Part 4 of 5 - My team included; Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Winston Churchill and George Eastman Kodak.

Metaphysical properties of project management are perhaps the least understood, rarely practised or even discussed in any of the project management literature or educational establishments found today. Yet the metaphysical properties that naturally belong to project management are the long forgotten fundamental cornerstones for putting the word “success” back into project delivery. These are the very same metaphysical properties frequently used by the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, The Wright Brothers, George Eastman Kodak, Winston Churchill – and many others whose successful projects we all still benefit from to this day.

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Before taking on any project I like to know all areas (including potential dependencies). Depending on how much time I have before coming in front of the client, I can spend up to 16 hours a day investigating a project brief. I find that 4 hours sleep is sufficient for me when working a challenging project. I meet daily with the Account Manager (on this GSM Portal project, Lisa) and we brainstorm potential issues. I normally forage through everything from equipment receipts, contracts, to client affiliations. Then I draw up a list of all the required tools I need on the project. I do not get everyting but I make the consequences of non-receipt very clear. I select a series of techniques to be applied based on my initial investigations of the project brief. Mel, my London office secretary, efficient as always, arranges taxi, flights, and hotel. Finally I select my invisible team; in this case George, Winston and Master Da Vinci. Now I am ready :-)
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My driver took me back to the Sheraton, rather than directly to the office. For a while I looked at my brain map in the makeshift strategic bunker section of my suite - changed my clothes and took a slow walk into the city. As expected, I get no further than two steps from the hotel entrance before my work mobile rings. It was Lisa in London. The Client had suspended the project. She wanted to know more details of the meeting, but thought better than to insist on it. She, more than the others, knew my focus on this project – she said she would wait for me to get back to her. Before arriving in Zagreb, this scenario was not anticipated because the project was marked as a non-starter until our (me and Lisa) presentation which injected life back into it. To my thinking this suspension was a benefit to the project. The real question now was to determine which solution and restart techniques to use, plus what penalties would I need to place on the client to ensure that the project continued uninterrupted?

Sir Winston Churchill gave me the foresight to create the strategic bunker in my club-suite. Here, my investigations in London were laid out ontologically. All potential risks to the project were listed - all risks had owners of responsibility with a chart detailing likelihood of probability to occur. In the bunker I could brain map solutions to these risks, calculate impact and decide what leverage should be applied in this suspension situation. When I went through all the project receipts and contracts, never once did I see a service level agreement (SLA). The client was spending vast amounts of money on equipment, yet failed or overlooked the need to secure the appropriate SLAs (especially for the technical set-up from IBM). Sir Winston was also a master tactician, and I needed to get directly to the person/s on the Client side that had authorised and acquired this equipment – which I managed successfully. Their role would be to bring the Client back around the table – which they did (although not everyone turned up for that meeting, but it did forcibly remove the project from suspension).

George Eastman Kodak has been on all my projects. Here was a genius manager, and organiser – loyal, trusted and with a work ethic that still remains in scarcity today. George’s strong humanity helped me to work with the Croatian, Indian and London teams – then later helped me take control of IBM, Siemens, Motorola and other 3rd parties (orchestrating their deliverables to slot in place and at the right times). Prior to the project resuming I needed to get my own house in order. The only damaging accusation left to deal with was the PTK training one. The team found evidence which supported their attendance. Afterwards, I needed to strengthen the system integration weakness. I discovered more evidence of the Client’s financial wastage when I persuaded them to allow me to visit their production site. Adopting George’s insights, I moved for an additional contract to be signed bringing the entire project under the control of my organisation (but to complete that, I needed the help of Master Da Vinci).

Leonardo Da Vinci brings to the project a fresh, unique and inquisitive nature. All the scenarios created for the projects are generated with him in mind. Observation, extrapolation and documentation are direct contributions. In London we realised that the key to the project was the content management system (CMS), but I could not play this card until the project suspension had come into play. Several 3rd party suppliers (including IBM) tendered for the CMS contract. Da Vinci questioned how each could supply a bespoke CMS solution – allowing for a game plan to be created to win the tender. For example, we deduced that IBM could not create a content management system – given that it had made no attempt to create one in the first year of the project starting (well before I arrived on the project). While we had not anticipated the project suspension, we did consider that the project could fall under IBM control. Our priority, if this happened, was to fight vigorously for CMS design and development.

The project meeting for lifting the suspension lacked the attendance of the accusers from the Tuesday weekly taskforce meeting. The Client with evidence which countered their previous accusations sent a written apology to my London office. The penalty I implemented was for 100% control of the project to safeguard against any further interruption – leveraged by financial wastage evidence. My request kick-started the CMS and systems integration tender. I was prepared by my teams and won the tender after three hour interview sessions beating all the other 3rd party suppliers. Without my visible and invisible teams we could not have hoped for better. There is no doubt that these great heroes used planning, scheduling, and monitoring to achieve their goals. Yet, they used something else as well, something which would keep their goals alive for centuries after they had departed this existence … ingenuity.

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How you deal with uncertainty determines the outcome of the project. By default it is in our job description to deal with uncertainty in projects everyday. Uncertainty management is not something you learn from books. You learn this through continued experience, such as on this GSM Portal project. True, you can learn to anticipate risks (for example) via books, but there is more to projects than risk. You need to know everything about the project and what project assets are, plus how and when they should be brought into play. The impact of this experience is that you learn to manage various outcomes, and last minute surprises. For example, part of uncertainty management involves rigorous preparation techniques. The long hours devoted before the project restart were rewarded by being able to model solutions based on the discovery of holes that were leaking time, haemorrhaging money and bucking the project schedule.

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Oh and by the way, if you are ever on a big project like this one, never ever take a normal hotel room – take a club suite or bigger :-)

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