The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Forming Tasks from Objectives to Execute a Project | PPP #33

Episode Date: June 28, 2020

Part 3 in the series is where I contrast the parallels between the seven Executing tasks from the PMP exam with the work Emergency Managers and Incident Management Teams do every day.

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 the show. Thanks for tuning in to part 3 of this 5-part series, People Process Progress episode 33, PMP Equivalence, Execution Tasks Performed by Emergency and Incident Managers. So now we are in the doing, if you will, stage phase. Executing is 31% of the PMP exam. So if you're studying, this is a big chunk of it, right? We can do all the getting things going, chartering, a ton of planning.

Now we have to get the work done. And this is where we as project managers are really going to be working closely with our teams to really enable them because the doing of the work, unless you're a project manager and also one of your analysts or coders or builders or something, usually not what's going to happen. You're there to make sure they have what they need to get the job done. So let's go through these parallels, these equivalents from the executing tasks. And for those, there are seven tasks in this. And so again, I'm going to parallel what do we look at for the PMP exam as project managers practically to and what are things that emergency and incident managers are already doing. So you can equate and parallel your work to that

of a project manager, you're already doing a lot of this great work. So good job. Also, if you could do a little bit of work and subscribe and rate and review and reach out to me if you'd like on whatever podcast platform. If you can subscribe there, reach out to me, pupilprocessprogress at gmail.com, pupilprocessprogress.com. I post a link tree link anytime I post this on the Facebook page for the show or LinkedIn. So that takes you to everywhere to subscribe. So thanks again. So let's execute this episode. So task one in executing is to acquire and manage the project resources based on your human resource management plan. So this means we're going to get our

resources. Typically though, in practical application during planning is really when I ask for folks because you need them to plan, right? To tell you how long it's going to take. What is a realistic schedule? What's the work that needs to be done? What's the real level of effort? So this is where some of that crossover between execution per the project management body of knowledge in the exam may not align with the real world.

So, you know, if I wait until it's time to do the work to ask for resources, they're already going to be doing other stuff. So in emergency and incident management, early on, this is where we need to make sure we've involved, again, finance procurement, right,

in our EOC training. So ahead of time, we've already involved those folks so that when we do need their help, it's not the first time they're there. This could be just because it's an equivalent, whether I agree with where this is or not, in practical application is, like I mentioned in the planning section, we talked about our planning units, where the resource unit's going to work with operations, figure out who they need, when do they need them by, where do they report, all the practical pieces

of requesting things. Same thing for emergency operation centers. Which emergency support function partners do we need here? How long do they need to work? Do we have pre-approved practices and those kind of things? And again, working with, you know, this is about people and stuff and facilities, right? And so this is what we're going to be working on when we execute, making sure that we have those because we should have already planned for these. So this won't be the first time that we're going to ask for these or get them going. The second task in executing is to manage tasks execution. And that

makes sense, right? Based on all the planning we've done, now it's time to look at the schedule, the task level stuff, have your team, you know, by now you've already gotten together, this task will take this long, this one that long. I need this much space, whatever they need. And now it's time to just keep folks on track, have those regular meetings, follow up on tasks that aren't being completed. The emergency management, whatever tool, like I've mentioned, WebEOC is an online tool for managing work requests, right? To your emergency support functions where you are or to and from the state or federal level, whatever level you're working at. Have some sort of incident action tracker,

like if you're on an incident management team, we used to use spreadsheets, you can share them online via Google Docs or Dropbox, something like that. Monitor the status of those right across all sections. So you wanna be doing something where you're managing tasks and requests. And in ICS it could be planning requests, it could be logistics, whatever, but you need to have something.

So emergency managers and incident managers and public safety folks should be pretty familiar with the Microsoft suite, particularly Excel and projects, certainly in project management, project is huge. There's also a bunch of different web-based things like Project Online, SharePoint, tons of other suppliers. But this is where we are looking at tasks and seeing are they being done on time? If not, why do we have to move these? Do we need more people and all that kind of stuff? So again, execution is making stuff happen. Task three in executing in the domain here for the PMP exam for the one through the end of this year, Rimmer,

is to implement quality management. So all that stuff we talked about, how we're going to measure the quality of the work that we're doing for the project, is it being performed in accordance with the quality standards we've set, particular with when you get into this with like Six Sigma stuff that looks at quality improvement and workflow. But are we doing the coding? Are we building the new notes? Are we getting the work done that we said we would? And is it of a high quality?

