The Glasgow Group
SFPM– Compilation
of PM Interviews
Version – 1.0
Ujjwal Daga
9/5/2011
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Contents
Summary and Key Takeaways from the PM Interviews ............................................................................... 3
A Conversation with Douglas Long ............................................................................................................... 6
David Lukey, P. Eng, MBA, PMP, talks about project management ........................................................... 10
Interview with Kevin Aguanno .................................................................................................................... 12
An Interview with Craig Nagel, MBA, Project Manager .............................................................................. 16
Interviewing David Barrett, Program Director at SEEC ......................................................................... 20
Majid Khan on his recently acquired PMP certification and project management experiences ............... 23
Additional Reading ...................................................................................................................................... 26
How can you engage? ................................................................................................................................. 26
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................... 26
About the author ........................................................................................................................................ 27
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Summary and Key Takeaways from the PM Interviews
More than 15 project managers (PMs, PM consultants, senior managers, marketing managers, VP,
program directors) were interviewed at length to gain deeper understanding about the current scenario
of project management from various perspectives. The summary of all the interviews is documented
below, followed by 6 full-length interviews.
Who is an ideal project manager?
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Acts as a facilitator - risk mitigation, removing barriers to the efficient creation of value (servant
leadership model)
Should embrace change (they should want a lot of change so that the solution is as close as
possible to the one the customers thought they needed)
Somebody who has their foot in both worlds – understands the technical details, and also has
the business acumen, soft skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving skills, etc.
Engages all teams and stakeholders in the planning phase - structure the projects in a way that
pleases the maximum number of stakeholders (larger buy-in and support for the project overall)
More than the project management methodologies it is important that they understand the
business strategy and business case of the organizations and find the underlying business value
Should be transparent in project execution
What seems to be working well in Project Management? Which aspects of the role are the Project
Managers certainly getting right?
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Sophisticated and well-defined project management tools and templates
PMs are effective at producing a plan and understanding the mechanics of producing a plan
Well laid-out and matured project management methodologies, that guide the PMs to
understand the things that they should be looking at
In which areas should the success of a project be measured (other than on time, on budget delivery)?
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Two distinct components of project success – project management success and product success.
Project management success focuses upon the successful accomplishment of cost, time and
quality objectives, and also the manner in which the project management process was
conducted. Product success deals with the effects of the product’s final product. (David
Baccarini, December 1999, Project Management Journal)
Whether the right solution is delivered - the one that customer wanted
Whether the organization benefited from the project (business aspect)
Clearly define the project goals upfront to get an understanding of the areas the project success
be measured against. Define the performance metrics accordingly
From a marketing standpoint, the real measure is the brand perception
What kinds of projects benefit the most from the use of agile methods?
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Agile is about being adaptive and iterative. Viable for high change highly complex projects
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Works best when the requirements are unclear and you are not sure what the end solution will
look like
Used most in the delivery of IT projects
Agile doesn’t fit where we know exactly what we need. Also, agile is inefficient for a low change
project because it is costly and the constant iterations and frequent feedback gathering from
the customers might actually annoy them
For which areas do organizations seek advice from external strategic consultants?
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Political disagreement and lack of trust between business sponsors and the delivery
organization. An outsider can bring in new ideas and help the companies to start on a
completely fresh approach
To get the individuals within the organization accept changes in policies, processes, etc
To introduce agile methodology
To seek help on the softer side, if there are people side challenges
If an expertise (mostly technical) does not exist internally within the organization
Sometimes organizations hire in a project auditor for troubled projects.
Which aspects of project management could be made better by using Solution Focus technique?
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Ideal technique to train the practical usage of project lifecycle methodologies and apply them
to a better use - a SF workshop to influence the training methodologies, have discussions
around it, and find solutions to the real issue, thereby pulling the true benefits of the existing
methodologies
SF questioning techniques in the daily agile (Scrum) meetings to enable progress
Effective during project planning phase - By using SF, PMs can envision the end goals of the
project with more clarity
Project areas like quality control - for example, if there are quality issues, ask the team, “What
should the solutions look like?”, “What steps we need to take to find the solution?” etc.
Performance reviews
What are the challenges that project managers currently face or might face in the future?
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Inability of the team to respond to changes - root cause of most troubled projects
The big one is communication – challenged further due to the geographical dispersion of teams
(global expansion, outsourcing, etc) resulting in limited opportunity for face-to-face
interpersonal communication within the team
Bureaucratic processes within organizations that make them less nimble over the years and
thereby making it difficult to respond to changes (Bureaucracy is loved by the middle
management!)
PMs most ill-prepared on the leadership front – soft skills, coaching, mentoring, understanding
people, communicating messages to stakeholders, etc.
People related – things like, how you approach and influence people you are working with to get
the work you want to be done, how you engage them to make them to contribute
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What are the aspects of project management that should develop and improve in the future?
