What sort of stuff do you need to think about if you want to run a project? The tools you use are not that important, but the things you need to track are. The truth is you can run an amazing project using just paper and pen – even a decent crayon will do. Just don’t forget to start with an pre-mortem!
I will give a walkthrough on my preferred “stack” for how I lead projects in a future post, but for now the focus is on the why. What is the philosophy behind projects and programmes. How do they differ from one another and why do we bother doing either?
Projects vs Programmes
The best distinction I have seen comes from the fantastic book Lead Successful Projects by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez:
Projects deliver outcomes against a deadline. Programmes deliver capabilities.
Lead Successful Projects, Nieto-Rodriguez
Projects have outcomes and they have end dates. They are the tip of the spear, what you need to do to “get things done”. Programmes are much longer term. They will deliver capabilities that are leveraged time and time again, serving many future projects.
An under-appreciated aspect of the project-programme interplay is that you often need the urgency of a project to trigger a programme, and the investment in its underlying capability. In this way it is not simply that capabilities feed projects to deliver value. Projects can be the vehicles that drive growth in capabilities. In my experience the best leaders keep this in mind.
People
A company is its people. The word “company” is of military origin (the only model we had on how to organise large groups of people) and it literally means “body of soldiers”. Any aspirations you have about running projects or programmes while avoiding the messy people stuff (!) should be retired right now. The company and its people are one and the same.
Take capabilities as an example. How do you know what capabilities your organisation might need? What existing capabilities are there that might need levelled-up? That is where a strong network is important; you should always invest the time in understanding the ecosystem that you are operating in. This is not just a question of looking up your org chart and asking team leaders what they do, although that can be a good start. Is there a quiet person somewhere in your company who has excellent ideas? Spoiler: probably.
If you do find such a person, what next? Have you told them you think their idea is great, and that it could form the basis of a valuable capability? Have you ascertained whether that future even appeals to them? What support could you give them? Often this can be as simple as listening to them, really listening, not just waiting for your chance to talk.
This is sort of stuff that you won’t be able to add to the Jira backlog. There is no handy burndown chart for being a decent person that you can report upwards in an executive summary. That is okay. Life is too short to be that interested in metrics anyway.
Communication
Once identified, the people who could lead these capabilities should be considered stakeholders in your project. Any other project leaders should be your stakeholders too. Real impact is delivered once you have multiple projects operating together harmoniously. This does not just mean that you can share resources without fighting (surely the bare minimum), but that each project team is proactive in looking for win-win situations.
In my experience win-wins are usually found when there is a healthy disregard for hierarchy within your project teams. I love the “Team of Teams” model from Gen. Stanley McChrystal (this is a must have for your reading list!). You might consider formalising your communication strategy and circulating it at large. Having people know the level of detail and the frequency of updates that they can expect form you is always a good thing.
Another crucial aspect of communication is story telling. As a leader you need to inspire your team towards a bright future, otherwise what is the point? That doesn’t mean you only try and do fun stuff. Rather, you do your best to set a destination for your team and create that shared vision of the future. Tell them how their project plays a role in realising that future. Tell them where you think the ride is going to get bumpy (in a good story it always does) and make sure they know you are along on the ride with them.
Storytelling is one of the most wonderful skills you can develop as a leader, and it is so fundamental to being human. We are all storytellers in some way. We understand them. They are where the real magic lies.
And they are also the topic for another time!
I like the idea that a programme builds up a capability and a project performs a set piece of work in a given time and budget. Academics are familiar with this language when applying for funding. For example, the UK research councils have programme grants which they describe on EPSRC’s webpage as follows ‘Programme Grants are a mechanism to provide flexible funding to world-leading research groups to address significant major research challenges.’ It is perhaps the world’s worst sentence. Perhaps, to paraphrase this nice blog post, they should say ‘Program Grants build research capability that will be used time and time again’.