Last week, we shared some of our thoughts on the power of Organizational Project Management, and how a holistic approach to portfolios, programs, and projects can empower the organization. Indeed, our take on driving project success across the enterprise hinges on just that: team members across the organization must be empowered to act on behalf of projects, no matter what their role, from executives, to managers, to project team members.

But just saying that project people must be able to act is mostly bluster. Even if your intentions are in the right place, being able to deliver results comes from orchestrated activity against a plan. It becomes a journey of exceeding the bar with project successes–provided you understand what that bar looks like.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of the Project Management Institute through the OPM3® ProductSuite, and the input of project managers around the world, we are seeing more of what that bar looks like in the form of Best Practices. Within OPM3, these best practices are a carefully curated set of 557 measures of successful project activity which set forth how the work of projects is done in a generic project setting. But the real magic of utilizing best practices comes through careful focus on your project setting.

In case you missed it, I’ll say it again: the keyword here is focus. Few organizations have the need for self assessment against every single one of the 557 recommended best practices. The beauty of the approach is that you don’t have to be weighed down with needless administration; your challenge is to define the practices that best measure project, program, and portfolio success across your organization, and measure on-going results against them. You, your project managers, your portfolio managers, and your teams know where they can improve, and where they shine, so ask them – whether from the list of 557 or not, if your teams are thinking about it, it is likely a practice worth measuring.

The result of your work will be a model for project improvement that addresses the whole organization. It provides a baseline for standardization, a model for measurement and control, and a path for improvement over time. And because your teams are developing the metrics, you will also be developing the buy-in that you will need for long-term attention and success.

At Cadence, we work with project partners around the world to help them define and implement their own model for standardization, measurement, control, and improvement. It is no secret that project offices all over are being confronted with the crude reality of our global economy, and are being taken to task to defend their place in operations: is the continued investment in a project management office at your organization worth the return in projects completed? Or is it just more administrative overhead, hindering the real work of projects more than driving it?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to answer out loud. But if you find yourself shaking your head in the negative, consider deeply the role of your project office and how you can take the lead in delivering your own best practices, measuring success, and driving improvement from within. Demonstrating such an active role in project education, measurement, and improvement is a quick way to demonstrate your project office is not just valuable, but too valuable to lose.

To answer these fundamental needs in a business environment of increased global complexity requires broadening the way we think about project management in our companies. For those who haven’t yet made the leap, it’s time to bring project management to the whole organization.

What does it mean to bring project management to the whole organization? The answer to that question comes in the comments we get in our own courses, and shared with us at conferences and symposia around the world.

“Management doesn’t get it.”

“Executives tell us what they want, but don’t follow through when we need support on our projects.”

“All they see is bottom line – they don’t understand implementation.”

And, heralded by our own graduates course after course: “I wish my boss was here.”

This sentiment underscores a key premise of whole-organization project management understanding: Everyone involved in projects must understand their roles in project management, from practitioners, to managers, to executives.

Seeing where this call for organizational project management comes from is important: it comes from the people managing projects. It comes from those who are saddled with day-to-day objectives and milestones, delivering results when it counts. What these people are bubbling up through the organization is a drive for greater methodological awareness against accepted standards in the field, and support when and where they need it.

Cadence has long been a partner with the Project Management Institute and all our courses are in direct alignment with the Project Management Body of Knowledge®, the set of standards of practice as defined by professionals in our field. But a standard is just the first step. Where Cadence shines comes in helping companies take these standards and establish and document the processes and practices it will take to adhere to them. That’s the Cadence Methodology, a field-tested approach to delivering results on projects through standards.

The second key premise to an organizational project management approach is ensuring that the people involved in projects execute their roles in the process. This involves a sophisticated and realistic approach to managing the portfolio of projects across the organization, the programs that make up larger strategic initiatives, and the projects that enable the organization to deliver strategic results.

The Cadence Project Management Methodology is steeped in a legacy of successful project results because our focus is – and always has been – on the whole organization. Our initiatives moving forward, including articles and interviews for this newsletter, will help to further refine our approach, illuminating the stories of those who have adopted a strategic approach to organizational project management and the success that comes from such efforts across the enterprise.

We wish you a smooth transition from summer to fall, wherever you are, and thank you for joining us on our journey to help you deliver your best work through projects.

Cadence has worked closely with the Project Management Institute’s Career Framework initiative. Members and credential holders have free access to this valuable tool: a diagnostic tool that assesses your skill level across over 100 discrete characteristics. From project and portfolio management to budgeting and so much more, you will have a roadmap that not only defines your level of proficiency in each field, but highlights the holes in your background for future development.

Once you have your skill audit, put your plan together. Which skills would you like to hone and craft in the next year? Next six months? Next quarter? When building your plan, like any good project plan, it is critical that you assign a date to your own skill development activities. With dates in mind, you will be prepared to look for resources to meet your personal skill development needs.

Where to look? Volunteer! First, contact your local PMI chapter. You can find a list of local chapters through PMI.org. Chapters are constantly looking for energetic and enthusiastic partners to help develop local membership. Do you need to polish your financial skills? Volunteer to take on budget and finance. Any of a number of roles and committees exist within your local chapter, and as a result of your volunteerism, you gain access to a library of resources and training opportunities, in some cases at reduced, or no cost at all.

Training firms like Cadence are an excellent source of additional bite-sized training opportunities. We provide a number of free resources, webinars, ebooks for our partners. Consider a lunch-and-learn session, for example; a more interactive environment for knowledge sharing and continued team development which often inspires team members to push for additional skill development themselves. We do our best to pack nuggets of gold into every podcast and newsletter, and can inspire even more opportunity to learn, and to connect with the companies that are driving the industry forward.

Finally, remember to think broadly. The management and leadership spectrum, even within the field of project management, is vast in scope. Remember that the goal of your training and development efforts is not to earn another certificate, but to add skills and tools to your personal catalog, and to deliver results today.

The COE was fashioned as a method of saving money by centralizing the best of all duplicate resources inside a large organization into one place. This center would then take on the task of managing their piece of the organizational puzzle, while any similar divisions outside the center would be dissolved.

