Service-Based Leadership of Project Managers

If you google with keyword “Service-based Leadership” or “Strategic Leadership”, you will see many articles and discussions are available and helpful there. In my post, I would like to summarize my knowledge and experience gotten in last 6 years of management and state some tips from my standpoint.

The term “Project Managers (PMs)” in this post is only mentioning to someone (not all) I’ve met and worked in last six years.

 Part I: Tips of Service-based Leadership of PMs

 1. Service-based Leadership by recognizing what value should be delivered

Many mornings when I have just started my work, PMs dropped me many emails asking for new templates used in their project management and how to fill meaningfully into forms and templates to send to clients. They would be willing to bring benefits to client, but don’t know how to perfect them. 

Many times, I have gotten plans and reports said more than ten pages of text without filtering that they were sent to all stakeholders from PMs for distributing information. I had to face difficulty and took a lot of time in finding out exact information I needed in hundreds of reports & plans each month.

A procedure which I realized was established unofficially for PMs using:

• Look for a template at company and a sample to illustrate how to use this template
• Try to fill all data in forms or reports.
• Send them to all stakeholders related.
• Wait for feedback 

The most important step was ignored in this procedure is “identify what useful information should be distributed to particular clients and isolate them in different forms/reports”

Once I stopped working; thought about what stakeholders were expecting and what PMs were doing; especially what value of company training to PMs in bringing the best services to clients. In reality, every level and position had different expectations for what they would receive, however PMs delivered unexpected ‘products’ - both software deliverables and information. Fortunately, QA team was responsible for testing software deliverables before releasing them to stakeholders. However, how about information distributed? Was all (information) put in one (report) although the stakeholder was only looking for a small piece in this one? I also recognized that the training heavily focused on teaching how to use template and paying attention on importance of process and standards which company following instead of teaching PMs how to complete forms and to distribute information base on stakeholder’s expectation. By this lacking of training, many PMs rigidly used project management framework, standards and processes, they have been running projects “robot-ly”

A service-based leadership PMs should start the work by understanding the needs and expectations of stakeholders (not only software deliverables but information distributed). The PMI also focuses on Stakeholder Management as key element of Project/Program Management; it interacts with many other processes during project’s being executed.

In many organizations I’ve known, after applied many techniques as survey, interview, focus group, brainstorming…to get understanding about expectations of stakeholders, they’ve stated Voice of Customer in Quality Function Deployment [1]  (Figure 1); have monitored it carefully and have used it for post-deployment survey to measure the degree of  stakeholder’s satisfaction.

  By understanding the needs and expectations of stakeholders, PMs can isolate what should be delivered to stakeholders and how to maximize value of delivery. Ex: If a PM identified what specific stakeholder looking for and he provided concisely and precisely information in report, that means he just minimized waste time/ effort of his client and just maximized business value for his client. This looks very simple but it is exactly service oriented management

 2. Service-based Leadership by setting win-win relationship
I’ve gotten many discussions with PMs at my company on what win-win relationship between the organization and clients. Most of them were on the same page to say that win-win relationship was project should be in budget and clients satisfied on what they had received. I totally agree with this point but it is not enough on my standpoint.

From report of Jim Johnson, Chairman of Standish Group that in typical software systems 64% of features are never or rarely used in reality. This means clients (outsourcer) must pay 100% costs of full features for only 36% value of delivery which they receive. I don’t think this is win-win relationship.

We don’t hope to perfect them to 100% usage. However, to maximize this number as well as possible, PMs should change mindset in accepting change requests. Don’t avoid changes. Look at change request from business view of client. And try to control changes in budget and time of project. I believe that PMs have own ways. And this also explains why Agile methodology is more and more popular.

                                                   Figure 1 Quality Function Deployment

Even a survey is more effective if it is conducted after a long time product’s feature is deployed to production environment, instead of conducting at release period.

We all understand that demands increase will push supply increases and only when business value of client is maximized, their demands will be growing up.

 3. Service-based Leadership by having another view about Stakeholder Management
3.1. An another look at client management
        Easy to say that a PM is working for his company but client really is person whom he is serving. The client is paying money for services of PM (who does not join directly to develop product). Besides, duty in coordinating/managing project work, the client always hopes that a PM as their representative to provide truly information about performance of team and to reduce Total Cost of Ownership ^[2] and Total Cost of Utilization ^[3] while still keeping project runs effectively and efficiently.

Client also wants PMs to manage performance of team members in best way they can. Remove barriers, provide appropriate tools, acquire good performers and stop service of poor performers who have no desire to improve.

Stakeholder management (I’m mentioning to client management) is not only to satisfy the expectations but PM also should play role as client’s representative to protect their business.

 3.2. An another look at team management
Employees are serving boss or boss is serving employees? A question is followed with many arguments. To answer this one, we should know what is objective here. My standpoint, I believe that boss should serve employees while employees are serving client because final objective is the boss needs to create environment where all employees feel totally committed to doing great job. 

The same with team management, according to “Road to Destination 3”, I completely agree idea about “Some people may feel proud when being promoted from a project team member such as a developer, a QC or so”, even some experienced PMs are also feeling proud of their positions and try to exercise power for highlighting their positions. This thought completely is wrong. The PMs or team leaders are not different from other members whose common objectives are to get project success and benefit for organization. They have power in hand to support and drive the team to success. It means they are serving the team performance.
 4. Service-based Leadership by having both reactive actions and proactive actions

Many PMs complained they hadn’t got authority to do this one or that one in leading and managing others, especially in Agile Projects or ODC Projects where PMs are mostly taken out power of management. However, “Successful leader don’t not attain their leadership positions by waiting for superiors to appoint them”.

The PMs should start project, initiate process; reach for more responsibility and look for more opportunities for themselves by serving the interests of clients. PMs are not only reactive in project management but also should be proactive in helping clients to identify risks, to improve everything in projects and give clients advices & constructive feedback even if PMs are not in charge of these things or are limited by authority

An example to illustrate this idea, if a PM is working on Agile project, almost tasks are assigned to team members directly from client. However, PM should proactively consider if any team members are lacking necessary skills to propose a short training to client and always keep an eye on their performance instead of waiting results from client.

5. Conclusion

The size of project success is determined by size of quality of service. It is the valuable intangible asset because the trust of client cannot be bought with money that this is acknowledged by quality of service that in there PMs are playing the most important roles.

[1] Quality Function Deployment: A method to transform user demands into design quality, to deploy the functions forming quality, and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process

[2] Total Cost of Ownership: A method used to help make investment decisions. TCO assesses the full Lifecycle Cost of owning a Configuration Item, not just the initial Cost or purchase price.

[3] Total Cost of Utilization: A method used to help make investment and Service Sourcing decisions.

6. About Author

 

Nhat H. DO, PMP

Software Development Director at TRG-Enclave

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