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Ability to respond to changes - ‘change control’ is a misnomer. One can better manage to adapt
to the changes that are going to happen anyway
Ability of PMs to have a more pragmatic view of project execution - too many PMs currently
focus on the official rules
The role of HR to evolve such that they become involved with the functional managers and the
business functions
Access to sophisticated project performance measurement review tools and methodologies, for
an accurate analysis of the effectiveness of the project initiatives
Ability of a PM to think more strategically - project management is currently only utilized as a
skill. (If you call yourself a PM, you will probably be utilized as a tool!)
Business readiness of the team, development of tools and approaches that help teams become
more prepared for the unknown - there is always that unknown about what you have developed
solves the end users problems
Suppose all elements of project management are driven by planning and agility, what would that look
like? What would be different?
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Project management will become financially more efficient and teams will become more selfmanaged. Bigger projects today toss a lot of project management resources, and it results in a
situation where we have too many managers, not enough workers.
From end users and delivery of projects perspective, all solutions and processes implemented
will become more flexible and anticipate changes better (it is a given that the business model
will constantly change)
During the planning phase, PMs will take into consideration the business variables that can
change in the future.
PMs will be able to think more strategically, to be able to learn the people, the stakeholders,
their relationships
Teams will celebrate the small successes and project delivery milestones
Suggestions for managing virtual teams
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Ensure that the technology infrastructure is in place and the technology is used better.
Discipline of running the conference calls is important (set an agenda, have a moderator,)
Establish the relationships with the team members.
Lay down the ground rules of how the project participants are going to communicate as a team,
and how information will be exchanged
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A Conversation with Douglas Long
July 15, 2011
Douglas is a leader in marketing of technology solutions to
businesses. He has over 15 years of experience in planning,
building and executing marketing strategies that significantly
improve the sales performance of a company. Douglas uses his
technology background and his ability to deliver clear and
concise messages to extract business value for IT services and
software product companies. He has extensive marketing
experience in several IT and Telecom companies, the most recent
being in his capacity as a Marketing Director at Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS), Canada, where he was responsible for all the
marketing functions for TCS in Canada. Notable among his
specialties are strategic planning, market analysis, marketing
communications, program management, and marketing resource management. He is also familiar with
the Solution Focus (SF) approach.
Hi Douglas, what is the relevance of Project Management to a marketing role such as that of a
Marketing Manager?
If you are running a marketing program, you really are running a series of project management steps.
For example if you run a lead generation program, you have to make sure that you manage all the
elements of marketing well. A good outbound lead generation program involves elements of social
media, emails, corporate whitepapers, blog articles, etc. You need to manage all these pieces
simultaneously to have a successful campaign. At the same time, you need to ensure that you don’t
leave out any team from the scene. In one of the multi-modal marketing campaigns at TCS, the sales
team was not drawn into the planning phase. To compensate for this, we had to run an internal sales
training very late in the campaign and we eventually got delayed by a few weeks.
Tell us a little about your experience of managing teams in the past?
In TCS, Canada, I did not have any direct reports. I had access to a virtual shared services team. In TCS,
UK I had 6 direct reports and we worked from the same location.
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You mentioned virtual team. As projects are increasingly conducted remotely due to outsourcing and
global expansion, the communication is often just based on e-mails and conference calls. How does
that affect project management?
Personally, it matters a lot to me. It can be difficult communicating remotely and having to schedule
every conversation. Ideally, I’d prefer a physically co-located team to allow easy accessibility and a quick
chat over coffee.
What suggestions do you have to deal with it?
The technology solution would be to have video conferencing because it allows you to become more
personal and enables group engagement. In my opinion, face-to-face communication is absolutely
critical. Having said that, I also think it is important to set an agenda for the conference. The discipline of
running and managing the calls becomes critical.
If someone else was to manage the lead generation project that you talked about, what suggestions
would you have for them?
I think the success of the project primarily depends on the planning; the execution part is easier.
Marketing is changing, and the instantaneity of communication is becoming very important. A detailed
rollout needs to be planned much in advance. Executing the marketing strategy is only one part of the
strategy. To be absolutely spot on, you need to ensure that the upstream and downstream marketing
activities are aligned and in place too.
In which areas do you measure the success of a project?
From a marketing standpoint, the real measure is the brand perception. ROI is another important area.
TCS had a very comprehensive balanced scorecard with both hard and soft variables to measure against.
We can gain fairly accurate information about how much stuff we are doing. You get a good idea of
things such as, number of qualified leads passed on to sales team, to an extent that you can actually
start putting a dollar value against these variables.
Which Project Management methodology did the team use?
Well, project management methodology is a little uncommon concept in the marketing function. The
approach used was never formally articulated, but agile was probably the closest to the approach we
followed.
Based on your experience, when do project managers tend to use the agile methodology?
I think agile is most used in the delivery of IT projects.
How often did you seek inputs from the customers?
We did not consult directly with the customers on a regular basis, but we were involved in doing a lot of
market research, which would require us to work in close relationship with analysts such as IDC, and the
sales team who were effectively our internal customers. They helped us by providing information
related to market forecast, trends analysis, performance prediction, etc.
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For which areas do you think organizations usually seek advice from the external consultants or
change management experts?
In most cases, it is getting the people within the organizations to accept any changes in the policies or
processes. It is not easy to get the individuals to buy-in company-wide or business unit-wide
transformation.
