Kolme Group aired our first episode of the EmPOWer your PMO Series titled – “Crushing Conversations with your C-Suite.” This webinar focuses on tough C-Suite conversations Project Managers often have to have and how to best prepare for them. 

If you’ve finished binge-watching the Netflix show Tiger King during social distancing (vendetta against who??), you can catch Chapter 1 on our Kolme YouTube channel now. Be sure to download our Crushing Conversations Cheat Sheet or read on for a quick recap.

PMO PowerHouse (Our PMO Leader)

During the webinar, Kim Essendrup – our real-life project management superhero, led us through a PM packed adventure where our PMO Lead Character, PMO Powerhouse, discovers some important lessons to level-up her projects. For instance:

• The sponsor support you get (or lack thereof) can make or break the project – so we need to Crush these conversations!
• Your PPM (project portfolio management) utility-belt is your secret weapon – it can provide data insights which help your C-Suite make well-informed business decisions.

And something we all need to hear:

• The superpowers that got us to where we are today, are not necessarily the ones that will continue to fuel our career trajectory – there is an opportunity to level up! 

League of Leaders (C-Suite)

As PMs and PMO leaders, we often need to communicate with various leaders within the organization to gain important decisions and move our initiatives forward. As PMs, sometimes we tend to get lost in the details of our project – RAG (Red Amber Green) indicators, issue & risk logs, status reports, etc. But as Kim mentions during the webinar, it is important to take a step back and think of the information the Executive wants to hear. This includes reliable and meaningful information that will help keep them informed to drive action and awareness from their strategic perspective.

In addition to what information you deliver, it is also important to understand how to deliver it. By recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of how each leadership personality will process the information, you can craft the message in a way that helps them consume the information more efficiently and effectively. This helps your leadership team make better decisions, faster. Now that’s a superpower!

During the webinar, Kim introduced us to an exciting cast of leadership characters that spanned the full spectrum of personality types inhabiting the C-Suite. These included Mr. Factual, Gut Check, Rising Star, and the 5-Headed Beast… (I know we are all picturing a previous leader who fits at least one of those descriptions).

Each member of the League of Leaders has their Modus Operandi (their MO), for how they make decisions. For example, Mr. Factual is very direct and wants the bottom-line up front; he doesn’t have time for big reports or fancy tools, but he still craves facts and data. Playing counterpoint to Mr. Factual, Gut Check relies more on intuition and experience; she needs the data to resonate for her to make a decision.

The journey continues as PMO Powerhouse goes into each new Boss-Battle! Kim describes how to prepare for these skirmishes and which tools to choose from your PPM Utility Belt so you can Crush your conversations and best deliver the data to the C-Suite elite.

Knowing how to support and prepare them for decision-making, whether by teaching the narrative or helping them “Say No” to themselves, can set you on a greater, and quicker path for decision success. You might not only be the superhero they deserve, you’re also the one they need!

Next Time On…

We bring you the next chapter of our “EmPOWer your PMO Series titled – “Change Management Powers – Activate!” Join Kim and Kelly as they discuss how Change Management skills can be another great resource to have in your Utility Tool Belt. Who knows, we may even meet a new character. 😉

We’re Here To Help

Contact Kolme Group to find out more about our Project and Change Management Services or email us at PPManswers@KolmeGroup.com.  

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube  and use #KolmeGroup on shared posts!  

This is part two of our series on Resource Management skills and best practices. 

In part one, “Learning to Crawl,” we helped you determine if resource management is right for your team or organization. Now to start building – it’s time to gather the appropriate data your resource management practice will build upon. While this may be a tedious process, it is a crucial step in ensuring that you have the foundational building blocks needed to implement a successful resource management solution.

Following are nine critical datasets to provide resourcing recommendations and enhance your project management skills. Remember, it is an iterative process but accuracy and completeness are key here. The more accurate and complete the compiled information, the better your resource management practice will run.

