4squareviews

This week I started doing posts summarizing the first two chapters of Terry Schmidt’s book Strategic Project Management Made Simple.    While reading his book, I have decided to take his Project Accelerate Now video course which goes into the material in more depth, and have decided what I call the “Strategic Project Management Challenge,” which is to use the Logical Framework Approach introduced in his book and video course on my next project.

Since I have been chosen as the Chief Project Manager for the project which will put on the Professional Development Day 2014 Event for the Chicagoland chapter of the Project Management Institute, I figured that it is a good place to start.   So I am announcing in this blog that I plan to use the Logical Framework Approach in the initial high-level planning discussions I will have at the kickoff meeting for the project I plan to hold by the end of this month.

So, in eight months, I will be able to sit down and evaluate not only how successful the project was, but to what extent the Logical Framework Approach contributed to that success.   Let the challenge begin!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

This is a series of notes on Terry Schmidt’s book Strategic Project Management Made Simple, which adds the Logical Framework Approach to traditional project management in order to facilitate strategic planning.    The second chapter of his book is Building Strong Project Backbones, and introduces the reasons the basic questions you must ask when doing strategic planning.

1.   Introduction

The last post talked about the 4 crucial strategic questions, which are:

–What Are We Trying to Accomplish and Why? (Goal, Purpose, Outcomes)

–How Will We Measure Success (Success Measures, Verification)

–What Other Conditions Must Exist (Assumptions)

–How Do We Get There? (Inputs)

Notice how I included a word or two in parentheses after each question.    This represents the element in the Logical Framework Approach that the answer to the question corresponds to.

The important points to remember about the 4 crucial strategic questions are a) they need to be answered in order, b) they are linked by If-Then statements, and c) you need to check the links between each question.   This post deals with these important points.

2.   Answering in order

You need to discover the following:

–Purpose (what is the product, service, or result that the project will create, and what impact will it have)

–Objective (what are the characteristics of the product, service, or result; in project management language, these are  called the project deliverables)

–Goal, which in Terry Schmidt’s book, refers to the strategic reason for doing the project (in project management language, this is sometimes called the business need).

THEN you need to ask yourself about

–Success measures, and how they will be subject to Verification

THEN you need to ask yourself about

–Assumptions, those elements outside the project (including the impact of events, and stakeholders within and without the organization)

THEN you need to ask yourself

–Inputs, those resources and activities needed to produce the Objectives.

3.  If-Then or Causal Logic

The language that links the questions is If-Then or Causal logic.    If we achieve certain Objectives, then we will create a product, service, or result that serves a Purpose, which will then contribute towards the company’s strategic financial Goal.    Another way of putting it is that achieving certain Objectives will cause the creation of a product, service, or result which will serve a Purpose, and which will in turn cause the company to help achieve its strategic financial goal.

If-Then Logic relationships are not necessarily the same as what you see on a Gantt chart, that shows the sequence of activities on a project.    How is If-Then, or causal logic, different from sequential logic?    Here’s an example from a psychology class I took at the University of Illinois.    The professor was trying to teach the concept that “correlation is not causation”, and so he showed a graph showing the results of a survey of different towns in France where the two variables measured were a) the number of different storks seen, and b) the number of babies born in the town.    There was a very strong correlation!   Were more storks in some towns causing the number of babies born in those towns to go up?

He asked us to puzzle the question and come up with an answer.    I just happened to be taking a French class, and I saw in our textbook one crucial fact about French culture that solved the puzzle:    in rural French towns, storks often made their nests in the chimneys of houses.     Suddenly, I got the reason why there was a correlation.   The storks weren’t causing the babies’ births, but rather the number of storks and the number of babies were both independently related to the same variable, which was the number of houses in the town.   The more houses, the more chimneys, and therefore the more storks, because they liked creating their nests in those chimneys.    Also, the more houses, the more families, and therefore the more babies.    As the number of houses go up, both the number of storks and the number of babies went up, so these two variables were correlated, but there was no direct causation between them.    A Gantt chart shows the sequence of activities, but does not show which ones are causal and which ones aren’t.   For example, if you are building a house, you must wait for the plaster on the wall to dry before you start painting it.    In a Gantt chart, the activity “plaster wall” must come before “paint wall”, and there must be a lag of a certain amount of time between those activities to allow the paint to dry.    But the mere act of plastering the wall does not cause the subsequent activity of painting it; it just must come before it.  

