You can buy a person’s hands, but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.

- Stephen Covey

Of course, it is the most difficult thing to do – to win someone’s heart – but I believe that it is the best way to win their loyalty and devotion.

If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• Don’t “Drill Down” Into Technical Issues
• The Project Management Theories According to Bas de Baar
• Recommended Readings: Project Risk Management
• Recommended Readings: Computer Ergonomics
• Classic Mistakes Forever!

Let you team members be creative!

People in the software business are creative by nature. They have their own ideas of new stuff to do, new ways to develop things, etc. They just don’t have the opportunity to bring their ideas to life. In software development business people are usually overloaded with tasks that are boring and not interesting to them. They end up the working day squeezed like a lemon and they have no energy to work on the things they like. Day by day they are losing their creativity and are slowly transforming from artists to mere office workers.

So here are my advices:

• Give them some time to work on their own ideas. Make your plans in such a way that there should always be time for your team to think and work on the things they feel interesting for them. This way you will be able to keep them creative and to maintain their trust in you.
• Listen to their ideas. People need to share their ideas, thoughts and conclusions. Be the one who listens and you will become the one who they trust and who they are going to follow anywhere. Besides, sometimes their ideas might be very useful for your business.

What do you think about the best motivation? Please, share your thoughts with me.

By the way, Bas offers a free ebook version of his book “Surprise! Now You’re A Software Project Manager” to the one who gives the most interesting answer to this question, so you can go to his post and give your comment there to have a chance to win the book.

If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• How would you reward your employees – cash or gift?
• Who Does Money Really Motivate?

There are many occasions when a project manager is tempted to take on some development tasks especially if she is an experienced developer or when the project management activities don’t require full-time commitment. Things go worse when a technical issue arises and apparently there is no team member who can solve it. The project manager’s heart cannot restrain from plunging straight into the problem; she buries herself into that technical challenge and after that nothing can draw her attention back until a solution has been found.

This a very dangerous temptation and many former developers give in to it. The problem is that while you think about that specific technical problem you forget about all the other obligations you have as a project manager. As the old proverb says, you cannot see the forest from the trees. But your new position requires that you never lose sight of the forest.

If you cannot fill up your time with PM activities it is better that you manage several small projects than to work as a developer and a project manager at the same time. If it is really necessary to do development tasks, choose something more trivial and less important and delegate the more critical tasks to people who can devote their full time to them.

And in the end if the team collides with some technical issue that requires more time and research assign that task to a team member who can devote all her time to that issue and ask her to keep you informed every day about the progress. Sometimes it may require hiring an expert or communicating with the support center of the system software vendor – these activities require too much effort and focus that you shouldn’t assign them to yourself. If you want to develop as a project manager you shouldn’t lose the sight of “the big picture”.

This post is also available in Bulgarian language. 

If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email

You may also find these posts interesting:

• Techniques for Gathering Requirements
• Classic Mistakes – GigaLease Case Study, Part 1
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• What is the project goal?

I started thinking and looking for some more blog posts on delegation and I came to some conclusions which I would like to share here with you.

Delegation is a two-way street, says Richard Lannon. Yes, this is an important thing that we shouldn’t forget. And when we assign a task to someone and we hold them responsible for it we have to have in mind our reasons to delegate and their reasons to accept it.

What are the issues from our perspective? There are two major questions we must ask ourselves: Why to delegate? and What to delegate?

The most common reason we refrain from delegating is our streak of perfectionism – we think we can do it better or faster than the others or we just don’t trust them. Krishna Kumar has a great post on the reasons of our distrust towards our team and how can we overwhelm them. Penelope Trunk says that our ability to do things perfectly isn’t as highly valued as we think it is. In fact, perfectionism isn’t valuable in 80 percent of the work we do and it is so unhealthy that it’s a risk factor for depression. We have to learn to let go. We can’t control everything so we must trust the people in our team.

Another common mistake is to outsource the most unpleasant and dirty work to the others. Penelope Trunk says that if you don’t do any of the crap work, your team will think you do nothing and you won’t be accepted as a part of the team. You must keep for youself only those tasks that are your specialty and to delegate all the other tasks to the people who can do them best.

