How to lead
A Project At Work
Project Management Best Practices - How to lead and drive projects successfully?
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hello and welcome to productivity
compass by zoho projects
today we have a very special guest
amongst us
mr sri srinivasa is the program
management lead
for operational process and systems at
tesla this talk
is an initiative by our team at zoho
projects
we have been very lucky to have some of
the industry stalwarts
share their experiences with the project
management community
zoho is a company that builds sas
software products for businesses
we are over 20 years old now and have
more than 40 products to run sales
marketing hr finance and more
zoho projects is our offering for
project managers
it is used by customers around the world
and in every industry to plan projects
big and small track their progress and
collaborate with
teams we also have focus capabilities
for agile teams
to introduce our speaker mr sreenivasa
is a recent graduate from harvard
business analytics program
he holds pmp certification from project
management institute
he is certified in governance of
enterprise iit from
information systems audit control
association and is also certified
information systems auditor for
audit information security and
compliance
mr srinivasa comes with over 20 years of
experience
leading and managing medium to
large-scale i.t applications engineering
enterprise software applications order
information security and compliance
digital product solutions across
technology platforms
his key focus areas include global
operational readiness
and standardizing best practices across
teams he has handled
multiple project portfolios to help meet
business objectives
and advance top level goals and
organizational strategy
he is also a public speaker coach and
mentor
he guides startup companies and
non-profit companies on process
project and program framework in the
capacity as a board member
and core management group talking about
his hobbies and interests
he has produced shows at stanford
university college radio for the past 11
years
his channel its div has a stream of
talks on leadership
he's also a vocal artist and humorist
she has been supporting and providing
pm work for local non-profit
organizations
before we start i have a few points to
make the session will last for about 40
minutes
which will be followed by question and
answers you can post your questions in
the live chat section
the speaker will answer them after his
talk in case of audio or video issues
please use the link zoho.to
project slide to reconnect to the live
stream for more updates
and future webinars please follow us at
zoho projects
mr srinivasa the forum is now on yours
thank you thank you very much garango
and the zoho team and
it's a great pleasure and honor to be
here and
especially in this unprecedented tough
times with the
epidemic and there are lots of
opportunities available for all of us to
connect virtually and we've
learned something new or shared our
experience
from what we have learned life is a
journey and there's always ups and downs
so we we we learn every day and we
learn we care and we share so thanks for
giving me an
opportunity and it's it's a pleasure to
be with you all and thanks for all our
all the audience
who have given the valuable time uh to
our uh program today
so thank you so uh just wanted to read a
little uh disclaimer here
uh the the content that you're going to
see
is from my experience that i've learned
from great leaders
and great projects and
any references that we mentioned it's uh
it's quoted elsewhere here on the slide
deck
and also from experience from my present
and
you know other uh employments where all
over the globe where i was
very fortunate to help support the the
companies
but they don't but again these are my
views from my experience and
it doesn't bind my current or past
employers i just wanted to call that out
and of course this is mainly meant for
educational awareness
training and to encourage discussion
among our learning community
of project managers and cannot be used
for any commercial or business benefits
i just wanted to read that out as you
see here
what we are going to do today in the
next 40 minutes or so is just a
general overview of project management
the main thing here is to just set the
right stage and get some terminologies
clarified
and see a brief project life cycle a
sample framework which is
pretty much on the basis of pmi
well-known world institute project
management institute pmi.org
i really credit them for all my
learnings and also the other
organization is isaka i-s-a-c-a dot
o-r-g and you there are lots of
process and technology and how it's
usage and things like that so
i would quote necessarily where
appropriate
and what do you expect from a project
manager and what is that a
person whose role here they've got a
definitive role to play
in bringing a lot of people together so
what is expected
then what are the critical success
factors that will really help a project
to succeed
we learn every day we look for failures
we fix them
and some which we could not fix we just
try to see
how else can we collaborate to fix so
let's just talk through that
and what are the tool sets that are
available to us how can we leverage some
of the tools
right the next one is tips for leading
projects effectively this is more like a
i would say a summary which gives an
example of in the in the project life
cycle
on how we can do certain things again
project management is an ocean
a lot of things a lot of knowledge areas
a lot of processes and stuff
to put everything into the 35 minutes
here is difficult but
i'll try to do justice with some of my
learnings and see
what i was looking for what i learned
etc so
it's again to learn care and share
so let's go to uh general uh the
uh the next slide please overview of
project management
it's an application of knowledge skills
tools and techniques to
to project activities to meet the
project requirements so the key things
as you see it's it's a there's a
definition from the pmi.org
and if you look at this the requirements
is what one has to really pay attention
to
in in short example you can say what
problem are we solving
who is our stakeholder where all the
people have to come together
to accomplish an objective to meet the
requirements
right and how do we really
get to the process from start to finish
right so if you see look at this next
bullet there
project management it includes the
process groups
as defined by pmi is initiating planning
executing monitoring and controlling and
closing
there are a lot of key things involved
sometimes you get an
opportunity to start from the beginning
of the project
sometimes i've seen it the dynamism and
say there is a problem
the project is already underway it's not
going anywhere
you just have to go and find out what's
happening
what has not happened how you are going
to
just go and solve the problem so there
are always lots of things
a lot of variations that could happen
here
so the first thing i would say from a
project management perspective
is to understand the context understand
their own purpose
collaborate communicate
be organized so a lot of things i would
see a couple of keywords
as we move through the presentation and
of course one thing we need to
understand the project is
it's unique and it's temporary
that's interesting why you say project
is temporary
because you know this there's not a
project that you always say that oh it
runs for months and years and
a decade it's not like that a project
has got a definitive goals
you have some requirements and then you
face the projects
right and also you just see have a start
date and ended
and you start the next phase start
dating indeed and then you learn from
the previous phase
you just correct yourself it's something
you you would see as a retrospective as
we do in
