The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Bringing Partners Together for the Planning Phase of a Project | PPP #32

Episode Date: June 28, 2020

Part 2 in the series is where I compare the parallels between the thirteen Planning tasks from the PMP exam with the work Emergency Managers and Incident Management Teams do daily.

Please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum, and we will get started with People Process Progress in 3, 2, 1. Hey everybody, welcome back to People Process Progress podcast. This is episode 32, PMP Equivalents, Planning Tasks Performed by Emergency and Incident Managers. Slight tweak to the title there, it was going to be of or for, but these are things that emergency and incident managers do. So we're going to talk about that this time which is a pickup from episode 31 which focused on the initiating phase tasks performed by emergency and incident managers now we're getting into planning so planning for the exam is 24 planning

in real life is enormous right right? Plans are useless. Planning is everything is certainly the mantra that I believe in that many other folks do. So today in this episode, whatever day you're listening to this, we are going to go over in the planning, which is 24% of the PAP exam. There are 13 tasks as outlined by PMI. And so first task I would ask each of you listening is to subscribe on whatever platform you are listening on, give us a rating, etc. And to say thank you, that's my first task. So what is the first PMI task under planning, which again is 24% of your exam focus, so significant chunk as it should be. What are we gonna do in task one that says,

we're gonna review and assess detailed project requirements, constraints, assumptions with stakeholders. That sounds very familiar, but this is based on the charter we made near the end of the task and initiating, right? Focusing on those deliverables that we're gonna put together. So if you're an emergency manager,

you're gonna in brief those emergency support function partners, or you already do that, right, that are coming to support the emergency operations center. So doing the same thing we're going to do as project managers when we in-brief people based on the charter or some of the other requirements. We're going to work closely regularly, and we do, with local emergency planning committees or LEPC partners, right? Those are community stakeholders. Those are other governmental partners that we're planning and working with every day. We're going to do those after action meetings. We talked about that, but more we're going to brief on what was the outcome of those. Or if we have a replacement coming in, if we are that emergency support function person,

like I was ESF8, which is public health, I'm going to in-brief the person that's coming in, or if I'm switching out as a planning section chief to or from another person, we're going to do an in-brief. We're going to go over the objectives, the IEP for the day, all that kind of stuff. So just like planning is kind of an intro into the information, we gather an initiation. Same thing for emergency and incident managers. As new people come in, as we transition off, we're going to do that handoff. So the second task in planning, I talked about scope management plan, right? It's based on the approved project scope from the charter. We're going to look at some techniques, but it's very scope focused. And that's huge for projects because the scope are kind of the guardrails that are going to keep us all going down the same path without going off

this exit or that exit or expanding too much, getting resources and money off track. This is similar to number six of those seven patterns of highly efficient project managers I covered in people process progress number 28, where you want to develop the team's operational tempo. Just like project managers and the team are going to help set the scope, we are in the EOC going to set that battle rhythm, right? That operational tempo, the operational periods for the emergency operations center, for the daily events or for the no-notice incident. So what is the scope of what we're going to do? What are the schedules kind of type stuff? But the scope of this emergency operation center

activation is to support, boom, whatever incident, the storm that's coming, something like that. So very similar, I think, what I see parallel to setting the scope for a project as helping develop people. And I know rhythm and tempo kind of has to do with schedule, but it really also should involve heavily the discussion of what's the focus of this, right? Because if you're supporting from the Emergency Operations Center, you're supporting the entire locality there. If you're doing it for an incident, you're reporting a specific response or a specific event. So what is the scope based on those objectives for that event? Task three in the planning from PMI is cost management, right? So we're going to focus on

the cost management plan that's based on the scope that's built on the charter that's going to help us manage costs. So we touched on some of this in initiating for emergency and incident managers as well. We're going to have to have a good plan or should between finance and admin and logistics, right? What's our buying process? How much can we spend? Do we have sourcing resource requests? Who can approve those? Working all that kind of stuff out. So we do that every day. Finance folks do that all the time. If you've looped them into your incident management team and certainly in your emergency operations center, cost management planning like we do in project management is already happening by those professionals. So get some exposure to that if you're not already, if you're in public safety

or emergency management, and that'll be helpful. Now in some exposure to that if you're not already, if you're in public safety or emergency management, and that'll be helpful. Now in task four in planning, we're gonna get into that scheduling. So this really focuses on that. It has to do with our scope and our resources. And so how do we put all that together? We have a tool that we use in incident management

called the meeting schedule, which was the ICS 230. So it's exactly that. It's one of the operational periods, which is also on the incident action plans, where we follow the schedule around the planning P. What are the other meeting schedules for incident and emergency management? For the EOC manager, what are deadlines for content or updates that you need for the coordinating action plan or to do the update to the state in your system? Like WebEOC is a system I've used before.