But, like many other accidental discoveries, something wonderful happened. Before long, the COE approach took on more than just a functional use inside the organization — the COE began to live up to its name.

In modern project management, the specific tasks that fall to the Center of Excellence varies quite broadly from organization to organization. However, there are trends and best practices that define the high level function of the COE in the Project or Program Management Office.

First, the Project Management Center of Excellence provides educational and intellectual resources to the project management function of the organization. It is here that the organization houses the body of standards and guides for excellence in the internal project management operation. The PM-COE is the home of organizational methodology for project management.

Second, the PM-COE drives hiring and training against those standards. Global organizations striving for project management excellence are benchmarking their own processes and procedures against results. Ensuring human resources are hired, trained, and prepared to deliver results falls to the PM-COE.

Third, the PM-COE defines strategy in project management for the organization. This is the primary resource for intellectual capital in the broader field inside the company and provides access to the tools and technologies project managers will need to accomplish their jobs today, and in the future.
Finally, the PM-COE really can help grow profits and cut costs. Perhaps it is in the managerial DNA of the COE concept, but when resources and tools are pooled in such a way as a function of the PMO, new opportunities for greater efficiency become naturally apparent.

The PM-COE is a partner to the PMO. While the PMO is focused tactically on managing projects and delivering results, the PM-COE becomes the pit crew, ensuring project managers are trained, equipped, and prepared for work. It becomes a symbiotic relationship, an invaluable partnership that invariably results in better project management.

Even more, however, organizations that have adopted the PM-COE model as a function of the project management office have demonstrated a tacit commitment to not just running projects, but to learning through project management, and defining the project culture clearly through eduction, information, professional development and strategic awareness.

Cadence is a key partner in advanced training and consulting services designed to assist organizations interested in maturing and growing their project management office initiatives. Contact Cadence today for more information.

The COE was fashioned as a method of saving money by centralizing the best of all duplicate resources inside a large organization into one place. This center would then take on the task of managing their piece of the organizational puzzle, while any similar divisions outside the center would be dissolved.

But, like many other accidental discoveries, something wonderful happened. Before long, the COE approach took on more than just a functional use inside the organization — the COE began to live up to its name.

In modern project management, the specific tasks that fall to the Center of Excellence varies quite broadly from organization to organization. However, there are trends and best practices that define the high level function of the COE in the Project or Program Management Office.

First, the Project Management Center of Excellence provides educational and intellectual resources to the project management function of the organization. It is here that the organization houses the body of standards and guides for excellence in the internal project management operation. The PM-COE is the home of organizational methodology for project management.

Second, the PM-COE drives hiring and training against those standards. Global organizations striving for project management excellence are benchmarking their own processes and procedures against results. Ensuring human resources are hired, trained, and prepared to deliver results falls to the PM-COE.

Third, the PM-COE defines strategy in project management for the organization. This is the primary resource for intellectual capital in the broader field inside the company and provides access to the tools and technologies project managers will need to accomplish their jobs today, and in the future.
Finally, the PM-COE really can help grow profits and cut costs. Perhaps it is in the managerial DNA of the COE concept, but when resources and tools are pooled in such a way as a function of the PMO, new opportunities for greater efficiency become naturally apparent.

The PM-COE is a partner to the PMO. While the PMO is focused tactically on managing projects and delivering results, the PM-COE becomes the pit crew, ensuring project managers are trained, equipped, and prepared for work. It becomes a symbiotic relationship, an invaluable partnership that invariably results in better project management.

Even more, however, organizations that have adopted the PM-COE model as a function of the project management office have demonstrated a tacit commitment to not just running projects, but to learning through project management, and defining the project culture clearly through eduction, information, professional development and strategic awareness.

Cadence is a key partner in advanced training and consulting services designed to assist organizations interested in maturing and growing their project management office initiatives. Contact Cadence today for more information.

First, an important distinction. Historically, standards in the field of project management have focused heavily on the individual project manager or program manager. This stems from a convention of measuring aptitude: what do you know, and do you know what to do in a project management context. OPM3 on the other hand, represents a first for the Project Management Institute, addressing not only individual project manager competencies, but best practices across the organization for portfolio, program, and project management.

As a project manager, using the word organization may seem daunting. In the context of OPM3, however, the organization could be your entire company as easily as it could be your own functional area. This is the real beauty of the model: it scales impeccably.

The Knowledge Element provides the foundation for OPM3: 557 best practices as defined by thousands of project management professionals at work in the field. The Knowledge Element doesn’t provide any specific guidance on implementation, rather it provides a background on OPM3 components and operation.

The Assessment Element provides access to the OPM3 Self-Assessment, the online tool that allows users to compare traits of their current organization against best practices as defined in the OPM3 model. Through this self-assessment, you will become keenly aware of strengths and weaknesses in your organization, and see just where you stand against the continuum of organizational project management maturity.

Still, the data you cull from the assessment process might not be an appropriate picture for your organization. That’s why, as a function of the assessment process, you are able to define which best practices apply most critically to your project, program, or portfolio environment.

At the highest level, your OPM3 journey could end there: with a snapshot of your current capabilities and a new awareness of where your organization stands on the maturity continuum. However, assuming you are investing in the process for continuous results, the Improvement Element will help you deliver. Here, you will use the data from the assessment process and build a plan for improvements on key best practices for your organization, implement those improvements, and then re-assess to ensure successful implementation. Each change is specifically targeted to advancement along the maturity continuum.

While the self-assessment tool is comprehensive, like any assessment, interpretation of variables can be tricky. That is why specially-educated Cadence project managers are available to help your organization begin the OPM3 assessment process, a powerful tool for ensuring your projects are delivering the right results today.

PERT charts are no longer cool, for example. And we do a bit more planning these days than we did in the 50′s when most of our so-called “complex” projects were still run off a simple Gantt chart. But today’s projects have redefined the nature of the word “complex”. Teams are broader. Budgets are bigger. Deadlines are tighter. Stakes are much, much higher.

