All posts by Lisa Matragrano

03-Planning the work of a team, 04-Managing a project team, team roles, work plans

Six Views of Project Management Software

Leave a comment

When it comes to planning and managing a project, there have been many fantastic blog posts about the big picture. There have been posts about listing the work, breaking down the work, delegating the work, and everything in between. However, I thought it might be a good time to look at some more specific, nitty-gritty details within the topic. More specifically, I wanted to delve into project management software and similar tools because our office is researching what is currently available and ultimately deciding on the best option to use.

There are hundreds of project management tools out there. There are so many, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, it can feel overwhelming when asked to vet and decide on the right software for your organization. Over at Idealware (a consulting company for nonprofits), they asked nine project managers what project management software meant to them. Although the answers varied, they all had six overlapping, underlying themes.

Overall, the interviewees said the project management software should allow the user to plan projects (I certainly hope so), manage tasks, share and collaborate on documents, share calendars and contact lists, manage issues, and track time. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a single software package that can do it all. There are many programs that do one or two of these six topics really well but may not include any other feature. The author stresses that one should not overlook these standalone tools either. These tools include Manymoon, Remember the Milk, Zoho, and Google Docs (aka Google Drive). Not to mention, many of these options are free.

There are many different programs mentioned in the article that it’s not feasible to research them all. However the author of the article specifically calls out a couple programs that seem to be the most useful, Microsoft Project and Basecamp. For any of these programs, it’s important to understand its strengths and weaknesses in order to get the most out of the program or suite of programs eventually used to manage projects. So for about the next month, I’ll be vetting a few of these programs for our office.

I would love to hear about others’ experiences. What do you and/or your office use to manage projects? What’s great about the software and what makes you want to take a bat to your computer in true Office Space-style?

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles

Why We Don’t Speak Up at Work

2 Comments

Why do so many people choose not to speak up at work? Interestingly, it’s not always because we fear retribution or other negative consequences. In fact, the biggest reason people do not speak to their managers concerning feedback or suggestions is that they feel nothing would change even if they did speak up. According to a survey from the Cornel University Survey Research Institute, respondents chose not to speak up to their managers because they think it is “a waste of time.” This feeling of futility can have far reaching effects on employees and the work environment as a whole.

The problem reminds me of the psychological theory of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is the idea that depression and other negative mental states and illnesses “result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of the situation.” Although the theory was originally studied in animals, it has applications in people too, particularly in the workplace. When employees feel like they have no control, they begin to feel helpless; and when they feel helpless or like all of their feedback ‘falls on deaf ears,’ why would they speak up at work?

So how do we fix this problem? Claire Lew, the CEO of Know Your Company, provides some suggestions:

  1. Treat people that do speak up with dignity and respect. Ensure that they know they are being heard.
  2. Explain why you are not doing something. If there’s no explanation for not following their suggestions, employees will assume that the new ideas brought to the table are simply being ignored.
  3. Act on your employees’ suggestions. Claire states that the best way to encourage employees to speak up more and create a positive workplace is to act on the feedback offered – no matter how small.

These changes are relatively small and very easy to implement, but they have a huge impact on the company culture and on the employees working there. The next hurdle might be actually getting managers to listen to feedback about feedback…

04-Managing a project team, feedback, team dynamics, team roles

Get Rid of the Performance Review

4 Comments

In our office, it’s nearing the end of the fiscal year and that means performance reviews. The annual performance review was completely redesigned this year. In addition, there has been a huge push from above to make sure many more employees averaged close to a “3” in a 1-5 performance scale. Due to these changes, there was a lot of general confusion about what was expected of each employee for their personal review as well as what to expect at one-on-one reviews with supervisors. These changes ultimately had little to no effect on raise decisions; however while speaking with colleagues, it became obvious  that the cumulative effect of these changes was a destruction of morale and trust that had nothing to do with money.

Destruction of morale is just a small part of the damage a performance review might have on an organization. An article in the Wall Street Journal discusses several reasons why performance reviews, as they are commonly structured, are damaging and ill-advised. A few of these reasons are detailed below:

1. The boss and subordinate have two different mindsets walking into a review. The boss wants to talk about “skill limitations and relationships,” while the subordinate wants to negotiate a raise. At best, this discussion accomplishes nothing but, the author states, it more likely causes ill-will between the two people that has far reaching problems in day-to-day life.