So we're really getting a hold of what's the team schedule, what is our operational schedule, and really getting the nitty-gritty of that. So again, that's what schedule-based deliverables and milestones and setting those. And if you do scheduling of some sort, you do scheduling like you do for projects. Pretty straightforward.

The thing is there's conversations, right? What's feasible? When can we actually meet these dates? How many people do we need to do it? All that kind of stuff. Task five, we're looking at our human resource management plan, right? So resources. So asking for people, the experts that are going to do the work for us in emergency and incident management, particularly, you know, growing up in the planning section and in the resource unit, that's the whole job there, right? Is to help develop with operations. What are the resources or the people we need to solve the objectives? Similar to PMI, that human resource management

plan or resource management plan is that, right? How are we going to, you know, how do we get people from the resource manager based on maybe some rough or early estimates or more short up estimates at this point in planning on how long this work's going to be. And similar for maybe a response based on that schedule we have in the emergency operations center, we might need two people from your organization because we have so much work, particularly with logistics, or if it's the operations folks supporting from the people in the field from the EOC, you may need multiple disciplines there. Test six, communications management plan. So in the planning, as you notice, in the planning domain, many of the tasks have to do with plans. This one is communication. So the EOC manager creates a contact list for all the emergency support function partners. If you're not doing

that, maybe consider it so that we know either the reserve desk space phone has a phone number all the time. It's the same one, whether I'm sitting there or somebody else is. That's way easier than giving people cell phones out. In the incident command or incident management world, there's a communications plan or the ICS 205 that has radio channels. There's a 205A that's an actual contact list of stakeholders. So again, between the liaison planning and then make sure operations has those contacts. We're doing communications management planning and emergency and incident management all the time, just maybe in a little bit different way. In the project management world, it's kind of how often are we going to

have meetings? How are we going to push that out? Are we going to do emails now, you know, Zooms, WebEx, whatever, all those kinds of things. So all the different factors of who we're going to communicate, how we're going to communicate it, when we're going to communicate. But again, if you're managing an incident, supporting an incident, responding to an incident, you're communicating those things pretty regularly all the time, right? That's pretty cool. Test seven, procurement management plan. So this has to do with some of the cost management planning we talked up there as well but but the procurement management plan is you know how do we get the resources and what's the process to procure them not just how much do they cost do we have a

pre-arranged contract those kind of things so they're kind of blended again finance admin from the incident management team world or purchasing your purchasing department from your government agency that's working in the emergency operations center. But but finding out what contracts do we already have at what rate do we need to get new emergent ones? And so a lot of that procurement management has, you know, some of that groundwork should have been done in project management through business analysis through. We got the contract with the vendor. Now we're actually put the plan together. But what if we have to pay for people to get training on the project? Or what if we have to buy new equipment, all that kind of stuff? How are we going to do that?

Who can do it? Who can approve it? Just like we would through the Emergency Operations Center or the Finance and Admin section in the Management Team. SK, all about quality management and PMI under planning. And so how are we going to manage quality? How are we going to measure the cost of quality? How much time it's added if we have defects or the occurrence? So setting up really a good quality assurance, quality control process. In the emergency operations center, we want to

have regular report outs, right? So we want to hear from our emergency support function partners or incident command system section folks. How's it going? What progress are you making? What progress are you not making now? Just like in any project, we don't want to wait until the meeting happens to hear these things. We want to be having those conversations, but we need to have that tempo of how we're going to manage the quality of the work or along with the quantity people are assigned, just like we would do in quality management planning. A good way on the emergency and incident manager side to do quality management planning with

those regular check-ins is just add in some command general staff meetings, checkpoints, you know, throughout the day, throughout the operational period, and control quality, evaluate the effectiveness of the resource assignments. Do you have too many people somewhere? Do you need more stuff? Will we run out of water? Like we're always checking in, we're always looking at the quality of the work we're doing. How are the people we're there to help? If you're an incident management team, are they happy with what we're doing for them? Do we have some folks that are having difficulties with, you know, the relationship building or something like that? That's also a quality to me is what's the quality of the relationship that we have with

folks who are there to help. Looking at human resources, communications, procurement, quality, change management, right? This is a big one because we don't want to, in projects, just changes to be made just whenever somebody wants to do it, right? So we want to address how they're controlled and how to track and manage that change. That's task nine under planning and the domains for the PMP exam based on the project management body of knowledge. So in emergency management and incident management, incident command, this can come into unity of command, right, for official requests. So this speaks to, you know, if we're not doing good change management on projects, we could have new tickets put in, a change made just because someone said they wanted it.