1. Get to know your team.

This may sound ridiculous, but you really need to take the time to know your team. Learn about their individual strengths and weaknesses? What are the idiosyncrasies of their personalities that influence how they work? How do they handle stress? Are they good at multi-tasking or do they become overwhelmed with too many assignments? Do they play well with others or do they work best on their own? Asking these questions will provide you with your resources’ soft skills. Soft skills are just as important in aligning appropriate resources to projects as harder, technical skills. In fact, it can be the determining factor of how effectively a project team performs. Invest the time in learning your team.

2. Capture the current demand.

The goal here is to understand everything that your team is currently working on and the remaining duration of that effort. Identification at a team level typically doesn’t work as each team member may be working on different aspects of a single project. This data set is a living, breathing unit. You will need daily or weekly updates, depending on fast your environment changes, in order to ensure that everything is captured accurately. Ultimately, if you don’t know what is currently absorbing your team’s capacity, how will know their availability?

3. Identify pipeline and forecasted efforts.

To create a full picture, you will need to identify what projects are currently in the pipeline waiting for launch and what projects are hanging out in the forecast. While gathering this list, do your best to obtain accurate probability of fruition, scale of effort, and high-level requirements. This data set may not need to be updated as frequently as your current demand data but don’t let it sit idle for too long as projects may be added or drop from the list frequently.

4. Learn your project flow.

While each project is different, you can typically start to see the pattern of ebb and flow of actual work, and how long each high and low period last. Take some time to study this pattern and learn the impact of each project phase to your resources. Understanding this fluid pattern will allow you to strategically move resources between projects, maximizing efficiency.

5. Gather estimated efforts for project assignments.

For the resource management iterative process to work, you need to be able to estimate how much engaged, working time will be required for a project request. Without knowing how much time a resource will be dedicated to a project, it is very difficult to provide resourcing recommendations. How broad or granular you want to go on gathering efforts is up to you and how your team operates. However, I typically recommend that you go somewhere in the middle. I find trying to estimate the overall effort for an entire project never works. Going down to task level is too complicated and quickly becomes overwhelming. So, go somewhere in between. If your projects deliver in phases, how much effort is required for a resource for each phase? If the work doesn’t really lend itself to phases, where is the ebb and flow? Regardless of the level of detail you gather, do your absolute best to ensure that the estimates are as accurate as possible.

6. Identify project roles.

Project roles tend to be the first category that you filter on when mapping possible project resource assignments. These should be generic roles assigned to an individual project and not job titles assigned to resources. As an example, your project may need a Project Manager, Developer, Subject Matter Expert (SME) and a QA Technician. These are temporary roles that can be filled by any resources and terminate once the project completes.

7. Identify resource skills.

Please do not go crazy here! You want to go as high-level as you can while still being able to identify an appropriate resource for a project. Developer would be too broad of a category and usually refers to a role within a project. However, a Java Developer, or a C++ Developer is enough to classify skilled resources. To identify level of expertise, consider using a skill level.

8. Identify skill levels.

Skill level is completely different than an assigned skill. A skill level is a ranking system, within the assigned skill, that allows you to differentiate beginners from experts. Your skill may be Java Developer and the ranking (an attribute) for that skill would be 1-4 indicating beginner, intermediate, advanced and expert levels. Administration is greatly reduced by keeping your skill level as an attribute within the main skill rather than breaking out each level as an individual skill assigned to resources.

9. Gather additional resource factors that impact projects.

Is your resource fluent in a foreign language? Where are your resources located? Is there any scheduled PTO or holiday times that you need to work around? Do your customers have regulatory or security requirements that must be met? Each of these factors impact project assignments. Gathering and maintaining this information for each resource will be key to accurate project assignments.

Time Well Spent

Yes, foraging for and gathering this amount of information is time consuming and occasionally difficult. However, it is well worth your efforts. If you take the time now to gather accurate data in a manner that can be consistently monitored and managed, you will be well on your way to creating a sound foundation that is the centerpiece of your resource management practice.