in agile a methodology right after every
sprint you say what did we do well what
we didn't do
well how can we change is there a
problem with the skill
is our problem with our you know the
various constraints of a project
right so in first place we need to
understand
we have to meet the requirements to meet
the requirements there are
there is a process everything is around
process so what pmi recommends generally
is uh
the the process
groups as you see here let's go to the
next slide please
so as part of the terminology briefing
um
you can see here on the left the product
portfolio program and project management
i just wanted to just uh
talk through a few points here let's
start reading from the
left top generally you see always people
think about the product is like there is
always a requirement there's a market
need
there is something we need to increase
our market share there is a
there is a road map of this product that
is being planned
which which will result in a feature and
functionality and things like that
of course who is the main driver the
customer the competition the regulatory
uh right and security what not
so it might result in of course it's a
hardware product or software product
or of course these days everybody's on
mobile is an example for a software
application
it could be an enterprise-wide system or
it can it would be an individual
it could be like a b2c application uh it
could be a device
that could help streaming or
the the application or media not so
there's this a product a very specific
you know which is uh which has got a
definitive goal
to feature after feature there is a
some people you would have heard minimal
viable product
that needs to be launched at a
particular time and then you enhance the
product you learn from the
industry look at the customer they give
some feedback
look at the competitors and then you try
to get to know
how can we innovate how can
i digitally transform my company to
get ahead of the competition how can i
be efficient all kinds of things
uh you will just focus on the products
out of the equation
then if you look at they see the
portfolio is
it's everything is a project you can say
but again
uh a product that is to be launched
is managed through a project manager i'm
trying to bring the relationship here
that it will be good to understand
so then what happens is right you see
the the
competitiveness the revenue the enhancer
uh then the legal regulatory staff
you're doing some projects for cost
reduction
for efficiency gain meaning what i can
do
in 30 minutes i wanted to do it in in 15
minutes
so if say say for example if you are
buying some products now everybody is
going online for
purchasing everything especially in in
this current situation of this epidemic
in covet 19.
so if you look at people are trying to
say okay you can order
on the web and things like that you
don't have 20 clicks to get to
purchase and complete the order can i do
this in five clicks
show a catalog give them a
package where they can just quickly go
and check it could be a bundled product
what not
and then you just have to pay and you
just
put your address and stuff like that and
hit uh done
or you're going to go and pick it up on
the on the store
on the curbside pickup what not look at
the number of clicks there versus
you just go through like about 300
product lines and you try to
sort through and things like that so a
person has to always look at efficiency
minimize the number of clicks
it's all driven by the customer and the
innovation and how to be efficient etc
so so this becomes portfolio so if you
look at to your right here
uh given some examples on a finance
portfolio
and a sales portfolio means these are
all right portfolios are vertical
where you can see there are programs
which consists of projects
and each project has got some
deliverables on the end of it
you know you start and you finish so
that you should understand the
relationship because
finance sales marketing engineering
supply chain
order operations for that matter you
know you have
uh marketing you have love i mean
communications
a lot of individual verticals will have
their portfolio
and they all have their budget in terms
of uh
getting some projects to be executed
there is some budget allocation
in organization so we need to understand
that
but again the question here is uh it
depends on the level of the project
manager also like sometimes you know you
are given and say go and execute it
sometimes you are in a situation where
you will be able to contribute to the
portfolio
in some cases you are in a c-suite
executive who is just looking at what
projects are what projects or programs
or a portfolio that we need to
allocate the funds so that's kind of so
what we are going to do in the next
couple of minutes is there are two
angles one is the strategic angle
another one is the operational angle
so let's focus on the the operational
angle of these projects how to be
how to drive and lead projects
effectively
all right so of course in every uh
uh portfolio or the program you see you
can see
it's a satisfy the business requirements
is our main
uh you know goal our motto right so as
you see programs and projects are
it's basically they're intertwined there
are a lot of related projects
formed together to form a program which
is a key thing for the
to meet the company's goals and
objectives ultimately
we need alignment to the company's goals
and objectives so first thing is
as an executive's responsibility is to
get the mission statement get the goals
and objectives
trickle down to the manager and below
right and as a project manager our goal
is to understand
not only just what problems are we
solving and how is it aligned
and meeting the goals and objectives of
the company this is always like
there's a company's milestone which we
are targeting for
and delivering value so that's the main
thing
all right yeah so let's go to the next
slide please
the project life cycle which is uh
yeah so are we are we good there uh
project life cycle is sample framework
yes
so in this case you know let's just look
at the central uh
the diagram there which is you initiate
you plan you develop and build execute
monitor and support i mean this is just
like a
a broader uh you can say faces
that's kind of fitting the pmi framework
but it's just
my way of doing uh this to keep it
simple
so you there's always you initiate
something then you plan
and you start designing and then you
just start building and
execute monitoring support so let's look
at the i'll peel the onion for you
on the right side you see plan and
prioritize first of all that is very
important because
there are like hundreds of requirements
now you need to also plan what is the
minimal viable product
that will get the biggest bang for the
buck so the challenge here for most of
us
is if you say the project is going to
take 8 months and 12 months and 6 months
yeah that's what it takes but if you
want to be competitive
if you have some regulatory conditions
that you have to meet
if you think that you you you have the
information security
data privacy or anything for that matter
that needs to be met
now there's no time for waiting six
months eight months like that
and in this competitive world we are all
racing to the occasion right so
what we have to do is prioritize and
then understand
make sure that we have got there is a
process alignment there is a systems
alignment
we have the capacity to deliver right
and
we have to understand the dependencies
between the various tasks that we
are that forms of that contributes to
the deliverable
it aligns with the product roadmap so
what we do is
we will just understand the various
tasks
understand the dependencies do some kind
of an estimation
and then create a minimal viable product
kind of a situation where you say what
can i deliver in three weeks
what can i deliver in six weeks so that
