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Lessons Learned in Implementing a PM Community of Practice |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Tuesday, 12 August 2008 |
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As project managers, we all collect lessons learned. Implementing a successful community of practice is similar to implementing a small project with a charter, change management processes, communication strategies and deliverables. The following lessons learned are just a few helpful hints on successfully implementing a PM community of practice.
Lesson Learned 1: Start Small but Brainstorm Big Recognizing the potential value a project management community of practice can provide is exciting. However, before the COP seeks to host a project management summit across the organization, they need to start small and continue to brainstorm big. A project management community of practice needs to provide tangible and applicable value to its membership in order to succeed and continue its growth. If the COP is just another set of bland presentations, its value can be quickly diminished.
Successful project management communities of practice start out small and grow through incremental steps and incremental successes. Emerging COPs will struggle with membership, leadership, goals and objectives, and will go through the same stages of team development phases including forming, storming, norming and eventually performing. By starting out small with practical lessons learned sessions or hosting a guest speaker, the project management COP can recognize its successes while continuing to brainstorm and plan for larger events.
I’ve participated in planning both large and small project management COP events. The larger COP events like a PM Seminar Day succeed because the COP team had previous successes implementing smaller endeavors and were able to grow and learn from each other. COPs should still brainstorm larger functions and plan to tackle larger events when the team is ready. Implementing COP events is similar to project teams learning rapid prototyping or iterative software development. Organizations are likely to apply new management techniques to small projects first and evaluate the results before applying the approach to enterprise projects.
Lesson Learned 2: Remember the Boy Scout Motto--Be Prepared What do you do if the speaker for an upcoming COP event suddenly cancels on the day of the event? You could cancel the event and risk disappointing first-time visitors to the community of practice. You could reschedule the event that took six weeks to coordinate across schedules, meeting rooms and the guest speaker’s availability--or you could pull out the backup presentation that you had ready in case this event occurred.
I’ve planned several events that required guest speakers who suddenly couldn’t attend due to travel issues, conflicting appointments or illness. Just like projects, COP events have scheduling risk and event facilitator needs to have a backup topic or alternative activity to mitigate the risk. In earlier articles, I referenced my Lessons Learned in MS-Project presentation as a quick and easy, ready-to-present activity. If I’ve already presented on the topic and need a backup, I’ve used an “Online Resources for Project Management” presentation. As your planning committee identifies topics and activities, it’ll be easy to identify backup materials.
Lesson Learned 3: Rotate COP Event Planning We all have projects to deliver, risks to mitigate and issues to resolve. Taking on additional work within a COP isn’t the easiest to handle when deadlines are due and a project is running behind schedule. It helps to have members of the planning committee rotate event planning for each of the COP meetings. The planning committee should have representation from various business units across the organizations so project management issues can be raised and represented across the enterprise. The individual committee members do not have to present at the event, although they should take an active role in planning and facilitating an upcoming event.
The benefit of a COP is the free flowing exchange of different ideas and approaches to solving project management issues. COPs need to be cognizant that one or two members are not always planning or leading the various activities. Allowing a minority to control and direct the COP can limit additional ideas and lead to burnout. Remember, participation in a COP is voluntary and requires group participation to be successful. Rotate the event planning and your COP will grow with the influx of different ideas. The membership will also appreciate the variety.
Lesson Learned 4: Establish a collaborative presence on the corporate Intranet As the project management COP grows, you’ll receive frequent requests for presentations, activity calendar, agendas and meeting minutes. A simple solution is to post the files on a shared fileserver or find some shared space on an internal Web server. The challenge with these simple solutions is they lack collaboration and group discussion tools.
If your company has implemented Microsoft Sharepoint, EMC’s eRoom or similar Web-based document sharing and collaboration technologies, consider applying it to the COP. If you have an internal website for the corporate project management methodology, a link can be easily added to your COP collaboration site. Specific sections of the collaboration forum can be restricted for the planning committee, but sections of the site should be free to the PM community to host discussions, post ideas, answer questions and share reusable project tools and artifacts.