Stay tuned for our article on the next step in the resource management process, Resource Management: From Crawling to Walking. In the meantime, check out PMI’s article on Mastering Resource Management for some additional learning.

Next Steps

Contact Kolme Group to find out more about our Project Management Services, please email us at PPManswers@KolmeGroup.com.  

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube and use #KolmeGroup on your shared posts!  

 

It’s Monday morning, and you are about to send a status update to your project team and sponsor. You pull up your project tracking resources and…nothing. Now, you’ll spend the next few hours emailing, texting, pinging, or calling your project team to submit their timesheets so you can send your status report.

I think as project managers we have all sung this same tune. Let’s face it – even with the best intentions, we’ve probably forgotten our own time sheets a time or two. The time-tracking application may even be up on your screen, but a few urgent emails or client calls later, and the task is forgotten.

In today’s technology-induced and distracting world, our attention spans are flooded with task-switching overload. One best practice to combat this, while also driving positive employee engagement and increased productivity, is the use of a technique known as Gamification.

In this blog we will review Gamification as a Time Tracking Best Practice and what elements to include for proven success when creating for your team.

What is Gamification?  

Gamification is not simply making a game out of something; it is using specifically designed methods – game mechanics — to tap into the reward center of our brains and provide positive reinforcement (by way of an uplifting dopamine release)¹ for completing a task. It enables opportunities to fuel both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation factors within us. Small Business Trends² provides a great explanation for gamification: “A process for integrating game mechanics into something that already exists to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty. This can be almost anything, from your website to social media presence, day-to-day operations, customer engagement and more.”

Gamification may seem like a trendy buzzword especially when the concepts reference digital examples, but its benefits have been around for several hundred years. The theory was first introduced by Russian Scientist, Dmitri Mendeleev, during the 19^th century³. Mendeleev used his interest in playing cards to help him understand and categorize elements by arranging and listing the information on each card. He was able to turn a mundane task into something that held his attention; this research helped him create the first publication of the Periodic Table of Elements.

From scientific discoveries to updating a timesheet, gamification could be…wait for it… a game changer.

Gamification for Time-Tracking

There are ten primary game mechanics in gamification: Fast Feedback, Transparency, Goals, Badges, Leveling Up, Onboarding, Competition, Collaboration, Community and Points⁴.

Each has their place to help motivate your employees with different incentives and engagement goals. They can be used together or separately. The seven game mechanics mentioned below have been specifically curated to help with the dreaded timeclock blues – how to increase timesheet compliance and get your employees motivated to submit their timesheets.

Fast Feedback

The first helpful time tracking best practice to remember in gamification is providing fast feedback.

We all love encouragement, especially when it is coupled with instant gratification. The use of notifications tied to your timesheet application can help your employee or project team member feel a sense of accomplishment and provides a quick pat-on-the-back to reinforce that they are doing a good job.

• Many applications can be configured to use workflow rules integrating third-party apps such as Slack or coded right into the tool itself. When an employee enters their time for the week, they’ll have an instant note saying they are a time-keeping rock star.

 

Badges and Leveling-Up

The next helpful time tracking best practice in gamification is rewarding with badges and level-ups. 

Badges are tangible evidence that someone is performing well. Coupled with leveling-up, a great partner to badges, employees can proudly display their continuous, long-term achievements. Badges can be awarded during staff meetings or individually shared out by members in a department message board or team discussion post. They can be tailored to your company culture and provide an opportunity to get really creative.

• Fitbit has done a great job using badges in a unique way to help motivate the number of steps a person should take each day (Have you earned your Great Wall of China badge yet?) Similar badges can be created with the theme of time logging:
  

  You’ve logged enough time to have watched every episode of Game of Thrones	You’ve logged enough time to have read the Encyclopedia Britannica	You’ve logged enough time to have traveled to Mars in 1965 via the Mariner 4

• Create several levels of badges for employees to proudly display they are hitting their goals and then some – helping you to rack up more even points with this incentive:
  

  Congrats! You have leveled-up to a Quarter-Time Warrior. Thank you for submitting each timesheet for the quarter by Friday afternoon.	Whoa! Watch out! You are a Six-Month Slayer. Thank you for submitting each timesheet for the first half of the year on time.