How much of a role does HR have on these aspects such as people management and the human side
of change management?
It depends. In some organizations, HR responsibilities mainly include the administrative functions, such
as, recruitment, compensation, employee benefits, and training budgets. However, I personally think
that HR role should evolve and parallel the needs of their changing organization. They should get
involved in the development of the people, and work with the functional managers to enable the
organization to achieve the business goals.
What do you think is more important for a project success? - The internal improvement in the project
management practices or improvement in organizational management of projects. By that I mean,
assessing the organizational structure and business goals to select and manage the right projects in
order to meet the strategic goals.
I think both are equally important - internal alignment as well as the overall organizational management
of projects.
Both SF and Agile Project Management approach share a strong grounding in the development of the
next small steps associated with achieving the final goal. So, do you think it becomes it is very
important to share the small successes within the team?
I agree that it is very important. Sometimes you don’t have the time and the luxury to celebrate the
small successes because you start focusing immediately on the next short-term goal. I think it works
better if the customer buys in to the achievement of the short-term successes; for example, payment on
delivery milestones.
What seems to be working well in Project Management? What would you describe as your team’s top
strengths?
Communication was my team’s biggest strength. We were pretty clear and well articulated on the goal
that we were trying to achieve, which enabled us to stay focused on the path towards the goal. We also
knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses very well.
What are the kinds of challenges do you think Project Managers currently face or might face in the
next 3-5 years?
I think the geographical dispersion of teams is a major challenge. It creates limited opportunity for faceto-face interpersonal communication. This may negatively affect the team collaboration and
performance.
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What aspects of project management would you like to see develop and improve in the future?
The area that needs most improvement is the development of sophisticated tools and methodologies
for performance measurement and performance review. It is critical to measure the impact of
marketing. As someone said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
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David Lukey, P. Eng, MBA, PMP, talks about project management
July 19, 2011
David is the Program Manager at MTS Allstream, the Council
Board Member at Canadian Red Cross, and the President of
Board of Directors at Condominium Corporation. Recognized as
a professional with notable success and uncommon
approaches,
David
has
been
driving
innovative
telecommunications marketing and product solutions for many
years. He has done his MBA at Schulich School of Business, and
holds Post MBA in Advance Management Certificate and
Masters Certificate in Project Management. Notable among his
specialties are strategy planning and execution, product
positioning, relationship development, and team building and mentoring.
Hi David, how is a project management background relevant to the role of a Program Manager?
Project management thought process is a good-to-have background for Program managers. But a
program manager works more often with the strategy. They have to deal with the act of managing
multiple projects, usually related to one another.
What is the one project management challenge managers currently face?
Geographical distance across the teams is a challenge to the project managers. The questions you have
to answer as a project manager is, “How do you develop relationships with people?”, “How do you
collaborate with the remote teams?”, “How do you relate with the team members”. The interpersonal
skills of a project manager become very important.
The project manager needs to work with the people; the people do not need to work with the project
manager.
In which areas do you measure the success of a project?
One certainly has to deliver the project on time and budget; otherwise the value of the project outcome
is diminished. In addition, you need to ensure that the right solution is delivered – the one that
customer wanted. So, evaluate to find out that the initiative was delivered as expected.
Also, look at it from the business aspect and see if the organization realized the benefits from the
project. By that I mean any quantifiable organizational benefits, such as, improved customer service
level by x%, reduced bad debt by x amount, reduced time to manufacture a product, increased
economic development, etc.
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How important do you think is it for project managers to understand the business aspect along with
the management side of things? How does it apply to the project managers who are hired on contract
and hence are less exposed to the business knowledge of the project?
Some project managers, for example, the ones working alongside the project management, do
understand the business implications of the project. If a project manager just has to manage the
technical front of the project, then it is probably less important.
For which areas would you seek advice from an external strategic consultant or change management
expert?
If there is some technical solution that needs to be implemented, for example CRM software
deployment, then it might be beneficial to seek external guidance because the expertise does not exist
internally. For other areas, such as, people development, human management, it makes less sense,
because they would not know the organization culture and policies.
How much of a role does HR have on these aspects such as people management and the human side
of change management?
In my opinion, HR do not look at themselves as a business function and are less driven by business goals.
They should start looking at those areas too. Additionally, they should also be able to identify the causal
effects of changes. For example, if training is provided to the staff, it leads to employee satisfaction.
What aspects of project management would you like to see develop and improve in the future?
Project management is currently utilized as a skill. If you call yourself a PM, you will probably be utilized
as a tool. If that happens, you are less likely to be invited to a leadership meeting where strategic
planning is carried out. On the other hand, the PMs possess the relevant skills and know how to execute
the strategy. I think this is one area where I see the role of a PM evolve.