On the other hand, you should put yourself in your team members’ shoes. They always ask themselves “What’s in it for me?”. Penelope says:

“Important work” means that it helps someone meet their own goals. So you should delegate to people not based on what is important to you, but what is important to them.

And more:

Your job is to help make people stars. Management is essentially an act of constant giving and constant patience. It entails giving people a little attention all the time instead of giving them lots of attention only when they mess up. In fact, if you’re managing people effectively they don’t mess up, because you play to their strengths and teach them how to move around their weaknesses.

People want to grow. and the most effective way of learning is by doing things. When you delegate your team members tasks, when you hold them responsible for those tasks fulfillment, they will learn a lot even if they make some mistakes.

The number-one factor in job happiness for young people is training. If they think they’re learning a lot on the job, they’ll like the job. You need to constantly coach these employees and teach them new skills and ideas. If you don’t, you won’t be able to lead them.

Perfectly said. Now that’s what is most important in delegation.

If you like the posts in this blog or you are interested in the discussed topics, please, subscribe to the RSS feed to guarantee yourself that you won’t miss an interesting post. You can do it in an RSS reader or by Email

You may also find these posts interesting:

• Krishna Kumar Did An Interview With Me On Software Development
• The 15 Commandments of the True Leader
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• The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader

I got involved in a project recently where the official policy of the company was to say “No” to all the customer’s requests. The project management responsibilities were shared between several people but not one of them liked to take responsibility for any decision so it became easier to all of them to say “No” instead of considering the customer’s request.

It was said that meeting the deadline was the most important goal of the project and so it didn’t matter if the result product was pure garbage and wasn’t usable for the customer. No one cared if the product really solved the customer needs as long as we keep the schedule and meet the deadline. Another explanation of why they always said “No” was that the request wasn’t described in the Functional Specification and therefore would not be done.

In fact this behavior is a direct implementation of the Waterfall model. Once the specification was signed absolutely no change could be made to the project. This is ridiculous. In our dynamic age when the business rules and the environment change so often, to stick so tightly to an outdated document is plain stupid. And I think they just have forgotten one of the most important duties of the the project management – to negotiate. You always have limited time and resources but your main goal is to solve the customer’s problem and to make them happy. Who cares if you’ve met the deadline but you provided unusable product?

When discussing the requirements changes with the customer, there are times when you should say “No” but there are more times when you should say “Yes”. You just have to learn how to negotiate and how to make tread-offs, and you always have to look for a win-win situation. It is not impossible. It is just not easy and not every PM can make it. It requires some skills and experience but it can be learned if there is a desire to do that.

Treating the customer like an enemy and always saying “No” is a suicide for the project, for the manager and even for the whole company.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• Recommended Readings: Computer Ergonomics
• The Most Important Rules of Delegation
• Managing Padding in Time Estimates
• Rich Maltzman, Crowdsourcing, and Project Management
• Loyalty

We all know Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory. There are motivation and hygiene factors that drive our job satisfaction. Here is my simple understanding of them:

• motivation factors drive us to work more, to perform better, to be more creative
• hygiene factors are the ones that their lack demotivates us and drive us to work less, to perform worse, and to be less productive and creative

David gives 7 very good examples why money is not a motivating factor but rather hygiene one. Pawel, on the other hand seems disappointed that in reality people are most interested by money and the other forms of motivation seem not being too effective.

Reading all this stuff you may think that these are objective factors and they are valid for all people. But it’s not true. People are different and they are interested in different things. And here came my enlightenment: There are two major kind of people based on what kind of factors are more important to them. I would call them active and passive people. There are people who consider the hygiene factors as more important (passive) and there are people who are interested in motivation factors (active).

And there are also two major types of work:

• interesting, dynamic, creative, and varied, and
• routine, monotonous, and boring

There is a need of both kind of people to match the corresponding type of work and respectively, you have to motivate them differently. The active people better fit the dynamic type of work – designers, architects, project managers. They are ambitious and creative type of persons and they can be motivated using a variety of motivation factors. All of them will work.

On the other hand, for more monotonous type of work you need the passive kind of people. Even in the field of software development there are many tasks that require persistence and patience and the active people are not the right choice because they get bored very soon. You need passive people but you cannot motivate them because they are not ambitious – they are not looking for improvement – they just want to do their job peacefully and quietly. For them the hygiene factors are determining so you need to secure them.