A decade ago, the answer was the PMO. The project management office was to be the central repository for project practitioners in medium and large companies. In the best examples, PMOs were user-driven and organic, managed by a savvy suite of experts who knew how to get the most out of the tools they used. And still, project complexity grew.

Today, the PMO has evolved. OPM3 stands to formalize project management operations and help to define a clear path for process improvement.

What is it? OPM3 stands for Organizational Project Management Maturity Model, and it is a model that is owned by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Unlike so many other maturity models in the field, however, OPM3 was crafted by thousands of project management professionals, volunteers, and experts across 35 countries around the world. This is not an ivory tower theoretical application.

In short, it is a big deal.

Perhaps because so many people were involved in its genesis, simply diving into OPM3 can prove a bit unwieldy. Put simply, OPM3 helps organizations understand a broad scope of best practices in the field through a knowledge element; measure organizational performance against those best practices through the assessment element; and build a bridge to meet those best practices through the improvement element.

There are 557 of these best practices, each broken down into a few meaningful capabilities. As such, where OPM3 shines is in dealing with the dramatic increase in complexity in today’s projects. In fact, OPM3 specifically encompasses a whole-organization view of project management, something Cadence has long professed as a key success factor in projects. OPM3 best practices cover project, program, and portfolio management through four key stages of process management: Standardization, Measurement, Control, and Continuous Improvement.

Too often, we see projects that have fallen prey to organizational ill-will. Projects that have fallen through the cracks of management, projects that are spearheaded in spite of misalignment with organizational priorities, and projects with no executive support or leadership. Where OPM3 shines is in helping organizations turn key strategies into projects, and ensure that all projects serve in the achievement of broad strategic vision.

Specially-educated Cadence project managers are available to help your organization begin the OPM3 assessment process, a powerful tool for ensuring your projects are delivering the right results today.

Where we are brought back into the project process comes when the first change occurs. Dealing with change on projects is one thing. But integrating change in a positive and proactive manner is something else. Here are three points you can use to prepare your team for big change when it happens.

1. You cannot plan for change.
The nature of change itself is that it is unexpected. It is dynamic. It is fluid. It will come from all directions and areas of the business when you least expect it. There are two points to be aware of as a leader of your project team. First, if you did your planning right up front, sudden change is likely not the result of poor project management. Second, if the business requirements are changing around you, it is not always an indicator of poor project sponsorship. These two points are often unfairly delivered in tandem. It is up to you to keep your team motivated and productive as you work to integrate change, no matter where in the organization it comes from.

While you cannot plan for change, you can certainly plan what will happen when you are confronted with it.

2. You cannot insulate your project from last-minute change.
If change is truly dynamic, unexpected, and fluid, beware the tendency to build in a drop-dead point for change on your project. As experienced project managers will tell you, change happens when it happens, whether or not you have placed a moratorium on your project.

In fact, change that hits your project after your deliverables are “feature complete” will still have an impact, if not on your own project, on your stakeholders and the organization.

3. You cannot create perfect stability in your project.
In fact, not only is it impossible to create stability within your project environment, it is a detriment to your project to attempt to do so.

However, the project plan is a document that invites assumptions of stability. But markets change. Technology changes. Working to insulate your project with too much rigidity in your project plan will also insulate you and your team from great potential opportunity that comes with maturing markets.

Building a model into your project planning process for dealing with change will help you answer all three of these points with flexibility and efficiency.

First, build a change process that is accepting of all change as change requests in your project plan.

Once you have captured these change requests in a simple system, you are able to review each under the guidelines set by the project in the first place: where will this requested change affect the project Cost, Schedule, or Performance against plan. The result is a system of options – options you are able to review for sign-off with your project sponsors. Options which allow you to remain completely flexible in accepting change at any point in the project, and delivering a platform for processing that change in an open and dynamic arena.

Visit cadencemc.com to download the Cadence Change Request document. This tool has helped project managers around the world by providing a mechanism for capturing each change request – and the impact of the change – in a single page. Available for free right now on cadencemc.com!

We have been sharing thoughts over the past two weeks on how to secure training resources and create opportunities to develop professional skills in a volatile training market. Today, we review a strategy for bringing project management training to your teams when they need it, and working with your training and development teams closely to implement it.

The Joint Venture
Most the work we do involves project managers working on projects that involve more than a single core team. Project managers are integrating the efforts of extended project teams including internal and external customer teams, contractors, and suppliers. With such a variety of team backgrounds, our partners quickly realize that a crash course in project management planning and discipline will go a long way toward streamlining the project process and ensuring that all team members share the same project management language.

Our most innovative clients are leveraging these extended team relationships as extended training relationships; sharing the load — and the costs — of timely and effective training between companies and divisions to ensure that training comes when you and your teams need it the most.

The New Role of the Training Department: Ask for Help!
There is a secondary message in this strategy for HR, Training, and Development professionals. In times of fiscal constraint, their role changes, too.

Traditionally, the training and development arm of the organization works diligently to provide on-going training across the enterprise. But as we have said before, when training dollars are cut, so too goes the variety and timeliness of the training that might otherwise play a critical role in your project plan. If the training dollars aren’t coming from the organization at large, it is time for you to begin to budget training into your project budget.

In this new world, project managers must remember that it is absolutely appropriate to ask for help. Invite a representative from training to join your team. This way, you can keep your training teams apprised of your project schedules, the specific tactical importance of training, and when that training will make the most difference in your ability to deliver results. Put the responsibility of providing access to training on the team member best equipped to deliver it.

The message to training teams is equally important: Be on the look-out for ways you can provide strategic and tactical assistance to projects in your organization. The more involved you can become in finding strategic training alliances between teams, and providing access to training when it is most critical to the organization, the better your ability to increase the importance and visibility of the training function.

First, make sure you have a clear understanding of your training needs. Project Managers are in affect “Mini CEO’s” for their projects. The skill requirements are broad — from core business skills to finance, management, leadership, communication, and more. While it is important to have a focused competence in project management, don’t forget that the best project managers — like the best in most fields — are the most well-rounded in their search for life-long learning.