4.  Checking the Links

Now, suppose you have completed the first question, and have a project with specific Objectives that achieves a Purpose that contributes to the company’s strategic Goal.   If you go to the next question, which is the Measure for Success, and you can’t answer the question, then you may have to go back to the first question to refine it.

If you can’t find a measure for your success, then your Objectives may be too vague.    So if you are ever getting stuck with a question, go back to the previous question and see if you can make it more specific.    Like I said in my last post, this is why you don’t ask your GPS device to “take me someplace nice.”   It’s not specific enough of an Objective.   How would you verify if the place you arrived was “nice” or not?   That’s going to depend upon the criteria you set for what a “nice” place consists of.   If you on a family outing, you may want to go to a sports game, but your spouse may want to go to a movie, and the kids may want to go to a theme park.    The place you go to will have to achieve the Measure for Success that all members of your family can agree on, if your Purpose to have a pleasant family outing with the Goal of achieving family togetherness.     You may have to go back to each family member and poll them about what they would like to in order to get an Objective that is specific enough that everyone can agree upon.

5.   Conclusion

This gives the basic information about the 4 crucial strategic questions, what they are and what the important points are that you need to remember about them.   These crucial strategic questions will form the strong backbones of your project plan.

Next week, in Chapter 3, Terry Schmidt will relate these 4 Crucial Strategic Questions to the Logical Framework, which puts all of the questions into a matrix that links them all together in a single picture.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

This is a series of notes on Terry Schmidt’s book Strategic Project Management Made Simple, which adds the Logical Framework Approach to traditional project management in order to facilitate strategic planning.    The second chapter of his book is Building Strong Project Backbones, and introduces the reasons the basic questions you must ask when doing strategic planning.

The key problem in project planning is that people start worrying about the how of the project, before being clear on the what and the why.    The four critical strategic questions are as follows, and they need to be asked in this order:

1.  What Are We Trying to Accomplish and Why?
The question “what are we trying to accomplish” will produce the Objective of the project.   But you also must ask why it needs to be done.   That gives you the Goal of the project, the strategic goal of the organization which the objective of the project must serve.

2.  How Will We Measure Success?

Let’s say you have come up with the Goal “deliver customer value.”   How would you be able to tell whether the project, once completed, actually fulfilled this Goal?   If the answer is, “I don’t know,” then your Goal is too vague, because you are not able to come up with a way to measure the success of the project.   How would you be able to tell whether the project, once completed, actually fulfilled the stated Objective?   Again, if the answer is, “I don’t know,” then your Objective is too vague.   It would be like going to the GPS device in your smartphone and typing in “someplace nice”.    You need to type in a specific address.    Similarly, you need to develop a specific measure of success.

3.  What Other Conditions Must Exist?

What other conditions or factors must exist outside of the project for the project objectives to be successfully completed?    These factors are referred to as Assumptions, and this question introduces the idea of Risk Management into the strategic picture, although Stakeholder Management could also be included in this concept of Assumptions as well.

4.  How Do We Get There?

This is where you breaking down the overall Objective into smaller and smaller objectives in order to figure out how to achieve that Objective.

According to Terry Schmidt, the problem with many project managers is that they want to get involved in the technical details of question #4 (“How Do We Get There”) before the Objectives are stated, aligned with Goals, and clarified by asking what Measures of Success are going to be used to confirm that they have been reached.

In sum, don’t work so hard at climbing the ladder before you have made sure that the ladder is leaning against the right wall!

The next post will discuss the If-Then structure that links all of the four critical strategic questions, and is used to break down the Objectives into smaller and smaller units.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

This is a series of notes on Terry Schmidt’s book Strategic Project Management Made Simple, which adds the Logical Framework Approach to traditional project management in order to facilitate strategic planning.    The first chapter of his book is Thinking Outside The Bar Chart, and introduces the reasons why strategic planning is important.

As mentioned in the last post, NASA Rule #15 states

A review of most failed project problems indicates that the disasters were well-planned to happen from the start.  The seeds of problems are laid down early.  Initial planning is the most vital part of a project.

What are some of the specific planning mistakes that can create disasters on a project?    The following chart describes six dangerous planning mistakes, and gives some concepts for solutions to these mistakes.

It is Terry Schmidt’s contention that the Logical Framework Approach will provide solutions which will help you avoid all of these dangerous planning mistakes.   How?   By helping you create a strong project backbone which has the strength to carry the planning load, but at the same time has enough flexibility to change when new information comes to light.

