Peter Taylor - The Lazy Project Manager

Copyright Peter Taylor, 2009

The right of Peter Taylor to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by
Infinite Ideas Limited
36 St Giles
Oxford
OX1 3LD
United Kingdom
www.infideas.com

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of small passages for the purposes of criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the publisher. Requests to the publisher should be addressed to the Permissions Department, Infinite Ideas Limited, 36 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LD, UK, or faxed to +44 (0) 1865 514777.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781906821135

Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Designed and typeset by Kerry Pearson
Printed and bound by TJ International Limited, Cornwall

Contents

I have received a lot of support during this project, the writing of my first book, and I want to thank everyone.

I will avoid doing it by name (you all know who you are), but I will do it by role instead this will both help protect the guilty and keep me safe from forgetting someone important.

There was my flight companion back in 2008 who, when asking me what I wanted to do next in my career, declared that being an author and public speaker was a great idea but that I was probably too lazy! Well, that was the catalyst, for sure.

There were those who didnt laugh (too much) when I put together the idea for the lazy project manager and the first version of the website (www.thelazyprojectmanager.com) and bravely showed it to other people for the first time.

And there were those who supported me during the writing period itself, commenting, and contributing, reviewing, acting as unpaid editors and generally helping out.

Finally, thank you to Richard at Infinite Ideas for having nothing better to do on the day my book idea landed in his in-box.

Thanks to all of you.

Productive laziness is all about success, but success with far less effort.

By advocating being a lazy project manager, I do not intend that we should all do absolutely nothing. I am not saying we should all sit around drinking coffee, reading good books and engaging in idle gossip whilst watching the project hours go by and the non-delivered project milestones disappear over the horizon. That would obviously be just plain stupid and would result in an extremely short career in project management in fact, probably in a very short career, full stop!

Lazy does not mean stupid.

No, I really mean that we should all adopt a more focused approach to project management and exercise our efforts where it really matters, rather than rushing around like busy, busy bees involving ourselves in unimportant, non-critical activities that others can better address, or which do not need addressing at all in some cases.

Welcome to the home of productive laziness.

On the following pages you can read more about what I mean about productive laziness and how you can apply these simple techniques and approaches in your own projects. The major project topics will be covered but from a productive lazy point of view.

I am not, by nature, a lazy person but I do have many other things to do in life, beyond the projects and programmes that I manage, and I have therefore learned the manner in which to balance life, projects and work. What I am, though, and also by nature, is success orientated. Therefore the balanced approach that I utilise also has to ensure that both my projects and my career are successful and that they leave me with sufficient time for home and family. I am a Lazy Project Manager. You can carry on as you are or you can join me in the comfy chair of life and still get the project results that you and your project sponsors demand. Lazy does not mean unsuccessful.

It is, however, important to be clear what this concept of productive laziness is all about and, in the importance of scope definition, precisely what it is not about.

This is not a project management training manual. It will wholeheartedly fail to teach you to become a project manager; if you do want to learn about critical path analysis, earned value management, Monte Carlo simulation, work breakdown structures, critical success factors and terms of reference then put this book back down and pick up an (allegedly) more boring-looking one that is no doubt somewhere nearby. You can come back to my more interesting book later on when you need a little light refreshment for the mind.

Equally, it is not a replacement for a good fundamental project management education programme. There are, I guarantee, huge parts of the project management skill set and process missing.

It is not an alternative to a project management methodology; definitely not. And it is not a replacement for experience or for valuable support from an experienced project management coach. All these things you should already have in place, achieved or secured or, if not, have a plan in place in order to do so.

But it is a sharing of my experience and can act, to some degree, as a virtual coach for you in your project work. It does describe a way to work smarter. It is, if applied well, a means to become more productive in what you do for your projects and what you can do outside your projects. It can deliver a better worklife balance.

It works, and has worked, for me and it may work for you as well. I hope so. To be clear again, I have been formally trained in many project management methodologies over the years, I am a certified PMP through the Project Management Institute (PMI), and I have obviously had a lot of practical experience over the last twenty years in a wide range of projects and businesses and have been supported by some great project managers in my time.

Being a Lazy Project Manager is all about being focused in your project management efforts and learning to exercise your efforts where it really matters, where they make the most impact.

There are many, many books that will take you into every detail of every component of the project management skill set and process steps; this is not one of them. This is project management from 37,000 feet. So welcome to the project management mile high club!

Programme management or program management is the process of managing multiple interdependent projects that lead towards an improvement in an organisations performance. It typically supports a strategy in place for the business, such as an ambition to be the fourth biggest supermarket by 2015 or reduce wastage by 5% in two years.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) is a non-profit professional organisation dedicated to advancing state-of-the-art of project management. It is the worlds leading association for the project management profession. PMI sets standards, conducts research, and provides education and professional exchange opportunities designed to strengthen and further establish professionalism. This institute aims to advance the careers of practitioners and enhance the performance of business and other organisations. This is done by running and maintaining five credentials in project management including the Project Management Professional which is properly expressed as the credential PMP.