way you work towards
shaping up the you know requirements
design more like an agile
way or a hybrid way of doing things and
then get to
the deliverable of this product in in in
a quick
with a quick turnaround that way people
see value
of course with great quality that is
very important
at every phase of the project quality
is the mantra and then of course you
will perform
risk assessment so if you if you kind of
make sure
you assess your capacity you assess the
requirements you did some estimation
you did some process system alignment
and you see how it is aligned with the
roadmap because you can't just go and
get a requirement which is not in your
roadmap right yeah
so i'm just giving it at a high level
every one of them can
really warrant a session on its own
then let's move on to the right here as
you see the build
test validate and these are all okay
once when you know okay fine we all
agreed everybody we got the right skill
resources uh we put a high level project
timeline
and uh with milestones established and
everything okay let's start build
of course one of the things is what are
the use cases what are the test
scenarios
we are going to do it in a iterative
process that means you know you build a
test to validate build the test to
validate like you know
sounds very familiar it's like agile
right and then of course
you always need to have a status check
at a every point of time i always say
you got to keep an elevator pitch ready
hey how is the project going
um yeah you know no you just say
the projectors we have accomplished
three milestones
we are targeting the next milestone
we are having an issue we reached out to
somebody
maybe you could help us that's the kind
of that thing
if you if assuming you're meeting an
executive and he's asking this question
and say always the executives always ask
you what can i do for you
what do you need from me i am the
sponsor of this
programmer project and i'm uh i just
wanted to know where you are
then the next that means what does it
mean they are questioning you they're
asking
how can i help you so you need to always
as a project manager you need to have
those data points at all times with you
it's not that 20 things that you know it
is
the thing that you know to get some help
to get the project
moving and get some resources
reassigned get some additional support
to get the project executed because your
your head is in the line right so it's
such a very enviable uh
situation i would say right so when you
do the development and stuff one of the
things which is often forgotten which i
would like to
again high level is you need to talk
about how are we going to do the
releases are we going to have a weekly
release are we going to have a monthly
release or a bi-weekly release
plan this work with the release
engineers if it is an i.t system project
and and everybody should be aligned
there okay i'll talk more in a couple of
slides there
support planning is of course this is
one thing which is often forgotten
you know who is going to support post
release of this project
is there a customer support team if
you're handling customers then customers
will be calling in who's going to
handle them what is the uh like level
one support level two support
everything needs to be planned right
this stage
and you'll see some stars on top here
they're all
uh with which you can see like uh um
the legend it's the audit and compliance
and information security we need to
engage
those teams as well to see if there is
any financial
data or report that is going to be an
outcome of this project where a
company's decision is going to be
made being a public company we are
obligated to make sure
we are compliant from a stocks
perspective as well
and at the same time information
security is very important as to
how secure is your website how resilient
is your website
right how much of data is being
protected what data are you collecting
that's itself is a separate topic to
discuss but at least what i would like
to
tell them it's not an afterthought most
of the time the data security
information security compliance is an
afterthought
so i would suggest that as a part of the
process we should have it there that's
why there is a star there to just to
highlight that
okay let's go keep moving on from the
execute to
the the readiness review uh you know
keep in the same slide please
on the readiness review uh product
deployment go live support more monitor
means monitoring is very important to
see
how do you know that the this project
has been successfully
uh delivered what is the uh you know
who's
accepting that project so it is very
important to know the user acceptance
post project is also matters just go
survey it
talk to the field understand what's
happened what is not happening
because there are a lot of times you
design something
you execute something and you call the
project is done no
what will be more helpful is go to the
field
talk to the customer internal or
external customer
understand are they using the project
the the
develop i mean the developed software
application or
the implemented process for that matter
are they using the manner it was
because there's always gaps in the
communication and stuff
so you got to make sure that you you you
do a good job of
doing some field analysis right and some
people have they do pilot
also they should do it in a faced
implementation
for a subset of the teams to see
and learn before they really go
full-blown and especially when you're
global when you're implementing
something you got to be very careful
there
so the last one on this slide you see
the retrospective
then what is the measure success against
the roi return on investment is
you said that you know i'm going to
increase my productivity by 30
i'm going to reduce cost by 25
okay so how do you measure you come up
with those
stats and you tell your sponsor about
this is how
my roi of this project and that's the
need for doing this project you do all
this
pitching and everything during the you
know the first
strategic angle before to get the
project
approved but then when after the project
we have to go and learn did really
are we doing this if not what do we need
to do
why is it a failure so you know what
always look for that angle to learn from
the previous project
all right and of course you're in a
maintenance mode of course
you'll have to do a lot of patches
you'll have to maintain and
make sure there'll be some things
missing here and there
people will get new ideas when they
start using it
you need to make sure there is adoption
the user adoption is the best thing that
you can expect
so for all the efforts as a team that a
project manager the product manager
business analyst the developer
engineering qa test
business secretly everybody put together
in front of the customer to
look good for for the company
perspective the adoption
will really get the company from point a
to point b
in terms of you know being a competitor
in this competitive world
let's go to the next slide please so
expectations from a project manager as
you have seen in
various places you need the right
attitude you need to be a
relationship builder you need to be
self-organized that's very important
and you need to have a good
documentation skills that doesn't mean
you need to replace a technical writer
you can always engage a technical writer
to get the technical documentation
but just the basic things that is
required from a project manager is
do you have all the tasks aligned you
you understand the dependencies you have
the business requirements documented
you have a status reporting to talk
about what did i do
what is coming up next uh when what is
the risk what are the blockers
are you organized or do you have the
project sign off at various stages you
need to do all that
and i always tell my project team
you need to understand the business
context understand the business context