Does it meet the expectations and deliverables and quality? So in emergency management, when we are doing those emergency operation plan revisions, and we're pulling together people, and we're seeing what works and what doesn't, are we having those regular check-ins, whether it's time to update it for the next cycle, you know, of renewal or not, we should keep people familiar with that and meet. We regularly go into meetings within the community, we're hosting those, we're encouraging completion of those activity logs if we're on incidents,

those incident command system form ICS 214s, right? That we're going to look at, we're going to keep in that documentation unit and the doc box. And we want to use those to look at, you know, what are improvements or what are strengths, right? Because what didn didn't we do? Well, what did we do really well that we want to do for the next time and then apply those for the next operational period? Same for projects, right? So the equivalent of this task three and executing, you know, going back to the PMP side

of the house or project management is even we don't have to wait till the end to do lessons learned, we should be doing that constantly, right? If we learn something one week that affects the work for the next week, we need to adjust. And same thing can happen whether it's for the emergency operations plan, for the incident action plan, for activity logs, all those kind of things. The fourth task under the PMP column in executing is approve changes, right? So now we're going to do the changes that are part of our change management plan. We're going to follow those processes if we need to, and they're going to meet the project requirements. So similar to the one above this for emergency operation revisions, we want to do a

formal review and we want to make those changes and track them. And there's usually a table that's in an emergency operations plan that tracks changes. Like I made it, and then what was a significant change after that? What was the date? Who made it? then what was a significant change after that what was the date who made it very basic like three column table or something like that so we should be doing that as well for you know for the emergency operations plan it should be feedback from responses we've done in the past from exercises or just looking at it and go it you know what we can make this better more actionable less pages whatever for the incident command system a more tactical look at it we're gonna get feedback constantly from all the incident command system sections,

particularly operations, and we're going to iterate the plan. So if we have, even if it's a planned event and it's multiple days like that UCI bike race in 2015 I've talked about, which is a great regional effort with great people involved, we work every day like it's a new incident or event and we're going to change things we're going to change how many people we need in operations or even planning or whatever but we're gonna follow those those changes we're gonna follow our meeting cycle we're gonna follow the change management planning if you will in the incident command system and emergency operations plan revision process just like we would for a project task five is to implement

approved action so for the risk management plan. Let's say some of those risks are being realized or we see the impact of these risks and we need to take advantage of opportunities. Maybe one of the risks is we could finish early because we have two extra people. Hey, let's get those people into the project. The planning section on the incident management side in particular is going to make changes to the incident action plan based on those adjusted tactics from ops right and we'll make those during the current period with just you know red ink written on the paper plan or you know if you can sit there and type it

we could update them there but have those notes and then safety and the medical unit that did all that risk management planning before is also going to look right let's say the water goes down and we don't need to wear flotation devices. Well, we can have our folks take those off if it's summer, it's hot, right? And we're going to make those changes based on risk. Let's say with a medical unit, we start seeing more people getting sick. You know, just like now COVID, washing our hands more, wearing masks, staying apart, all these things that we're told or we do to help keep ourselves and others safe, that adjusts. It continues to be adjusted. The sixth task in execution, we're going to manage the flow of

information. Boy, is this a challenge, right? But we have a communications management plan, right? And we've had that signed off by our stakeholders and they approved how often and what methods we're going to use and when that's going to happen. And in the emergency and incident management world, our public information officer, right, is who kind of owns this. And they're going to use and when that's going to happen. And in the emergency management world, our public information officer, right, is who kind of owns this. And they're going to vet all the press releases that are going to go out through the emergency operations center. There's going to be, you know, if someone wants to add something or they see something in the last update that wasn't right, they can go to the EOC manager, which is typically the emergency manager, work with the public information officer and and get that fixed, and then do those releases and manage that communications. I mean, that's almost exactly

the same thing. Similar, but more for kind of the team is the situation unit, which is in the planning section. And they're going to maybe develop a schedule and when we're going to send situation reports. So this is equivalent to kind of like a project status report. And the situation reporter sit rep will identify like key consumers, like who should get this? How often should they get this? What information should it have in it? It's very, very similar to a lot of the elements in a communication management plan. And are you going to email it?

