Payson Hall

Sometimes we disparage people who treat symptoms rather than solve problems, but sometimes treating symptoms can be the correct, or only available response.

We call them “estimates” rather than “accurate predictions of the future” because of uncertainty. Failing to convey uncertainty often contributes to misunderstanding.

If your organization is experiencing disproportionally higher chaos on your larger projects, you might ask if you had sufficient information and time at the beginning to understand the problem being solved before anyone committed to cost or schedule targets.

I’ve seen a lot of change during my 45-year career in information technology, some more significant than others.

If the people assigned to give you guidance are AWOL, how might you proceed?

When should the team and stakeholders be brought together to assure everyone is on the same page?

An IT manager's "chess" metaphor contrasts HR's "checker" mindset: HR seeks homogenous staff, but IT needs diverse specialists. This mismatch creates challenges in hiring, promoting, and compensating IT professionals, often leading to talent loss.

What are the attributes of an effective team?  Can you build or grow one?  What would success look like?

Many people resist writing and are out of practice, but small improvements can make a big difference.  If you would rather go to the dentist than write a one-page report, these tips are for you.

Because of vendor firm expertise at blame management, clients need to be vigilant and proactive about managing systems integration efforts.

If you are aware of your vendor’s motivations it helps you understand their behavior and can be a real asset when you negotiate with them.

When a project manager is confused, sometimes the problem is the situation and not the PM.

Life lessons can be found everywhere if you look for them.

When organizations want to step up their project management game and implement more rigorous project management practices, there is always fear that the administrative overhead will exceed the value gained.

A project’s sponsors are the senior managers who want the project completed and control the project’s budget and schedule. Effective sponsors support the project manager to get the job done.

Being responsive to customer needs and desires is not a bad thing—the decision to accept, reject, or defer a change is something that should be considered in light of the consequences of the delay.

Projects exceed their predicted schedules for many reasons. The cost consequences of some delays are obvious, but some are subtle. Knowing the expected costs of delays is vital to supporting informed decision-making.

We often talk about the importance of effective communication on a project, but we often omit timing and context. Messages need to be timely if a project manager is going to guide the narrative.

Payson Hall learned some lessons from optimizing data system performance that could relate to human team management and leadership. For instance, if a system is overworked, it can't be any more productive beyond a certain point; the same is true for people. Both also can get more done by minimizing multitasking and prioritizing jobs. Read on to learn more from machines.

In today’s fast-paced workplace, software developers and project managers are confronted with a painful paradox. They are faced with continual pressure to accelerate the development process, but this “need for speed” can result in communication failures—and the accompanying project and quality problems.

Negotiation skills are essential for team leads, tech leads, and project managers. As they gain seniority, these folks frequently find themselves thrust into both formal negotiations with vendors and suppliers as well as informal negotiations with management and their own staff, often without benefit of much preparation or training in the art and science of negotiation.

Decision management is an overly formal-sounding title for an essential set of skills and processes needed by every project manager on a nontrivial effort. Project managers must be thoughtful about decisions. This doesn’t necessarily require an additional process, but it might involve a more rigorous application of the processes currently in place.

If you want to be a stellar performer and a good project manager, don’t treat every assignment as if it were an ultra-high priority, but keep a sense of urgency. Finishing tasks and finishing projects is a sign of a professional. Don’t let yourself get distracted or put off too much.

In the same way that math is a learned skill, project management is a learned skill. You can get better with practice, instruction, and mentoring. Avoid being surprised by the new job requirements, acknowledge it is a new role for you, and seek a mentor to help you navigate.

Like quality management a decade ago, project risk management has become such a “check-the-box” exercise in some organizations that vocal critics are clamoring for its elimination as pointless overhead. In this article, Payson Hall suggests that you consider a grown-up conversation with the leaders in your organization about the capabilities and limitations of your risk management efforts.

Quality improvement initiatives sometimes have trouble getting traction in organizations because of the perceived formality. In this article, Payson proposes a technique for identifying process improvement that is fast, organic, and will fly under the radar of most skeptics until it has demonstrated its value to the team.

Between extreme opinions of what is testing “overkill” and what is “essential,” there sometimes exists a reasonable middle path. In this field report, Payson identifies an example of risk mitigation and the evolution of the analysis that brought him there.

Yogi Berra famously said, “You can observe a lot just by watching.” In this article, Payson shares some of what he’s learned about leadership just by listening. Learn how transparency and iterative improvement can maximize the results of great leadership.

Whether you make the funding decisions at your company or support those who do, this article will help you view projects in a larger organizational context. Take a look at some of US President John F. Kennedy’s advice on committing to goals to help you get a sense of “funding sensitivity.”

The portions of projects that are not yet complete occur in the future. Since the future is an uncertain place, there will always be surprises. Some surprises are so obvious that they should hardly be called surprises at all. This is the kind of surprise that project management helps to avoid.

When it comes to the conversation between a project management team and a client, many complaints lead back to the same root cause: failure to manage expectations. Here, Payson takes a look at some of those complaints and reminds us that work product definitions aren't the enemy.

Most people understand that multitasking human effort is inefficient. This week, Payson explains why this is so in business terms that can be used to appeal to managers and executives, who sometimes request multitasking without knowing the consequences.

Design and implement a new call-tracking system.

Some lessons are so important that we get opportunities to learn them again and again. In this week's column, Payson Hall attends a project meeting where he relearns an important communication lesson about the meaning of words.

As a project proceeds, there are always adjustments and tradeoffs from the project's original goals to better match changing realities in both the project and its sponsoring organization. The tradeoffs may be subtle, but there are ALWAYS tradeoffs. In this week's column, Payson Hall describes a tool for discussing and documenting priorities.

When a crisis hits a business, you've got to work hard and fast to mitigate the negative consequences--a process which includes communicating with your clients. In this week's column, Payson Hall reminds us that keeping clients in the know is critical to a successful recovery and will stabilize the clients' faith in you, even when all has failed. Drawing from a recent crisis in which he was the client, Payson gives us key points to consider the next time we are overwhelmed by customers who want to know when business will return to normal.

Many good business analysts have evolved into strong software project managers--a natural career move accelerated by the shortage of experienced software project managers. Unfortunately, no one seems to be stepping into the analysts' vacant ecological niche. In this week's column, Payson Hall warns that business analysis is becoming a lost art. And it's the software project team ecology that is suffering the most from this trend.

Improving your process plan is as simple as ... well, it's a secret that Payson Hall wants to share with you in this week's column. This bit of advice has helped numerous companies and everyone involved in the process. Find out how Payson, formerly part of the development community, became one of THEM and learned this great secret.

Home construction metaphors are often helpful for communicating software project management concepts. Listeners don't need an engineering degree to grasp that task sequence is important. Explain how you must schedule an appointment for the "open wall" electrical inspection two weeks in advance. Then, explain how a one-day slip on a wiring task can result in a much longer delay in the start of the sheet rock task, which in turn may delay painting, thus, occupancy by weeks, possibly months -- same as with delays in software projects. In this week's column Payson Hall draws from personal home-ownership experience and defines the resemblance between software project management and managing his home.

If business projects are part of your profession, you know that many projects fail to live up to their potential. Some projects fail to achieve their schedule or budget goals or fail to deliver everything initially promised. Still other projects simply fail altogether. Many of the problems faced by projects can be avoided, or at least contained, by effective project management practices. Using a "Top Ten" list as a framework, this article highlights ten of the most frequent reasons for project failure, and examines some alternatives and remedies for each.