say there's always some attitude where
you give me a project
when is it to be delivered then i'll
take care of it thank you that's good
that's a good attitude
at the same time if you understand why
we're doing this
and it will really help and who needs to
do what
the reason is it will help to go
and unblock somebody because at the end
of the day project managers are in a
very enviable situation also
you're a great facilitator a great
communicator who
establishes accountability against
various people so if something is not
happening
you need to just escalate escalation is
good in this case it's not just
telling bad about something you are the
person who brings in the visibility
red green yellow don't feel bad about
calling it as red when you say call it
as red what did you
what are you recommending right
let's go to the next slide please so
just a quickly you all know this you're
all experienced to people
so you see there's always we work on
this triple constraints
you see a scope schedule cost
right always if the scope is not
controlled
if it's not properly planned then you
are not able to predict the timeline
in which this project needs to be
delivered right sometimes you are not
given the opportunity and then say
um here are these 100 requirements can
you tell me when this project can be
completed more often you see in this
competitiveness
a date is fixed already you agree i see
you guys nodding your head
and then you work backwards to see if i
need to deliver to match with my company
milestone then when am i to do the pilot
when am i to
deploy when am i to test when am i to do
what in terms of the various phases of
this project
right so you got to be careful with with
knowing the scope very well
then the next one of course cost again
nobody has got a
open wallet and then say okay just take
as much it wants to just go and
develop something some of the startup
companies if you can see
they're all work in a very very uh
stringent budget because
they don't have that much of money they
otherwise they have to go to
another venture capitalist and then ask
to ask them to cough up more money
okay and they we are not everybody is
like a
in the fortune 500 or 100 companies
where they have money
because they always have some money
dedicated to
to exploit what the company is doing
right now to increase customer
satisfaction
do operational excellence etcetera and
they'll have to allocate some fund for r
d
to explore what new opportunity that's
lying outside
so it's always between exploit and
explore the conflict
but not everybody is at that luxury to
do that so you got to be very
sensitive about you know being running
things efficiency minimizing wastage
so you need to have the right resource
first of all you need to have the
capacity
fully utilized whether it is the
resources resources
does not mean it is just human resources
it's also the infrastructure resources
the resilient
hardware that you need to run this right
and of course
as a critical success factor you need to
also have a very good engagement
cross-functional teams you need
everybody you need see that's what isa
called
in in their in their uh you know uh
educational stuff they always say it's
always in in governance and enterprise
id it's not id
at the end of the day so it's a business
and i t together forming a core team
this that kind of a tight will knit
a team you need it's always i always say
in my engagements
we need great business partners with
information
technology i've worked in both places
all right and of course communication is
super important
if something is not working something is
working keep everybody
you know abridged with what's happening
okay let's go to the next slide please
okay let's get to get to the the meet
project management tool sets
first and foremost is project charter
without going into much detail i'll just
give you
project charter the gantt chart which
you can see on the bottom of the screen
then the work breakdown structure which
is where basically you take the bigger
chunks of deliverable into what does it
take to get to that deliverable
and so that way you can assign the task
to
individual and then project status is
super important
risk and issue log you need to see what
is the issue what is the severity of the
issue
what is the risk is there is a known
risk is it something which you can
mitigate
or you can transfer the risk to someone
or
sometimes people are always fearful
about
the risk of the risk of not knowing what
that is the risk
and of course you need to have a racy
chart which is you know as you see here
who is responsible who is accountable
who's consulted who is informed
okay so that's super important of course
minutes of the meeting means just
to just a document with action items
every meeting is super important get
somebody
uh in consulting that i've seen but
there's always a person who's
taking care of okay what is the end of
the end of the meeting
what are the action item who is supposed
to do what we need to go with a clear
agenda
you need to come out with a key walk
takeaways from this and of course we
need to do roi analysis
now i just wanted to focus your
attention to the right side where you
can see the project charter
see if nobody is got that
even when you are put in a project you
say do you have a charter what is a
charter
it just tells you what problem are we
solving
who are the stakeholders when are we
expected to deliver what are my key
assumptions all right
and then which is you can see who is
going to accept it you can see
right what is the exit criteria means we
need to know when
you think the project is success right
and then who is the sponsor because that
way we if we wanted to go for ask for
more money
because uh the project there is a cost
to overrun because some
unprecedented things happen where you
are to spend more money
if we need to uh bridge them so in that
case you know you need to have
this is my charter just a one-page
document
everybody should have i would self-write
it and say this is the problem i'm
solving this is the customer
this is my assumptions that itself is a
separate topic
the you need to validate your assumption
because you assume getting into a
project of doing something
you assume that it's going to take this
much you assume that somebody is going
to
help you uh dependent like a vendor
customer or other
teams sometimes you know due to their
priority less
a project we it's always not dedicated
not all the
folks are reporting to the project
manager it's a matrix organization in
some cases
so they work in finance they work in
sales they work in other
departments but to help come and help
you so what happens due to the priority
shifting they will not be able to help
you
when when when they have other
priorities that coming in their way so
you have to go and reset things like
that so you you
they were allocating 30 percent of the
time to support your project
but that became five percent so you got
to really make sure
what are the assumptions that you're
making how many resources you need
you know and how long you're going to
take everything needs to be documented
and monitored very well
okay again i'm just giving a high level
we can talk
everything is is a is a topic on its own
to see
how to really um excel in such
areas but at least this will give you an
idea again
right uh let's go to an example this is
something i like
let's go to the next slide please which
is example
project marketing campaign management
sounds very simple huh
i'm going to spend five minutes on this
okay where do you where do you start
reading okay
let's just i just put it the color
coding there on the left you can see
where uh the various uh the faces are
given there in this case right
so you okay let's understand the problem
what are we doing
i'm telling the customer expect a new
product that
we are going to launch and i'm sending
an email to the customer
about getting them excited about that or