Cadence has worked closely with the Project Management Institute’s Career Framework initiative. Members and credential holders have free access to this valuable tool: a diagnostic tool that assesses your skill level across over 100 discrete characteristics. From project and portfolio management to budgeting and so much more, you will have a roadmap that not only defines your level of proficiency in each field, but highlights the holes in your background for future development.

Once you have your skill audit, put your plan together. Which skills would you like to hone and craft in the next year? Next six months? Next quarter? When building your plan, like any good project plan, it is critical that you assign a date to your own skill development activities. With dates in mind, you will be prepared to look for resources to meet your personal skill development needs.

Where to look? Volunteer! First, contact your local PMI chapter. You can find a list of local chapters through PMI.org. Chapters are constantly looking for energetic and enthusiastic partners to help develop local membership. Do you need to polish your financial skills? Volunteer to take on budget and finance. Any of a number of roles and committees exist within your local chapter, and as a result of your volunteerism, you gain access to a library of resources and training opportunities, in some cases at reduced, or no cost at all.

Training firms like Cadence are an excellent source of additional bite-sized training opportunities. We provide a number of free resources, webinars, ebooks for our partners. Consider a lunch-and-learn session, for example; a more interactive environment for knowledge sharing and continued team development which often inspires team members to push for additional skill development themselves. We do our best to pack nuggets of gold into every podcast and newsletter, and can inspire even more opportunity to learn, and to connect with the companies that are driving the industry forward.

Finally, remember to think broadly. The management and leadership spectrum, even within the field of project management, is vast in scope. Remember that the goal of your training and development efforts is not to earn another certificate, but to add skills and tools to your personal catalog, and to deliver results today.

Remember, your skills matter. When the economy slows down, it becomes even more important to remain competitive, to take the time to sharpen your project management wits and shore up confidence that you are continually equipped to deliver results for your organization, even when the going is not so good. Bottom line: your demonstrated effort to keep your skills sharp is one direct indicator of your value.

2) Not all Training Pays. Focus on the Payoff
When you are looking for training opportunities, make sure you are looking for those that will most likely offer an immediate and appreciable impact on your own performance. Is the course going to help you do your job more efficiently when you return to work tomorrow? How about over the coming two weeks? If not, then you should keep looking.

As a project manager, your role is to deliver results on time and on budget. Taking the time out of your project schedule to get the training you need to perform can be one of the best investments you can make in yourself, and in turn your organization, but it had better be the right training. For example, even if you know you will need a Portfolio Management course sometime in your career, better to focus on the skills you need to sharpen to deliver your projects today, and to help you model the right project behavior for others on your team instead.

3) Sell Your Value
This can be one of the most challenging facets for project managers: it is your responsibility to sell yourself to your organization … continually. As companies centralize an increasing number of systems, and managers take on more direct reports, ensuring your record stays current can be a big — sometimes frustrating — job.

Document everything quickly. For every course you attend, document the outcome and submit it to your manager and your human resources or training and development office. If a form does not exist to allow you to do so, prepare a simple email outlining the course name and topic, the high-level objectives, and outcomes, along with a statement of how the course applied to your daily functions on the job.

Do you understand your own training system? If not, learn it! Even in times of constraint, resources exist to help employees get the training they need to stay sharp. Make sure you understand the ins and outs of your own training department, how to apply for training, how to petition for training, and how to find the internal funds you need to make sure you — and your team — are working at peak efficiency.

Here are a few things to consider when helping your organization define a project classification system.

1. Size. How big is this project? When you are trying to answer this question, think beyond the simple rules of dollars and headcount. Instead, ask yourself what the strategic importance of the project is to the organization. Is the project enterprise-wide, or localized to a smaller group or division? Is it for a key current or potential customer? Will the project include customer team members or full extended teams from other divisions?
2. Risk. What are the business and technical risks to the organization for taking on this project? Where does the risk come from? You might find that the biggest risk comes from your own internal culture not accepting the project justification. In this case, does the project have a key executive sponsor and champion? Finally, what are the risks of not taking on the project?
3. Time. Planning takes time. Based on the size and scope of the project, the breadth of the project’s impact on the organization, and the level of risk involved, how much time will you and your team be involved in the project planning process? The answer to this question will be supported in detail by the number of team members and expertise needed, number of deliverables in the final project plan, size and detail of the Work Breakdown Structure, and granularity of schedule. Micro or small projects might involve 2-3 people and a 1-hour meeting to develop the project plan. In contrast, an enterprise-wide software implementation might require 15,000 hours or more, with core and extended teams.

As you are defining your organization’s classification system, remember this: the key to successful classification is documentation at a level appropriate for the project.

Prefer working in a system that works? Graduates of the Cadence Project Management seminar gain extensive experience in planning projects that deliver results. Bring your projects, and your teams to the next public project management seminar and get your projects on the right track!

Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote of the “6 Weapons of Influence” in his widely acclaimed works on the subject, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Many writers have capitalized on the subject, but the following six principles connect well to the daily work of managing projects. As you read this list, evaluate the impact of your ability to develop each area in an effort to connect with your peers, your sponsors, and your team members at a deeper level.

Reciprocation: When you do not have explicit authority, remember that it is human nature to want to “return the favor.” Consider all the opportunities you have to help streamline the work of your team members. You are building credit through your generosity and strengthening that relationship as a result. You can count on the strength of the relationship to call on your team members in a pinch.

Commitment and Consistency: At the heart of project planning is documentation. But there is a collateral benefit hidden in the process. When your team members commit to your project plan in writing through the planning process, they are more likely to support the team over the long term. If you can commit to keeping the team active and involved in the planning process, you will achieve a higher level of performance over the long term.

Mimicry: Think of it as “social motivation.” People will do, in general, what they see others doing. This starts with you. Consider every move, every action, as under the microscope of your team from the beginning. If you model positive activities, your team will reciprocate. Are you timely when you commit to delivering reports to your team? Do you show on time with a smile on your face to meetings? These small acts go a long way to building a foundation of positive results for your project.