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Interview with Kevin Aguanno
July 21, 2011
Kevin Aguanno is a result-oriented project manager with over 20
years of experience in managing complex systems integration and
software development projects in a wide range of industries. He is
currently the Principal Consultant at GenXus Corporation, and runs
project management consulting services. Known for his specialty
areas, agile project management and troubled project recovery, he
is also an eminent trainer and coach in agile management method
s. Kevin is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional (PMP),
an IBM-Certified Executive Project Manager and International
Project Management Association (IPMA)-certified Senior Project
Manager (IPMA Level B). He has taught for several years at the
University of Toronto where we won the coveted SCS Excellence in
Teaching Award. Finally, he is the author of over twenty books, audiobooks, and DVDs, in addition to a
number of articles published in magazines and journals worldwide. He can be contacted via his website
at www.AgilePM.com
Hi Kevin, tell us about the work that you are currently doing.
Until recently, I was working at IBM Canada for 15 years and used to head the project management of
systems integration and business consulting projects. I am now an independent consultant and run my
own project management consulting service. I help companies with the adoption of agile project
management methods, which is one of my specialties. Companies often have difficulty getting started
with agile development, and some of them ask me to come in and help introduce agile to the
organization.
What are the kind of projects that you are currently handling, and what is your approach to project
management?
I deal with very large strategic projects and the nature of the projects are quite complex. As a project
management consultant, more than understanding the project management methodologies it is
important that you understand the business strategy and business case of the organizations and find the
underlying business value. I try to structure the projects in a way that pleases the maximum number of
stakeholders. So I help the companies achieve things in areas that are normally outside what a project
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manager thinks about. Second important thing that I focus on is to become very transparent in my
execution. I try to engage all the stakeholders so that there is a larger buy-in and support for the project
overall.
So, even though I officially have the control, I don’t try to act as the boss of the project. After all, the
team members are the ones who are delivering the value. Project Managers do not directly add value.
Their purpose is risk mitigation, and removing barriers to the efficient creation of value. So, I ask the
team members that if there is anything that is distracting you to add value, give that to me. It is
commonly referred to as the servant leadership model. While managing projects as a servant leader,
you try to act as a facilitator and remove impediments to the smooth processing of the project.
As I was going through your LinkedIn profile, I noticed one of your specialty areas is troubled project
recovery. What are the symptoms of a troubled project? And what are the types of recovery efforts to
save a troubled project?
When companies observe that the project schedule keeps missing, the team morale goes down, and the
quality slips, they know that they need recovery efforts to save the troubled project. Things like change
of sponsorship, bad estimating, unstable technology, insufficiently skilled team, are each still a symptom
of a troubled project. When you dig more into it, there is a common underlying theme. It is the inability
of the team to respond to changes which is the root cause of a troubled project.
Often companies have bureaucratic processes that make them less nimble over the years and therefore
they find it difficult to respond to changes. When I come in, I do not try to implement a completely new
methodology or something that is outside of the system. I try to introduce a new way of thinking.
Ultimately the bureaucracy is loved by the middle management. Top management doesn’t like it
because it makes the company less competent and reduces its efficiency. The lower levels don’t like it
because it stops them from doing their jobs.
Who runs or should ideally run the recovery effort – a consultant or industry expert hired from
outside or in-house personnel?
When troubled project gets really bad and a couple of project managers get replaced, PMs tend to apply
more of the governance processes, which got them into trouble at the first place.
So by the time they call an outsider, they realize that the way they have been trying to manage things
isn’t working. Often people do make suggestions internally, but nobody listens anymore because they
are too discouraged. Part of it is politics – there is a lack of trust; for example, business sponsors no
longer trust the delivery organization. An outsider can bring with them new ideas and help the
companies to start on a completely fresh approach. As a consultant, I also try to bring back the internal
managers at a later point and mentor them. This enables somebody internal to take ownership of it and
get the credit when the project becomes a success. Else, it might suggest that the internal team was not
competent.
I wanted to ask you about your book ‘Managing Agile Projects’. In terms of change management or
ability to react to changing requirements, what do the agile methodologies offer that is different from
the traditional methods.
One thing that I tell everyone is that the concept of ‘change control’ is a misnomer. Change is a given
thing in today’s businesses; one can better manage to adapt to the changes that are going to happen
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anyway. It is the ability to respond to changes that keep the companies competitive in the business
world. In fact, it is important for a PM to embrace change. They should want a lot of change so that the
solution is as close as possible to the solution the customers thought they needed. If we can adapt to
changes as we go, we can have more happy clients. A study shows that over two-thirds of the software
features are never really used by customers.
Based on your experience, what kinds of projects benefit the most from the use of agile methods?
Agile is viable for high change highly complex projects. If it is a low change project, agile is inefficient
because it is costly and the constant iterations and frequent feedback from customers might actually
them. Today, with everything multi-tiered, lots of interface, not many low change and low complexity
projects exist in IT anymore.
I read in the introduction of your book, that in agile methods, it is preferred that teams work in shared
physical environments and have face-to-face communication. However, due to outsourcing and global
expansion, we see a lot of virtual teams and organizations operating and the communication is often
just based on e-mails and conference calls. How does that affect project management?
Agile is trying to be highly efficient. Face-to-face is a preference because it is quicker, more efficient, and
gives us more time for the value-added work. Hence it is good to have a face-to-face communication
whenever possible, but it is not a must.
What suggestions do you have to deal with it?