I’ve used Sharepoint for past COP implementations and included a discussion forum, a shared project artifacts document library, voting surveys, external links and a simple roster of PM COP participants. If your company has integrated Microsoft’s Communicator Instant Messaging solution into Sharepoint, you can also see who’s actively online and available for a discussion. If your organization isn’t a Microsoft shop, you can consider a variety of open-source wikis, bulletin boards and listserv tools to support communication and collaboration.
A community of practice doesn’t need to be restricted within a single corporate entity. gantthead serves as an excellent example of an online community of practice supported by networking tools like ganttFace and niche discussion groups like the website’s GIG feature. The key to an effective community of practice is collaboration. Collaboration can occur at the same time or occur asynchronously. By providing better tools to support collaboration, your COP can grow virtually without having every team member appear in person.
Another use for the COP website is to store your own webcasts of past COP events. Affordable video cameras and free video editing tools such as Microsoft Movie Maker enable PMs to quickly capture key COP presentations and make it available to other COP participants on demand. A collaborative COP website will serve as a central pillar in your COP knowledge sharing solution.
I hope you’ve found these lessons learned are helpful. I’ve established an Establishing a PM Community of Practice GIG on gantthead to collect other ideas on improving COPs. I look forward to seeing you in the discussions!
This article was written by Andy Makar and originally appeared on Gantthead.com
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 August 2008 )
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Promoting and Growing the Community of Practice |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Monday, 04 August 2008 |
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Once the Community of Practice is initiated, the organization needs to promote and nurture the COP’s growth. Self-directed teams vote with their feet, and if the COP doesn’t provide value, attendance will quickly diminish or team members will suddenly become “too busy to participate”. Since you don’t want your COP to go immediately from the “potential” stage to the “memorable” stage, the following tips will help develop and grow the community of practice. Growth Tip 1: Ensure the organization legitimizes participation in the COP The COP sponsor is critical in championing the self-forming organization and ensuring the larger organization supports the COP by recognizing the effort required to develop and build a community of practice. The sponsor should encourage managers to allow their team members to participate in the COP and recognize the value these communities of practice provide to the organization. We all have work to do; however, spending an additional hour out of the work week on the COP is a well-invested hour to help move the organization’s project management maturity forward. Initiating and building a community of practice is an exercise in organizational change management. Sufficient time and visibility needs to be provided to recognize the benefits of a community of practice and provide opportunities to highlight how participation in a community of practice can benefit the overall organization. The organization and the community of practice evolve as the organization starts to refer to the community of practice as its own entity and seeks advice from its membership. Growth Tip 2: Demonstrate how knowledge gained in the COP is linked to the organization’s own business strategy A community of practice needs to demonstrate its strategic value to an organization’s own business strategy. In a project organization, a common strategy is to enable and support the business process through a series of tactical and strategic projects. Project organizations expect timely delivery of projects that meet or exceed business customer expectations and are executed at or below the original budget. The COP can demonstrate its strategic value to the organizational strategy by sharing its lessons learned, tactical tips and reusable tools to apply project management principles across the organization. As more COP members apply useful tools and project techniques consistently, project delivery should become more consistent and ideally improve the organization’s project management competency. If the COP fails to demonstrate is strategic alignment to the organization’s strategy and objectives, senior management will not support or promote it. I’ve worked within several different communities of practice organizations at different stages in development. In one organization, the organization valued employee development, job families and continual learning. Every employee belonged to various job families who held their own community of practice to promote learning in their own discipline. In another company, the community of practice struggled to achieve its identity due to the constant shift in business objectives, organizational instability and an understaffed resource pool. It is difficult to justify strategic value or build an effective COP when daily activities are not adequately supported. Growth Tip 3: Incorporate reward and recognition into the COP and the organization culture The organization’s culture and environment can influence the growth and participation within a COP. If senior management doesn’t recognize the COP, value membership’s participation in sharing lessons learned or incorporate reward systems, the growth of a COP will be inhibited. In one organization, achieving PMP certification was not well recognized or valued in the organization. With a change in leadership and incorporating reward and recognition into the performance evaluation process, the organization started focusing on the importance of certification and having a common language that all project managers understood. The culture quickly shifted and managers who previously had a hands-off approach to project management technique were suddenly reciting the importance of a well-defined WBS, OBS and creating a baselined project schedule. The same behavior is found in promoting and fostering a community of practice. The employee evaluation process should incorporate the extracurricular activities project managers pursue to move the organization forward. This can be difficult when project managers are faced with project delivery, late milestones or difficult suppliers. However, by identifying a balance between work priorities and employee development--and establishing reward and recognition for participation--a community of practice has a better chance to grow and establish a presence within the organization.