 

Goals

Another helpful time tracking best practice to remember in gamification is creating goals.

Goals help us know what is expected of us and how we are being measured. This game mechanic can be used in several different ways to motivate both individuals and managers of teams. Determining the key performance indicators that the team should be striving for is the first step. Then, input this data into your Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool so employees and their leaders can monitor their progress on achieving their goals.

• Below is an example from Clarizen, a SaaS-based PPM tool, which shows how KPIs and goals can be easily reported:
  

 

Competition and Transparency

Continuing on, a helpful time tracking best practice to remember in gamification is creating plenty of competition and transparency.

Competition can be a great game mechanic to drive participation and engagement for timesheets, especially when paired with another game mechanic, Transparency. By showing others how well they are performing in comparison to their peers, they will be motivated to have a friendly competition to improve their rank. This can be at an individual level as well as between managers of different groups within a larger organization.

• The image below shows an example dashboard you might build within your PPM or time tracking tool’s reports module to be shared with various user groups. This shows where the user ranks for their individual timesheet compliance, department timesheet compliance, and then an overall leader board.
  

 

Community

Another helpful Time Tracking best practice in gamification building a community.

Community caters to our innate feeling of belonging. It is why we are curious about what is happening with our favorite celebrities, the occasional check-in on acquaintances using social media, and the reason happy hour invites are well received. This game mechanic can be applied to help timesheet engagement by augmenting the earlier mentioned game mechanics of Transparency, Badges, and Goals. By seeing the progress of peers, employees can set their sights on their next badge to conquer or cheer on others to help reach individual and department goals.

• Use your PPM tools collaborative features to allow team members to share their achievements. If your current PPM tools do not offer a social post feed, there are other popular instant message apps such as Teams or Slack that can be used for sharing and allowing others to join in on the congratulations.
  
• The same collaborative tools can be used to help provide a platform for the community to join in and share where the team stands on timesheet submittal progress, promoting a team approach to achieving the overall compliance goal.
  

Conclusion

Gamification is not a new term, but its benefits can be realized more easily than ever using today’s technology. It can be a great resource to help you conquer the mundane or easily forgotten tasks – like the ill-fated timesheet entries. By applying gamification and game mechanics, you can also provide an opportunity to foster a greater sense of community and company culture, more transparency into department-wide goals, and increased engagement with your team. Game on!

Next Steps

Contact Kolme Group to find out more about our Project and Change Management Services, please email us at PPManswers@KolmeGroup.com.  

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube  and use #KolmeGroup on shared posts!  

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Sited Sources:

1. The Science Behind Gamification: Why it Works
2. What is Gamification and How Can it Help My Business?
3. 5 Benefits of Gamification
4. What are Game Mechanics
5. Ultimate Fitbit Badges Guide: Everything you need to know about these motivational badges
6. Prevent Timesheet Under-Reporting

Time tracking in today’s professional business world may be similar to playing a tense game of Frogger. You know you need to cross the road but no matter which way you leap, there is a high probability that you will encounter obstacles that will ultimately end your game. So, the question remains: Should we or shouldn’t we require time tracking?

As a certified Resource Manager, I can easily persuade you into landing on whatever decision you are leaning towards; for or against it.

If you are leaning against it, then most likely I would recommend that you don’t do it.It probably isn’t worth the stress and disruption to your team at this time.

If you are leaning towards it, or if your business requires billing for services operations, you need to determine what type of tracking you will require: Full Day or Time Against.

Before you decide, take a walk with me for a few minutes as I share some of my lessons learned about implementing time tracking.

