Page 77 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Know when to pull in subject matter expertise! New Year, new IT Project

Manager you - part 4

How are those New Year Resolutions holding up?
It’s OK me too!

As I write this, we’re now (just) into February. Dry
January can, at last, be consigned to history! Perhaps as
well as we are now one-twelfth into the new year - how
are those 2020 goals progressing?

Discussing those goals with IT Project Management
colleagues, friends, clients and acquaintances, it
occurred to me that there are some broad themes in
the areas we have identified for improvement this year.

That’s what this series of five posts is all about. So far,
we’ve talked about managing with meaning and purpose, confirmation bias – how and why to avoid
it, and how making good habits will make a big difference, and today … knowing when to pull in a
subject matter expert!

When’s the best time to start putting out a fire?

It sounds like a silly question but imagine that you walk into your kitchen and it was on fire. Your
partner is cooking chips and the oil in the pan has caught light. The eye-level cabinets around your
hob are blazing and the fire has spread to the kitchen blind. What do you do? At this point you call
the fire service, right?

A firefighter friend said something that chimed with me once, he was saying that in many cases
people leave it too long to call the emergency services … the damage and risk increases with every
second you delay making the call. IT Projects can be like this!

Back to your kitchen, this chip pan fire that we’re imagining is on an event timeline. Like an incident
within the lifecycle of your IT Project, there are stages at which you can sort it yourself with the
resources you have and there is a point where you need expert help. So, the chip pan starts to look
like it’s going to boil over – you take it off the heat and let it simmer down; the oil catches light – you
spread a wet tea towel over the pan; the oil catches light but you can’t find a tea towel and it
spreads to the cabinet above the hob – you grab the fire extinguisher; and so on. When do you call
the firefighters out?

IT Project firefighting

In any IT Project, inevitably, there will be times where something comes at you and blindsides you
from left-field. A scope creep request, new requirements from a client, a question that you don’t
have an answer for. It always seems to happen on a Friday afternoon, in my experience, when my
minded has started to think about fish and chips and the weekend ahead.
Like the chip pan fire, as an IT Project Manager, you’re on an event time continuum when your
project veers off course. There will be stages where you can sort it yourself with the resources you
have and a point when you need expert help.