MANAGEMENT: CONDUCTING EFFECTIVE MEETINGS

Meetings can be the biggest time-wasters or progress-markers. It all depends upon following several guidelines.

Numerous articles abound that give advice on this topic. I have my own short list but I’ll first mention several good ones I’ve found on other sites. There won’t be any duplicates.

Sources: effectivemeetings.com, personal experience

DON'T MEET

• Avoid a meeting if the same information can be covered in a memo, e-mail or brief report.

VENUE

• Don't hold the meeting in your office. Meet in a conference room or another office. This enables you to leave the meeting more conveniently.

ASSIGN THE MEETING PREPARATION TASKS

• Give all participants something to prepare for the meeting, and that meeting will take on a new significance to each group member.

MEETING’S PURPOSE

• Keep the number of participants in any meeting to a minimum and ensure that each person attending knows the agenda in advance and why they are attending.
• Know why you’re meeting and ensure everyone knows it. Know what to expect from the meeting.

AGENDA

• Prepare the agenda beforehand and ensure everyone has it.
• Follow the agenda. Start and end the meeting on time.
• Start with the priority items. If time runs out, the most important items will have been covered. The remaining items can usually be postponed to another meeting.
• Create a “complete” agenda. This contains every item that needs to be discussed. The items are organized by priority, by subject, or by any meaningful category.

IS IT A STATUS UPDATE MEETING?

• A well-conducted status meeting works on an exception basis. It uses the same principle of an exception report. This report that contains only those items that stand out as exceptions to the rule. If two projects out of ten have problems, then the report will only go into detail for those two projects.

USE TIME PRESSURE

• Use the 80/20 rule, namely, 80 percent of the work will be accomplished usually during the final 20 percent of the meeting time.
• Try a stand-up meeting.

WHEN TO SCHEDULE THOSE QUICK MEETINGS

• Schedule your 15- to 20-minute meetings at the start of the day. If you learn about problems, you will have the rest of the day to try to resolve it. Then, if necessary, you can hold another brief meeting at the end of the day.

SETTLE ANY POINTS OF AGREEMENT AND DOCUMENT THEM

• Typically, a discussion will ensue regarding an issue. At the right time, the leader or a facilitator should intercede and canvass the participants to determine whether a consensus has been reached.

NO DOMINATION

• Do not let any one person dominate the meeting or agenda.

UNINVITED PEOPLE SHOULD STAY OUT

• Prevent uninvited people from joining the meeting.
• Depending upon the environment, some bosses like to drop in unexpectedly. Although they certainly have the power to do so, their presence can inhibit participation. Furthermore, more people at a meeting tend to slow down the meeting.
• Place a "Do Not Disturb" sign on your door when you don't want to be interrupted.
• Diplomatically inquire about the purpose of the person’s presence at a meeting. If it doesn’t make sense, politely request that person to leave.
• Stand up when someone enters your office, and meet them at the door. If you and your visitor remain standing the meeting will tend to be shorter.
• Remove any extra chairs from the meeting room or stack your books and papers on top of any extra chairs. If you change your mind about unexpected visitors, you can always remove the books and papers.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT: WHY "QUALITY" IS NOT THE THIRD CONSTRAINT.

From the beginning, project managers are taught about the triple constraints:
1. Time also known as Schedule
2. Cost also known as Budget
3. Scope also known as Performance

Time and cost are self-explanatory. When it comes to the third constraint, different terms are used: scope (the most common one), performance, and, sometimes, quality.

Scope is a description of the project’s objective in terms of the objective’s requirements. If the project’s objective is to create a water-powered car, then the scope includes everything necessary to develop that car. Developing a new engine that runs on water is part of the scope. So are the selection of the car’s body and the final assembly of the engine into the car body.

While the scope enumerates all of the objective’s requirements, it also requires the performance of these requirements. The project team must perform the development of a new engine. The project team must perform the selection of the car’s body. The project team must also perform the final assembly of the engine in the car body.

Would you agree, therefore, that the two, for all intent and purpose, are synonymous? In fact, it may be more accurate to refer to the third constraint as Performance. While scope enumerates the requirements, it is silent about the performance of these requirements. Performance, when identified as the third constraint automatically implies scope and, more importantly, the performance of those requirements.