i'm telling them like um we have already
launched the product
here is how you can place an order okay
or you're saying we are doing a
marketing event
and if you wanted to just to come and
experience the product you can come and
do it for example right
so it's just such a simple thing but you
know you'll be really amazed
in this example you see you need to
understand who's the target audience
because there's like millions of people
hundreds and thousands of people
who's your target audiences your focus
group i mean they will give you you as a
project manager should just know this
because to help steer the project and
what tools are we going to use to get
this data and then
how who are you going to collaborate
what's the time when are you going to
execute it
what is the messaging requirement
because these all will give you
who are the dependent players to make
this project successful
how are you going to monitor that we are
successful and then of course
you will engage the the
folks who will be designing their email
and then to review and
prep all of this then there is always a
tool you use to
get this uh campaign executed and
sometimes it could be a
you know a sales force tool it could be
a homegrown tool
it could be any third-party tools for
whatever whatnot
right a campaign management tool and
then you have to got it tested and
vetted out
here is the fun part that's it my
campaign is done and executed no
look at the email that goes to the
customer then what do you expect the
call to action from a customer
standpoint
the customer what they open so you need
to see is the customer opened or not
so that's a tracking the customer
clicked or not
that's tracking again what do you want
the customer to do that's a call to
action
do you want them to go to our website
and buy something
or sign up for something now here is the
fun part
is your website resilient enough
to handle such volume of calls that
comes to
you you know what i mean so that is very
important to
let the web team involved and then say
we are going to do this campaign and we
are going to put the link for people to
sign up in a form is the form ready is
the graphics ready the content ready is
illegally written
all kinds of things need to be done
right see that's
that's a huge dependency second thing is
and then if the if the
people have you need to test it the
scalability of the website too right
at the same time you need to inform when
the campaign is going to be launched how
many people
we are sending it so you look at some
past experience to see
uh what is the what is the percentage of
clicks and things like that
that will be you'll be able to gauge
from the metrics to
to plan this and the next part is right
you need to make sure
that the data analytics team is putting
the right tracking code on the website
to see
uh to track all of this correct so it's
such a simple thing
now move to the the you can see the
right here software engineering efforts
as an example is a website
there's a content management there's a
campaign software there is a
the the data source you need to engage
the database team
infrastructure team then the analytics
team the intelligence team
such a simple thing and then say send an
email to potentials and customers
to just get them excited on a new
product
and then what you just have start
tracking and then you see
how this cross-sell upsell and other
opportunities worked
and how what is the effect of this
campaign isn't it fun
there's so much and of course there is
always approval your you your company's
branding is important companies image is
important
and also what worked here is it local or
global asia pacific or europe
or what not where where are we doing
this
so that is super important to know as a
project manager the reason is
um as a project manager just pay
attention to understand the context
that's all i'm saying
so that means it will it now you you'll
start thinking
oh then you will be effective if you
know what is being delivered
who are all involved what are the
nuances that means it's a great learning
and you know what every project you will
have fun
it's tough i mean it's it's very easy
every project you love when you feel
like
other you feel like i'm just running a
status report to see
whether you met hey can you give me the
status please and then can you see what
is next
that's no fun this is fun you learn in
the project so my
way of doing things which i tell my team
and when i build the teams i build pmos
one of the things i i i learn from the
great leaders
that's what they they do understand the
context i keep repeating that word
you might have seen like a broken record
right okay let's go to the next one
please
yeah so now the fun part right
tips for leading projects effectively
again it's more like a treat this like a
summary
and the entire thing that what i'm i was
mentioning to you from my learnings it's
there in this slide
have a project chartered for understand
the business case
the requirements assumptions
the timeline and please
who does what that's very
good thing we in the early stage you
need to establish that that's part of
initiating right face
then i mean in the planning phase there
are lots of things but i'm just giving
some
key things for you plan and collaborate
well this is very important
the developer when you go and ask for
status
should know this guy is asking for a
good reason
right it's not like you know tell me
when you're done it's question is are
you blocked
can i get you some help because a lot of
uh you know individually there are
different styles of functioning people
have tend to
focus on you give me something i'll be
done like a horse with the blind they
don't know anything about outside
so as a project manager you are just a
step above
to look at everything that's happening
at a 20 000 foot level and then see
oh this is not happening the handshake
is broken this is
not very clearly documented and such
things okay
and then of course understand the
infosec requirements
uh evaluate the compliance meeting
cadence agree on
how frequently are you going to have a
steering committee meeting a status
meeting
not too many meetings but at least it's
like
um what is the off-site of what i say
out of sight out of mind
so you need to have this is the project
status it's available here go and check
it or you send it like
the push this is the project status and
this is the milestones met
this is the milestones upcoming uh these
are all the various dates we are
targeting
this is the blocker and in this blocker
this is the help
that we need and this is the progress we
made all in a couple of
couple of bullets you can you can just
simply share in an email or
a slide deck or use a tool see that's
where the tool comes in effectively the
lots of tool
that that is there where you can just
attract the tasks the dependencies the
timeline who does what etc
it's leverage the tool it could be a
simple excel spreadsheet
or it could be a sophisticated tool on
the cloud or it could be
a you know the typical uh gantt chart
that is given by uh microsoft project
kind of a tool or
if there are lots of tools available of
course uh zoho also
right they've got uh the tools so the
lot of things that are that are
available uh in in the
market trello of course so you you have
and i've used very many
application tools like even jira has got
that a lot of you need to compare
based on your company's objectives and
what is the functionality and feature
set and and stuff
and then use and some people even use
confluence for that
so the no matter which tool you use the
thing is you are there to bring
visibility
please do that and then the key thing in
executing i'll keep it at a very high
level from a time constraint perspective
please test everything dryden data
migration dry run
if you have some assumptions validate
the assumptions go talk to the field hey
