The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - These are the 7 Key Things Project Managers Need to Know | PPP #19

Episode Date: May 3, 2020

Paralleling the steps to start a fire as outlined in the book 'Stuff Guys Need to Know' by Author John Hunt. Of course, it has my spin on 'Stuff Project Managers Need to Know.'

Hey everyone, thanks for hitting play. Hopefully you have subscribed. If you haven't, please go ahead and do that on whatever platform you're listening on. Also, a rating and review would be much appreciated. Get those stars up. It'll get the show up on the list. A little tip from James Gearing from Behind the Shield. That's a great message I think he has.

And as podcasters, we appreciate that as well. Today, I want to talk about, I was fortunate to get a copy of Stuff Guys Need to Know, and it's a book that came out in 2001 by John F. Hunt, who went to high school with the same high school I did, but the high school with my sister, and my sister helped actually put this book together and get it published. So I got this book, got an autographed copy, pretty awesome. I was flipping through it thinking about, you know, what would be a nice short episode. And I thought, Hmm, what can I equate? I'm looking around the bookshelf. And then I look at this book, which I haven't read for a while. So I started looking through it and I got to the section

under, um, uh, what's this one separating the men from the boys so it's like manly stuff stuff guys you know for men and so he walks us through the process and in the book John uses an eight-step process on how you start a fire right and so when I looked at this and I thought of conversations I've had recently with some folks about project management in the phases of a project. I thought, you know what, the steps that he uses can be equated to the steps from start to finish of a project, right? And whatever industry, just kind of generic. So I thought, you know what, let me look at that comparison. So very, you know, process focused, but the people for this episode could be any project manager, right? Of any level. If your project is to, you know,

reorganize the office, same kind of thing. If it's to get new software, new devices, new whatever. And so what I'm going to go through is I'm going to, I'm going to talk briefly about, and I'll touch on it again. If you haven't read this book, stuff guys need to know by John F. Hunt, check it out. It's really good. It's got just tons of information in it. Very helpful in kind of smaller, very digestible amounts. Pretty neat on the cover of it. It's really good. It's got just tons of information in it. Very helpful in kind of smaller, very digestible amounts. Pretty neat on the cover of it. It's got kind of a dress shirt and tie, kind of mannequin with no head or arms, but it's pretty cool. Again, from 2001, but very relevant, very cool. And so getting into this today, I'm going to look at my notes here. I'm going to give my two cents as we do here, right?

And so this is number five in that book, as I mentioned, on kind of the manly stuff of fire making. So the first thing he has is to prepare the fireplace or the fire circle, right? So when you start a fire, whether you're, let's talk about if you're in the house, obviously you want to have the fireplace kind of cleaned out. It's ready to go. It's ready for whatever materials, whether you have kind of the metal log holder or just going to stack them in there. And then if you think about a campfire, you know, you get all the rocks around in a circle

to help kind of hold that heat in. You kind of clear out the old wood or maybe use some of it, but you need to get the space ready. And so when I think about that for projects, that's early on, right? That's do you, you know, you've chosen your vendor or your product or something like that. And your preparation of the space includes your intake process. So hopefully your organization is either getting to the point or at the point of maturation where folks can't just kind of go out on their own and get whatever product and bring it in and say, oh, we need this installed. But rather, everyone knows and the message is, if you want something, and I'm going to talk kind of more heavy to IT because that's what I do. I'm an IT project manager. But if you want something to come into this organization, and it's connected and has technology, it needs to come through this

intake process, which means you'll fill out a request form, which is great. Let us know what you're trying to solve. Let us know what you're trying to do. And we can kind of help direct that. Maybe we already have something, maybe we don't. And then there's maybe a governance group, but a leadership group comprised of not just IT folks, but IT folks, business folks, if you're in healthcare, clinical folks, all the stakeholders that you should have there, but high level leadership. So everyone can look at something and know it's not just a high level person whose name weighs a lot asked for it, but it's not practical and it takes a lot of work, but rather maybe it's something that actually benefits 200, 300 people or the