Authority: It goes without saying that people tend to obey authority figures. But if you are not an explicit functional authority figure for your team members, you need to build a relationship with those who are. Go out of your way to keep functional managers apprised of their staff participation and the impact these people are making on your team, and you will have a bed of support if team member performance becomes an issue.

Socialization: Cialdini refers to this as the principle of “Liking,” that people are generally persuaded by those that they like. Consider carefully when building team activities; project managers who forego what some consider “light-weight” socialization activities may be missing a great opportunity to create long-term synchronicity on the team. Friendships build on a base of compassion; team members are more willing to help one another meet objectives when there is more at stake than a slipped deadline. Take your team bowling, or to an amusement park, or to dinner to foster camaraderie and build more powerful personal and professional bonds.

Scarcity: Desperation breeds success, but only when the team is functioning at a high level. If you have built your relationship with each team member, and allowed them to foster their own, when times get tough and resources scarce, your team will be more creative, more innovative, and more compelled to deliver results together.

First, project management is a process. There is no one best implementation structure, and as such, it must be flexible and adaptable to the organization it serves. There is no way to completely eliminate frustration on projects. Instead, we strive to make the project process more efficient, and the results more powerful and satisfying to achieve.

Second, project management must be subject to continuous improvement. It is equally important to measure the results of your successes in terms of projects completed, as it is to measure the project practices implemented along the way. There is no particular end in sight when it comes to project process improvement, rather continued opportunity to tune, and fine tune your project management initiatives.

Being a part of a project-driven organization will offer you greater opportunity — and satisfaction in your work — if you are prepared. Here are three major milestones organizations typically pass through as project management gains support.

1. Increased access to project resources: A maturing organization understands the impact of savvy project managers in delivering project results. Your teams will be made of experts across functional areas and you will have dotted-line authority over them. The days of fighting political battles to achieve your ends are not gone, but your new structure offers vistas for marshalling support for your project and delivering results more quickly.
2. Collocation: Success managing resources that are not your own can lead to increased project team responsibility. Collocation means you have moved one step closer to a project office of your own, and your functional project representatives have physically relocated to your project area. Your access to team members has just changed dramatically, as well as their level of participation: team members willing to relocate to a project area tend to have greater buy-in and drive to make their contribution a powerful one.
3. Project Manager as Functional Manager: When the dotted lines are replaced with solid lines, you’ll know your organization is nearing full support of the project office. You have your project staff, representing functional skill areas, and all of the additional responsibility that comes with it. With this increased resource load comes increased demand; you will have to manage staffing and performance initiatives formerly handled by functional area management.

At each developmental stage, your organization places more responsibility on you as a project manager, and on the project management office. With a fully-staffed project office and many critical projects under management, you will need the right mix of experience and discipline to deliver project results.

It is a connections problem. If you are an engineer, you have seen this many times, calculating the possible number of angles with any given number of rays. The real world power of this formula is far more interesting.

If you don’t remember your PMP study materials, this is also the equation which represents the number of possible communications paths in a group or team. If I am on a team with one other person, for example, where N represents the number of team members, my simple algebra tells me that there is only one possible communication path between us. If I am on a team of six members, however, suddenly there are 15 possible communication channels in action. Twelve team members? Sixty-six channels.

Then, we can begin to factor in the outside influencers.

An experienced project manager can tell you just how complicated the team dynamic can become without looking at the math. But while many talk about this communication challenge as something to conquer, to beat, or to control, take just a moment to think about the power that your team network can create.

1. Increased bandwidth = Increased process throughput: Like lanes on a highway, the more communication pathways you have open and flowing clearly, the more project traffic you are able to put on those roads.
2. Create new knowledge from previously discrete data sets: Einstein once said, “Information is not knowledge.” Yet we often mistake data for understanding. Leverage the power of the collective team network to process problems and make connections a single individual could never tackle alone.
3. Community: When challenged to increase processing and work toward clear communication channels, bonds grow within the team network that are not far afield from a family dynamic — and for some, this bond is even stronger than family.

Take a moment to examine your own team infrastructure. How do you exercise your teams? How do you build community?

Training. One of the best tools for developing new teams is to attend a team training. The Cadence Project Management seminar is one in which teams traditionally attend in a group; they take the time to work together with coaching in the classroom to develop their projects. To maximize results, consider the value of not just the course content, but the added value of team members working together to acquire it.

Online. The Facebook generation — the Millennials — have an advantage over many of us: they have an inherent understanding of the power of their invisible network. They connect online in seconds to create software, build virtual worlds, and rekindle powerful relationships. If your organization has an online tool that can serve a similar purpose, use it. But make sure it is more than a simple content management system. Storing files is one thing. Building relationships requires discussion, sharing, knowledge transfer, and understanding.

Share. When you are together, sharing time in a face-to-face meeting, remember that you are more than just team members. You are more than just resources. For each other, you are valuable colleagues. Build your team’s social network, and leverage the power of your connections for project success!

And yet, the speed of business continues to increase. Organizations, constantly seeking new opportunities in the market, are overrun with projects that devour resources and expertise. As a project manager, your role is to execute the projects deemed appropriate by your leadership. You are put in a challenging position when you attempt to deliver and you discover you’ve been handed a team ill-equipped to get the job done. What can you do to bring your challenges to light in a proactive and effective manner?

1. Educate your Functional Managers

Set a meeting with the functional managers of your team members individually, and detail in fine points both the tasks their staff will be responsible for on the project, and the skills required to complete them. Often, functional managers are put in a position to make team assignments quickly, without all the relevant data. Getting that understanding from you as project manager builds an important bridge, and may offer the opportunity for insight into team decisions; with all data on the table, you may find you are in a better position to ask for a new resource for the project.

2. Include training in scope

There is one sure-fire method to ensure your team has the skills required to deliver the project: include skills training as a deliverable in the scope of your project plan. This simple point delivers two key messages. To your team, you are saying that you value their participation and you want them to succeed even in light of the complicated requirements of the project. To your project sponsors, you are documenting a key short-coming in the qualifications of your team members and high-lighting your plan to overcome it; you are a professional that understands how to get things done in spite of extreme obstacles.