Reality of the work is that we are going to have global teams, but we have to try to minimize its impact
on collaboration. With remote teams, we can simulate face-to-face communication with the use of
technology, through webinar, IM, conferences, etc.
Agile says document as minimum as you can and challenge the need for each document, but certainly
creates the ones that you need. Documentation becomes handy when you want to communicate to
somebody distant or when you want to leave behind knowledge for others to come.
One certainly has to deliver the project on time and budget. What are the other areas that you
measure the success of a project against?
David Baccarini, in the December 1999 copy of Project Management Journal, had proposed two distinct
components of project success – project management success and product success. A distinction should
be made between these two, as they are not the same. Project management success focuses upon the
successful accomplishment of cost, time and quality objectives, and also the manner in which the
project management process was conducted. Product success deals with the effects of the product’s
final product.
Understanding the business is more important that understanding the technology. In IT projects,
there is a trend of promoting the best technical personnel to the project manager level? What are
your comments on it?
I think it is not wise to promote the most technically competent guy to a project manager, because you
are removing them from where they were good at, and they he may not make the best managers
because generally speaking, IT people are usually isolated doing their work in cubicles somewhere. The
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best person, for becoming a manager is somebody who has their foot in both worlds. He should
understand the technical details, and also have the business acumen, soft skills, and problem solving
skills. They should understand things such as the risks, the financial impacts, business benefits they are
getting from the projects, because they need to communicate the information to somebody like the CFO
in a language he understands. A CFO doesn’t need the technical details.
What is that one aspect of project management that you would like to see develop and improve in the
future?
I would like to see the PMs to be able to think more strategically, to be able to learn the people, the
stakeholders, their relationships. Another area that I would like to see them improve is in their ability to
have a more pragmatic view of project execution. Too many PMs currently focus on the official rules.
They should use their judgment to determine whether a particular rule makes sense or not. If the
answer is no, they should get permission to change that rule.
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An Interview with Craig Nagel, MBA, Project Manager
July 26, 2011
With 10-years of progressive project management experience, Craig
Nagel brings an impressive hands-on understanding of the
mechanics of Project Management. His strong business background
can help guide your strategy, understand your scope, and clearly
grasp the key issues. He is an MBA from the Schulich School of
Business, and has worked extensively in various capacities at Direct
Energy and Enbridge Consumer Gas. Notable among his specialties
are project management, business analysis and business
development. By identifying practical, common sense solutions,
Craig’s record of success is shaped by the teams he has worked with.
Craig has worked in a wide variety of environments, and
understands situations where discretion is required. He is also
familiar with the Solution Focus (SF) approach.
Hi Craig, tell us about your work and the kind of projects you have dealt with.
I started working for Enbridge Consumer Gas in 1992. A few years later, I moved to Direct Energy, where
I have spent most of my career. I have predominantly worked in the role of a project manager, with
about 60% of my experience in technology projects, and 40% in operations and business development.
Apart from project management, I have 2-3 years of technology consulting experience in CRM software
design and development. I recently had a short stint of working as a consultant at Planet Energy too. At
present, I run my own project management consulting service.
In general, which project management methodology did you use? Based on your experience, what
kinds of projects benefit the most from the use of agile methods?
I have used both, traditional (waterfall) and agile methodologies. Agile works best when the
requirements are unclear and you are not sure what the end solution will look like. In such cases, it is
advisable to organize the project into bite-sized pieces, understand and finish one piece, and then move
on to the next one.
Where do you think organizations are already agile?
I think the retail organizations definitely need to have agile systems and processes to cope with the
frequent requirements change in the retail industry, and to be able to beat the competition.
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One of the things that came up in the last SF workshop was the challenge related to managing virtual
teams. Now it is preferred that teams work in shared physical environments and have face-to-face
communication. However, due to outsourcing and global expansion, we see a lot of virtual teams and
organizations operating and the communication is often just based on e-mails and conference calls.
What has your experience been with managing virtual teams? And do you think working with remote
teams affects project management?
I have done a fair bit of virtual team work. In my last project at Direct Energy, a large chunk of the team
was located remotely. In virtual team settings, I think it is important to establish the relationships with
the team members. It certainly helps if you have met them before having to work with them remotely.
On certain project milestones, such as project kickoff meetings, test initiations, I’d still prefer the team
to be in the same room, otherwise it becomes much harder.
What other suggestions do you have to deal with it?
You certainly need a sound technology infrastructure as the base to be able to host net meeting type of
solutions, screen sharing, and a consistent way of having a voice communication. If all of these are in
place, then visual interaction is not a must-have requirement for me. This being said, if the technology
doesn’t work consistently, then it becomes a distraction in the net meetings and can take you off the
topic.
Another technique that I use when dealing with remote teams is to interact with each of my team
members individually as well. It gives them a more intimate setting to have focus of what you are doing.
In IT projects, there is a trend of promoting the best technical personnel to the project manager level.
How important do you think is it for IT project managers to understand the business aspect along with
the management side of things? What are your comments on it?
I think business understanding is more important than technology background. I don’t have the
technology background and at times it has been a challenge for me at Direct Energy, but I believe one
can learn the technology with time. A more desired quality in a project manager is to have the business
acumen and the ability to communicate the message to the team.