entire organization. And the other component of this that I equate to kind of preparing the fire circle for your project is the level of effort estimate. So early on before you even pull the team together, it's a good idea to see how many people hours, how much stuff, how much expense, how long might this take, and put that together in kind of a short and sweet, you know, quick summary. So that's what I think for the projects that preparing your fireplace or fire circle is that intake process, the kind of government governance review and approval, and then looking at level of effort. And then, you know, obviously choosing if it's a vendor, okay, we'll go with this vendor or choosing, okay, this is what we'll custom build or make or put in there. The second thing from from the book stuff guys need to know from john

hunt is to gather your fuel, right? And he breaks this out in three categories. Tinder, which is like leaves and grass and kind of the little stuff that helps get it started. For survivalists out there, you know, you can use like sock lint and you know, all the little things that are really flammable. Kindling, which is like small sticks, twigs, those kind of things. And then wood, which for him in the book, he mentions like half inch to six inch size wood, you know, if you've done campfires, you know, you've probably grabbed some big, huge wood and put it in there. Hopefully safety safely. But that's the thing, right? It's from real small stuff that helps get it started.

It's from kindling that helps really kind of build up the flame. And then the wood that's like the core of your fire once it gets going. And so for me and a project, I actually looked at the tenders, the sponsors and the leadership and maybe even the steering committee and not that they're not as important. In fact, you can't have a good fire without using tender, right? That's what gets the heat building. That's what gets the you know, catches the fire easier before the heavier wood catches. But it's not going to be involved the whole time, right? It's going to be involved, it's going to get things started, it's going to give approvals, and then it's going to say, cool, let us know, do your monthly check ins with steering committee or something like that. But when you get to the

kindling, that's what I think of like business owners. And so that's who is a project manager, I would work with a lot. That's who I'm going to work with on the day to day decisions, the weekly calls, just a little more closely than the sponsor, because sponsors are high level folks, they're not going to be involved in the weeds, or even you know, the tall grass or, you know, way down in there, they're going to be at the 30,000 foot level. Well, with the business owners, they're going to be much closer to the ground, but still not the folks that are doing the work, same as a project manager, I'm very close to it, but I'm not doing the work. And so for me, the kindling that is critical that you'll still throw some sticks on the fire here and there, they're still integral. But again, they're not sustaining

the project throughout. And so for me, the big pieces of wood, the big fuel, the, you know, the most important piece once the fire gets going is your builders, your doers, your folks on your team, your subject matter experts that are doing the work that we are all here to support. So, you know, for me, all these pieces, and just like a fire, just like John mentions in his book, are critical to the starting, to the continuation, to the buildup, and then to the maintaining of the fire. And so for me, sponsors and leadership

help get us started, get approvals, and we keep them informed throughout, but they're not always there. Kindling, business owners, those are the folks. We are working with them a lot more, and sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not always there. Kindling, you know, business owners, those are the folks, we are working with them a lot more. And you know, sometimes they're there, sometimes they're needed, maybe you need to throw a couple extra six on there a couple extra touch points with the business owner. But once you're going, you know, you can you can put big pieces of wood and those big pieces of wood, like our resources, our partners, our subject matter experts are going to keep that

fire going. Step three, from the book is to build the base. And it's interesting because one of my early incident command system from between the slides was called building the base with incident command system. And so with NIMS 700, actually, I think it was that one, the framework or foundation was ICS, but that was kind of a neat thing. It was exactly the same verbiage, but building the base. So with those sticks, with the tender, the kindling, the wood, making a square, making a box, and then stacking things up on top of it to make it bigger. And so when we start to build the base for our project team, that's when we bring people together, right?