So this people-wise for emergency management, incident management, to me has to do with if I'm in a section, I work for one person up one chain of command up one line, right? I don't work for one person up one chain of command up one line, right? I don't work for everyone in every other section. So part of, to me, change management is making changes to logistics based on what someone in finance admin said that may not be vetted or someone from planning came over and was like, no, no, let's just do this. I've seen this before, whatever, right? So you need to work that out in your section and work out how we are going to work together, because I don't have to go through 10 people who shouldn't have to in the incident command system structure just to get to the other folks in the units. But I also don't have the right as a planning section chief to just walk over to a unit leader in logistics and tell them what to do, right? That has also changed management over people. So we need to encourage in emergency management, incident command, incident management, horizontal partnerships

and collaboration to achieve incident or event objectives, right? So that means we're talking to each other horizontally, but we're not given direct commands. So we are managing the changes that we may or may not make based on agreements within our section with other sections and all that kind of stuff. And again, in projects, we're going to track through either change orders, and this is a huge thing on the exam, change orders, control boards, change control, all that kind of stuff. But we want to track it too. Track your key decisions on some kind of list, spreadsheet, whatever. But you need to track it so you can reference it. And we need to get it approved by the folks on the team that have approval, your business owners, your sponsor, other key stakeholders, not just be throwing changes, you know, in there to the wind.

Task 10 under planning, risk management, right? So we're going to make a risk management plan. What if this happens? Do we accept that risk? Do we build a dam in front of this to try and mitigate risk from the flood based on our project space? Do we make a risk register, right? So we need to register a list of those. What risks have happened? What are we gonna do if we do encounter that risk? What if we do run out of people? And we need to look through it throughout the project life

because these risks could become issues. That's what happens to a risk. We think this might happen or we know this has happened before. If it actually happens now, it's an issue that's affecting our project. So for incident management and emergency management somewhat, but particularly incident management, there's a safety message, which is the ICS 208 form. And so it's a pretty direct

correlation to me that we should for sure, the safety officer that's putting that together and working with operations, logistics, and planning to do all this planning, but particularly the safety officer should include risks and mitigation strategies. That's what the safety message message is that's what safety message planning is in the medical unit that works in logistics who's the member of the medical support for the incident management team members needs to also have a pretty concise medical plan that's the ics 206 track injuries track near misses of imt members so when you're doing risk management it it's safety does it for the entire incident or event, right, or could for what you're supporting, you know, the emergency operation center. And the medical unit leader will do it for the team on here's some risks that are in the area,

here's what we're going to do if this happens. So a lot of parallels, you know, risk management, obviously, for project management, business focus is not as life safety focused as safety messages and medical plans are. But you're still looking at how we can avoid the risk, mitigate it, accept it, transfer it to somebody else if we're not willing to take it. All these different risk strategies, and you can look those up. But it's pretty direct. So again, if you're doing those things as a safety officer or medical unit leader, you're doing risk management planning just like a project manager would in the planning phase or planning domain of project management. So great job. We have put together quite a few different plans, risk, change, schedule, cost, communications, human resources, and a few others. And now in task 11 in planning, we're going to focus on presenting

this project management plan, which is the culmination of all these other plans to the stakeholders. We're going to tell them, hey, here's all the things we want to do in all these different areas. We're going to get approval and they want to proceed with execution, right? So we've done tons of planning. Now we want to actually do the work, write the code, build the house, whatever it is for the project, for Emergency Operations Center, and for Incident Management, and we touched on this in initiation, when you present these things, when you present the plan, this is the planning meeting. That's what this is to all the Incident Command System sections, stakeholders, VIPs. Now, a lot of the Incident Command System sections