this is what we are planning to build
if we give this to you would you be
willing to be part of a
subject matter expert you got lots of
knowledge in this area why don't you
just come and
help right so they'll be very happy to
help
people are waiting to ask because if you
are going to solve their problem
definitely they will be very glad to
help you right
and then control and monitoring this is
where again this is a topic on its own
planning the rollout considerations that
is where you got to be very careful with
rollout and face to roll out pilot roll
out
and what not all right so
again get everybody informed if
you're going to like like i said in the
example
if you're going to launch a an email
campaign to people and the customer is
going to
uh click on it to do and most often what
happens not everybody will understand it
in first place
uh i mean i cannot generalize it some of
them
what they do they choose to call so do
you have the support team
enabled uh the customer support to
handle the calls
if they do not know that such campaign
is gone
in this in the example that i shared see
that is what is called rollout
and the dependency understand and
collaborate
alrighty good so so if
so in a nutshell if you take care of
some of these key things and
look for failures so that as you have
seen
right in them in the model that i've
learned from amazon and all like you
know
you have an idea from a team just go and
execute fail fast learn and then put
your learnings
to improve refine and successfully take
risks
and then you come out successful but pay
attention to understand the context and
project manager has to understand the
purpose of
them being there all right
so let's go and do the right thing
so that kind of what i wanted to share
today and
definitely i'm here to answer a few
questions so garango could you mind
sharing any questions we have from the
team please
okay
yeah so um i think yeah so i got a few
questions here
so um hope you can still hear me right
so how to automate the project
management workflow
we can they wanted to share some tips
so again the question here is first of
all
automation is very good because it
expedites things and
you'll have better tracking visibility
so please evaluate any software
that's available and which can help get
the
bring the visibility on a task-based
approach a task with the owner
with clear deliverables with the
dependencies
with uh also estimation and
also can get a roll-up summary and gives
a visibility of the multiple uh
projects that you are tracking to the
portfolio
so i would say the first thing to
automate is we need to be
disciplined to have some of the process
understood thoroughly
and with a standard best practice within
the team who are
project managers that is very important
and also we need support from the
c-level executives to support for
project
i mean there are i've seen in companies
where they say just get it done
i don't know how you do it that's one
approach other thing is
you know what we have to follow a
process so that we learn from our
mistakes and correct
ourselves so follow-up process tell me
what do you need to
get that automated so definitely you can
leverage any of the
the software tools that are available to
do that
the main reasons for uh projects fail is
this because
again not understanding the context uh
uh very well
and also the factor is you always plan
for happy path
i would always uh be a little bit uh um
nervous and they say if everything works
well
yeah that's not the ideal world right
the ideal world is
we expect to that to be so look for
failures always ask the question
where can it fail if it fails what do i
do always think like that be the devil's
advocate and then see
if it fails always have plan b people
say no we work with one plan
that's the plan we execute it thank you
you're good
but always keep some thing in the back
pocket and see if it fails what do you
do
if the resilient hardware it could be
have multiple
failover with one field you have the
second one the second
the other the factor is a thorough
testing
to make sure that uh you know testing is
done and uh you learn from that results
and also i would say one key thing
between qa scenarios
qa scenarios and always take business
scenarios too
and then test it and pilot it learn
go to the field next question is
successful project manager quality is
understand the sense of purpose
you are collaborative like i said in the
slide
you you just look at the the the
attitude keep an open attitude mind has
to be like a parachute
it works only when it's open okay and
then
you you have a you are in a very uh
you are the core center which connects a
lot of people great facilitator
communicator organizer you can say all
of that
um yeah i will send some
recommendations for the book but i would
say at least once you know
pmbok is a very good book to learn the
various knowledge areas and processes
that pmi recommends and definitely we
all learned
from this from pmbok right and of course
you can always look at some agile books
and stuff i'll send my recommendations
to the team later
so they can share it in an email um
metrics should be used to convince
executives to sanction which is a very
interesting question i like that
very interesting question what metric
how do we convince executives to
sanction a budget or a project you know
this one is very important because this
is again
you partner with the marketing team the
sales team
or your you know supply chain team
and then you work with them they all
have a business case and say this
increases my productivity reduces my
cost
and then it reduces the clicks for the
customer
it gets us competitive because you know
the same customer
which has been a customer for you for so
long
will go to another company if they know
that other company can
they can get the product for the same
money or less money
which is highly productive with the
greater benefits
so one of the things we all learned in
customer value creation is
you need to make it easier for the
customer to
interact with you and that's all about
digital transformation
we can cover a separate topic on that so
i'm very much interested so
so the point here is to convince the
sponsor of course
you can always say this is the problem
we are addressing
by addressing this problem and this is
the benefits
across the various five things which i
mentioned as an example legal regulatory
compliance information
security efficiency productivity cost
and then put a matrix and then say this
is the true savings
for doing this and in employee morale
safety and making it a better likable
lovable
environment
yeah well again see this is the question
um
yeah how do you compare the pmi model
see
the question is you company see
agility is very important for for
ability to
understand what's happening and your
ability to
to to make some refinements
change tweak and react to the market
fluctuations and what's happening
so but that does not mean you should not
have a process
you should have a framework an agile
agile is
is you understood what's happening
you know your capacity you have an
ability to
switch gears and react to to do this
with a high quality product okay and
again the the way they implement like
you know it's a waterfall methodology
you have agile methodology or a hybrid
methodology every company does different
things
uh which suits their process culture and
their structure
and their strategy so we got to do what
works for
every individual company based on some
analysis
so i would say
nothing or
i will put it in a positive sense if
your organ self-organized that's the
best thing
you need to do will help
[Music]
so again um
the teach i mean i would say i'm sharing
my learning that's one question is about
the teaching shared by you i'm just
sharing my knowledge of
the learnings here so it's like
everybody will have their own learning
just pay attention to how your last
couple of projects went
