Soft Skills For Project

Managers and Teams

Kathy Schwalbe, Ph.D., PMP

Express Scripts PMUG Meeting
February 16, 2005
[email protected]
www.kathyschwalbe.com 1
 Speaker Background
 Associate Professor at Augsburg College, Dept.
of Business Administration, also teach project
management at U of M in ME dept.
 Author of “Information Technology Project
Management,” Fourth Edition out this March
(Note: Most figures in this presentation are
from my text)
 10 years full-time industry experience before
entering academia in 1991

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 Personal Background
 Middle child (#3 out of 7)
 Did not speak until 3 years old
 “Forced” to write a lot in high school
 Rarely spoke in classes (until graduate school)
 Studied and worked in primarily hi-tech jobs, but
soon learned that…
 Communications and other “soft” skills are what
help you advance and gain job/life fulfillment

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 Presentation Overview
 Project management framework
 Job functions and characteristics of
effective project managers
 Tool and techniques to help project
managers and teams (require hard and
soft skills)
 Developing soft skills

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Project Management
Framework

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 Project Management Mostly
Job Functions* “hard” skills?
 Define scope of project  Evaluate project requirements
 Identify stakeholders,  Identify and evaluate risks
decision-makers, and  Prepare contingency plan
escalation procedures  Identify interdependencies
 Develop detailed task list  Identify and track critical
(work breakdown milestones
structures)
 Participate in project phase
 Estimate time requirements
review
 Develop initial project  Secure needed resources
management flow chart
 Manage the change control
 Identify required resources process
and budget
 Report project status
*"Building a Foundation for Tomorrow: Skills Standards for Information
Technology," Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies, Belleview, WA, 1999
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 Characteristics of Effective
Project Managers*
 Leads by example
 Visionary Mostly
 Technically competent “soft” skills?
 Decisive
 Good communicator
 Good motivator
 Stands up to upper management
when necessary
 Supports team members

Encourages new ideas

*Zimmerer, Thomas W. and Mahmoud M. Yasin, "A Leadership Profile of American

Project Managers,” Project Management Journal, March 1998 7
 Project Management
Tools and Techniques
 Project management tools and techniques
assist project managers and their teams in
various aspects of project management
 Many tools and techniques emphasize
“hard” skills, but they require soft skills to
get people to use them effectively

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What’s the Most Popular Tool
Used by Project Managers?
 The Work Breakdown Structure

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WBS for an IT
Upgrade Project

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You Need Good Soft Skills to
Develop a Good WBS
• The WBS provides a very logical
structure, but our minds don’t work that
way
• The challenge is getting people to
provide good inputs to help develop the
structure
• Suggestions for developing a good
WBS?

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Try Using a Mind Map to
Help Create a WBS

Can use pictures and

colors, too, in drawing
mind maps

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What Are Some Popular Time
Management Tools?
 Gantt charts
 Network diagrams

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Gantt Chart for an Intranet Project

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Network Diagram

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You Need Good Soft Skills to Create
and Control Project Schedules
 Gantt charts and network diagrams are
also very logical, useful tools, but…
 How do you get good estimates, figure
out the dependencies, and get people
to focus on completing critical tasks on
time?

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 Pass the Gorilla…?!
 A project team at Apple Computer worked
in an area with cubicles, and whoever was
in charge of a task currently on the critical
path had a big, stuffed gorilla on top of
his or her cubicle
 Everyone knew that person was under the
most time pressure, so they tried not to
distract him or her
 When a critical task was completed, the
person in charge of the next critical task
received the gorilla
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What Cost Control Tool Do Many Experts
Say is Crucial to Project Management?

 Earned Value Management

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Earned Value Chart

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What Do You Need to Implement
Earned Value Management?
 Top management commitment
 Team commitment to develop good
estimates and enter “real” actuals
 Culture that permits mistakes
 Strong integration between project
budgeting and corporate accounting
 Good metrics to create better estimates
based on actuals from past projects

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What’s a Popular Tool for Clarifying Roles
and Responsibilities for Project Work?
 Responsibility assignment matrices
 RACI charts

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Responsibility Assignment
Matrix (RAM)
Sample RACI Chart

R = responsibility, only one R per task

A = accountability
C = consultation
I = informed

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You Need Soft Skills to Help
Clarify Roles and Responsibilities
 Do you take the time to clearly define
roles and responsibilities on project
tasks?
 Do you need to convince people that it’s
well worth the time and effort?