Growth Tip 3: Ask Senior Management to provide resources for the COP The community of practice is a self-directed team concept that can still benefit from internal and external resources to improve its development. As with any business meeting, a COP will need meeting facilities, communication support and an artifact repository to share files and information. Depending on the COP’s scope, additional experts from external PM organizations or guest speakers may be invited to present at a COP meeting. These activities typically require a small budget to secure a meeting room, pay guest speakers or provide refreshments/lunch for participants. Minor financial resources are not the only type of support needed from senior management. By working with the COP, senior managers can also help form a leadership team to guide the COP development. This team should be comprised of COP leaders and other management representing different areas of the organization. By establishing a steering committee supported by senior management, the COP can effectively obtain guidance and resources when needed. The COP will also have the sponsorship and visibility to highlight how the COP activities align the organization’s business strategy. Participation from senior leaders also helps the community of practice include representation from all organizations and help create relationships with other community of practices within the company. One example is having a senior leader from the enterprise project management office participate in the COP steering committee. Some COP teams may be leery having a governance organization participate in grass-root level COPs; however, the enterprise project management office can best advise the COP on how their activities link to the strategic projects and programs within the company. By obtaining support and resources from senior management, it helps to eliminate barriers to participation and helps influence the organization’s learning culture. By establishing a steering committee that involves senior leadership, the community of practice can clearly see how the organization values the work and benefits of a community of practice. Implementing a COP is an exercise in change management and just like any project it requires sponsorship, alignment to strategic goals and objectives and resources to succeed. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 04 August 2008 )
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Improve Project Management Maturity with a Community of Practice |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Thursday, 31 July 2008 |
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The issue of project management maturity is an active topic within the PM community. Regardless of the organization’s project management framework or methodology, PM maturity levels vary among business units, departments and individuals. Departments can be compliant with a methodology; however, their individual project artifacts may differ entirely from one project to another. The methodology may have specific schedule development standards or status reporting requirements, yet organizations will still find status reports and project schedules that lack consistent milestones and deliverables. These issues stem from project management immaturity and consistent practices within the organization.
A project management maturity model has been published by J. Kent Crawford in his book The Project Management Maturity Model, which serves as a useful tool to define an organization’s project management maturity. PMI’s Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) standard provides an assessment tool to help organizations determine their project portfolio management maturity. These models help assess an organization’s current state and define the future state for PM maturity. In addition to these models and assessments, organizations also need to adopt tactical approaches to improve PM maturity.
One approach to improve project management maturity is through a project management community of practice. According to PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3), a project management community of practice is an important component to an organization’s growth in project management.
A project management community of practice is an informal group of project management practitioners who share advice, tips, techniques, lessons learned and promote relevant topics in the project and program management domain. The community of practice is not a formal organization found on an organization chart, but rather it is a self-directed team comprised of individuals interested in sharing, promoting and improving the project management domain.
According to Etienne Wenger’s article “Communities of Practice: Learning as a Social System”, a community of practice is a segment of the organization’s structure that emphasizes the learning people accomplish together instead of the within their reporting unit, current project or immediate personal network. Members learn through voluntary participation and interaction with each other instead of a top-down communication cascade. Membership can include employees, contracted staff augmentation resources, suppliers and even business stakeholders.
