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Find Money for Your Project(s)

Some Projects or Ideas have it all: great potential, great teams, and excellent support but no funds. For a lot of Project Managers, this is a reason to stop. The general idea is that if there is no money then the organization is not ready or not willing to execute the project.
I can relate to that way of thinking but there is also another side to it.

FIND MONEY FOR YOUR PROJECT(S)…

First of all, you need to analyze WHY there is no budget assigned to your Project. By figuring out the WHY you get the direction for WHERE to collect funds, and then the HOW is easy enough.

IT IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK. GIVE IT A TRY…

Ask at least on 3 levels WHY the budget is not available, e.g. at your CFO, your Project Sponsor, and at a Project Manager on your own level. Interview them in order to obtain as much information as you can. Ask open questions and try to avoid making assumptions.
Take your time to (double) check your conclusions because these are the starting point for the next step.

When your conclusion is “internal problem, my project was not (properly) presented at the budget commission” then you have your work cut out: create an elevator pitch, put your Project on the agenda of the budget commission and prepare a hell of a presentation.

If your conclusion is “external problem, there is not enough money incoming”, then you look outside the organization e.g. subsidies, gifts, contests, fundraising… In all cases, you have to do the same preparation: the elevator pitch, the presentation, and really know all the ins- and outs of your Project needs and the situation the organization is in.

Does this work?

Yep, it does! We won a contest and collected €500.000, we applied to a fund and raised €175.000, we got salaries paid from a subsidy… Be creative, be brave, and just go for it. Money is always available when you look in the right places. Always.

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Celebration as a project tool

WTF is probably the first thing that sprung into your mind, or maybe you are knotting your head because you’ve discovered this already. Celebration as a Project Tool.

None of the existing Project Methods is mentioning Celebration so why do I? Simply because it adds proven value to your Project Management toolbox and it works in all branches, countries, and in all types of projects.

We are used to marking the start of a project with a kickoff, the placement of the first brick or the first pole. So, the start of a project or program is covered and in some fields the marking of the end of a project is also clear, e.g. cutting the ribbon or baptizing a boat.

What happens in between? That is up to the Project Manager who is busy with scope, time, and budget. With solving problems, getting deliverables in, and stakeholder management. Busy, busy! No time or budget to celebrate… Then let’s be creative and find time and budget because celebrating is helping to keep project fatigue out of the picture, is helping to keep up the spirit, it bonds across different borders and across departments or project parts. It makes your project attractive. Every person wants to be part of success.

It doesn’t take much to get the celebration feeling started. Buy ice creams at the convenience store, minibars, or cakes (e.g. Stroopwafels) and present this on well-timed occasions to all involved. They are going to be pleasantly surprised and you’ll see your spin-off almost immediately. For big landmarks or deadlines, you’re serving bubbling (non-alcoholic) wine and beer in a meeting room or venue where invited guests will celebrate with you and your team. In all cases, you’re sure to take pictures and use this in your communication. It happened when we see it.

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Make New Mistakes…

Making new mistakes is hard. The old are easy. How to change it?

The year 2019 started for me and my teams with the New Years intention to make new mistakes.

Are you grinning right now?

That is probably because you relate to the subject. Making old mistakes is easy. We do not want this to happen but every now and then we are confronted with the fact that we are repeating our mistakes.

Habits, habits and habits

We are all creatures of habits. In our personal life as well as at the job. On top of that we are as Project Managers conditioned by the Project Methods we follow. The deliverables “Lessons Learnt” and “Closing Report for Steering” are just a couple examples. We deliver them and then? Is the new project that starts after yours, looking at your Lessons Learnt? Are they acting on the recommendations? Is the Steering interested in how much money is not spoiled on old mistakes? Nope.

Stop spoiling money and effort on old mistakes

By accepting that we are habits trigged we have half of the solution. We need to establish new habits. And that is hard work for all involved. Do we need to put effort into this? I do not know your specific situation but in general 4 to 13% of the project budget is spoiled on stuff you could avoid by not repeating old mistakes. Nice isn’t it?