2. There’s a widely held belief that performance determines pay; however raises are generally determined by the yearly budget and the overall economy and marketplace. The performance review often turns into a thinly-veiled justification for the raise the employee will receive, good or bad.

3. Performance reviews are generally set up to appear “objective” but because a single person is reviewing a number of people, the assessment cannot be free of the bias, motives, and feelings of the reviewer at that moment.

4. This same boss who must review a number of people simultaneously might be comparing very different people with sometimes very different job responsibilities but holding them all to the same criteria. For example, a trait that might be seen as an asset in one instance or by one reviewer could be seen as an impediment in a different situation or by a different reviewer. Similarly, two different employees may have two different ways to get a job done. Although both employees might achieve the same outcome, the boss may agree with one methodology and rate one person higher than the other. Unfortunately, this rating has little to do with actual performance.

5. Reviews in general impede personal development. If employees need help, they’re often afraid to speak to their bosses. Employees may feel that by acknowledging that there is a gap in their ability or knowledge, bosses will see that in a negative light and will decrease their potential raises for the upcoming year. Therefore, people do not grow as employees because they fear the retribution from asking questions.

Performance reviews seem to be a necessary evil but do they have to be? Perhaps there are alternatives to the performance review. The writer of the WSJ article focuses on addressing reviews as a team endeavor between the boss and subordinate and not as an adversarial experience in which both players enter the discussion on the defensive. He defines these meetings as “previews” instead of “reviews” in which both the boss and subordinate assess each other and when there is a problem with their teamwork, both members of the team must discuss and work to fix the problem at hand. The hope is that perhaps these changes lead to a more productive and healthy work environment and less game-playing and morale destruction.

What would you suggest reviews be replaced with?

01-Structuring a problem, issue trees

Issue Trees: More Useful Than Initially Thought

Leave a comment

In my free time (can any of us say “free time” with a straight face anymore?), I volunteer as chair of a committee for the leading professional organization of my field. A couple of weeks ago I was approached by the Board of Directors to lead a project to analyze one of the websites our organization offers as a service to members. Currently, we host and provide overall guidance for the direction of the website and pay a third-party provider to make it a reality, but many members of the board have started to wonder whether there is a better hybrid sourcing arrangement that would decrease our costs and provide a better value to our members. They believe that there are a number of problems with the website that the organization is not equipped to address or they do not want to spend the time and resources to address them. In fact their exact words were, “We could pay a consulting firm to do the analysis for us, but we were wondering if you think your committee could take it on instead.”

Because I just don’t know how to say no (and I have all that free time mentioned above), I agreed to lead the project. In a way, this assignment to focus on different aspects of MP couldn’t have come at a better time. During our last committee meeting, we began brainstorming the key problems with the website, the positive and negative outcomes, and possible solutions. I found myself relying on problem trees far more than I ever expected.

In a Project Management article at Bright Hub PM, the author describes a helpful method to brainstorm and pinpoint causes and consequences of a problem using a problem tree in a way that I haven’t tried before. He suggests dividing a board into three vertical sections in which the team lists the problems in the center column, the causes of these problems in the left column, and the consequences in the right column. The author also recommends clearly delineating between the direct causes and consequences of these problems compared to those causes and consequences that are indirectly related. Then, finally he suggests pictorially connecting the causes, problems, and consequences into a tree.

During the discussion, I often had to put forth questions in order to get the conversation moving. An article by Overseas Development Institute provides some helpful starting points, including:

–          “Which causes and consequences are getting better and which are getting worse and which are staying the same?”

–          “What are the most serious consequences? Which are of most concern?”

–          “Which causes are easiest/most difficult to address? What possible solutions or options might there be?”

–          “What decisions have we made, and what actions have we agreed?”

This method is a little different than the method my team used to create a tree in our previous semesters, but the advantages are clear. It provides a method to break the problem into manageable pieces that can be assigned to different members of the team while clearly establishing links between the various cause and effects of each problem. It will help our team prioritize both the big picture and more detailed actions that need to take place to ensure a successful project. In particular, I think creating a problem tree with a team that is international really helps all of us visualize the project. It becomes a tool that each one of us can reference at different times during the project to make sure we’re on track. Problem or issue trees are proving to be pretty useful.