Wenger’s article highlighted the benefits a community of practice provides including: Provides a cost-friendly solution for knowledge sharing and information exchange. New project management techniques can be piloted within the community of practice and feedback can be obtained before a large corporate rollout. Best practices, project management tips and lessons learned can be promoted and shared through a community of practice. Members of a community of practice can also pilot new project management training courses and advise on the pros and cons of the courses before approving them for the larger pool of project management resources. Provides proactive knowledge retention within the organization. Unlike a database of lessons learned or thick manuals full of project management process, a community of practice can provide effective methods to apply project management practices to a local organization. The community of practice becomes a fluid body of knowledge that can quickly convey knowledge instead of pointing novice project managers to reams of project management theory and process flows. New project managers benefit from a community of practice by quickly learning applicable techniques and processes that work well within an organization and can find project management mentors to guide them. Champion project management competencies to encourage growth in project management maturity. Members within a community of practice learn about project management techniques inside and outside their immediate firm. They collaborate with other project managers and discuss new ideas to improve the project management discipline. Provides a sense of identity within the organization as the community of practice is organized around the topics that matter the most to their team members. The community of practice builds an identity and reputation as a useful mechanism to share, communicate and broadcast new project management ideas. In one organization, the enterprise PMO would review upcoming process changes with the community of practice to promote change management and awareness, and to generate buy-in.
An organization’s project management culture and maturity improves as project managers come together to share lessons learned, apply tactical approaches to accomplish work and cultivate an organization of continual learning. Encouraging ideas from inside and outside the organization helps to increase awareness of new project management concepts and provides a platform for future learning. The next few articles in this PM Community of Practice series will provide guidance on how to create, promote and support a new community of practice. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 31 July 2008 )
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Listen to the Establishing a Community of Practice in 7 Easy Steps Podcast |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Friday, 18 July 2008 |
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BOT International recently interviewed me regarding the 7 Steps to Effectively Building a Community of Practice. You can listen to the podcast at: http://www.botinternational.com/thepmopodcast_135.htm |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 18 July 2008 )
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Community of Practice Stages of Development |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Wednesday, 16 July 2008 |
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A community of practice will go through several stages of development as it moves from concept through development. It is important to understand the stages a project management community of practice can follow to plan goals and events accordingly. When a PM COP is emerging in the organization, the focus should be on growth and promoting a brand around project management learning, networking and collaboration. It is also important to understand when a project management community of practice is waning as additional energy, new ideas and revitalization may be required to reactivate the community of practice.
Stages | Description | Key Activities | Potential | People face similar situations with the benefit of a shared practice | Finding each other and discovering commonalities | Coalescing | Members come together and recognize their potential | Exploring connectedness, defining joint enterprise, negotiating community | Active | Members engage in developing a practice | Engaging in joint activities, creating artifacts, adapting change circumstances, renewing interest commitment and relationships | Dispersed | Members no longer engage very intensely, but the community is still alive as a force and a center of knowledge | Staying in touch, holding reunions, calling for advice. | Memorable | The community is no longer central, but people still remember it as a significant part of their identities | Telling stories, preserving artifacts, collecting memorabilia |
Table 1: Stage of COP Development
During the Potential Stage, the community of practice is just forming and members are sharing similar situations and stories as they learn from each other. The members are just discovering the strengths and weaknesses with each individual and identifying the key resources to help solve project management problems. Similar to the forming and storming phases of team development, the project management community of practice is developing a common vision, establishing goals and emerging as a shared learning resource.
In the Coalescing stage, the community of practice enters the norming phase of team development and recognizes its potential to the organization and the benefits provided with membership. An informal leadership team emerges as the team coordinates and plans different activities and establishes its identity. The group is exploring its identity, developing connections and negotiating its role in the organization. During this stage, other participants may be skeptical of the community of practice and its overall role in the organization. As a learning organization, the community of practice needs to demonstrate its value by providing worthwhile learning activities to the organization.
