Execute the Project

3.1: Manage the project
Managing the project is nothing more than letting the tasks roll along, and if new tasks come up, insert them back into the work breakdown chart and follow steps to replan the rest of the project with this new task involved. It just goes back to the place in the plan that needs to be adjusted due to new information, different scope, different schedules, different resources... and you start over with the project plan from that point.

MITR:

• Monitor the behavior
• Investigate variances
• Take Action
• Report

Monitor: Monitor the schedule the communications, and the performance of the team. Be sure that you are sticking to the Project Planning document.

Investigate Variance:

Have regular meetings, as you agreed to in your earlier planning meetings about governance. Use meetings to solve problems. Don't use meetings to get status reports. The pressure is too great in meetings to get accurate and honest status reports.

Go privately to Task owners for status reports. Say: "You were going to start here and finish here. Are these dates still good?". Then ask "Why?" and shut up. Don't ask more. Don't help them answer you. They'll give you far more that you ever would have thought to ask if you just keep quiet.

Take Action:

A Project Manager has to do everything by influence since she is not the functional supervisor (evaluation-writer, raise-giver) of the team members. Use this process for managing by influence:

1. Problem statement. Be direct, specific, non-threatening. State what was expected, then state what you observed. Then shut up.
2. Diagnose the problem: find out if they don't have the skills to fix it (ability) or if they don't want to fix it (motivation). Here's how to tell the difference: say to them, "If I put a gun to your head could you do it?" If yes, it's motivation. If no, then it's ability. (I don't think Ernie would suggest we really say the gun part....)
3. Set follow-up. There's no "we" in follow up: "I will do x, you will do y".
4. Follow-up:

Reward honesty and efficiency. What you reward is what you get. Remember your metrics: what you measure is what you get. When you reward, recognize what they did, acknowledge it, say it out loud, and let people clap.

Report:

All along the way (according to the schedule you first set up with your sponsor those many steps ago) give your sponsor reports. If something goes wrong, go instantly to the sponsor.

Bad: We're 90 days over schedule.

Medium bad/good: We're 90 days over schedule, and we want to add another researcher to get us going faster.

Excellent: We're 90 days over schedule and we want to add another researcher because the Egyptian codex we're working on can be translated faster if this new guy works with this old guy by doing Vulcan mind-melds 10 hours per day. The impact will be that we can cut those 90 days down to 10 days over schedule (and I can take the 10 days from my managerial reserve), but it will cost us $49,000 for this guy. The constraint matrix says we have some leeway in resources but none in schedule, so this is our recommendation.

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