How to manage long-term projects in a mode of constant change?
When managing projects, a lot of complexities await us — from coordinating the timing of work to tracking goals and results. Being ready for change is the ability to maneuver and not be afraid of difficulties.
Maksym Prokhorov, founder and managing partner PM PARTNERS
Maxim Prokhorov, owner and founder of PM PARTNERS, spoke about how to manage projects when there are constant changes around, how to build a strategy and work with long-term projects in order to achieve the set results.
1) What is project management?
Project management is, first of all, managing each other’s expectations. And sometimes we are not talking about two-way communication (client-customer), but about several stakeholders at once. With such management, the principles of transparency, trust, collective feedback on the work done appear. Who manages expectations, in principle, manages everything. Apart from expectations, project management is a story about business, and therefore about money. Here it is important to be able to manage resources, tasks, because if this is not done, the business becomes unprofitable and immoral.
A business partner and I once had an interview with an analyst, where when we asked what is the criterion for the success of a project, we received an amazing answer — an act of work performed.
Everyone eventually finds his own interpretation of what project management is. In the case of PM Partners, this is expectation management and resource management.
2) What types of project management do you single out?
There are several types of methodologies — Waterfall and Agile. But, to be honest, there is no 100% view, because in reality everything is mixed. Waterfall (cascade method) — for the sequence of tasks. Most often it is present in large engineering projects, in government projects. If you do not study all the regulatory documentation and follow the Agile methodology (flexible methodology), you will not have an understanding of where you will end up.
The management methodology also depends on the duration of the project: in a short project, you don’t need to do regular sprints, it’s enough to agree on goals once and move according to the plan. While in a long-term project, regular reports on the work performed are needed.
3) What projects can be considered long-term?
Short-term — projects that last up to 3 months. They don’t need much efficient tuning. The team is not overloaded and it consists of 6 people maximum. Usually such projects are pitches, this is speed and this is service.
Medium-term projects — from 3 to 12 months. If such a project does not exceed the schedule, it does not carry certain financial statements and does not significantly affect (do not restructure) the internal activities of the company. There is a transformation, but in separate areas. Usually these are projects for some department or division.
Long-term projects are projects that last from 12 months to 3 years. Such projects significantly change and transform the entire company.
All global business operates year round. If the project is not more than a year, accordingly, it is medium-term and operates within one budget period. Projects longer than a year involve decision-making at the board or investor level, because they incur long-term financial costs and time costs for the team.
4) Are there methods for managing long-term projects? How are they different from short-term management?
The first technique is the maximum immersion with the client in a trusting relationship.
The second technique is problem solving. Project work is the regular identification of problems and the definition of an approach to their solution. Based on our experience, there were only 4 such problems: simple, complex, dynamic and chaotic.
A simple problem is when someone solved it before you and you take his experience and apply it to yourself. If you haven’t found how to solve a problem in external sources and you have to bring in an expert to solve it, it’s a difficult problem. If this was not possible, then the problem turned out to be dynamic. Then you take risks, try to solve it by all means, and if this does not happen, then, congratulations, such a problem is already chaotic.
The third technique is when you get used to each other and can talk directly about all the problems. When you reach the third level, then the project is in a rush — on both sides.
Such project management techniques can be applied to both long-term and short-term projects.
5) How to build a strategy for a new project, given the constant changes in the market?
To begin with, when starting a project, define its boundaries. This is exactly what the Waterfall methodology is about: you need to set goals and move along them like stairs.
It is better to divide long-term and medium-term projects into stages so that you can stop, revise plans, and make changes. The most ideal route that we have chosen for ourselves is 3–4 months.
We have been going to this methodology through trial and error for 5 years. The owners want to see the results, and when the work goes in stages, there is always the opportunity to show it.
In addition, there is an important thing — modeling or visualization of the project. In other words, create a model for $5 and show it to the customer. Yes, it can be as ugly as possible, but there is no better tester than the end user. Don’t wait for the perfect product, show it at the very beginning, even if it’s not fully functional yet. It is important to give a modeling product and get feedback. The modeling stage is extremely important before starting the main processes.
6) At what stage should the existing development strategy be reviewed? What “calls” for this should be?
The first “bell” is when you realize that you are doing automation only for the sake of automation. When the resources spent on certain transformation actions did not bring proportionally greater results: you spent a million, and at the end he gave you 10 thousand.
The second “call” regarding what you are doing: when you return to the project after 3 months to see who is using it, but it turns out that no one.
The third “bell” — when the operating team changed. There are very few cases when a new team follows an old strategy. Most likely, if the project team changes, then the strategy was already out of order. In this case, it is better to take a break and generally reconsider the direction in which the company is moving.
We had cases when both the customer and the contractor changed in a long-term project. We took a break for 2–3 months, explained to the owner that such an outcome is better, otherwise there is a high probability that the output will not be what we would like.
I will share several cases of PM PARTNERS.
Case 1 — development company:
The global task of the project was to automate budgeting. Initially, budgeting was carried out in Excel by each employee the way he wants. It was not clear what was being built and for how much. The last straw was the construction of the complex, which ended up being $5 million more expensive than planned.
We have completed a pre-project, started work and have already completed part of the processes for automatic budget accounting. But when they got to the stage of working directly with the budget, users wanted the same Excel. Then we took a break, changed the team on the part of both the contractor and the customer. So we were able to implement the project, but already during the implementation period, new system features began to appear that would not be possible in Excel.
Case 2 — wine production company:
The task was to change the “granary books” to digital accounting. At the time of the start of the project, the owner did not know the amount of stock left in the warehouse, etc., and the inventory itself was formal.
After 3 months, the owner finally felt his enterprise. But from the very beginning, the customer did not have a project team. It appeared after a year of work on the project, at the same time the emphasis in its management changed significantly. Conflicts began and we decided to pause for 3 months to stabilize the situation. As a result, the project was divided into two parts: what the company does on its own, and what we do — a project history for the development of the company.
7) What factors can lead to changes in the project?
The most terrible factors are external: the geopolitical situation, for example. We cannot influence them. The most managed are internal: we can change the structure of the company or replace the project team at any time. When the situation is outside, it is a stupor. And in this case, the issue of automation is in tenth, if not hundredth place.
8) How to analyze and implement changes in the project?
It so happened that for 5 years of work, not a single project came to where it started. It is a process of constant change.
First we need to define the goal — what we want to get as a result of the work. If there is a goal, a charter should appear — who does what in the project, who has what tasks. It is important to understand that there are two project teams: internal and external. It is worth defining their powers, because this greatly simplifies communication. Every 1–2 weeks it is necessary to record the results and the changes that these results have brought. In no case should changes go away from the goal, and even more so affect it.
For a detailed understanding of the project, we conduct diagnostics. This is our internal know-how. What is it for? 99.9% of clients themselves do not know what they want and come for a ready-made solution. Thanks to diagnostics, the client understands what he really wants from the project, he passes this project through himself. Then the spent resources, time and money will not be useless.
The best clients are those who understand their desires: they know what they want, how much it costs, and they are ready to manage the process. But there are 1 out of 100 of them. There are clients who do not know what they want, but are ready to do something with it, to deal with it. And there are those who do not know and do not want, because it seems to them that they think that they know and want. They are the most complex and often work with such ends at the diagnostic stage. We have different financial relations with each such type of client, because there is a different degree of responsibility for the project.