During the Active stage, the members are actively developing the community of practice and the organization has a cadence and rhythm. Members understand the meeting frequency and the community of practice has an identity with the organization. Members look forward to the various events and refer to the community of practice as a knowledge source for project management knowledge, lessons learned and useful advice.
During this stage, the community of practice will produce project management artifacts such as automated tools, improved templates and tactical approaches to applying project management in the organization. Relationships evolve and the members continually renew their commitment to promoting lessons learned in the organization.
During the Dispersed stage, members don’t engage the community of practice with the same energy as before. The community is still active as a knowledge center but it lacks the impetus it contained in the active stage. Members still keep in contact with one another, hold get-togethers and leverage their relationships to solve project management programs.
Some community of practices will continue to the Memorable stage and others will be re-invigorated with new energy as different membership and new leaders emerge to continue to “carry the torch” for project management learning and improvement. If a community of practice enters the Memorable stage, the organization is no longer a central group of knowledge but people still recall it as a significant part of their organizational identity. Members retain the templates, presentations and ideas created in the community of practice. However, the community of practice is no longer active. Former members refer to it in the past and share stories of worthwhile activities and experiences.
Understanding these stages helps the community of practice understand its relationship to the official organization. Wenger also identified several relationships with the parent organization as defined in the table below:
Relationship | Definition | Challenges | Unrecognized | Invisible to the organization and sometimes even to members themselves | Lack of feedback to improve | Bootlegged | Visible informally to a select circle of people that are “in the know” | Obtaining resources | Legitimized | Officially recognized as a valuable entity | Organizational Scrutiny | Strategic | Widely considered central to the organization’s success | Short-term pressures | Transformative | Able to redefine its environment and the direction of the organization | Relating to the rest of the organization as an informal entity |
Table 2: Relationships to the Official Organization
As the community of practice matures, it value and relationship to the organization changes. Since the organization is constantly changing, the community practice needs to remain flexible. As new leadership directs the larger organization, the focus and support for ancillary project management learning opportunities and networking may not take precedence. The benefit of the community of practice is the low cost and low effort to promote lessons learned in the organization.
Overall, the organization obtains a strong return on investment in the form of inexpensive learning and knowledge sharing without spending a significant amount of money growing and nurturing the community of practice. The next article in the community of practice series will provide several ideas to grow and nurture the project community of practice.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 16 July 2008 )
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Establish a Community of Practice in 7 Easy Steps |
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Written by Andy Makar
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Sunday, 13 July 2008 |
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Establishing a project management community of practice requires a modest amount of effort, but if you follow these steps, you’ll have your first community of practice meeting within a few weeks. The steps are neither complex nor time-consuming, but they do require some planning to ensure a successful community of practice launch.
Step 1: Write a mini-charter As project managers, it shouldn’t surprise you that the first step in any initiative is to draft a brief charter describing the goals, objectives and scope of the community of practice. Developing the charter is an important step since it establishes the key goals and objectives about project management community of practice and describes the groups overall intent. It is a useful document that can be shared with other business units, departments or interested participants. The charter doesn’t need to be a massive ream of information. Usually a one- or two-page charter document is sufficient to describe the purpose, benefits, goals and objectives. The estimated duration for this activity is one to two hours. If you’re brainstorming the scope with a few team members, it may take you a little longer to synthesize ideas and reach consensus. Step 2: Create a presentation about the COP The next step is to draft a presentation deck using your favorite presentation. You don’t need a lot of slides--just enough to convey the idea, scope, benefits and next steps with the community of practice sponsor. A brief outline may include: Attached to this article is a sample template you can use to promote your own community of practice. Step 3: Identify a sponsor and obtain buy-in Once you have your presentation deck assembled, schedule a meeting with a key leader in the organization who you think might champion the idea of a community of practice. An obvious choice is your organization’s enterprise project management office, although some communities of practice may be reluctant to ask the PMO to be the main sponsor. Due to the dynamic learning nature of the community of practice, tailored or modified project management practices and tools may be introduced. Sometimes these tools and techniques are not