We've gotten all the approvals. It's gone through intake. We have a level of effort. And then it's like, okay, let's talk to's talk to our sponsor and our business owner, because you'll talk to them early on, let's start to pull people together. And so for me, the the base of a project is the charter. And again, like we've talked about here before, it's not just the documents, the processes that go along with it. And then the kickoff. And of course, one thing that I'm a pretty big advocate of is this

foundational for right. So when you put a charter together, you're going to have early objectives, you're gonna have an org chart, or a proposed one, an early one, you're going to kind of know the kind of resources, you may not have names in all the boxes, and then communication, we've already communicated a ton. And we're going to make sure we keep doing that. And so for me, the base, just like a fire, but the base of a project is the charter. And it're going to make sure we keep doing that. And so for me, the base, just like a fire, but the base of a project is the charter. And it doesn't have to be this super drawn out thing. And you know, there's, there's some trends where it's, you know, two pages and somewhere it's 10 pages. But you just want to capture here's what we're trying to do. Here's why we're trying to do

it. Here's, you know, the objectives we're trying to meet, here's what we'll measure of success. And you can look back through previous episodes. And I did one just on charter elements. But the process of doing that, you're going to have some early good conversations. As a project manager, it's also a good opportunity for you to think about, okay, what do I think could be really efficient? And if you're newer, just ask. Ask other folks, your leaders, your boss, other senior project managers. If you've been around for a while,

I think it's always good to come to the table, not with an empty org chart or not with an empty proposal, but say, hey, here's what I'm thinking. And then how can we shore this up, right? So you're not starting from square one. Step four, we're going back to that tinder and kindling and the fire piece. So for the tinder and kindling, the tinder rather, so you know, you have all these kind of like pine needles or leaves or something, and you don't want to just throw them in there because they'll just fall apart. You want to kind of ball them up, right? So it makes a nice kind of, you know, fuel source that's a little more compact, plus it stays together. And then for the kindling, you're going to build kind of that teepee above those. So for me as a project, right, we're looking at

the charter, we're looking at doing our kickoff, we've brought together leaders, we've communicated very much to kind of let them know, hey, here's the structure we think could work with this project that's been approved with this, you know, or they may already have one or a start of one. So you know, when you're looking at that Tinder, when that handoff from those sponsors and leaders, they may already have some of that. It may already be kind of put together, if you will, and building those relationships, right?

So kind of as you would with the Tinder and squeeze it together and make sure it's strong and it's working together. You're going to do the same thing with your leaders as you get together as the project manager to make sure that you both have an understanding of expectations for each other of your role, right? What's the hierarchy of what you're doing? Is it project ties? Is it, nope, everybody works for you or you don't work, nobody works for you, all that kind of stuff. And the similar for the kindling. So you build that teepee. So it's a much stronger structure,

really building that strong relationship with your business owners, because these are the folks that you're going to work with very a big change in money or scope or time, right, or the quality. And so if there's a proposed change or an accidental one comes up, that's when you and the business owner together will have to go back to the leadership there. So looking at step five is to add to the base, right? So we're going to keep adding sticks to keep building up the fire as we need to, to get it going, to get it sustained. And this to me, when I think about projects as a project manager, we've had some good meetings. Now we've got, you know, the bones of a charter or maybe even a full charter. We've made sure that we're squared away in our communication with leadership and with our business owners and our partnership is pretty strong. And so for me, we're going to start adding tasks, right? We're going to start getting down to, okay, this kind of resource generally would do these kinds of tasks

for this kind of project. And maybe even starting to get into, right, we have named resources now. We're looking at resource needs specifically, we're asking for these type of analysts or this type of expert and the resource managers will look at their people and see who's available and then assign it. And of course, that priority depends on, you know, for me in the healthcare space, there's a lot of regulatory or safety or some some of those things help help us drive the priority verse, where's this in line with the other however many projects, right? So that actually kind of helps sometimes, but it also can be something a project manager needs to consider because we're going to go to a resource manager and say, hey, I need someone or some people.