The principles of creating that strong project background are covered in the next chapter, Chapter 2:   “Building Strong Project Backbones,” which will be covered in the next few posts.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

This is a series of notes on Terry Schmidt’s book Strategic Project Management Made Simple, which adds the Logical Framework Approach to traditional project management in order to facilitate strategic planning.    The first chapter of his book is Thinking Outside The Bar Chart, and introduces the reasons why strategic planning is important.

1.  Beyond PMBOK©

The main reason why Terry Schmidt wrote his book is that the Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK©, is necessary for project management but it is not sufficient for you to do projects well.    You need to think strategically, which means to allow the objectives of your project with the strategic goal of the organization.

If the objectives of your project do not align with the strategic goals of the organization, or they get out of alignment of that goal in the course of the  project, then the sponsor may decide to terminate it.     PMBOK© does mention the fact that the statement of work, the “seed” of the idea of the project, if you will, needs to reference the business case, which is the strategic business goal of the organization.    However, the planning process as taught by PMBOK© does not ensure that those strategic business goals will be met in the course of completing the objectives of the project.

The Logical Framework Approach, however, does ensure that those strategic business goals are met, because they are considered as an integral part of the planning process right from the beginning.

2.  Complex projects–some common dynamics

In the course of his long career in project management, Terry Schmidt has consulted on a lot of complex projects.  Although the application area that these projects were involved in varied, the dynamics of these projects has many factors in common.   I have taken his list of complex project dynamics and expanded with a column that shows the project management areas that are involved, based on a description of each dynamic.

You can see from this chart that ALL project management areas are represented in the list of dynamics of complex projects.   Some dynamics cover more than one area, but the one area that is represented by multiple dynamics on this list is the area of Stakeholder Management.     It is managing the “ecology of people” surrounding the project, both within the organization and outside of it, in order to reduce the risk of their influencing the project in a negative way.    Although Stakeholder Management is considered an outgrowth of the Communications Management project management area, it has many common elements with the area of Risk Management.   This is because Risk Management deals with events which can positively or negatively impact the project, whereas Stakeholder Management deals with people who can positively or negatively impact the project.

3.  Start Smart

There’s a common expression “well, it’s not rocket science”, implying that it’s not an especially complex point.   There’s a reason why “rocket science”, or what NASA is involved in, got into the vernacular as being the end all and be all of complex projects, and that’s because they the Apollo Moon project was the most complicated engineering project of its time.    A lot of project management principles that are practiced today have their origin in the American space program, and one of the most valuable planning principles is NASA Rule #15:

A review of most failed project problems indicates that the disasters were well-planned to happen from the start.  The seeds of problems are laid down early.  Initial planning is the most vital part of a project.

Dr. Donald S. Remer, President of the Claremont Consulting Group and the Oliver C. Field Professor of Engineering Economics at Harvey Mudd College put NASA Rule #15 into economic terms in what he calls Remer’s Rule of 10:

It costs approximately 10 times more to fix a problem at each later stage of the project. 

A problem that costs $10,000 to fix in the planning stage will cost $100,000 to fix at the design stage, and $1,000,000 to fix during the construction stage.

The lesson that NASA Rule #15 and Remer’s Rule of 10 point to is clear:

INVEST SUFFICIENT PLANNING TIME AND EFFORT EARLY BECAUSE THE COSTS SAVINGS ARE HUGE

4.  SPOTS syndrome

It may seem ironic, but Terry Schmidt, who is writing a book on strategic planning, is also a big critic of strategic planning–as it is typically practiced.    

Here are the problems he sees with typically produced strategic plans.

• Produced as a ritualistic exercise
• Vague
• Full of jargon
• Lack the right “hooks” to be actionable

Such plans gather dust on a shelf, and thus suffer the “Strategic Plan on Top Shelf” or SPOTS syndrome.    Terry Schmidt’s mission with his book is to take strategic plans and make them living, breathing documents that help combine the best ideas of Strategic Planning and Project Management.

But before going into details of Strategic Planning, Terry Schmidt wants to go through six dangerous mistakes made during the planning process.    That will be the subject of the next post.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

1.  Introduction

I decided to go through the book Strategic Project Management Made Simple (John Wiley & Sons, 2009) by Terry Schmidt for several reasons, one selfish and one altruistic.    As a project manager who put together one of the tracks of programming for the Professional Development Day Event last year for the Chicagoland chapter of the Project Management Institute, I had invited Terry Schmidt to speak about the Logical Framework Approach because I thought it would be an interesting topic to present to the over 300 project managers who came to the event.    I was glad I did, because his presentation seemed to be well received by those who attended it.    

