7 Steps to professional project leadership: A practical guide to delivering projects professionally using easy-to-remember steps and tools.

By Ian K Shreer

It is well known in that qualifications and certifications can be a foreword of an individual's capability. After several years of experience, recruiting and supporting people working in project and program delivery, I have discovered while these are important. The ability to do the job rather than know the job gives a greater chance of success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IKS Press
• Release date: May 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9780648834229

Ian K Shreer

Ian is an ex-military logistics specialist who has expanded his considerable experience in project and program delivery through a fortunate series of events. Born in Cornwall, England, and then brought up in Kent (Thanet), Ian has spent time in over 20 countries worldwide and has a large close family, mostly in the UK. Ian is married to Samantha and moved to Australia in 2011, and has lived in Melbourne, Sydney and now the Gold Coast where he currently resides.

Book preview

7 Steps to professional project leadership

7 Steps to professional project leadership

7 Steps to professional project leadership

A practical guide to delivering projects professionally using easy-to-remember steps and tools.

Ian Shreer

publisher logo

IKS Press

This book is dedicated to Samantha and Sonic.

Thank you for the support.

XX

Copyright © 2020 by Ian Shreer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Printing, May 2020

Contents

Dedication

1 WHY?

2 Captain your Ship

3 Organise your team

4 Numbers - Know your numbers

5 Time and planning

6 Risks, Actions, Issues, Decisions & Clarifications (RAID-C)

7 Organisational Change Management

8 Lessons Learned

9 The End!

10 Appendix A - Risk

11 Appendix B - Issue Register

12 Appendix C - Clarifications

13 Appendix D - Standard Report

14 Appendix E - Stakeholder Map

15 Appendix F - Key responsibilities

16 Appendix G - Change Impact Assessment

About The Author

1

WHY?

For a long time I have believed project leadership is a profession the same as other professions. The small difference is that gaining experience in project leadership is ubiquitous, whether it is managing all of the responsibilities of the family holiday or building a new home, there are skills required for making sure we don’t make big mistakes. And believe it or not these two simple everyday examples include every facet of project leadership.

The key is knowing whether it is out of your depth or not. I have witnessed and supported a number of project leaders who were not aware that, without best practice (not method) in their tool kit, they might as well be on their own risk register, or whatever document they want to use for managing and understanding risk.

This book is about the long journey to find a tool kit that enables powerful and professional project leadership to shine through. It is predicted that poor project leadership can account for 90 per cent of government project overruns.

While these are big, hairy and well documented, these are not isolated. In 2011 I witnessed a project grow from $29,000 to over $300,000 purely because of the poor performance of the project leadership.

In the early 2010s I was working to uplift a delivery office which had a project that had overrun from $5m to $84m, yes that much. There are a number of factors that can contribute to cost blow-outs on these types of projects, however professional project leadership will assist in reducing the number of these events, and although there may still be failures I hope the impact is lessened through the process described in these pages.

There will always be projects – and programs for that matter – that will overrun by time and cost or just not deliver even the ‘minimum loveable product’. This is all agnostic of method and comes down to practice. For the past 10 years I have taken a keen interest in how projects are led, managed, run, mastered – whatever word you wish to use. What I have seen is a consistent leadership approach. Always with the best intentions although not always with the best tool box or skills to deliver in some tough environments. In 2011, due to a number of factors, including fate and the want for a lifestyle change, my wife and I relocated to Melbourne (Australia) from the United Kingdom. Starting again in a new country and building a career / reputation was a totally engaging process and what was interesting is that Melbourne, as with many major cities worldwide, is in a constant change cycle. Apart from creating opportunities for starting a new life, it also offered a testing ground for the skills I knew I had gained and had added to my tool-box, but couldn’t easily describe. It turns out this tool-kit is a full project delivery kit that can be used in a multitude of environments and industries.– it doesn’t matter if it is financial institutes, mining, utilities or education to name a few – there is a constant need for the embodiment of professional project leadership.

In an attempt to document, discuss and acknowledge some of the best practices I have witnessed, tested and practiced, this book exists as a means of assisting, in small ways, the reduction of waste that companies experience. While this is definitely not a ‘golden bullet’, in the correct hands these pages can provide the confidence and resolve to build success out of project leadership.

We need to think of professional project leadership as the ability to run a project from start to finish as quickly and efficiently as possible ensuring the best outcome, regardless of any framework or governance that is in place.

