Page 138 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Malc said, "This made me question whether we were making enough of the milestones in our IT
Projects, or were they passing by uncelebrated? More often than not, it was the latter. No wonder
our IT Projects sometimes felt like that first swim did. No wonder we often ached mentally. I mean,
we were great at setting milestones and the units of our project would waterfall into one another
until the project delivered. We were just really rubbish at high fiving each other! On the first swim, I
did length after length without really acknowledging the achievement and we had got like that with
the chunks of our IT Projects. We just delivered them without acknowledging the dependencies we'd
serviced or the chain we were creating. We are now great at marking milestones!"

"I gave this some real thought on my next swim. Could I break bigger swims up into more meaningful
milestones, rather than 10, 20, 30 lengths was there something 'sexier' and could this then be
applied back at work? I asked how big the pool was ... it was 24 metres (which I was gutted about
because I'd kidded myself it was Olympic sized) and from this, I worked out that one kilometre was
roughly forty-two lengths! Just two more than I'd been doing!”

“So twenty-one lengths was half a kilometre. Next time I swam with this mindset. I celebrated after
the 500m mark and the forty lengths was a doddle as I pushed for that one-kilometre milestone.
Back in the changing room I took out the calculator on my iPhone and worked some other
meaningful milestones. 50 lengths would give me 1200m. Just over another two more would deliver
a kilometre and a quarter. 63 lengths and I'd have swum over one and a half kilometres. I could do
this! I started to get excited at these numbers! Then I asked Siri how many metres in a mile and
worked out that by swimming 68 lengths I could achieve this literal milestone. Over a week I built my
swim and on one glorious Friday, I completed my first one-mile session. It felt amazing and I could
not have done it without these incremental celebrations along the way."

Back at the office, Malc applied the same thinking to his IT Projects. Dull, uninspiring milestones
were replaced with ones that you could feel. Units of the IT Project were separated even further so
that a team working on a deliverable over a longer period could celebrate more regular wins. The
atmosphere in the office improved and morale soared, the pace and quality of the work improved.
"The most recent development I've brought from the pool to the office came this week when my
tired brain miscalculated on an audacious swim. I'd done the mile, then the two kilometres, then the
mile and a half and I looked at the clock on the wall of the pool and thought 'let's do this - let's crack
on to TWO MILES'. I did the calculation in my head and it was only back in the changing room that I
realised I'd messed up my working out! I'd swam 4 lengths short of this target! I was gutted!
Ironically, I'd nearly asked the man in the lane next to me who was warming down to confirm my
maths - but who does that? The next day I did swim the TWO MILES (and the extra four that I missed
the day before!!"

"The takeaway for IT Project Management from this is that I wondered how much value we may be
leaking through little miscalculations. If I hadn't got the iPhone calculator out I wouldn't have known
that I'd missed my target, in the pool, it didn't really matter but at work, it's a different matter. How
many projects are we delivering below their full potential because we all missed something? We
now have a culture where asking a colleague to check your work is OK, in fact, we've introduced a
'buddy' system to positively encourage this. The culture will also encourage you to flag these
miscalculations and implement your own remedy - like doing an extra four lengths the next day. As
for that guy in the next lane doing his warm down stretches. he has inspired me to ask our Project
Management as a Service partner to carry out regular gap analysis and portfolio health checks
because sometimes an independent pair of eyes spot something that you don't!"