Wanted: Head Coach
1300-attorney, global law firm seeks Head Coach to lead team of highly skilled consultants, IT staff and vendors.  Must avoid burdensome forms, reporting requirements and processes while focusing team on producing results and meeting deadlines.

You might not run that ad when selecting a person or firm to lead a project for a major international law firm, but you do need to find someone who thinks like the head coach of a football team — a team that is going to the Super Bowl!

So, what type of project manager would you assign to a large-scale, technical project?  A top-down, follow-my-orders type?  A manager who wants to make everyone happy and just get along?  A PM obsessed with pushing the team to work harder and faster?  These would not work with a team of senior IT staff, firm stakeholders and highly regarded experts.

You need a PM with the characteristics of a coach: visionary, consensus builder and communicator . . . someone who manages processes and workflows, sets team goals, monitors progress and allows the team to do the work.

The PM should understand the technology to be deployed but need not be a technology expert.  Project managers who are “experts” tend to do the work.  Instead, allow your project team to perform the work, and rely on the experts to mitigate issues and provide solutions.

Planning and Preparation (The Gameplan)
Prepare a plan that meets firm expectations yet gives the project team time to design and engineer the right solution.  For example, suppose you were leading a project to migrate 11 million documents to a new DMS over a period of seven months.  Your plan might look something like this:

Phase 1 — Design and Consensus.  Conduct meetings with key stakeholders, project team members and IT staff to develop a design that meets the firm’s business and technology goals.  Create a proof of concept (POC) environment to test design variations and testing scenarios.  The POC will drive design and validate which scenario or combination of scenarios is best suited for migration.  Duration:  three months.

Phase 2 — Build, Test and Pilot.
Using the design guidelines from Phase 1, finalize the core build design and infrastructure design.  Rigorously test various client configurations and document the results.  Conduct face-to-face meetings to confirm the design.  Ensure the final design meets client expectations.  Duration:  three months.

Phase 3 — Implementation, Training and Rollout.  The implementation phase is the culmination of the project.  The design specifications and test outcomes drive plans for training, web integration, deployment and rollout.  Use subject matter experts (SMEs) to develop plans that minimize the impact on the firm’s user community, infrastructure and resources.  If necessary, create office SWAT teams to assist users with the transition to the new system.  Duration:  one month.

Subject Matter Experts (Offensive, Defensive and Special Teams Coordinators)
Large, technical projects require experienced subject matter experts to successfully execute design and engineering, desktop deployment, custom tool development, performance modeling and Web strategy.  You cannot afford to flounder with less experienced technologists in a project that will touch every desktop and document in the firm. Activities and deliverables of the SMEs should be supervised by the project manager.  Their progress should be documented and discussed through weekly status reporting.

Managing the Team (The Game)
The traditional approach to project management may cause your team of highly skilled professionals to rebel against your management style.  You already know that many technologists hate doing status reports and attending meetings.  They often feel time could be better spent meeting deadlines and preparing deliverables.

How can you meet the firm’s expectations for project management and reporting and get high performance from your team without burdening them with traditional meetings and reporting requirements?  Consider the following:

• Use a “big picture,” high-level work plan approach.
• Increase the number of major milestones within the work plan to guide individual team effort.
• Create smaller project teams led by a team leader focused on a particular aspect of the project or major deliverable.  Empower team leaders to make decisions within the framework of the project.
• Monitor progress using weekly status meetings where team leaders verbally report progress.
• Prepare a status meeting agenda that is updated with notes taken during the meeting.  Post the updated agenda to a project website as the weekly status report.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Make a point to speak to everyone on your project during the course of a week.  Use the information gained to prepare and fine-tune your status meeting agenda and report.
• Conduct informal one-on-one mini-meetings weekly with key stakeholders to keep them informed and aware of any showstoppers or delays.
• Track issues/assign responsibility.

Changed Processes (Half-Time Adjustments)
Focus your team on meeting goals and deliverables by being proactive when it comes to change control and change management:

• Hold team leaders, not individual team members, responsible for providing status and updates.
• Prepare a collaborative status report based on the weekly status meeting.
• Use Microsoft Word, Excel and/or Visio to communicate work plans, milestones and timelines.
• Limit Microsoft Project to the Project Manager.
• Administer change management.
• Document requests made during weekly status meetings.
• Obtain approval from project sponsor during weekly one-on-one meetings.
• Publish approval or denial in status report.  If approved, document the approval, assign responsibility, schedule change into work plan and monitor progress.

Lessons Learned (Post-Game Analysis)
Following the project, it is always good to reflect on challenges, successes and lessons learned.  The following are good rules to live by and are the result of experience gained over the course of many large-scale projects.

• Plan for additional time to coordinate client and vendor teams.
• Communicate major milestones to vendors.
• Set deliverable expectations for vendors.
• Monitor vendor commitments and deadlines.
• Be flexible — not all will go as well as planned.
• Keep stakeholders (client and vendor) informed of project progress — good and bad news!

Use client IT staff as team leaders (if qualified).  This gives them ownership of the project, provides opportunities for knowledge transfer and builds strong relationships.

Keep project sponsor and CIO informed of progress whenever possible. 

And last but not least, remember that like a football game, success is determined not by one person, but by a good gameplan, extensive preparation and the coordinated execution of an experienced team managed by a thorough and motivated head coach.

Go Team!

About our author . . .

Ronald K. Thomas is a senior consultant and experienced Project Manager at Baker Robbins & Company.  He may be reached at rthomas@brco.com.