Recently, I’ve been chosen to be the Chief Project Manager to put on the PD Day 2014 Event and I wanted to use the Logical Framework Approach to use on planning and executing the project.    So the selfish reason I wanted to go through the book was to understand it so that I could use it on my next project.    However, the altruistic reason I wanted to go through the book was because I wanted others in the project management community to understand the approach so that they could use it on their next projects.

2.  Outline of Book

Here’s an outline of the three parts of the book.   Part One answers the question of what strategic thinking means in project management and why it is important.   Part Two tells you how to use strategic thinking in the planning of your project, and Part Three tells you how to use strategic thinking in the execution of your project.

My goal is not to reproduce Terry Schmidt’s book, but to summarize it and to think of additional examples to illustrate the points he makes, in order to encourage those who are interested in looking at the approach.

Tomorrow I will start with the first chapter, Thinking Outside the Bar Chart.    I’m looking forward to the journey, not only my journey in going through the material, but hearing from those of you who have gone through the posts and who are considering adopting the Logical Framework Approach for your next project!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

I just finished being a Contest Master for the Spring Speech Contest being held at the Area level of Toastmasters International.  The Fall Speech Contest has four levels, club –> area –> division –> district, and the Area level is therefore the second level.

The contest went fairly well, but I wanted to write down 5 lessons learned so that the contest next Fall will go more smoothly.

1.   Start Planning Early

If the District contest takes place in November, then counting back one month you have the Division contest in October, the Area contest in September, and the Club contest in August.    In this round of contests, I started planning for the Area contest one month ahead in August.    Next time I have start planning then in July, which means practically THE moment you become a club officer.     For example, you need qualified judges for the Area Contest in September, but when is the training for judges given?   In July and August.   If it’s at the end of August, and you suddenly realize, “we need qualified judges”, then it may be too late to get people trained for the job.

2.   Use the Rifle, not the Shotgun

Now I’m not talking about open carry laws in the Toastmaster Club; I’m referring to how you ask people to volunteer to be a contestant, or to perform one of the support roles.    If you ask at a club meeting and say, “any volunteers?”, the response will be minimal.   But if you go individually and say, “hey, you’re really good at X (whatever role you are looking for).   I was thinking that you would be a good person to have at our contest to do X.”   When you thrust somebody in a role outside of their comfort zone, you are going to face passive resistance.   But when you first GROUND them by recognizing their strengths, then you can STRETCH them into the role by taking those recognized strengths and applying them to the contest.

3.  Lateral Cooperation

The Division Governor should be willing to help out at your Area Contest, of course, and we certainly didn’t have a problem with that.   But you need to get cooperation from other Areas in the same Division.    You can approach the Division Governor but it is best to forge relationships with other Area Governors.    Why?   Because you can take the qualified judges in your area and have them be judges in the other areas, while the other areas reciprocate.    We had a problem with that in this round of contests, but what the Area Governor and I (the Assistant Area Governor) have done is we have gone and taken the first step by volunteering to help in the other contests.   Once we are a known quantity in the other Areas, then next time around when we ask them for help, they will be more willing to step up to the plate and do so.

4.  Vertical Cooperation

As I mentioned, the Division Governor should be willing to help out at the Area Contest, which is to be expected.   But going in the other direction, you should get cooperation from your own Area.   In my previous incarnation as an Assistant Area Governor, it took TWO YEARS for me to convince anybody in my home club to be a contestant in a speech contest.    Our club was a safe haven for them, and they didn’t want to leave it.    So I started to ask some members to help out at the contest by doing a role such as being a timer or helping out with registration.   Once they were at the contest, they enjoyed themselves and were more likely the following year to be a part of the contest again.

If you do have a contestant, however, getting people to attend in order to support your club’s contestant isn’t so difficult.   If a certain club is sponsoring the Area Contest in their neighborhood, then there is a point of pride in their putting on a good contest, and it is thus easier to get volunteers to do contest roles in that case.

5.  Encouraging Words

If someone enters a contest, they need to be given praise just for having taken that step.    They may work hard on a speech, only to get 3rd place.    They will naturally be disappointed.    They may be disappointed to the point of saying, “what’s the use?”   So talk to the winners and congratulate them, but tell the others to that they are, in your eyes, winners as well for having taken the brave step of being in a contest.

