By Thomas Cutting, PMP<\/p>\n
![\"paranoia\"](\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/paranoia.thumbnail.jpg\" "\\"paranoia\\"")
You leave for your flight well ahead of schedule.\u00a0 Traffic is light and you arrive, unhurried, at the airport.\u00a0 Strolling up to the counter you secretly laugh at the frantic people running toward the crowded ticket line or scanning the flickering departure screens in panic.\u00a0 Being the saint that you are, you even let a mother with a screaming child ahead of you in line, silently praying they are not on your flight.<\/p>\n
The kiosk attendant signals you forward and you confidently hand him your ticket.\u00a0 Reading his tag you smile and say, “Good morning, William.”\u00a0 He glances at the ticket and looks quizzically at you and rechecks the document before calling over a manager.\u00a0 As she scans the paper you catch William staring at you with a smirk on his face but he quickly turns away.<\/p>\n
“Sir,” the manager says, “were you aware that this ticket was for yesterday?”\u00a0 Your sense of confidence is proven false: and your day was going so well.\u00a0 Fortunately, William is to busy helping the next customer to notice the dump look on your face.<\/p>\n
Call it paranoia, but every time I get a strong surge of confidence I get nervous.\u00a0 It seems that no matter how many times I verify project progress something ugly always rears its head to ruin my day, like when:
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The vendor promised a strong replacement project manager for a very client intensive project.\u00a0 During the turnover meeting the clueless look on his face caused a bit of doubt.\u00a0 Upon questioning, he admitted to never having managed a project before; never receiving project management training; and wasn’t told that his new role would include project management.
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The team developing the backend interface has been “on schedule” for testing for weeks.\u00a0 At every status meeting they re-state that they will be ready by 6\/28.\u00a0 On 6\/28 they proudly announce that they have completed the interface: design.
\n\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The support team has confirmed that backups are being performed nightly.\u00a0 They have even told the project manager to stop repeatedly asking such a stupid question.\u00a0 After all, they are professionals and know what they are doing.\u00a0 A month after going live the system fails.\u00a0 No problem.\u00a0 The tapes are recalled to perform a restore only to discover that the backups never completed successfully.<\/p>\n
How do you keep from being lulled into a false sense of confidence? I suggest you\u00a0 K.I.L.L. it.<\/p>\n
Keep changing the questions.\u00a0 The project manager dealing with the “professional” support team asked to the point of irritation if the backups were being performed.\u00a0 She needed other questions that may have produced a different answer.\u00a0 “Who is performing the backups?”\u00a0 “When do they complete?”\u00a0 “How many tapes are involved?”\u00a0 “How long is it taking?”<\/p>\n
For the interface problem, a simple “What will be ready by 6\/28?” may have uncovered a serious problem.<\/p>\n
Even though it was a fixed bid project, asking for the replacement project manager’s resume would have saved time and effort.<\/p>\n
Insist on evidence.\u00a0 To ensure the project stays on schedule you need facts, not promises.\u00a0 One of those facts is actual time spent and estimates to complete from the people performing the work.\u00a0 Minimally this can be collected at the activity level but preferably by task.\u00a0 This exposes trends before they become trouble.<\/p>\n
Have the support team show run times and completion codes of successful executions.\u00a0 Check with end users to ensure successful processing.\u00a0 Go check the online system yourself to verify that the changes were implemented.<\/p>\n
Listen to what is not said.\u00a0 As you begin changing your questions and insisting on evidence there may be long pauses or blurted out excuses.\u00a0 Usually what is left out is as important as what is said.\u00a0 Begin by saying “So, what I am hearing is: ” and restate what they said.\u00a0 Then follow up with “Can you confirm then that you: ” to clarify what you didn’t hear them say.<\/p>\n
“We will replace the current PM with another one” should have solicited “Can you confirm that the PM will have equal or more experience?”<\/p>\n
For the errant development manager, reiterate that he said, “The code will be unit tested and turned over to the development environment by 6\/28.”<\/p>\n
Learn from previous mistakes.\u00a0 The saying “once bitten, twice shy” applies to both your mistakes and other project managers’ lessons learned.\u00a0 Review the results from similar projects and ask other project managers about the team members you inherit.<\/p>\n
Informed optimism is far more reliable than false confidence.\u00a0 Keep checking the details and you won’t miss your flight.<\/p>\n
Published by Josh Nankivel with permission from the author<\/em><\/p>\n About the Author<\/em><\/p>\n By Thomas Cutting, PMP You leave for your flight well ahead of schedule.\u00a0 Traffic is light and you arrive, unhurried, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[470,468,467,469],"class_list":["post-1306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leadership","tag-confidence","tag-intensive_project","tag-project_management_training","tag-project_progress"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14099,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1306\/revisions\/14099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"ThomasCutting\"](\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/cutting.thumbnail.jpg\" "\\"ThomasCutting\\"")
Thomas Cutting, PMP is project manager, speaker, author and founder of Cutting’s Edge. His blog at www.CuttingsEdgePM.blogspot.com provides real world experience and lessons learned to the global project management community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"