If you mix the factors and use the opposite approach you will get nothing. If you secure the hygiene factors for the active and ambitious people they won’t be satisfied because they will always be looking for some improvement and growth that you don’t provide. And if you try to motivate with achievement, recognition and personal growth people who just want to receive their salary regularly and to have an always-working vending machine for free, you again will get only their dissatisfaction.

Having all these considerations I think every manager should follow these simple rules:

1. Analyze the different jobs in your team or organization and define which of them require active people and which of them require passive people.
2. Hire people who match the job type – active people for a dynamic job and passive people for a routine job.
3. Use the appropriate motivation mechanisms according to the person’s type and the job type – hygiene for the passive people and motivation for the active people.

There are professions or countries where there are more people of the one kind and less of the other. For example, in Bulgaria passive people are much more than the active ones. I believe this is the reason for Pawel’s skepticism – both Bulgaria and Poland have been a long time on the same side of the Iron Curtain so probably this is why the most people he has met are passive ones and they are interested mostly in the salary as a hygiene factor.

Finding the right people for a job may be a problem and may take a long time but I think it’s better to work with fewer people before you find the right one instead of hiring the wrong person. If you put a person that doesn’t match the job you will never be able to motivate them.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• How would you reward your employees – cash or gift?
• How To Motivate Your Team?

Here are my questions and their answers:

1. How did you become a Project Manager?

• By accident – 7 (77%)
• By choice – 2 (22%)

2. Did you have formal PM training before your first assignment?

• No – 7 (77%)
• Yes – 2 (22%)

3. Do you like being a project manager?

• Yes – 6 (66%)
• No – 3 (33%)

The answers my readers gave bring me to the same conclusion I made in my previous post: people come to the project manager’s profession surprisingly and unprepared. Nevertheless, most of them begin to like their work and find it interesting.

I wonder what could it be if we had more training and a better promotion to our profession…

You may also find these posts interesting:

• How Do People Become Project Managers?
• The role of the Business Analyst – poll results
• How Can a PM Become a Real Leader?
• The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader
• The 3 Most Important Qualities of a Project Manager

Do you want to be a good boss? Can you rely on your team absolutely? Do you want to be a true leader? To feel like a general who can lead his soldiers through fire and brimstone to the ultimate victory?

Well, you just have to follow these advises that Pawel Brodzinski called 15 Ways to Be a Good Boss. I would call them The 15 Commandments of the True Leader. Here they are, published with the author’s kind permission:

1. Give credit to your team whenever they’ve earned it. Publicly.

2. Don’t be too fast with criticism. Wait until you calm down.

3. Don’t wait with feedback to next performance review. That would be too late.

4. Be team’s advocate in front of your supervisors. And vice versa.

5. Let people find consensus instead of telling them what to do. Whenever possible.

6. Enter when you see a conflict. Be fair no matter who is engaged.

7. Be open, honest and straightforward. More often.

8. Listen to the team. They have good ideas.

9. Let people be accountable. Whenever they can.

10. Don’t be afraid to make bold decisions. They pay off.

11. Make though decisions when you believe they’re right. They’ll backfire when not made.

12. Don’t panic in any situation. People count on you.

13. Take the responsibility for the team’s work. Their mistakes are yours.

14. Find the time for your people. Whenever they need it.

15. Cultivate teamwork and team chemistry. Individuals and their interests can destroy both.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• The Most Important Rules of Delegation
• The Recommended Weekly Readings (2007-08-18). Project Management
• The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader

One of the richest and most valuable resources in the subject of Project Management is GanttHead. I highly recommend you to become members of this site and to subscribe to their newsletter. In relation to my recent posts about leadership (How a PM Can Become a Real Leader and The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader) I found Andy Jordan’s article Project Manager vs. Project Leader where he argues that no matter how qualified in the area of task management a PM is they must have leadership skills. “PMs have a responsibility to manage their teams – even in a matrix organization – and that means being a leader”. Later on he describes the different sides of the leadership, the easy and the hard parts of being a project leader.

Another great article you can find on GanttHead is Tom L. Barnett’s Leadership-Powered Project Management. He says that all the leaders we know from history, no matter whether they were political, military, or business leaders, no matter their different styles, they all shared some similar leadership qualities. Mentioning Washington and Lincoln, Gates and Welch, Churchill and Eisenhower, Tom Barnett gives us the similar traits that are common among the great leaders. The traits that will set us apart as leaders and distinguish us from everyone else.

Although leadership skills are necessary quality for every project manager, there are techniques of the craft which are a mandatory part of the PM’s skillset. The PM Hut blog published recently Thomas Cutting’s post How to Really Fix a Failing Project where he focuses on the most important things a project manager should do when his or her project is in trouble. If you can stay calm and follow his advices there is a great chance you will get your project back on track.

PM Hut is a great source of useful information for the project managers. It is some kind of aggregator where they publish articles from many experienced and interestingly writing bloggers in the field of project management (including me, too ).

Writing the project documents is probably the most hated obligation of the project manager. I know a lot of PMs who don’t understand very well the purpose of each document and this is the main reason for their frustration when it comes to writing it. PM Hut has published an article by Sam Elbeik to help in this matter. While his article is pompously entitled The Secret of Successful Project Management it is a simple and understandable explanation of the purpose and the value of the key project documents like the Project Charter, the Plan, and the Progress Report.

At the end I am giving you a very serious article by the PM guru Tom Mochal in the TechRepublic’s PM blog devoted to one of the first things that happen in a project – the kickoff meeting. Why it is important and how you should conduct it – read it here (note: it may require a free registration!)

P.S. This series is inspired by Liz Strauss’ post on thematic link posts, which is a follow-up to Joanna Young’s post on the same subject. Many thanks to both of them for the idea!

You may also find these posts interesting:

• Krishna Kumar Did An Interview With Me On Software Development
• Top-down Planning – Good or Bad?
• The Most Important Rules of Delegation
• Project Management and Hiking
• The 15 Commandments of the True Leader

• Keep your eyes on the big picture. When things get tough, everybody’s temptation is to become acutely focused on the problems. A leader stays focused on the vision of completing the project objectives. When everyone in the team tends to run into details, your leadership keeps everyone focused on the big picture and the value you’re providing.
• Maintain team cohesion. When circumstances get tough, even the most loyal team members can tend to become pessimistic. Team members are tempted to start shooting perceived enemies and, unfortunately, they sometimes shoot each other. They begin to question each other and find fault with one another. The real leader fights this urge and helps the team stick together.
• Be the first to sacrifice. When there’s pain to share, leaders should do just that. If the team needs to work overtime, the project manager should work overtime as well. If the project team needs to come in on Saturday, the project manager needs to be in as well. Don’t just share the pain — take more than your share (but not all) of it.
  
  Well, this is the only point I wouldn’t agree much with. If you take the blame, the sacrifice, and most of the pain you wouldn’t be able to continue leading the team. You would be thrown away. I agree the leader should share the team’s burden but at the same time they should keep their dignity and authority. (Mike)
• Remain calm. Panic is a common human emotion and no one is immune to it. A leader, however, thinks the problems through and remains rational. Being calm will enable the leader to make the right decisions for the entire team. Panic only leads to disaster, while calm leads to victory.
• Motivate. In tough and challenging times, people tend to get emotionally drained. They can’t see how it’s all going to work out. The project manager should focus on motivating the team and show how the result will be good. A leader must remain positive and likewise keep the team positive.
• Create small wins. When things are bad, the team starts to wonder how they can win. The project manager should look for ways to win — even small, interim victories. With each small win, the leader will build esteem and a positive attitude.
• Keep a sense of humor. Hardly anything in life can’t be laughed at. As the project manager you need to look for opportunities to instill fun, and laugh at yourself and the situations that present themselves.

When project managers show leadership, the team will follow – maybe not immediately, but eventually. The project manager is the person to lead the charge and to keep the entire project on track.

You may also find these posts interesting:

• The 20 Qualities of the Inspirational Leader
• The 3 Most Important Qualities of a Project Manager
• Software Project Management Again
• How Did You Become a Project Manager – Survey Results
• The role of the Business Analyst – poll results