3. Outsource to contractors who have the skills

Many project requirements may be too complicated to provide just-in-time training for your critical team members. In this case, make room in your project budget to allow for outsourcing key deliverables to contractors or vendors who have the skills and expertise to get the job done.

4. Use a part-timer for on-the-job training

If you are struggling to find a key skill in a particular area of your project, consider inviting an expert to join as a part time team member. Their role will be to provide expertise in the under-served area, and allow other team members to learn from them on the job. This is a good solution if you need to help a team member brush up in specific areas, though the burden is on you to ensure there is adequate balance between skills handoff and project work.

The art of navigating the Skill Gap rests in your ability to find efficient, low overhead solutions to delivering your project. The project must win. If you find you don’t have the skills on your team to get your project done, look to your sponsor to help you build exceptional project support.

1. Make sure your sponsor understands their role in the project
Many executives who inherit the role of project sponsor don’t come from the ranks of project manager, and may not always know how to best serve you and your project. As sponsor, they are the internal recipient of project results. That means, your sponsor should be spearheading the effort to define and finalize scope for the project. They will own funding and signatory responsibility for the project, and therefore carry the weight of explicit authority for your project on behalf of the organization.

2. Make sure your sponsor understands your role in the project
For the sponsor without a great deal of project management experience, this is one of the most critical teachings you can convey: Your sponsor provides the coaching, you provide the workforce. They have a distinct role in the project management ecosystem; they keep the you, the team, and the organization excited, motivated, and sold on the vision of your project, and to the change in the worldview that is possible when your project is complete. They sell your project up and out; without vocal supportive sponsors on the rooftops of your organization, there is a greater chance for your project to wither on the vine.

3. Make sure your sponsor is a diplomat
The utility of the project manager-sponsor relationship can be quite broad when it is working. But your immediate use for a good sponsor is far more tactical. Your sponsor will make your job easier by navigating complex policy across the organization, negotiating conflict when departments collide, and continuing to sell your project in spite of opposition in the ranks. As project manager, it is easy to imagine the weight of the all these functions on your shoulders, but do not underestimate the power of your executive sponser in taking the charge for you, to free you to do the work of the project.

Remember, as we say so often: the project must win. If you find you don’t have the kind of attention your team needs to get your project done, look to your sponsor to help you build exceptional project support.

The Project Sponsorship Audit is a useful tool for analyzing and identifying potential pitfalls in your sponsorship process, and help you identify solutions and recommendations for change. Click here to download the PDF free from Cadence today.

1. Shed those extra hours
Sit down with sponsors for each of your projects and remind them of each of your project issues and opportunities. Resources are likely just as constrained in 2008 as they were in 2007. Ensure your plan for completing your project work this year with such limited resources is front and center, visible to your teams, sponsors, and functional managers. If you are asked to devise a plan to do more with fewer resources, make sure you are equipped with your Project Change worksheet to frame your discussion around concrete implications to your projects’ Cost, Schedule, and Performance components and team members.

2. Go back to school
It is never too late to learn something new, particularly in project management. Updates to the PMP curriculum, along with the new Program Management Professional certifications are just the beginning. Consider taking a course on Risk Management, Managing Project Management or Portfolio Management and ensure you have the latest skills to deliver results effectively.

3. “Keep track of track of your progress…”
Dr. Alan Marlatt, director of University of Washington’s Addictive Behaviors Research Center, says “the more monitoring you do, and feedback you get, the better you will do” when setting New Year’s Resolutions. The same applies to your projects. Have you performed a reporting feedback audit lately? Do you really have the systems in place to know where your team is, and how efficiently they are performing, when you need to know it? Use this time to get your reporting system in shape.

4. Don’t be a dictator
Control is in our nature. But benevolent project managers accomplish more faster than angry task masters. Remember: the project must win. Project success is more important than ego, relationship issues, and politics. Apply a delicate touch to project problems and you will stand a better chance of keeping your goal in sight.

5. Be persistent
Change is hard. Do not let yourself be daunted by early failures when you try something new. Like losing those last few pounds, or quitting a bad habit, managing your own expectations will go a long way in a successful outcome. Remember, a good portion of your job as project manager is transferring that enthusiasm to your team. The key to making change stick with your teams comes in sharing your confidence that you will succeed, that you will deliver your projects on time, under budget, and within scope.

From everyone on the Cadence team, we wish you the greatest project success in 2008!

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Understanding what to do to resolve this issue is only half the solution — the second half. Project managers must also develop a sharp eye for project warning signs up front. Here are five key areas to consider when evaluating whether your project is on track for success.

1. Personnel. Watch for the key warning signs: do you have all the critical skills covered for your project team? Even more importantly, are you relying on part-time staff supplying critical skills, or carrying responsibility for tasks on the critical path? From simply being stretched across project work, these team members may begin falling short on meeting task estimates. Make sure that the right people working on these critical activities are the same people owning responsibility for their delivery.
2. Planning. At its root, make sure you have a detailed plan of work that includes WHO is doing the task, WHAT the completion criteria is for the task, WHEN the task will be completed, and HOW MANY hours will be required, at the task level. If this key data is missing, you may be working off an incomplete breakdown of work; make sure you have your deliverables broken down into their task level activities.
3. Scope. From the start, make sure your project scope is in writing, avoids ambiguity, and is approved by your project sponsor and customer. Anything short of this level of visibility to your scope risks project launch without clear specifications, firm design, and organizational buy-in and support.
4. Organization. Do you know who your sponsor is? Do you have multiple sponsors vying for ownership of your project? A variety of sponsor/project manager relationships may suit your organization, but they all have the same thing in common: the sponsor has a vested interest in support of your project succeeding. While it may be hard to quantify this relationship, you will know it when it begins to fail: no project justification, no clear lines of communication and responsibility to — and through — the project sponsor, the sponsor is from a different part of the organization than users and customers, or the sponsor’s organizational role has changed due to a reorganization.
5. Technology. If you are working on a “bet your business” project, make sure you have authority and willpower to withstand using new, untested technology and support systems, or using packaged solutions that require radical modifications to adjust to your organization. Doing so introduces unnecessary risk to your project.