And it's not like their people are just doing nothing, right? So they may already be busy. And then we come in with this high level safety or regulatory thing. And that's something we need to be sensitive of is we're going to ask for their folks. And it's a it's a, it's a kind of an ask. But you know, when you have very critical things to the business or the organization or the department, it's coming to an ask that's weighted, right? But that's a conversation. And that's, that's part of the duty of a project manager is, hey, this, you know, let's just level set, this is this just has to happen. So you know, we have to have somebody. The other thing we can show up here too, is our schedule a little bit more, right. So we've got a high level, hopefully one kind of month by month, rough estimate way

early. And then now we can start adding some of those estimated hours from that level of effort early on. And, you know, talking to our resources more, the resource managers and saying, well, what do you really think and kind of getting more into it. And, you know, just like a fire, we add more kindling, right, or more wood to the base and keep building it up. Well, in projects, sometimes, you know, what it looks like at the beginning is almost never, or really never the same at the end, meaning do we need more people? Did we lose people? Did the schedule get longer? Was it shorter? And so we're always kind of monitoring the fire. Is it burning well? Is it not? Do we need to add oxygen to it like more

people? Are we going to be kind of agile, which means we can do this piece of it, then we'll evaluate it, then we'll do another one? Or are we sticking with the waterfall where even then it's still dependent on the phase before it, right? So if we haven't initiated well, and I don't mean just all the documents and boxes checked, right, then are we really ready to execute or monitor or do any of that kind of stuff? So number six is light the fire. Right now we've got all this stuff together. We've got our kindling and our base and everything. It's, you know, striking a match, lighting it from the box of the pyramid from the bottom. Per, you know, again, stuff guys need to know book. It's great. So when the team is ready for me for projects, that's when we're going to make sure we get approval, right? And we're going to execute. So we're going to start building the stuff. We're going to start changing the workflow

or adapting it or whatever the project is focused. Again, for IT, it's, you know, we're going to execute. So we're going to start building the stuff, we're going to start changing the workflow or adapting it or whatever the project is focused again, for it, it's, you know, we're going to build the software, we're going to work with the vendor to build the software based on specs that we give them, or we're going to prepare the devices or a combination of all of that together, right? Because, you know, some complex projects have a bit of all of that. And then we're going to execute the work, we're going to build and then we're going to get ready to and then we're going to execute the work. We're going to build and then we're going to get ready to and then eventually go live, which means we're going to put this new thing in place, we're going to improve on whatever process we had. But it's the day where we say, okay, these new devices are out there, there's new softwares coming out. And so there's a lot of preparation that we've done in preparing the site and building up the fire and having relationships.

And now, you know, it's time to light it, at some point, we just have to go. And it's a very stressful time for everybody, because it's, we've already put a lot of work in at this point. And now we're going to see it out in the environment, which I've mentioned before, and if you've done projects out there, or any other kind of task, you know that you can test something on a few folks, you can do it in a lab. But it's never the same until you actually start, right? So you can have the prettiest looking base with tinder and kindling and it's ready to go and it's all dry and it takes like 20 matches to get it lit, right? As good as it looks, the fire doesn't start. And if you've ever gone camping, then you know that that could be a problem. So number seven

is to keep the fire going, right? So you got to keep it, you get it lit. Now you got to keep it going at least for a while. Maybe you're going to cook. It's keeping you warm. You're going to build from the fire guidance from stuff guys need to know. You're going to, this is step number seven. You're going to build a fire with larger pieces and add as necessary, right? Pretty straightforward. So you've lit it, it's going, and then to keep it going, you're going to keep adding to it. And so for projects, as a project manager, you're executing, you're live, you're going to be there, be proactive in supporting your teams, removing obstacles if they have any. Maybe some areas didn't even realize the project was coming

their way. So that's a gap. That circles That circles back to communication. What, how do we fix that gap? Are there people that are obstacles that don't want to do the new thing, the new process, use the new product? Well, that needs to be brought up with your business owner with their leaders. We need to work through that because it's not, you know, your projects team whose job it was to make the stuff, you know, the technical things, get the devices together to sell this to everyone to use it. It's it's yours as a project manager with leadership to do that ahead of time as much as possible. And when you run into obstacles to help facilitate discussions to say to let folks know the why of things, right? Ask for more resources if you need them. So if your fires dampening down,

you need more wood, right? Got to go get it in the woods, got to get it from the store. If you're buying those bundles. If you're on a project and you're becoming kind of resource poor because you run out of stuff or people are out or changing or whatever's happening, then you got to, ahead of time, proactively as you can for expected things, for unexpected, get back to those resource managers and say, hey, you know, this is slowing us down. This is a gap we have. And do the best you can. And it may not be even be your folks, it may be the vendors. So escalating with your primary reporting contact, and then the leadership in their organ, and all that kind of stuff. And you got to keep leaders up to date. So part of keeping the fire going of keeping the support for the project and the awareness and the buy in is letting leaders know, here's how the go live is going.