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Do You Know How Your People
are Allocated?
 What tool can show you individual and
group allocations?
 Resource histograms

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What’s Wrong With This Picture?

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Are People Afraid to Let You Know
When They’re Under Allocated?
 Most people let you know when they’re
too busy, but are they really too busy?
 Are they working on the right things?
 Is it “safe” to say you can handle more
work or that some tasks you’re
supposed to do aren’t worth doing?

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Which Project Management
Knowledge Area is Least Mature?
 Project Risk Management
 What simple tool can you use to help
identify and prioritize project risks that’s
very low tech and high touch?
 A probability/impact matrix (using sticky
notes works fine), and then…
 Discussing strategies for managing high
and medium risks, both positive and
negative, and documenting them in a
risk register
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Sample Probability/Impact Matrix

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 Sample Risk Register
No. Rank Risk Description Category Root Triggers Potential Risk Probability Impact Status
Cause Responses Owner

R44 1

R21 2

R7 3

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What Are Some Important Project
Communications Management Tools?
 Stakeholder analysis
 Stakeholder analysis for
communications
 Status/progress reports

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 Sample Stakeholder Analysis
Key Stakeholers
Ahmed Susan Erik Mark David
Project Manager
internal senior mgt. Project team Project team Hardware vendor for other internal
Organization project
sponsor of project and Supplies some Competing for
Role on project one of company's DNA sequencing expert Lead programmer instrument company
founders hardware resources
start-up company,
demanding, likes very smart, Ph.D. in best programmer I Nice guy, one of
he knows we can
Unique facts details, business biology, easy to work know, weird sense oldest people at
make him rich if
focus, Stanford MBA with, has a toddler of humor company
this works
Level of interest very high very high high very high low - medium
very high - can call the subject matter expert - high - hard to low - other vendors
Level of influence low - medium
shots critical to success replace available
keep him happy he knows his
make sure she reviews
keep informed, let him so he stays, just give him project takes a
Suggestions on specs and leads
lead conversations, do emphasize stock enough lead time back seat to this
managing relationship testing, can do some
as he says and quickly options, likes to deliver hardware one, but I can
work from home
Mexican food learn from him

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Sample Stakeholder Analysis
for Project Communications

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What Do People Write/Say On
Status/Project Reports?
 Are people encouraged to bring up
issues?
 Are too many reports done in writing
instead of verbally?
 Do managers and team members
provide helpful suggestions during
review meetings?

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Individual Versus Organizational
Issues
 Every individual can improve his/her
soft skills
 Organizations must also strive to
provide a culture conducive to good
project management

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Organizational Culture
 Organizational culture is a set of shared
assumptions, values, and behaviors that
characterize the functioning of an
organization
 Many experts believe the underlying
causes of many companies’ problems
are not the structure or staff, but the
culture

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 Ten Characteristics of
Organizational Culture
 Member identity*  Risk tolerance*
 Group emphasis*  Reward criteria*
 People focus  Conflict tolerance*
 Unit integration*  Means-ends
 Control orientation
 Open-systems
focus*
*Project work is most successful in an organizational
culture where these items are strong/high and other
items are balanced.
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 Developing Soft Skills
 Many tools, techniques, and courses in
project management emphasize “hard” skills,
and it is important to learn them
 It is also crucial to develop “soft” skills to be
effective, such as
 following the ABCs of communicating
 building rapport
 listening empathically
 team building, motivating, negotiating, etc.

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 ABCs of Communicating*
 Aim for a specific result or series of
outcomes from your communications
 Be positive
 See, hear, and feel sensory data
 Dovetail desires
 Entertain long- and short-term
objectives
*Laborde, Genie, Influencing with Integrity, Syntony Publishing, 1987
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Building Rapport
 When rapport is not present, it
becomes top priority in communication
 A process called mirroring or pacing
works well to gain rapport
 Many sales people use mirroring, then
stroking, then go for the sale

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Listening Empathically
 Empathic listening means listening with
the intent to understand
 “Seek first to understand, then to be
understood,” as Covey puts it
 You can learn to put yourself in
another’s shoes and focus on
understanding them before trying to get
them to understand you

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Team Building,
Motivating, Negotiating, etc
 Many soft skills take time and practice
to develop, but most people are capable
of improving them
 Role playing is a good technique before
testing new skills in a real-world setting
 Working with a mentor/expert also
helps build these skills

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Ideas for Developing
Soft Skills at ESI?

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 Questions/Comments?

Note: You can access lots of great, free PM info from my

Web site at www.kathyschwalbe.com.
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