One certainly has to deliver the project on time and budget. What are the other areas that you
measure the success of a project against?
It is a good idea to clearly define the goals of the project upfront. That gives you an understanding of
what areas should the project success be measured against, and define the performance metrics
accordingly. For example, in one of the sales force automation project, we had come up with
performance metrics such as administrative cost savings, closing ratio of leads.
Did you ever have to hire an external consultant to recover a troubled project? Also, for which areas
do organizations normally seek advice from an external consultant or a change management expert?
This is an approach that I am currently hoping to take myself. I have seen instances where external
program managers are brought in to manage projects of large and complex nature. On most occasions,
it happens when there is a political disagreement and lack of trust between the business client and
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technical department about who is going to be in charge of the project. Sometimes I was even brought
in without my role clearly defined, and in anticipation of problems.
From your experience, what is that one aspect of project management that could be made better by
using Solution Focus technique?
I can draw one example from my personal experience. After a 2-day rigid project delivery life cycle
training, we were handed a 3 inch binder, which included a bunch of guidelines and templates, and was
quite overwhelming. While it is good to have a checklist, following a methodology is really common
sense. What we needed more was getting trained in the practical usage of the methodology and how we
could apply the methodology to better use. I think this is a real opportunity of SF – a day’s SF workshop
to influence the training methodology, improve how we have the discussions around it, and find
solutions to the real issues. It is an ideal technique to pull out the true benefits of the existing
methodologies.
I also think asking SF questions in the agile meetings can be a very effective tool to enable progress.
As a project manager, what are the kinds of project management challenges that keep you awake at
night?
They are always people related, things like how you should have the conversation with the stakeholders
for the help and the inputs that you need, how to communicate with the QA owner to make sure that
the right amount of testing is done, etc. It is always about how you approach and influence people you
are working with to get the work you want to be done, how you engage them to make them to
contribute.
What seems to be working well in Project Management? Which aspects of the role are the Project
Managers getting right?
I find people are effective at producing a plan and understanding the mechanics of producing a plan,
such as Gantt charts, linked project plan, usage of Microsoft Project and other project management
tools. So I believe that the mechanics of the plan are fairly well defined and are never the issue. The
execution of the plan suffers from team’s buy-in challenge sometimes due to lack of 100% dedication.
What is that one aspect of project management that you would like to see develop and improve in the
future?
The one thing that scares managers is the business readiness of the team. There is always that unknown
about what you have developed solves the end users problems, and whether you are fully prepared for
that unknown. Hence it becomes important to engage the end users, making sure they understand what
is getting implemented and whether it meets their requirements. If end users are not involved initially,
the other option is to bring them in as testers and get end user testing done. I would like to see
development of some tools and approaches that helps you become more prepared and makes things
less scary.
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Suppose project management is driven by planning and agility in the future how would the customers
and stakeholders benefit?
Project management can become financially more efficient. Bigger projects today toss a lot of project
management resources, and it results in a situation where we have too many managers, not enough
workers. This is one area that will change in the future if the projects are truly driven by planning and
agility.
From end users and delivery of projects perspective, all solutions and processes implemented need to
be flexible, as it is a given that the business model will constantly change. So a project manager may fix
on executing a project or a task in one particular way, but needs to aware of the business variables that
can change in the future. Project management would be more successful if it included anticipating
changes more.
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Interviewing David Barrett, Program Director at SEEC
July 28, 2011
David Barrett is the President of Solutions Network Ltd., Group
Conference Director with Diversified Business Communications
Canada and Program Director at The Schulich Executive Education
Centre, Schulich School of Business, York University. He currently
runs conferences for project managers and business analysts, and
manages the PM and BA education for the Schulich Executive
Education Centre. In his role with Diversified Business
Communications Canada he is the Group Conference Director for the
project management and business analysis events portfolio. In his
spare time David has developed a series of presentations designed
for all types of audiences ranging from project managers, business analysts, senior management and
executives and general audiences for all types of sectors. He is currently writing his first book.
Hi David, tell us about the work that you currently do and what pleases you most about it?
I am in the project management and business analysis space, and have been here for 16-17 years now. I
work for an organization called Diversified Business Communications, and help them run their project
management conferences and business analysis events around the world. I also deliver speeches as a
keynote or session speaker at conferences. I am the Program Director for project management training
at Schulich Executive Education Centre. Other days of the week, I am co-editor of projecttimes.com,
which is an online resource dedicated to project managers. In the past, I have run a recruiting business
for project managers. I am currently writing a book on project management.
I like networking in the common areas and that’s what I love the most about my job. I like being the
networker, being the catalyst in help people learning.
What level of project managers do you deal with and what do they wish to gain from your project
management certification?
I am typically connected to project managers from all sectors. The level of project managers I deal with
are junior to intermediate, 1 – 8 yrs experienced, and looking for project management education to
become better at what they do.
What are the kinds of project management challenges that they usually discuss with you? Also, what
challenges do you think they should be prepared for in the future?
It has to be on the leadership side, many of them are ill-prepared on that front.
