What is the Rebel Project Managers Handbook all about?

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It has two aims.  The first is to cover the basics of project management which, it must be said, are pretty straight forward once you have cut through the thousands of words of advice, the dozens of processes and goodness knows how many rules which we now have to navigate.

 

The second is to get you to ask questions about your project, your team, the tools and the processes you are using and then about the culture in which you are working. In other words, to looking at the big picture.

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If after reading the handbook you get a bit agitated when you hear somebody say “But we always do it like that!” then we’re heading in the right direction.

 

So why the Rebel Project Managers handbook?

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As the years pass, Project Management continues to develop. It is becoming a more mature discipline and professionals can now obtain Chartered Status as you can in other professions.

 

In parallel, more and more words are written about more and more "methodologies" e.g. Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid, Scrum, Prince2, Prince 2 with Agile, Critical Path Method, Prism, Kanban, Scrumban (really! What is THAT??), Lean and Extreme Programming. Add to that the processes and Bodies of Knowledge and the word count is significant. One of the biggest contributors to the word count is, of course, Prince 2 which has over 100,000 words and is a sub-industry in its own right.

 

There is a risk that the application of the rules, processes and governance become the central point of focus for a project team and the real job, i.e. delivering something, becomes secondary; as long as the boxes are ticked we’re doing OK. 

 

The British Standard for Project Management, BS6079, states:

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“Governance and management should be appropriate and proportionate”

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I interpret that as saying "If it doesn't help you, dump it in the recycling bin....for now"

 

One of the primary aims of Agile is to simplify delivery and to focus on the production rather than the documentation and when the ”Agile Manifesto for Software Development” was published in 2001 it had just 182 words. Now there are thousands and thousands of words written on the subject. Can nobody see the irony? 

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PMs know that there is no silver bullet and that none of the tools available will solve all of their problems. If there were a silver bullet, we would all know about it by now and would have given up trying anything else. And I would not be bothering with this Handbook of course.

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So the PM has one option; Rebel. 

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Challenge the norm, challenge the processes and, where necessary, challenge the culture, hence the title; The Rebel Project Managers Handbook.

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In his book, “Rebel Ideas”, Matthew Syed writes, “…teams of Rebels will beat teams of Clones.” My experience certainly supports that view and not just in project management.

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Douglas Bader, a hero from the second world war, made a clear statement on rules which is often quoted; “Rules are for the observance of fools and the guidance of wise men.”  Did he have a point?

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Maria Kapsali argues in her research that “Project management should be concerned with equipping the team to cope with challenges rather than giving top managers a platform to monitor progress; the system to manage projects needs to be unique to those using it and the environment it is working in.”

I could not agree more with that last statement.

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Some of what I have written will go against conventional PM thinking and that is the intention, we need to spend less time on the conveyer belt (or turning the handle of the sausage machine) and more time spent thinking about delivery.

 

So what does “improvement” look like?

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Good question, how about;

 

“Fewer words, fewer documents, fewer and shorter meetings, less effort, less stress and more verifiable data, all achieved with no impact on the final product.”

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Pie in the sky?  Maybe, but if we don’t try, it won’t happen.

 

You will need a few prepared and rehearsed responses to the statement “But the Handbook/process/course notes say that it must be done like this.”  For me, that is “red rag to a bull” time.

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“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein.

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Who is this Handbook aimed at?

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It matters not if your job title is Project Manager, Delivery Manager, Project Lead, Team Leader, Project Supervisor, “Project Admin” or any one of the dozens of alternatives currently in use; if you are delivering something new for somebody then you are the Project Manager as far as this Handbook is concerned.

 

Senior managers who are not and have not been “hands-on” project managers may also find some of the text useful to understand what their teams are, or could be, doing.

 

Why have I written this?

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Over the years I have had the good fortune to work in a wide range of organisations ranging from the absolutely brilliant to the, well, not quite as good,  in a number of sectors and I have noticed a trend towards the more bureaucratic approach which, it must be said, is more prevalent in public sector organisations than commercial which is what I suppose we would expect.

 

Having done the courses, passed the exams and got the certificates, I don’t ever recall it be suggested that project managers should challenge the norm or indeed challenge anything because the mantra is to “follow the process” because the process is King, or Queen, depending on your point of view.

 

How do I expect the Handbook to be used?

 

Hopefully, you will keep it handy and, after checking the basics, refer back to it when specific issues arise, or you want to deal with something in a slightly different way or maybe want another point of view. 

I hope it will raise the odd smile and doesn’t induce a strong desire to yawn or sleep. 

 

There may well be times when you read something and conclude that it’s rubbish, and you may well be right, but you are thinking about it and challenging which is a good thing, and hopefully, you will have got closer to your target, whatever or wherever that may be.

 

There are three sections in the handbook.

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“The Basics.”, then “Let’s Deliver Something”, a simple template for the delivery of a generic project which attempts to make your delivery simpler by challenging the norms. Here I suggest things that you might want to “Prod, Poke and Challenge” to find better, more efficient ways of working.

 

Finally, “Topics for Discussion”, where I discuss 74 topics ranging from “Agile” to “What Skills do PMs need?”  and include things like “Earned Value Management”, “The curly Wig Test”, “Optimism Bias”, “Meetings”, “Failure”, “E-mails”, “Audits” and lots of other things that you may encounter when delivering projects.