We should be in a contest not to beat the other contestants, but to beat our own weaknesses.   If you go to a gym, and you are stronger at doing a certain exercise than everybody in the gym on that day, what health benefit do you gain from that fact?   NOT A SINGLE ONE!    You only gain a health benefit by being better than you were the last time you were in the gym.   Similarly, you do not get better at speaking by being chosen as the winner in a speech contest.    You get better at speaking by entering a speech contest and doing the practice it takes to be the winner.

I did okay this time around at the Area level, but I need to take this message to the Club level and let people know the benefit of entering the contest at the ground level, at the Club.

These are just five points I think that, if I followed them in the Spring, would make the Area contest even more successful than it was this time around.    I will confer with the Area Governor and see what he thinks!    It’s not too early to plan for the Spring Contest!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

1.  Introduction

In 1994, Harold Bloom, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University, wrote The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, in which he argued for the more conservative viewpoint that literature should follow the “art for art’s sake” ideal and not have it be subservient to some program of social engineering or political correctness.

After I moved to Chicago last summer, I found that the local library, together with the interlibrary system that stretches across the libraries of the Chicagoland area, is a wonderful resource.   I re-read Harold Bloom’s book and decided to embark on a program of reading (and in some cases, re-reading) the Great Books of Western Literature, in particular as set forth by

• The Great Books of the Western World series by Encyclopedia Brittanica
• Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

The plays of Aeschylus, along with those of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, are contained in the second volume of literature in the Great Books of the Western World series.    There are seven extant plays of Sophocles  included in the Great Books, and yesterday’s post covers four of them:   Ajax, Electra, The Trachiniae, and Philoctetes. Today’s post will cover the remaining three plays:   Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

For a synopsis of the work, I ask that readers turn to the Wikipedia article on Sophocles and refer to the section on Synopsis.   I will focus on 5 themes of the these plays as I encountered it in my reading and listening to the work.

2.  5 Themes

to be continued tomorrow

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

1.  Introduction

In 1994, Harold Bloom, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University, wrote The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, in which he argued for the more conservative viewpoint that literature should follow the “art for art’s sake” ideal and not have it be subservient to some program of social engineering or political correctness.

After I moved to Chicago last summer, I found that the local library, together with the interlibrary system that stretches across the libraries of the Chicagoland area, is a wonderful resource.   I re-read Harold Bloom’s book and decided to embark on a program of reading (and in some cases, re-reading) the Great Books of Western Literature, in particular as set forth by

• The Great Books of the Western World series by Encyclopedia Brittanica
• Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

The plays of Aeschylus, along with those of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, are contained in the second volume of literature in the Great Books of the Western World series.    There are seven extant plays of Sophocles  included in the Great Books, and today’s post covers four of them:   Ajax, Electra, The Trachiniae, and Philoctetes. Tomorrow’s post will cover the remaining three plays:   Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

For a synopsis of the work, I ask that readers turn to the Wikipedia article on Sophocles and refer to the section on Synopsis.   I will focus on 5 themes of the these plays as I encountered it in my reading and listening to the work.

2.  5 Themes

to be continued tomorrow

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

1.  Introduction

In 1994, Harold Bloom, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University, wrote The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, in which he argued for the more conservative viewpoint that literature should follow the “art for art’s sake” ideal and not have it be subservient to some program of social engineering or political correctness.

After I moved to Chicago last summer, I found that the local library, together with the interlibrary system that stretches across the libraries of the Chicagoland area, is a wonderful resource.   I re-read Harold Bloom’s book and decided to embark on a program of reading (and in some cases, re-reading) the Great Books of Western Literature, in particular as set forth by

• The Great Books of the Western World series by Encyclopedia Brittanica
• Harold Bloom’s book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

The plays of Aeschylus, along with those of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, are contained in the second volume of literature in the Great Books of the Western World series.    There are seven extant plays of Aeschylus included in the Great Books, and the previous post covers four of them:   The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, and Prometheus Bound.   Todays’s post will cover the remaining three plays that coincidentally represent the only extant trilogy we have for any of the Greek tragedians.   The trilogy is called the Oresteia, and consists of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.

For a synopsis of the work, I ask that readers turn to the Wikipedia article on Aeschylus and refer to the section on Synopsis.   I will focus on 5 themes of the these plays as I encountered it in my reading and listening to the work.

2.  5 Themes

to be continued tomorrow

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »