Expert Judgment – A Project Management Technique

Once I had a conversation with my team member. He just finished a complex customer issue.

I asked him “How are you feeling now?”

With a sigh he told “Uhh. Much relieved and relaxed.”

“Smart boy. You learnt my 3 year experience in a week time” I replied him with a proud smile.

I continued “You can gain more expertise on lot of things by working with me. What do you think about working with experts like me?”

He answered coolly “You can easily find out experts. Experts are the one who asks more questions and does not know the answers to those”.

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After reading the above – “Are you laughing at me?” This is not the case in real life project management. Experts are asset to any activity esp. projects. Expert Judgment is a widely used Tools & Techniques in almost all major processes in PMBOK 4th edition from Initiating till Closing of project/phase (To be precise it is used as T&T for 19 processes). In some of the processes it is the one and only technique mentioned.

Experts are those individuals or group who possess specialized knowledge or training in particular area. In project management, experts are either part of the project (i.e. project manager) or involved (i.e. stakeholders) in project processes. Project teams with project manager and team members with relevant experience in the project related subject can perform the project with more success probability than those are not. Other than project team, generally available experts are project consultants, user groups, subject matter experts or senior management people.

Judgment provided by those people with expertise in appropriate project area is utilized at various stages of project phase in order to do effective project management. Their expertise is used to analyze historical information, define & ensure appropriate standards, get various suggestions/advice, evaluate different options, determine best suited options.

In order to get maximum utilization from Expert Judgment, as a project manager, you -

* Create a contact list & skill inventory for each stakeholders on the subject expertise

* Make sure you have adequate communication system in place to contact experts on time

* Ensure you seek expert judgment at appropriate time

* Use delphi technique whenever required. This helps you to reduce biased decisions

Executing Process Group Process – Direct and Manage Project Execution

This is continuation to my earlier post on Process Groups & Processes Mind Maps. As Initiating & Closing Process Groups have only 2 Processes each as it was easy for me to present them in a single post. But other process groups like Planning, Executing and Monitoring & Controlling are having more processes. So I am planning to present you one process in each post. This will be helpful for me in explaining about each ITTO item in the same post. This is the first post of Executing Process Group processes. Below is Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs Mind Map for Direct and  Manage Project Execution which is classified under Integration Management Knowledge Area.

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Important Note:

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites. As this one is part of my training guide and project management book.

Closing Process Group Processes

This is continuation to my earlier post on Process Groups & Processes Mind Maps. Here is Closing Process Groups Processes Inputs, Tools & Techniques and Outputs Mind Map. Knowledge area for the process is mentioned in the stem of main branch.

 

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites.

Career Development Framework

“Career Management” was a jargon for me till I attended a training about that. Career management & development has lot of tags attached to it like Talent, Competency, Skills, Job level, Roles & Responsibilities, Career, Improvement Plans, etc..etc..! We need to understand distinct meaning for each word to differentiate what we know with what really is it.

Once a resource joined a project almost all his future decided with the Job level, Tenure in that Job Role, How was his performance? Here is a 2 x 2 grid framework which utilizes two key factors – Tenure in Roles & Performance in deciding career development of the resource.

Learn the Job? – New to Job? New to a Role? Both scenarios fall under this category. As soon as a resource inducted/promoted in a team, his/her performance will be measured against goals set for that individual based on the roles & responsibilities attached to his/her job level.

Stretch Goals? – Resource is picking up job knowledge very well in short span of time. What to do now? Promote? Nope. Getting more exposure, in other words experience in a job level is more important for promotion. If a resource perform beyond his goals set then challenge him/her with more complex goals. This will make the project benefit out of increased productivity and also resource gets trained on number of required activities.

Improve performance? - A resource spending years in a job level without improving his performance. What do we do? “Fire him!” This will be the word management will propose. Lower the goals & give the individual a positive feeling. Identify the missing critical skill. Put him/her on training. Slowly develop the individual based on his/her own talent.

Future Responsibilities? - A resource found to be performing well for longer period of time within a job role – here comes the promotion part. Every organization has its own policies & procedures for promotion. Hence the tenure & performance scales differ. It is up to the manager to convince upper management for an individual’s promotion with all evidences.

Key points for thought:

1. Anyone will move from one quadrant to another quadrant within a performance cycle.

2. Ignored or delayed action on each quadrant results loss to the organization & de-motivate resources

3. Keep & do regularly update resources talent assessment & skill inventory

Conflict Management MindMap

Here is the conflict resolution & conflict management Mindmap. This map is self explanatory on conflict characteristics, conflict management influence factors & gives more info on each resolution type.

Characteristics of Conflict

• Natural & inevitable

• Forces a search for alternatives

• Team issue

• Needs to be resolved by conflicting parties itself

• Can be escalated to Project Manager

• Pros

  • Increased Productivity

  • Better decision making

  • Stronger team

• Cons

  • Low team morale

  • Decreased productivity

  • Biased decision making

  • Divided team

Conflict Management

• Characteristics

  • Openness required for resolution

  • Resolution focus on issues

  • Resolution focus not on personalities

  • Resolution focus on present, not the past

  • Different styles followed by different manager

• Influence Factors

• • Relative importance & Intensity of the conflict

  • Time pressure for resolution

  • Position taken by conflicting parties

  • Need resolution for Short term or Long term basis?

• Techniques

• • Withdrawing/Avoiding

  • • Worst way to resolve conflict

    • Withdrawing or Avoiding potential conflict situation

    • Temporary solution & leaves the conflict exists

    • Spoil goals & relationships

  • Smoothing/Accommodating

  • • Temporary solution & conflict may resurface later

    • Making differences smaller they seem by emphasizing more on agreement areas

    • Good for relationships

  • Compromising

  • • Permanent solution & conflict may resurface later if solution not followed

    • Getting into a solution that both parties agrees to some extent

    • middle-of-the-road kind of solution

    • Neither lose nor win

    • Will not make any difference in relationships

  • Forcing

  • • Provides Win-Lose solutions

    • One party forces other to agree

    • Happens when one has more power than other

    • Permanent solution but not the best

    • Spoil relationships

  • Collaborating

  • • Permanent solution & incorporated from one out of many resolutions

    • Resolutions provided from different viewpoints

    • More than one resolution identified, ranked and agreed best option selected

    • Leads to consensus and commitment

    • Experts or team involved in getting their viewpoints

  • Confronting/Problem Solving

  • • Permanent and indisputable solution

    • Best way to resolve conflict

    • requires a give-and-take attitude and open dialogue

    • Conflicts considered as problems & solved

    • Finds one correct solution for each disagreement area

    • Clear resolution -> no disagreement after this

    • Good for relationships

* Note# 1: There could be some typo or presentation errors. Please reply back for any corrections.

* Note# 2: You can use this for personal use (like studying for PMP Exam or PM activities). But don’t share this in common forum or web sites.