You can, but I suggest you don’t microwave a steak!!

Although I love a good steak there are good ways and bad ways to cook it. In the best BBQ books you will be told to cook the meat on one side for a number of minutes and then turn the steak and cook the other side for a different amount of minutes, ensuring that the BBQ is hot and making the perfect marks from the grill onto the steak. You just can’t get the same experience from a microwave. In fact if you have ever tried to cook a steak in a standard microwave you will find it cooked on the inside more than the outside, making the taste somewhat interesting.

So project methods are just the same as cooking methods – there are many of them, they need to be fit for purpose, and if you get it wrong you will ruin everything, although you may not know until you eat the food or worse, get into a middle of a project and find out the wrong practice was being used.

For many years there has been a want from all industry sectors to ‘delivery faster’; deliver more ‘value’ quicker. There has even been the mind set of – don’t worry about it being perfect just make it work for us. Interestingly in the early 2000s a small group of software engineers met in a ski resort (Snowbird) to work out a new way to deliver software faster and more, efficiently, use the investment that was being made.

This became knows as ‘Agile’ and quickly grew from a software development method to a project delivery method and in some cases a lifestyle. There is no underestimating the impact these engineers would have on so many projects, delivery’s and companies across the globe. I have been privileged to be part of a number of agile revolutions.

The premise of agile is to deliver in parts, other wise known as timeboxed, and iterative rather than the ‘big bang ‘approach that ‘waterfall’ project delivery facilitates .Which as it suggests delivers everything at the end. Additionally it promotes a more personal and connected way of working with a project team, with things such as ‘pulse checks’ rather than status reports.

The challenge that I have seen, which I mentioned earlier, is present in both a standard project delivery model and an agile model. The process I am working through in this book is relevant to all methods and therefore agnostic. Over the past 25 years in project and program leadership, I have witnessed at least two ‘agile’ revolutions. From the qualifications I have acquired and the courses I have attended, I am now fully aware there is a missing piece of the puzzle about managing a project that you don’t get taught by passing an exam or attending a course. From what I have experienced and witnessed the missing component is the practice that brings the method to life. These pages are dedicated to the practice, and as much as it is intended that the practice is agnostic of method, you will see echoes of many methods as you read through the practice.

Having worked in a number of different industries and roles, I have had to build my own toolbox of skills to be successful in any given situation. Most of these skills have now been rolled into a nimble and fit-for-purpose acronym which I have found can fit almost all situations in project leadership. I use this daily and it has never let me down. In fact, I recently took on a short contract to assist an old friend and used it to rectify the project that was on its second round of struggles.

From my early years in the Royal Air Force (RAF) I have found solitude and safety in acronyms that mean something in practice. The first one I was introduced to over 29 years ago was C.R.E.F.F. This is the live and die practice for military airborne logistics: C – Centralised Control, R – Regulation of Despatch, E – Even Flow, F – Full use of carrying capacity, F – Flexibility. Apart from being highly entertaining at parties (you can imagine right?) I have been able to introduce this into my everyday working practice after leaving the RAF. However, while this was great for logistics it didn’t really fit the bill when it came to project leadership and the elements that need to be monitored or setup or controlled. Did I hear a sigh when you read centralised control? I am fully aware that a ‘command and control’ approach is what some companies are trying to move away from and I am considerate to this approach. With that in mind what you will read in the following pages is a much more leader driven approach to taking control over the old-fashioned approach.

Now back to C.R.E.F.F. It is this last word that got me thinking about the practice and what it is that I am looking to learn when I see great project leaders. What can I learn and what can I take away from these highly accomplished and mostly relaxed people in high-pressure situations?

The military has some high pressure of its own and the calmness that comes from knowing what to do and when and where to draw from best practice, or that tool kit, is exactly what keeps the institution working the way it does.

Stumbling across C.O.N.T.R.O.L

Many years after leaving the air force I found myself in a position heading a project management office in Australia. Here I was in full recruitment drive looking to build a highly functioning team. One of the benefits of a role like this is to be able to step back and look at delivery differently and assess what it is that really makes a Project Leader great. I set about pulling together a brief that was easy to follow and worked a bit like a check list to filter through the applications.

C -Do they Captain their ship?

O - Do they Organise their team?

N - Do they manage their finances - know their Numbers?

T - Do they plan well -