what did you learn why it didn't go well
or if there are something that
went well just follow that all right
and uh project there's another very good
question about
maintain project stability with the time
constraints and maintain quality
yeah that's that's a challenge on its
own because quality
is what even if you take more time
quality do not compromise because the
customer that's what they expect
if you give five features that features
better be
better work okay so
there's no point in giving 50 features
where i'm using only 20 of the time
if i give you five features which i use
eighty percent of the time
and i do that well that's what the
customer wants
so if suppose say you you planned for
some say mid-june and you have some
indications
look for early indicators where the
project is not tracking well so you look
for
something and then you see that
this is not going well so what you do
find out what what is the risk and how
you can mitigate the risk
uh either cut down the scope or increase
the resources
that can help you to still meet the
target or
worse scenario is just uh bring
everybody to a discussion and say this
is the situation
it looks like we need to spend some more
time to get this project
delivered so what do you think in terms
of
our options can we just take a couple of
days more or
to just do this right thing and in fact
most business executives they
understand the situation nobody's wanted
to put some product
in the market and then say uh yeah just
go for it you know what i mean
yeah so yeah this is a very interesting
question from somebody
how do you some of the best practices to
use to organize multiple projects and
stay up to date
yeah the question here is just to assign
a person can have for example three to
four projects
if a person has got 10 projects it's
going to be difficult just form a team
i'm not saying you need to have 40
project managers but again in this
economy and stuff you know you need to
make sure
you get your homework done and get these
data spend some time do some good
planning
by proper planning good support from the
executive management
good understanding with the project team
and collaboration you will be able to
manage this
portfolio management is an art it's not
an easy thing you need support from
everybody
and that's one of the big challenge we
all learn from every project
and one project is not the same like the
other they're always some variable that
is being cost here
okay um
again the pmi there's one question about
zoho
um um again i have as you have seen i'm
i've not
tested any product here i'm just sharing
what are the things that are out there
um so my question here is
use the pmi model to get to know what
you need to focus on like you know
procurement management
your resource management risk management
the quality
the integration management right of
course time cost schedule
um right so all of these uh you just you
go through the knowledge areas uh
that is recommended like about 10 of
them there and then understand the
processes to get
what is the structure that looks like
and what we need to do
and the applicability of each of them in
your current projects
and so please um do your homework there
that's what i would uh i would suggest
and this is a another question it's an
interesting question too how do you
plan taking it upon uncertainty see
uncertainty is always there right
nothing is certain especially situations
like this a lot of projects are stalled
now in this coveted situation
isn't it so what do you do you need to
evaluate
when you're going to resume this project
is it still valid
first of all in the current situation
right and
that's one scenario the other thing is
you're doing a project and
suddenly the business objective change
the business is going in a different
direction see ultimately
all the projects that you do is to
satisfy the business need to the
executive
they know exactly where the company is
moving in which direction they are
moving
due to the market demand the feedback
that
the market survey the feedback that got
from
the market the companies tend to decide
you know what maybe we need to refocus
our attention readjust the scope like
that
there are always things like that happen
so stay closer
that's why the communication is
important the status
report is important the one thing which
i all
often seen people saying i don't know
what
what's happening in the project do you
guys know i don't want to be in that
situation
i always say it's i will communicate
this is the project this is what it is
and these are the challenges this is we
are on target
we are not on target but unless you take
care of these things
always have a proactive communication
all right
i mean you can provide a remedial
solution just in this call right now
right
every scenario is different you gotta
understand that as well
but it's a good question risk analysis
perform a six month project yeah i mean
there's no time bound i would say as a
project manager you need to have the
risk matrix list all the risks their
severity
and evaluate it every couple of weeks to
see
is that risk still there or is it
transferred
is it mitigated or something which
we cannot you know sometimes
always we we always present the risk to
the executives and say this is what is
the risk we identified here's the
mitigation plan we do
and here's what sometimes you know the
business executives they say
i take this risk i assume the risk
because they also evaluate
they are responsible for the board at
the end of the day right so the board
member the
board is looking for a huge project
multi-million dollar projects
right they have to respond to the board
and what's happening to the to the
project the migration project or
is a new product that you're launching
what is the risk of
not meeting the milestone or what is the
risk that if the customer
behavior changed what is the regulatory
things change
so they always have to report so you you
should know even if a slightest doubt
just ask all right
yeah this is a very good question
how to check information security
aspects in planning phase itself as many
things come
as during execution of project see
information security
is very important at every stage of the
project i would say so understand what
is the information security goals work
with your
security team and within the
organization and understand what is
their goal what is that policy and
procedure
get them engaged early enough into the
project and give them a glimpse of what
you are doing
then they will put their minds to see
you know how
is it what website here we are launching
new what kind of testing needs to be
done
what data is being collected and what
are we doing with the data what is the
archival strategy and
whatnot and we want to cover it in a
separate topic on this okay
but definitely engage them early okay
um but it's very good question
how much of contribution culture of the
division of the company
yeah so i you're right culture that
matters
see again if you are so geographically
distributed you need to have a you know
a
important aspect about what works
communication wise what works
security wise what works their
process-wise and also vendors
customers vendors are internal partners
for you if the vendor does not follow
your process
and thorough documentation and stuff
like that if you are dependent on the
vendor
the project will fail so you got to make
sure
the culture is not just within the
organization within the i.t
within the business it's also with your
external party like customer
and other folks so you got to be careful
that's called
engagement model that's called who does
what go back to the basics so all we are
covering in this
is go back to the basics never ignore it
just okay this is the timeline i'm just
going to hit it there's no magic
so everybody has to have a clear
expectations you know what
the vendor has got their own release
planning