PMO-sanctioned and a community of practice may feel pressured to obtain the PMO’s blessing before sharing an effective idea. I’ve worked with various PMOs where the staff in the PMO is no longer as close to project or program delivery and lose perspective on tactical project management. Other PMOs are excellent sponsors for a community of practice since they uses it as feedback mechanism for new processes and standards. The senior leader in your organization should be willing to champion the community of practice’s efforts. The sponsor’s commitment shouldn’t cost anything as the community of practice is a free, self-directed team interested in promoting project management and sharing lessons learned throughout the organization. The sponsor should be willing to promote the community of practice as news in an upcoming staff meeting or department meeting. Step 4: Establish a planning committee Initiating, planning and executing a community of practice isn’t a one-person show. Successful communities of practice have several self-directed team members that are willing to serve on a planning team to identify project management topics and manage meeting logistics. Depending on the scope, a community of practice planning team may ask for representation from each business unit as a method to promote and exchange planning ideas across the organization. Once you have your planning group assembled, brainstorm a list of potential project management topics, identify internal and external guest speakers, and draft a calendar of events for the community of practice’s activities throughout the year. You don’t need to plan the entire year at once. Adopting an interactive approach to refine upcoming events is an effective technique to generate new ideas and modify presentations based on changes within the organization. A community of practice event doesn’t have to be a formal presentation of a project management topic. A community of practice can sponsor PMP certification study groups, professional networking events and even social nights out to get to know one another. In one community of practice, the organization sponsored a Project Management Summit that promoted all the company’s internal project management resources including methodology teams, PMO support, training courses and additional learning resources. The summit included project management software and training vendors and featured different informational sessions on project management topics. New and experienced project managers quickly learned about all the resources available to them. Step 5: Select a date from your first COP event Your first community of practice event doesn’t need to be as ambitious as a project management conference. Start with something small that will provide immediate value to the project managers in the organization. A favorite topic of mine is “Lessons Learned in MS-Project” since MS-Project has a learning curve and if you don’t use it correctly then project managers can quickly become discouraged. “Lunch and Learns” or brown bag sessions are an easy way to host an event. Attendance is usually better if you offer some incentive to attend (i.e. food) but this might be cost prohibitive depending on the size and budget. The key is to provide a forum for project managers to network and encourage knowledge sharing. Feeding them doesn’t hurt either. Step 6: Promote and Market the COP Leverage your community of practice sponsor to communicate the upcoming event. Ask to attend your sponsor’s next staff meeting and provide a brief five-minute overview of the community of practice. Ask the staff members to cascade the information to their organizations. Another effective technique is to ask the PMO to send an invitation to all the project managers in the organization. A week or two before the first community of practice event, post flyers on bulletin boards or in common areas where people will see the flyers. Promoting isn’t difficult to do but requires some time to get the word out and start generating buzz about the community of practice. If your planning committee has representation from each business unit, you can cascade your event and each representative to promote the community of practice in their organization. Step 7: Host your first COP event Conducting your first event can follow a simple format. Ask your sponsor to kick off the event with a few words about the importance of the community of practice and benefit of sharing lessons learned across the organization. Deliver the project management topic and allocate time for questions and answers. Remember to ask members to sign-in and leave their e-mail address as you may want to contact them directly regarding future events. Have a few hard copies of the presentation materials available and ensure the materials are distributed electronically before or after the event. If your organization has a multiple participants from other locations, considering hosting the event with Web conferencing software like WebEx or Live Meeting. Depending on the PM topic, you may want to consider recording the event for reuse and include it in a project management library. If you find yourself presenting on the same topic frequently, a downloadable copy of the presentation may save you the headache of delivering the same presentation again and again. Ask your enterprise PMO to host the presentation materials on their department website or create your own site to archive the information for future visitors. Initiating a project management community of practice is a straightforward exercise in effectively planning and promoting a series of meetings. By following these steps, you’ll effectively establish a learning resource pool that will help contribute to the PM maturity and the raise the awareness of PM and lessons learned with the organization. In the next article, we’ll review the stages of community of practice development. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 13 July 2008 )
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