Risk in any of these areas alone may serve only as a warning or a shot across the bow. But beware: project problems in one area typically herald a cascade of problems across the others. A swift solution exists in a solid and committed sponsor/project manager relationship.

If you have experienced any of the above on your projects, take a moment to learn more about the Cadence Project Sponsorship seminar coming up November 8-9 in San Jose, CA. Invite your project sponsor and join us, along with the foremost experts in the field, and get control of your projects with confidence.

What’s the Problem?
When problems arise, you will be communicating not just with your team, but with your sponsor, executive management, and your customers. To have a clear conversation on the problem, you will first have to define the problem well. State the problem in two or three sentences, covering the original plan along with the change which has moved into problem status.

As an example, imagine you are working on a project to relocate your central operations to a new facility in another city. A key supplier of new cubicle equipment has just declared bankruptcy, and given notice that they will not be able to fulfill your order of equipment to the new site on the original project schedule.

Where’s the Pain?
While some project problems can stop your project in its tracks, most will have a direct impact on Cost, Schedule, or Performance, but your project work could continue. Once you have your problem clearly identified, you will define the immediate impact on the project if the problem were to go unaddressed.

In our example, the supplier has indicated that they could deliver the promised equipment, though they will have to delay four months. If the problem goes unchecked, it will have a direct impact on schedule, a four-month delay. There will be an indirect impact in other areas of the project, likely costing more to the organization in delaying the move, and moving the final project completion date far beyond the original schedule.

Workarounds
If the initial impact of your project problem is not acceptable, what are your alternatives? Defining alternatives that mitigate the impact on the overall project will round out your platform for discussion with your executive sponsor.

In our example, Alternative 1 might include finding another vendor to fill the order on schedule. This will cost more, but may be cheaper than the cost of a four-month delay. Alternative 2 might consist of updating scope to include used office equipment instead of new, saving money but impacting performance by sacrificing the look of brand new cubicles in the new space.

Building a process around dealing with project problems will help frame this key discussion with your sponsor, executives, and customers. Visit Cadencemc.com and download our free Problem Solving Worksheet to customize and align with your project management process. And don’t forget! The Cadence Public Project Management seminar is the only place to get your teams aligned on process, and to deliver results now. Bring your team and your toughest project problem to class and prepare for success today!

It is tendency, however, to plan at 50,000 feet. That’s where this week’s project tip comes into play. This week, batten down the hatches: build a plan that will ensure you secure — and maintain — sponsor approval.

Whether your project is in the capable hands of 2-3 of your closest team mates, or driven by a core team and expanded teams beyond them, you will need to have the right pieces in place to ensure you have executive and sponsor buy-in, and maintain it for the duration of your project.

The Wisdom of the Crowd
You have a team for a reason. They bring the expertise of their representative fields. Use that expertise and have the team define the breakdown of work; resist the urge to do so yourself. At the end of the process, the team will back you when you submit a project plan with the confidence that all necessary work is documented, and you will have more credibility in scope discussions with your sponsor as a result.

Time is On Your Side
You may have been handed your latest project in emergency status, but you must still take the time to plan. In fact, in emergencies, it is even more important to have a plan to fall back on when all else seems to be crashing down around you. Two to three days of focused planning up front will help you build your plan, and provide context of your project within the organization. Your sponsor will be more likely to support your efforts knowing where the project is going from the start.

The Devil in the Details
Best practices in project management dictate the components you should have in your project plan based on the size of the project you are managing. In general, the bigger your project, the more detail is required in the plan. To be safe, always error to the conservative. For example, while a full Work Breakdown Structure may not be recommended for all but medium projects and larger, the visual layout of deliverables and tasks on a small project may help your team make connections about the nature of the work they had not considered previously.

Status: Go
The number one habit you can build into your routine as a project manager is to love and live by your status reports. You build political support and good will by keeping your sponsor informed of your activities on the project. As a result, you will have a team member in your corner as a lobbyist, a driver for you and your team’s success to complete your project on time, on budget, and on scope.

For more, visit cadencemc.com and download the Cadence Responsibility Matrix and Schedule in PDF. They are both key tools in defining work, fighting tendency, and getting your project started right.

Do you know your Sponsor? Join Cadence in San Jose, California for the two-day Project Sponsorship seminar, taught by the experts: Randall Englund and Alfonso Bucero, co-authors of the book, “Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success.” For more, visit cadencemc.com.

Because too many times, project teams are under-represented in critical areas that directly affect project performance.

Scale the Team with the Scope of the Game

There is a tendency for new project managers, promoted after a few early successes, to become complacent in their team selection. After all, a small team of motivated team members, coupled with effective and efficient management is enough to mark up solid success on small projects. But as your projects grow in scope and visibility, make sure you expand your team accordingly. Consider team members from these fucntions to make sure you are equipped for project success.

• Customer: A customer representative, whether internal or external, will help your team maintain focus on your project deliverables.
• Software, Hardware, and IT: There are few projects today that do not involve some sort of software or hardware integration. Even if your project deliverables do not directly involve software, ensure you have key representatives from all the appropriate departments on your team to provide an interface between your project and your organization’s technical resources.
• Manufacturing: Understanding your organziation’s manufacturing resources can provide valuable insight into an area that holds the biggest potential surprises in product development projects. You will need a team member well-versed in the language of machines, warehousing, transportation, and logistics.
• Purchasing: The most entertaining stories of project management heroism usually involve project managers skirting the system to acquire parts or materials outside the chain of purchasing command. Avoid the hassel — invite purchasing to be on the team and saddle them with procurement responsibilities!
• Supplier: Invite your largest vendors to join the team and ensure that material resources are available when you need them.
• Marketing: Companies with fully-staffed in-house marketing organizations are few and far between. More often, they are short-staffed and over-worked. Secure a marketing team member to have responsibility over messaging design, agency work, and process management in creative development.
• Sales: When sales is involved from the beginning, you’ll find a greater investment in product knowledge and drive to generate field activity from launch, thereby avoiding potentially slow product uptake.
• Human Resources: Next to purchasing, there are few departments that boast as many processes, procedures, rules, and regulations as human resources. But the language of HR is foreign to many of us. Invite a representative from HR to join your team to align human project resources — in a language you can understand!
• Customer Support: You have thought of everything. Your product launches. And then, the phone rings with your first customer service call. What do you do? If you invite a support representative to join the team, you’ll ensure you have your call center and support resources aligned when you need them.