sort of already work together to create this plan you're going to present, particularly operations, right, whose plan it is. And to any VIPs that want to hear the plan, maybe it's never worked with the incident management team. You've come in to help, something's happened in the locality. So you're going to do a good brief and represent your team well and your locality well, and talk about all the work that you've done and how you would like to execute it and then get their approval. Just like you would if you were the project manager leading team that put together all this planning and say, here's what we want to do. Boom. Task 12 talks about a kickoff meeting. So this is the start of the project milestones. And

this is kind of late in the game. I think often I've had kickoff meetings or been part of them actually during initiation. Like, hey, it's approved. Project manager's assigned. We're working together, sign contracts, got a charter, kickoff, then go. So because then we can ask for resources and do all that kind of stuff. So here it's in task 12 and planning. So it's kind of a planning initiation crossover in my mind. But this talks about communicating it, right?

So this kickoff meeting is like your operational period briefing, or you're gonna share an emergency management, incident management, what's the layout of the incident, what are the objectives, resources in that briefing, or you're briefing the troops, the operations section folks that are going out into the field, or if you're in an emergency operations center, you're briefing the folks that are in the EOC to support the entire locality or entire business, whatever your emergency operations center is supporting, and do that really good briefing

so folks know what they're doing, who to talk to, how to talk to them, and to kind of get started there. We've done tons of planning as project managers in our PMI hats here in this column, task 13 in the planning domain. And so now it's time to do stakeholder management planning. So we've done all this planning, we've presented it to our stakeholders, to our sponsors, all those folks. And now we're going to see how we're going to manage the stakeholders, right? So how are we going to keep them informed, develop their interests, analyze their needs, engage them for project decisions, expectations. In emergency management and incident management, one thing that I've seen that works really well, it's in training. It's in the incident command system, emergency operation center interface training that is done up at the Emergency Management Institute by FEMA is the policy group, right? So we're going to make a policy group. We'll have the emergency operation center. Then we'll have the incident command system folks on the ground. We don't

really want one because, you know, too many people in a space or on a call or something, just not as productive. But we want the policy group, the leadership folks to have their own group to work out leadership stuff with leaders, where we can go to them if we're the emergency operation center, put it close to them, but not necessarily in there. That's where the work needs to get done. And sometimes folks aren't comfortable working near C-suite folks or command staff folks or whatever. So it's good to have a policy group that covers legal and compliance and security and whatever other elements for your project. Same thing for emergency and incident managers. So put it close to the emergency operations center in that side of the house. If you're

on the incident management team, coordinate closely with them and get that guidance, but have a separate policy group. It's very helpful. You can then manage their expectations. You can communicate with them. The incident commander or the EOC manager can be that liaison with that policy group if anything needs to be escalated or clarified. And that'll be really helpful. We mentioned in the initiating one, there are knowledge and skills. And here I'm going to summarize because it's a long list. I know you don't want to hear me read a list, which I tried not to do this time kind of streamline with each of these episodes is really skills in the planning areas that we talked about for PMI, right change management costs, procurement, etc, etc. Another really good one that was workflow

diagramming. And so business analysts, clinical informaticists in the healthcare space do this a lot. Workflow diagramming, emergency and incident management is kind of like doing your tactics meeting, right? How are we going to take these objectives into tasks that actually people are going to do? And to do that, you need someone that's familiar with it. So that's why operations is someone that needs to be a pro there. And so similar to emergency and incident management, you need to have familiarity with all those areas, predetermined contract list, what are your buying policies, what's the organization of your emergency operations center,

you should know what that is, have a good org chart, make a good work-rest ratio to help mitigate some of that risk of burnout and stuff like that. And again, when I share this document, you'll be able to see all that. So I'm not going to read through it there. But I think, you know, to me, again, going back over this that I put together a while ago, there's so many parallels between what emergency managers and incident management team members do with what project managers do.

And again, I really attribute my learning and success as a planning section chief to my getting into being a pretty good project manager and hopefully continuing to grow in that capacity just because there's so much crossover. And again, I think I've said before, you all know good process and the ability to bring people together in a process and help everyone make progress translates across all disciplines, all sectors. So I hope this planning domain focus, which again, is 24% of the exam if you're studying for that PMP exam before the end of this year, or if you're just trying to think about how can we sell this to emergency or incident management or public safety folks to develop more comprehensive project management. Well,

there's a lot of parallels and I hope this helped with that. You all helped. I appreciate all the feedback I've gotten, emails, folks reaching out to be on the show or that have been on the show. Thank you all so much. As always, stay safe, wash your hands, and Godspeed.