Here's how adoption is going. Here's or not going right. It's not going to go perfect, but here's the status of it. Let's stay up to date on our reports, do the best we can in that aspect. So that information also helps keep the fire going so that if there's grumbling about this new product or process or something that leadership already knows about it, and they can help at their leadership meetings or in their discussions or with what they see and support the project because they're in the know. The last step of any fire, but before that, a step that you could take is please subscribe to the podcast. Please reach out to me on peopleprocessprogress at gmail.com. There's a Facebook page people process progress. And then there's people process progress.com. So feel free to do that. So this last thing is

putting out the fire, right? We've we've used it, we're going to bed for the night, we're done with the campground, whatever it is. It's the old water, mix it up water, mix it up water, right? Do that until there's nothing steaming. There's nothing hot. There's no coals. As a former firefighter and a public safety guy and public health guy, I'm pretty big on like super watering the fire. Nobody wants a house fire or, you know, woods fire or anything like that. So make sure that happens.

So similarly for projects, we want to make sure that we don't leave spot fires or leave stuff burning. That's going to then flare back up. And so we need to make sure that before we go live, we already have our support process for the go live and then for afterwards, when it's operationally supported by non project people. So shore that up well ahead of time, you know, weeks ahead of time, not just the day before, but you know, and we have sign off and we've had those conversations. It's not a here's the project, here's the thing, but it's But it's an ongoing conversation with the people that are going to be asked to support it.

That won't be as familiar as the project team. That won't be as familiar as you or the other leaders. So make sure that's good to go. Have a stable product to hand it off, right? So just like we want to make sure those coals are out for sure. It's stable. It's not going to relight. We want to make sure before we even think about or can hand off the project that we've done the best that we can. And I've definitely

seen success with this and then failure with this. You think it's looking good. It's great. And then, oh, it's not working. And then you got to do some other things and circle back and fix that. So make sure that you ahead of time or dress as much as you can before you hand it off. But then you're also ready to address because you're going to be one of the subject matter experts on on the overall project or product or process or whatever to come back and help that support if it comes back up. And the last thing is check in, right? So you're gonna before you go to bed before you, you know, shut down for the night at your camp spot and make sure the fire is out, you're going to give it one last check, we're going to make sure

even when you close, and part of this, you know, putting the fire on is closing and doing all the documentation and the discussions. And, you know, a lessons learned report is that, you know, check in after the project's closed to check in with the people that adopted the new process or using the new product, maybe formally and informally, right? You can do that with surveys, but you can also do it with discussions with the people who have the new thing. So I hope this was a helpful kind of neat perspective. I thought cool parallels in all things between process, right? And people that are the most important that we do, whether it's, starting the fires here or with our families, you know, teaching our youngsters how to start fires using some of this great guidance from

John Hunt stuff guys need to know, or projects, right as project managers, bringing people together. And from start, you know, getting things ready, gathering surprise, preparing supplies, rather preparing the site, starting with conversations, getting people together, getting a little more detail, getting the work done, getting ready to hand it off, and then checking in when it's done and actually closing it out. So again, thank you all so much for the great feedback I've gotten so far from this and the Between the Slides podcast, from folks that I've talked to on other podcasts. I look forward to having great guests again in the near future. Thank you so much for listening, subscribing, all that you do out there each and every day. Look forward,

just like all of you, to more regularity. But remember, get some fresh air, go for a walk. We are getting through this. We're doing great. And Godspeed.