How to?

A good start is to have a focus point. Beside the out loud spoken intention, I used a replica of the tile you see in the left corner and put it in our project room, so we looked at it daily. It did remind us at our intention and brought the subject in several occasions to the table.

We started the habit of asking ourselves the question out loud “Have we seen this before?”. By doing this we were creating a new habit and we were using previously used solutions or insights more quickly. The downside is that we didn’t had any experience with the new mistakes, but our new habits were helping us out. Creating new habits is work in progress so don’t be too hard on yourself. Be honest, laugh about your own stupidity and move on. Describe the mistake and the work around. Be sure to keep on making new mistakes.

Keep on growing.

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Assumptions are dangerous to Projects

Wouldn’t it be great if a sign, like shown here above, popped up in your Project every time an assumption is presented or made?! It would warn you, the Project Manager in time.

Assumptions are dangerous to your Project…

You’ve got the assignment, you’re PM for a challenging project. Your contact used phrases like “most important project this year for our company” and “all are excited”, during your intake meeting. You assume “I am needed, I am wanted, the whole organization is anxious to work with and for this project.”

When working with suppliers and the key person states “we deliver all working tomorrow”. With no prior experience with this key person. You assume “Delivery is okay”

You leave the Steering after presenting your weekly progress and no remarks of questions were posted from the attendees. You assume “Everything is fine!”

Let us stop with these 3 examples.

Some readers will argue that the given examples of assumptions were conclusions based on the given input or info. True! You can look at it that way. And, checking is better, really the best.

Start your stakeholder management directly and ask your contact during the intake-meeting more in-depth questions like “Can you tell me more about the support this project already has?”, “Who is the biggest supporter?”, “Which department is the least supportive?”, etc.

In the case of the supplier: Check with other colleagues that have previous experience with the supplier what their experiences were, so you know the risks upfront for this delivery.

And, mannn… leaving a Steering Committee without having to answer questions or replying to remarks is a big red flag. Your project is not fine at all. It misses support of the stakeholders at least or the communication is not fine-tuned towards the attendees and they had no clue what you were telling them. Or, in the worst case, this was the last meeting with this group. On another level, the decision is already made to shut your project down. In all cases it is all hands on deck Project Manager: time to meet your stakeholders one-to-one.

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Mixed Methods… what recipe works?

You arrived early to avoid traffic jams or other obstacles in order to get a great first impression. You’re are a seasoned Project Manager with the necessary paperwork and track record to proof you’re up to the task. They asked for a PM with Scrum and minimum of 5 years’ experience. The meeting went fabulous and you’ve got the assignment.

After some days you realize that the Scrum-method is still to be implemented over the organization, basic data is kept in various systems, data quality is not always reliable… Now the real job starts. How to get all Project Teams aligned, get accurate data for the Steering, get control over progress, problems, and solutions?

Mixed Methods in your Project, Program or Organization: What recipe works?

The first part is that we never fight complexity with more complexity! Keep it as simple as possible. Always.

Second part is to acknowledge that we Project Managers, navigate on 3 basic things;

Scope, Time and Budget. No more, no less.

Sounds easy enough but then reality kicks in (again). The majority of your teams are from external parties, the teams work in different countries and maybe in their time zone, and last but not least the level of maturity differ extremely. It is time to call in the troops…
Your team! Find a timeslot that works for all project leads and invite them to the Problem Review Board. Every workday e.g. at 12h the group spends 30 minutes where all answer briefly to “What is your problem? Who or what do you need?”. The match between problem and solver is made and you move on to the next participant. All the details will be worked out outside the PRB. The sole purpose of a PRB is to match the problem with the solution/solver.

Up till a group of 20 this works great.

There you have it. Your basic recipe. Now it is up to you to extend it to your needs, your situation, your skill level.