Then there’s the third term that’s sometimes used to refer to the third constraint—quality. Quality is incorrect.

Neither Scope nor Performance is synonymous with Quality. Performance is what the project has to do. Quality is what the customer wants.

Every project’s goal is a satisfied customer, i.e., a customer that is satisfied because the project's objective was met. Does quality figure in the outcome? It sure does but the measure of quality depends upon circumstances.

Sure, we know that a best practice of project management when gathering the project's requirements is to ensure that fuzzy terms like "quality" are converted into measurable and objective metrics.

The following discussion does not contradict that. I am merely making the case that Quality is not the proper term to use as the third constraint.

PMBOK, itself, specifically identifies the triple constraints as scope, time, and cost (Section 1.3). Then it continues... "Project quality is affected by balancing these three factors. High quality projects deliver the required project, service or result within scope, on time, and within budget."

There is no ambiguity there. Quality is not one of the limiting three. Quality is a goal and not a constraint. Quality can be more closely related to the schedule or the budget, depending upon circumstances. Consider these two examples.

First: quality might be a function of time. Let’s say that you expect your wife to give birth within a two-week window from June 15 to June 30. You have to finish the baby room on or before June 14. You make it but the shelves haven’t been installed and the crib is only partially assembled. Wouldn’t achieving one hundred percent quality mean that shelves were installed and the crib was fully assembled? On the other hand, the project (of preparing the baby room) can be considered successful since it met the project’s objective satisfactorily.

Second: quality might be a function of the budget. Your project consists of replacing the worn kitchen countertops. Both of you decided to replace everything with granite countertops. Unfortunately, the week before your purchase date, the price of granite countertops doubled. That made it exceed your budget so you decided to settle on Corian—another material that cost as much as granite before its price doubled. Quality, in this case, is more closely related to cost. The kitchen countertop project was successful despite the fact that you had to settle for a less-expensive material.

Don't you think these makes sense? I welcome any comments.

Until then, I urge you to keep this in mind. The third constraint can accurately be identified as the Scope or Performance. But it should never be Quality.

To the left is a graphic that incorporates this fallacy. Out of professional courtesy I shall not disclose its source website.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT: REALISTICALLY CONSIDER THE BUDGET

Realistically consider the budget!

A project has five major elements:

1. The budget
2. The schedule
3. The people
4. The resources
5. The rules

Project management has many aspects but all of them fit under these categories.

Why is budget listed first?

Well, isn’t cost usually the first thing the project sponsor brings up?

In fact, isn’t cost frequently brought up in the same conversation that sparked the project idea?

Doesn't it make sense therefore to immediately consider it?

If the sponsor wants to build a new $1 million data center and is suggesting that it can be done for $600,000, then maybe the project idea should be squelched right there and then.

Let's say that you were able to persuade the sponsor to increase the budget to $1 million. Is everything fine? No. It's easy to overlook a related aspect, namely, the scope. Specifically, you want to ensure that the budget is appropriate for the scope of the project. It is time, therefore, to define the scope.

Doesn't this approach run counter to the "normal" process of defining the scope before estimating the budget? On the other hand, doesn't the example given happen more frequently in real life? Reality often does not follow the textbook model. In this case, it certainly doesn't. The budget often precedes the scope although conventional project management thinking says that it should be the other way around.

Let's say that for any number of reasons, many of which were beyond your control, the new data center was finally finished at a total cost of $1.2 million. Now the question is whether you think the sponsor will consider the project successful?

What do you think?

The sponsor will probably not consider it a successful outcome unless they were forced to approve every change and/or activity that increased the total bill by another $200,000. An over-budget situation can be avoided by two things: first, ensure that the budget is appropriate for the project scope, and second, implement a strong change control process over the project cycle.

Where does the project scope fit in? As its own entity, it doesn’t. However, the components that comprise the project scope do. These components are the budget, the schedule, and the resources (including the people). As you can see, the project scope will fit once it is decomposed into its four elements.

It’s human nature to try to get more for you money. It’s suicide to accept a project that has an unrealistically low budget relative to its goal. Let’s keep that in mind.