Full Day Time Tracking

Full Day time tracking requires a resource to account for 100% of their working hours. This is the more complicated, more demanding, and most difficult type of time tracking to successfully implement and get adopted. While, there are several key benefits, the drawbacks can come with real consequences to both the organization and the team environment.

Benefits:

• Provides a full picture of productive vs non-productive time/activities
• Provides resource allocation justification
• Provides performance accountability
• Identifies where processes should be improved
• Provides process improvement KPIs
• Provides the most detailed level of estimating work effort and forecasting resource capacity

Drawbacks:

• Can generate largely false data – Resources often arbitrarily enter in 8 hours just to meet the requirement. Others may under report or inflate time to appear that they are either more efficient or more overloaded than they may be.
• Often creates a negative working environment by generating a feeling of “Big Brother Watching” or being micromanaged.
• Difficult to get buy-in from the resources and managers. This requires a lot of tough conversations and a strong dedication to taking the most unpopular avenue.
• If Applied to Global Users – Can create complications in countries that have Work Counsels and/or strict privacy rules
• Can create legal complications if global, contracted or non-exempt employees consistently report more than the agreed upon contracted hours

Before you decide to implement a Full Day time tracking requirement, take a minute to be brutally honest with yourself – is this truly required to achieve what you need?

If you are unsure that this is right for your team, then don’t do it! You need to be fully committed to deal with the objections, consequences, and occasionally out right defiance if you plan to go down the Full Day time tracking path.

If this option worries you, perhaps consider implementing the less daunting time tracking type, Time Against.

Time Against Time Tracking

Time Against tracking requires a resource to account for the amount of time they spend working on a particular assignment and the overall daily sum of hours is not as important. While time tracking will never be popular with resources, this is the less demanding, more user friendly, and easier type of time tracking to successfully implement and get adopted. Following are a few of the benefits and drawbacks for this method.

Benefits:

• Provides a more accurate picture of actual time spent on individual projects
• Can identify where processes should be improved
• Provides resource allocation justification when combined with resource management best practices
• Provides performance accountability
• Provides the most accurate level of estimating work effort and forecasting resource capacity
• Eliminates the “Big Brother Watching” and micromanagement feeling
• Easier to get buy-in from the resources as they are more likely to understand the request versus harboring feelings of having their privacy invaded.

Drawbacks:

• Resources need to change their working behaviors in order to make entering time against projects a routine activity
• There may be times that large blocks of time are unaccounted for which ultimately should generate a conversation with the resource
• If Applied to Global Users – Can create complications in countries that have Work Counsels and/or strict privacy rules
• Can create legal complications if global, contracted or non-exempt employees consistently report more than the agreed upon contracted hours

Which way to go?

Between the two time tracking types, I have historically seen greater implementation success with the Time Against option. Resources are more open to accounting for how much time they spend working on something so long as every minute of their day does not need to be tracked.

The result of this that you typically have more reliable data that you can use to improve overall performance.

But First, Ask Yourself…

Regardless of which path you choose, there are several other questions that you need to take an open and honest look at:

• Will time tracking improve your working environment or simply create more overhead? – This is a difficult question to be honest about. Our initial inclination is to start listing off all the ways things will improve: accurate effort estimating, resource forecasting, resource load balancing. All good responses! I would challenge you, however, to look at it again. Especially after looking over the next few questions. Time tracking will always come with additional overhead, negative emotions, and change management. It’s worth being honest with yourself on if it is truly required.
• Once you have this information, do you know what to do with it? – Be honest!!! Gathering information is great! Gathering accurate information is even better!! Now that you have it, do you know what to do with it? Do you have an established resource management plan that you will be utilizing? Do you have knowledgeable Resource Managers that know how to analyze the data and turn it into some that can be used for both executive level and team level decisions? If you don’t, take some additional time to evaluate your needs.
• Are you willing to risk changing the work environment by implementing time tracking? – Let’s face it, we hire our resources for their skills, their knowledge, and their experience. Asking them to track their time is often perceived as a slap in the face, even if you have very valid reasons for the ask. Time-tracking discussions are very difficult to have! Be aware of the impact that this will have on your team’s morale.
• Do you have Leadership’s buy-in and support? – If they are not fully committed to backing up this requirement, it has a very low chance of succeeding. If your Executives are not fully on board, consider implementing another method to gather the data you require.
• Are you willing to link time tracking to a compliance program?  – This typically impacts resources’ financials or reviews, positively or negatively. If you aren’t willing to take this step, understand that compliance will be extremely low. If it isn’t required, and there are no consequences for being non-compliant, then why should I bother?