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In the Masters Certificate Project Management program that you have created, what aspect do you
emphasize more upon - the business side of project management approach or the technical things
such as templates, Gantt charts, project management tools?
If we talk in terms of art and science, I focus more on the science, and less on the people skills. Most of
the training is technical; there is a 2-day module on the soft skills as well. I think they are weakest at soft
skills; things like coaching, mentoring, understanding people, communicating messages to stakeholders,
etc.
You had started a company, Project Management Recruiting Inc. which used to supply project
managers on contract to numerous companies. How do you think it affects project managers who are
hired on contract and hence are less exposed to the business knowledge of the project? Also,
sometimes they operate under shorter timeframes, tighter budgets. I am sure that involves additional
challenge too, such as, not knowing the team’s strengths and weaknesses too well, difficulty in
delegating tasks.
It depends on the case and how they are positioned. There are instances when you are expected to
forget the people side and just crunch the task at hand.
Let’s talk about meetings, especially the virtual meetings with teams in different locations, which are
brought about due to global expansion and outsourcing. In such virtual settings, the communication is
often just based on e-mails, calls or at best webinars. How does that affect project management?
It’s all about managing people. Even in the face-to-face interactions, it can be a challenge. If you are
trying to collaborate remotely, it is even more difficult.
What suggestions do you have to deal with it?
You got to use the technology better and spend the time getting around the obstacles better.
Both SF and Agile Project Management approach are all about taking the small steps, achieving the
short-term goals towards the final goal. How important do you think it becomes to celebrate the small
successes within the team? And what difference do you think it makes?
It is a very important element. Teams should definitely celebrate the milestones successes.
For which areas of project management do organizations normally seek advice from an external
consultant or a change management expert?
Sometimes organizations hire in a project auditor for troubled projects. Agile is another great example.
At times, they seek help on the softer side, if there are people side challenges.
On the flip side, there is a cost of loosing understanding of the culture, if an external consultant is
brought in. People want to be led, told what to do and be directed towards the project goals. A soft
leader is never going to do that.
Based on your experience, what kinds of projects benefit the most from the use of agile methods?
These are projects that we don’t really know what’s coming. Agile is about being adaptive and iterative.
It doesn’t fit where we know exactly what we need.
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Which are the key areas that the success of a project should be measured against?
Traditionally, you are expected to manage a project, on time, on budget and within scope. Additionally,
it is about how well you manage the change.
Which areas do Project managers succeed in? Which aspects of the role are the PMs getting right?
At the first level, project managers need the content knowledge (the industry knowledge). This cannot
be trained, it comes with experience. At the next level, they need to be trained in the technical skills
which can be done at a fairly short time. Once you are well-versed in the technical and content
knowledge, the next level is about gaining the soft skills necessary for project management.
What is that one aspect of project management that you would like to see develop and improve in the
future?
I think project management is in a pretty matured environment right now.
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Majid Khan on his recently acquired PMP certification and project
management experiences
July 28, 2011
Majid is Marketing and Strategy Professional with an MBA and PMP,
and extensive experience as a Brand Manager and Product Manager
in CPG, retail and consumer services industries. He has created
successful brands and increased sales, market share and profits in
both retail and online environments. Majid has experience with
multiple industries and sectors including CPG (consumer packaged
goods), consumer services, automotive, retail, market research,
manufacturing and chemical industries in Canada and
internationally. He did his MBA from Richard Ivey School of Business,
and specialized in Marketing and International Business. He also
recently acquired the PMP certification, and currently works as a senior strategy and marketing
consultant at Springboarders.
Hi Majid, tell us about the work that you currently do and what pleases you most about it?
I am currently doing strategy consulting and marketing consulting, and working with small and mid size
businesses to help them find their business solutions. I am an MBA and a PMP certified professional, and
can offer experience and skills from both sides to the clients.
What is the relevance of project management to a marketing role such as that of a Brand Strategy and
Marketing Consultant?
It depends on what level of brand strategy you are doing. If it is at a high level, and involves defining the
vision and the brand, and devising strategy for what is it that you want, project management knowledge
may not be directly useful. Project management experience comes in handy when you need to
implement and roll out the plan. So, for the execution of the brand strategy plan, project management
knowledge becomes relevant. It has become particularly relevant today, because the perception of the
brand is now determined by the customers, and varies with each customer too.
You recently did your PMP certification. How do you think it will add value to what you are currently
doing?
The important thing about PMP is that is helps you define the projects. It gives you a structure,
introduces you to project management templates, and familiarizes you with a lot of best practices. For
example, you have strategy at the top, and define the scope. Based on the scope and the goals, you
define the metrics. As part of the strategy, you may have different project, for example, consumer
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promotion. It also builds in awareness and identification of the stakeholders, importance of engaging
them in the planning, looking at things such as risk assessment, time management, quality, and other
resources externally and internally such as HR. It helps you focus on 9 key areas, such as scope,
objective, cost, HR, time, risks, quality, procurement, etc.