do you know that you you'll base every
assumption of this
based on okay vendor is going to give
this in time what if the vendor does not
deliver on time so that's where contract
management comes in
you write it in a contract that you are
supposed to you are obligated to do this
if you don't do this it's heavy uh
you're penalized for this
so people write contracts to talk to
vendors so that itself is a the
procurement management
team so engage the right team to talk to
them on that behalf
right um
do you have some more minutes and
because i have a few more questions here
i can handle a couple of minutes more
i just wanted to share uh
um again my knowledge and experience
what best practice need to follow if
project budget exceeds to
completion budget yeah so that's a
that's a very interesting question see
again
i wish i have a magic wand to answer the
question
best practices if project budget needs
to completion
uh i mean completion project see the
again
this is one area where people are people
need
a good support from a tool to track the
cost allocation of the project
to get ahead so this is one thing again
start with any tool that you you got or
do some analysis for a better tool to
help
the budget allocation and see how much
capacity
it is going to take what what does it
take to
do this project because it's procurement
of hardware software licensing
and things like that the development
cost then the operational cost people
often forget
right and the support they also forget
then the supply chain cost they forget
so it depends on project to project
so first of all get some kind of a
ballpark estimate and this is one area
where people are still improving i don't
think they've got them
they've mastered that there's always
cost to overrun
but i would say here's the best thing to
do just
get some ballpark estimate and validate
your assumption
learn from it so that next time when you
estimate
estimation technique again you can you
can be better at that
and it's always fun to at least when
nobody asks for it you better do that
that way it's you good for your own
edification
all right um let me just go through some
of the questions i see if i have not
missed anything thanks for asking these
questions uh dear listeners
i hope my answers are
okay enough to i mean i have answered
your question uh i'm still trying
um okay
so i ultimately process uh
matters and also one thing you you have
to see is like
um have a clear understanding with the
stakeholder
on always check with them is that
meeting your needs
do you want any different way of doing
things
also work with the matrix organization
if somebody's reporting into you from
another department
that's another challenge my manager gave
me a new job
i can't focus on this project anymore
you will find such surprises so you got
to be
these are all your dependencies again as
a project manager it is your
responsibility
to make sure your assumptions are
validated
and your dependencies are always you
know
you can depend on them it's kind of
funny to say right
you depend on your dependencies and make
sure you bring some predictability
yeah so um
yeah the the
okay i think i think fairly we covered
fairly we covered and thanks for asking
some questions
uh uh last one are there any best
practices you can probably help get
yeah deliverables needed from a client i
am
i'm just thinking see that's again
it's an understanding right who needs to
do what start with that
and then say for what you need for a
project there's always a relay race
right it's a handoff from one point to
the other point
so you got to work with them and see
set expectations i expect you to deliver
this for example
if a vendor you're doing a let me go to
some technically here
uh if you're depending on a vendor where
you give some request and the vendor is
giving a response in an apa signature
for a technical project
so in that case the vendor needs to be
recipient be available to receive your
request and provide a response
and the question here is what if you are
not able to connect to the vendor
what if the vendor is not connect to you
how do you get your acknowledgement
working i'm
look at an example like a middleware
technical aspects of this project
so that needs to be thoroughly tested
but that needs to be thoroughly
wetted out all the requests they should
be in a position to
receive and they need to they their
software tools and stuff needs to be
prepared for that so that's all the
expectations which is again
work with your engineering team and
again
one thing i wanted to say this whatever
we
heard oh it sounds like we have to do
everything not necessarily
just be aware be open
understand what's happening then you
will be able to help people
at the end of the day you are your goal
as project manager
or our goal as project manager uh or pmo
program manager what not
is your facilitators you are remover of
impediments you are there to
just make life easier for them and then
it's like a question of
doesn't matter who who gets the credit
we are a team
have a team approach so for the success
of the project
together we succeed okay all right
um let's see
yeah the blind spots
uh project managers need to be careful
about yeah actually that's very true
blind spots is just talking to have a
one-on-one
and uh and outside of just asking for
startups with your project team just ask
them how is it going you know is there
anything i can do for you
is there anything what would make it
easier for you to do what you're doing
and
uh is there any way i can help ask like
that open conversation will really help
and again assumptions one thing if i can
say
don't assume even if you assume
something because we all make
assumptions
validate your assumptions
yeah this is a very good question for
startups one person will be handling
multiple projects any suggestion
uh which thing we need to focus on in
project phases
well see multiple projects again you
know
that's a that's a little bit like
juggling too many balls in the air right
so you got to make sure go by the
priority
go by the deadline and things like that
every project there's no big or small
we need to succeed in those projects so
i would suggest is
dedicate your time to each project and
focus on that project
and just to see that don't just do okay
this project i take care of this and
then i go to the next project
just have some focused time have some
core team discussions with the project
and say guys we have a deliverable
thank you for partnering with us what
what are the challenges blockers that we
need to focus on
how do i unblock you it's like your
agile uh you know daily stand-up stuff
right
are you blocked hey who can help here
right do you need help from the
executives do you need help from within
or there is always somebody who has done
this before right and
i would even say i tell my team all the
time project managers can help other
project manager too
and then get some help and say there's
always somebody has done that
and one thing i would say use a tool
or tools standardized so that all the
project managers use that
and also set expectations with on how
the reporting needs to work between
the project team so that everybody uh uh
follows that so i'll say
tools will be one of the very good
aspects of bringing some
standardizations at end of the day
all right okay thank you guys
i guess i've tried to answer most of the
questions
to my knowledge all right again i wanted
to throw a disclaimer there
once again these are from my experience
and doesn't bind any of my employers
current or past and
just sharing what i learned from leaders
and from other books and i'll share the
other books and stuff through
to zoho team karungo and
pratik thank you thanks for the
opportunity
thank you mr speaker your talk was very
likely
thank you dear participants uh for more
updates
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thank you stay safe
you