My Time Tracking Recommendation For You…

Ultimately, there are many, many factors that should be reviewed thoroughly when considering project time tracking. At the end of the day, here’s my recommendation for you:

If you feel the need to require time reporting, and a minute by minute breakdown isn’t absolutely necessary, have resources report time against particular assignments rather than a full day’s accounting.

Balance the non-reported time by adjusting their overall availability. Link this initiative to a compliance program, whether you choose to utilize the carrot or the stick – although you will get a much better reaction with carrots! Take the time to explain to your resources exactly why this information is needed and lay out the WIIFM factors.

Finally, make sure to follow up your team after some time has passed to review the results of this effort. Let them not only see, but understand, what benefits time tracking brings to the organization.

Let’s Continue To Chat…

Contact Kolme Group to find out more about our Project and Change Management Services, please email us at PPManswers@KolmeGroup.com.  

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube  and use #KolmeGroup on shared posts!  

Dr. Rita McGrath kicked off the PMO Symposium ’17 with a talk on the 5 Components to Competitive Advantage. In her keynote, she noted that the goal of strategy used to be achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. But the pace of innovation today makes any such advantage transitory at best.

To illustrate this, she shared an interview with RIM CEO Jim Balsillie, from 2008 when RIM was on the top of its game. In that interview, Jim Balsillie said they planned to just keep doing what they are doing, because it was working well so far. To contrast this, she shared a quote from Jeff Bezos, 

“It’s day 1 forever, because day 2 is death”

 

Be On The Look Out

She noted that industry borders do not stay in place – the greatest competitors will come to you from outside your industry with a new approach, creating a strategic inflection point.

To illustrate this, she shared the example of how Arcades were completely supplanted by home gaming consoles.

 

The 5 Key Components To Competitive Advantage

In her strategic playbook, she outlined the following key components to staying on top of the transient advantage game:

1. Continuous Reconfiguration – build in flexibility so you can respond and adapt to change
2. Healthy Disengagement – have a safe way to exit a failing business or idea, and repurpose you resources. This is very important, because success is often preceded by failure.
3. Separate Power from Resource Management.  This is because resources are too often put into a position where they are defending a current position, rather than developing strategies that should be driving toward the next advantage.
4. Accelerate the organization – this starts with Innovation driving ideation, which goes through incubation, then accelerating the business
5. Finally, create new requirements for leaders. They need to be able to take in new information and act on it, rather than shooting for the status quo. As she puts it, leaders today more often take “tour of duty” assignments, rather than fill static roles.

The Innovation Matrix

Dr. McGrath then took us through her innovation matrix, which depicted where and how to diversify your portfolio to help drive agility and advantage.

• New Positioning Options should be explored, even if they are contrary to each other. Typically, one positioning strategy will remove the need for others. But, this is still important, as the right new positioning strategy can have a huge impact.
• Stepping Stone exploration should be done in a small, niche market with a specific problem – the solution for which could make a huge opening in a big market.

She closed with words of wisdom:

• Transient advantage makes fools of us all – because we expect those benefits to last. And they don’t.
• There needs to be a balance between supporting current operations and innovation – too much on either side is not good.
• There is no secret – well developed innovation practices work.

She also has a newsletter and a number of books you can find on her blog, here

Let’s Unite!

Contact Kolme Group to find out more about our Project and Change Management Services, please email us at PPManswers@KolmeGroup.com.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube  and use #KolmeGroup on shared posts!