Second Stop on the Tour

Lesson Learned: It's Got to be Easy

This, the second stop on the tour, walks you through additional lessons that I’ve learned and tells how I’ve taken all of the lessons and incorporated them into the Scorecard Program.

It’s been some number of years now that I’ve known that measuring is the critical element. I’ve helped teams to create their surveys and watched as they committed to sending them out. But the fact remains that most teams just don’t do the monthly surveys. It is a lot of work to develop, send out, collect, tally, analyze and then distribute the results of a monthly survey. And, I’ve come to believe that perhaps it is just too much to ask the team leaders to take on this task – because to do it right is a lot of effort.

The larger the project, the more complex the issues become and the more difficult it is to even capture what is on each person’s mind.

So, I’ve worked to make it easy for the project leaders. I will do the work for you… so that you get the results! Working with the project leaders, we will develop, send out, collect, tally, analyze and distribute a monthly Scorecard to the entire team (all of the key stakeholders). This will allow the entire team to both give and receive regular, monthly, feedback. I will also offer you guidance and advice along the way and help you to hold the team’s feet to the fire.

 

Lesson Learned:
It's Got to be Safe to Tell the Truth

Are you going to tell your boss that he’s not doing a good job, or that you really need him to follow-through with what he said he would do? Probably not! Are you going to tell the senior-most person on the project that you are not getting what you need in order to finish on time? You probably can’t. Are you going to tell your counterpart that they don’t seem to be able to make a decision, and that telling you to just read the project documents really isn’t helping to resolve a significant problem? You’d sure like to… but you know that it would only make things worse.

These are things that project leaders are faced with all of the time. I’ve found that if you can know the “truth” of what is going on during a project you have a very high probability that you can manage the project. People won’t tell you the truth if they are afraid to. They might be worried that someone will turn on them. Maybe they don’t want to make waves or point fingers. But believe me, these issues play out on the project whether you know about them or not. Sometimes people just don’t feel like they have access to to the people to whom they’d like to tell their concerns or ideas.


By sending the Scorecard directly to me, it becomes safe for all of the project team members to tell the truth. I keep each person’s responses confidential. This creates an atmosphere where it is OK, and even encouraged, to tell the truth. The good, the bad and the ugly get shared. Now you can deal with every important issue and you will have more time, and thus a better chance to mitigate the negative impacts on your project.
 

Lesson Learned:
You've Got to Measure the Right Stuff

In the first part of our tour, I shared a critical lesson I learned: “what gets measured gets done.” But how do you know what to measure on your project? After working on over 1,000 projects, I’ve developed a pretty good idea of what it takes for a project to succeed. I’ve also seen the patterns of failure and know them when I see them.

I’ve also asked the team members on over 250 projects to tell me what were the attributes of their most successful projects. Based on the answers, we developed project metrics (ProMetrics™). The metrics help to assure that you are measuring the most critical project success factors. Working with the project team leaders we will identify the goals you want to achieve in each of the ProMetrics™ success factor areas.

In addition to the ProMetrics™, on Mega and Large Projects you will also receive a unique Mega Project Success Factors™ assessment. Most of the industry research on mega projects is based on what made projects fail. I’ve identified 9 factors (so far) that were present on successful mega projects (and absent on mega projects that failed). This quick assessment at the beginning of your large/mega project can help to assure that you are structured to succeed.

The Scorecard Program

I’ve tried to incorporate all of the lessons learned into an effective, easy to use process where I can be there looking over your shoulder and helping along with way. The goals of the Scorecard Program are to help the project leaders to:

  • Assure Acount-Ability
  • Steer the project by measuring project success factors
  • Identify issues before they become problems or disputes
  • Develop high-trust relationships
  • Create an atmosphere of fairness

This is why I am so excited about the Scorecard Program. It works! But don’t take my word for it; let’s look at a some project-specific case studies.

Your Third Stop on the Tour includes more detailed information about projects that have implemented the monthly Scorecard Program. Just click on the link below to go to the third stop on your tour.

Third Stop of the Tour