One of the things that came up in the last SF workshop was the challenge related to managing virtual
teams. Now it is preferred that teams work in shared physical environments and have face-to-face
communication. However, due to outsourcing and global expansion, we see a lot of virtual teams and
organizations operating and the communication is often just based on e-mails and conference calls.
What has your experience been with managing virtual teams? And do you think working with remote
teams affects project management? What other suggestions do you have to deal with it?
The most preferred way of communication is face-to-face. The main challenge of communicating just
over phone is that you can’t be sure whether the person you are talking to fully understood you.
Generically speaking, communication is a big part of project management, and a big part of the project
success as well. I have led a couple of virtual teams in the past. A suggestion in the project management
templates is that you lay down the ground rules of how the project participants are going to
communicate as a team, and how information will be exchanged. Another suggestion is to make the
best use of technology – webinars, skype calls, etc.
What are some of the challenges that project managers currently face?
The big one is communication. In the most part, everyone in the team wants to be helpful; sometimes
they don’t know how to help. You need to make sure that the person on the other end has actually
understood you.
What suggestions would you have for a new project manager? How do you think they can be better
prepared for the future?
They should try and find out as much information as they can by talking to their supervisor, reaching out
to their teams. It will help them to understand the company’s culture, as well as their teams’ strengths.
You mentioned understanding team’s strengths. How does it apply to the project managers who are
hired on contract and do not get the opportunity to spend enough time with their team members for
understanding the strengths of each team member?
There will always be that disconnect between real scenario and the ideal scenario. In contract projects,
there has to be a lot of emphasis on planning for identifying the skills needed in the team. Team
formation and hiring is then based on the skills identified.
Which are the key areas that the success of a project should be measured against?
From a project management methodology, you need to write down the project objective and the scope
first. As long as you have met the scope at completion, the project is a success. That’s why there is a lot
of fuss in the initial planning phase as well.
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Based on your experience, for which areas of project management do you think organizations seek
advice from an external consultant or a change management expert?
It depends on the project and on company, and also on what skill sets they have. If they run into a
problem, it could be for a variety of reasons. Expectation from the project managers is that they are
proactive and identify the problems as quickly as they occur. For example, if their analysis tells them
that they lack a particular expertise in-house, then it makes sense to get that expertise externally.
Who takes that decision?
In ideal scenario, the project manager should be the one deciding, but it doesn’t happen on many
occasions. PMs are the ones running the project, but there is somebody else controlling it.
From what you already know about Solution Focus, what is that one aspect of project management
that could be made better by using Solution Focus technique?
If you using SF, you are looking at what the end goals of the project are. The expectation is that the PMs
are proactive, so it is important to ask the questions in the planning phase. That’s when SF can be very
effective. Sometimes project managers come in at a stage when things have already been decided, and
their role is to implement the requirements. At that point, SF may not be of much help.
Within the project too, SF can be used in areas like quality control. For example, if there are quality
issues, ask the team, “What should the solutions look like?”, “What steps we need to take to find the
solution?” etc.
What seems to be working well in Project Management? Which aspects of the role are the project
managers getting right?
The things that are properly laid out are the methodologies, which guide project managers to
understand the things that they should be looking at. The actual challenge ends up happening in the
implementation, sometimes due to forces that are beyond your control.
What is that one aspect of project management that you would like to see develop and improve in the
future?
Project managers need to constantly update their base knowledge. As technology changes and
methodologies evolve, new stuff gets added on. But the fundamentals will always be the same and the
more than anything, it is about the mindset that needs to change in order for the project managers to
adapt better.
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Additional Reading
I encourage you to read the links below to deepen your understanding on the topic.




A solution focus primer
Don’t analyze problem
One step at a time
Sprint Actions for change
How can you engage?
Attend
Workshop on
Sept 24 @ CSI,
Toronto
@SF_BIZ_1
Acknowledgements
This study was conducted as an independent research paper with inputs from several project managers
and Solution Focus professionals. Special thanks go to all the industry experts, my colleagues, Alan Kay
and everyone else who engaged in the workshops, interviews and online conversations. They have added
immense value to this study by providing their valuable feedback.
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About the author
Ujjwal Daga is a solution focused IT professional with extensive experience in driving
innovative technology solutions in the Data Storage and Telecommunications
industries. He has completed undergraduate degree in Computer Science
Engineering and has five years of experience in enterprise software development
and consulting from CA Technologies and Wipro Technologies. Ujjwal is adept at
using various industry products and technologies and delivering high quality customer solutions through
effective collaboration with diverse cross-functional teams. Presently a second year MBA student with IS
and Strategy concentration at the Schulich School of Business, he has a strong interest in building a
career in the Technology and Project Management consulting space. His sharp business acumen can help
organizations find solutions to complex problems and guide their strategy.
In his current role as a business consultant at The Glasgow Group, he is actively involved in developing
and presenting new consulting products and concepts in project management by conducting interviews,
workshops, and secondary research. He has also created and engaged a community of Solution Focus
professionals and PMs in different countries through business events, blog posts, whitepapers, and
focused LinkedIn discussions, co-creating what may become the future of project management! Please
visit his LinkedIn group, Solution Focus BIZ if you are interested to learn more on the topic.
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