The Principles of Project Management

The Project Board

The project board is a small group of people whose main responsibility is to make the really big project decisions. Much as you, as the project manager, have an incredibly important role to play, and indeed will make many of the day-to-day decisions, you'll always be focused on delivering the project. The project board is there to make the really big strategic decisions -- even if that means potentially killing the project.

Your project's board should consist of:

• the project sponsor
• a technical advisor
• a business advisor or domain expert (if needed)

The project sponsor is the embodiment of the project customer, that is, the person for whom the project is being delivered. Typically, this person will be the head of the department that will benefit the most from the project, though in some cases, if multiple groups within the company will all benefit from the project, the sponsor may be someone who's even higher up within the organization. This person is usually also the one who's paying for the project, so he or she will have a clear interest in ensuring that value for money is delivered. Ultimate decision-making authority resides with the project sponsor.

Choosing the right project sponsor is very important. This person needs to be interested enough to stay involved and take the project seriously. He or she equally needs to be senior enough to have the authority to make the very big decisions -- even the decision to cancel the project if necessary.

Sometimes, you don't get to choose the project sponsor: either someone has already been selected, or is chosen without much input from you. This can be fine -- the sponsor may be interested in the project and have sufficient authority to help you achieve results. Equally, they may seem disinterested and disengaged from the project.

Dealing with Disinterested Sponsors
If you find yourself working with a disinterested sponsor, sit down with that person and discuss the project, his or her role within it, and your expectations. If the person can be the sponsor you need, engaging him or her in a discussion may well pique the sponsor's interest and lead to more active involvement. Alternatively, if you need more than the sponsor can give, he or she may step aside quietly, or even volunteer to help you find a replacement.

The technical advisor and business advisor or domain expert are there to provide perspective and advice to the project sponsor. The sponsor may not understand the full technical or business process implications of certain decisions that need to be made through the project -- he or she can rely on these advisors to promote and encourage the best possible decision.

As project manager, you should expect to meet with the project board regularly to provide progress updates and discuss any key decisions. Usually, the role of the project manager is to lay out the options and recommend the course of action that you believe is the best way forward. However, it's important to realize that the project board's job is to make the really crucial decisions, which may even extend to stopping the project if it's been delayed too long, is too expensive, or if there's evidence that the desired value will not or cannot be delivered.

Usually, the biggest challenge with the project board is not to identify the three members, but to keep the size of the board to just three! All sorts of stakeholders will feel that they should be on the project board, particularly in organizations where decision-making authority is seen to convey status.

What you ideally want is for all stakeholders to feel that they're being represented on the board by at least one of the three members, rather than needing to be on the board themselves. This is another reason why project board members are often senior members of the organization -- if the other stakeholders report to them (either directly or indirectly), the board members will also be representing their views.

But let's get back to our example. Before we realized that the four projects really needed to be combined, the project might have had a very different project board, as different teams would have been involved and affected. However, for the combined project, we identify that since the customer service, sales, marketing, IT, and product supply departments are all affected, John Vaswani, the Head of Operations (which encompasses all these groups) is the right person to be the project sponsor.

The technical advisor will be Sandra Chan, Head of IT, who can advise on how the solutions being proposed will fit with the existing company systems, and how ongoing maintenance and support will be completed. The Head of Customer Service, Adam Garcia, will also participate on the board as the business expert. They will, of course, be advised by their own operational teams, but the point is that the project board will include three key people who can make the big calls!

As soon as she heard about the project board being formed, the Head of Marketing wanted to be included as well. You had a difficult decision to make. As far as possible, it's best to keep the number of board members low. Any efforts to expand the board can easily snowball until half of your stakeholders want to be on the board casting their votes! That said, if the project scope is broad, and you're going to be working on business processes in a wide range of areas, as in this case, it can be useful to have multiple business experts.

In this case, however, you sit down with the marketing chief and explain that the marketing department will still be consulted -- you want to have some of the marketing team on the project as "consultants" to ensure that the solution that's developed isn't solely focused internally, on the customer service team's needs. The marketing department's point of view would also be represented on the project board by John Vaswani, who, as Head of Operations, will be interested in making sure that all of the different areas work together as efficiently as possible.

You come away from this meeting with a double win: content with the proposed arrangement, the Head of Marketing has already assigned some of her team members to be more directly involved with your project. You've also managed to keep the size of the project board down to three, which will make the decision-making process much smoother than it would have been if the team was bigger.

The Project Team

The other stakeholders that are very obviously quite invested in the project's success are the project team members themselves. These are the folks who are working alongside you to deliver the actual work and, as such, they're essential! Depending on your circumstances, the project team members may herald from different backgrounds and companies, and may have been brought together just for this specific project, or they might comprise an existing team that's been charged with focusing its efforts on this new challenge.

Whichever is the case, ensuring that you have the right mix of abilities on the project team is key. We'll talk a lot more in later chapters about how to help your team members work well together, but the first step towards harmony is to make sure that they have the skills necessary for the job.

As with the other stakeholders, you'll want to understand where the people in your project team are coming from. You may well find yourself with a mix of contractors and employees, some working full-time and some part-time. What are their personal motivations? How do they feel about working on this project? Are they viewing it as the opportunity of a lifetime or a punishment? Do they feel they have the needed skills, or are they worried that they're out of their depth?

"Hang on a second!" I hear you protest. "I'm not their manager. Why should I care about how they're feeling?"

Even though you may not be their line manager, or responsible for their careers, you still need to care about how your team members feel, since this will affect your project. People will always be the most complicated component of any project, so it's crucial that you become adept at understanding them. While this may seem daunting, the reality is that just by listening to your team and trying to understand where they're coming from, you'll learn almost everything you need to know. The elements that you don't uncover by talking to them, you'll learn from watching them work together (or failing to work together, as the case may be!).

When you're starting a project with a new team, I suggest that you sit down, one on one, with each individual. Ask them what they're looking forward to and what they're feeling apprehensive about. Share your vision for the project and how you see them being involved. Try not to pile on the expectations too much, though; rather, focus on listening to how they feel about the project and what concerns they might have.

What If It's Just Me?

Sometimes you may find yourself being both project manager and project team. In this situation you might doubt the need for project management. Your doubts would be valid! If you're a team of one, the tools and practices of project management that focus on team collaboration won't be as useful. With no need to share and communicate, you can keep track of your tasks and deliverables however you like.

Realistically though, much of the true value of project management is in communicating to the stakeholders and project board, rather than your team. Project success depends on the involvement, trust and often contributions of the stakeholders. Equipping the project board to make well-informed key decisions is also extremely important.

If you are a freelancer or similar, primarily working solo on projects, then you may well want to strip down to just the essential tools and best practices. By focusing on the tools that smooth your interfaces to stakeholders and project board, you will get the most out of your investment in project management. For more information, see Appendix A, Tools.