Are you going to post it? Is it going to be somewhere like that? And so very similar, particularly for internal. And then the public information officer is kind of your external. So if you have maybe did great things, some of the, you know, the folk, the great folks I work with, and was fortunate to help support doing telemedicine implementation with smartphones, right. So there were news releases for that to share it. And some weren't even from us, they were from folks on the which is the best possible feedback that would be, you know, that were out there working nurses or other

folks saying how it helped them so much. So that's an external release that's posted on a news site, you know, that's external. So there's kind of a handoff there between how are you going to manage external push of communication related to this project or effort or response and how are you going to manage the internal communication that's going to affect maybe the flow of the project or the response. The seventh, the last task listed under execution for these PMP exam domains for the, at least through the end of this year, is to maintain that stakeholder relationships, right? So we had that stakeholder management plan we made that identifies who's who, maybe we have that RACI chart, right? So who's responsible, accountable, who's going to be consulted on some things

and who are we just going to tell, who's going to be informed. So that helps a lot, that RACI chart or that stakeholder register. And now is when we're going to have that, right? Relationships. If we don't have, you know, focus on our people first, we can't have a good process

and certainly we can't make progress, right? So we have to really now we're going to focus when we're executing all this work, we're going to keep an eye on our stakeholders. That includes everyone from our analyst to our vice president, that's our sponsor, and everyone in between on the team, and it's critically important. So like in initiation and planning, there are some knowledge and skills that PMI recommends that you have for this execution or focus on or study and be able to do, of course, the most important. Continuous improvement, being able to put together a statement of work, quality standard tools, vendor management

contracts, and recognizing those interdependencies between the different project elements. So as a project manager, you should have the overall view of everything that's happening in the plan, exactly like a planning section chief, because you've been part of it and you help facilitate the process. You need to know if something changes over here, have an idea that it could affect something over there. Be able to speak to it and either say, yep, that makes sense or, hey, have you considered this? On the emergency and incident manager side, almost the exact same thing.

You got to be continuously evaluating how the operations go and how's the emergency operations center doing? How are the folks in the field doing? Transparency across the team, right? There's really no secrets. There's some parts when you get into intelligence or law enforcement sensitive stuff, but largely we should be communicating horizontally,

meaning across all different levels of positions and vertical up and down our chain of command regularly. Consider tracking those burn rates, right? So how much are we spending on this bulldozer plus the driver that's clearing land for the fire? And we have to, during execution, during operations, monitor the tempo of our teams and our partners, right? Because now is the time when we're sending folks in the field

or we have folks doing hours and hours of coding. Now is when folks are going to start to get tired, when they start to burn out, when things can happen. And as a project manager, it's critical that you keep that view also, that emotional intelligence. And certainly as a planning section chief or an emergency manager or an incident commander or incident manager, you got to look at the tempo of your team and not get lost in the forms or the briefings or the whatever else, right? It's all about our people. So thank you so much for going through this execution

domain, which again is 31% of the current PMP exam. There are seven tasks in there, plus some of those knowledge and skills. I hope, again, this highlighted, if you're an emergency or incident manager or in public safety or similar fields, you're doing project management all the time. There are equivalents. The difference is the forms and what we call them process a little different, but a lot of the core skill sets of what you all are doing totally translate to being a project manager. Thank you all so much again for coming to this third in the series of five.

Look forward to catching up with you all in the fourth, which will focus on monitoring and controlling. So really looking at how we do it with this execution or how we do it with our response, with our support and coordination. Everyone stay safe. Please, for goodness sake, wash your hands and Godspeed.