Recruiting these resources ensures you have the ability on your team to communicate with key departments, and marshall the resources necessary to deliver task results. Scaling your project team with resources appropriate to the scope and scale of your project can ensure that you are equipped with the right expertise to complete your project on time.

In the project environment, informal project management has come to mean several things. It is the work of project managers applying formal project management tools to small, disorganized bodies of activities. It is also the work of project managers applying social skills and community wisdom to motivate and inspire team members to do more effective and efficient work. Here are four critical skills that the best project managers cultivate in their own informal project management efforts.

1. Know when to ask… and when to tell. In well-planned projects, it’s easy to get lost in definition. After all, the team put in the time and the energy to document project tasks at an exhaustive level in order to let task definition go when it comes time to do the work. But sometimes, the best and most profound inspiration can come from team members who are actively involved in project work. Know when to ask the team for their wisdom, how to take criticism on the project, and how to tell them to stay focused on the work at hand.
2. Know your team members … and their skills. When a sweater begins to unravel, it begins with just one loose thread. So it is with unravelling projects, too. It will start with one team member who has misrepresented their skill level and is falling behind on their tasks, and it will end with chaos, as those tasks begin to affect other tasks, until eating away at the critical path. Take the time to get to know your team’s skills so that you will better trust their estimates, and have a framework for resource discussions.
3. Know your role as project manager … and as conductor. As a project manager, every task is important. But there is a tempo to all projects, and a good project manager will stand before the team not as a task master, but as a conductor, tapping out the tempo to keep things moving toward completion. Get intimate with your project schedule; use it to motivate when your team hits the critical path, and to relax when things slow down.
4. Know when to get in line … and when to push. Most companies do not organize around projects. They are organized around process and procedure — process and procedure that can impede your projects. Expert project managers know when to move outside the system to keep their teams moving forward, and how to rebuild bridges that may have been destroyed in the process.

In the real world, we know that the project manager rarely selects the sponsor. Rather, the sponsor is the person who wants the project, is willing to pay for it, and who is looking for a project manager who can get the job done. As a project manager, make sure to discuss the following four criteria in your first conversation with your new project sponsor. Consider this the project sponsor interview process.

Understanding: When selecting a sponsor, it is critical that the candidate have a clear and comprehensive understanding of the project. Beyond project objectives, however, the candidate should be operating at such a level that they understand where the project fits in the organization. This visibility from the top can be a key success factor in driving change; visibility that often escapes project managers and team members who are busy with project activities.

Support: It is not enough for a project sponsor to simply understand your project, they must support it. A successful candidate believes that there is a need for your project, and that change as a result of it will be beneficial for the organization. Your project sponsor will be your conduit to executive leadership for your project; their actions at this level can be a driver for change, and will help you deliver resources to your project and your team.

Political Capital: When confronted with the biggest and most dangerous project problems, your project sponsor must have the political capital to solve them. A good sponsor will put their name and reputation on the line as a public proponent of your project, marshal resources on your behalf, and insulate you from any political backfire that could distract you from your project.

Will to Act: Your project sponsor is not a process monitor. They’re not your cheerleader, either. In fact, having understanding, providing support, and delivering political capital mean very little if your candidate does not have the personal will to take action. There is a toughness to your sponsor, a grist that comes from experience and training. It is the combination of all these attributes that will drive your sponsor to take action, to remove barriers, and to navigate the pitfalls of organizational backlash and fear.

Project Sponsorship is the newest in the Cadence seminar portfolio. Organizations too often do not spend the time to understand what sponsorship is, why doing it better is important, and how to improve sponsorship performance. The Cadence Project Sponsorship seminar is designed to teach participants how to create an environment that achieves greater project prosperity as a result of excellence in project sponsorship.

We invite you to take your own Project Sponsorship audit! Click here to download 15 questions to spur your own thinking about sponsorship in your organization, and learn more about the Cadence Project Sponsorship seminar.

Still, even experienced project managers and team members need a refresher, a reminder of what it is that makes them successful in their work. Here are five tips to getting your next project started right.

1. Plan to Succeed: All too often, project planning is skipped, done poorly, or the process takes far too long, yet it is one of the most important undertakings for the project team. As project manager, do whatever you can do to get your whole team together in person for a comprehensive planning session — off site — and define the scope of work with the right people in the room!

2. Define your work: It’s all too easy to let your Work Breakdown Structure slide when you’re sitting around a table of content experts. Fight that tendency! Make sure you’re building a comprehensive definition of work for all your team members to see. Whole-team contributions to the WBS can help defend your project from the plague of scope creep down the road.

3. Own your Tasks: There are few things more frustrating for a project manager than discovering that two of your key team members are both working on the same task, wasting time and diluting focus. Help your teams and define project responsibilities early. Remember: only one team member can take the lead on any given task. This will keep your people focused and your tasks on track!

4. Red Light, Green Light: Are your weekly status meetings longer than a half hour? If so, they’re too long. You’ll be able to accomplish more, and keep your key players focused on their work, by driving down that status meeting and ensuring that your team members focus on the red and the green: of their tasks, which are in jeopardy of holding up the project?

5. Communication and Overload: Communication is a double-edged sword. As project manager, your instinct might be to ensure the team is copied on every email and meeting request. But part of your role is as the gate keeper for your team! Make sure they know what they need to know to mark their tasks complete, but not so much that they lose focus through information overload!

Need Training, or a Refresher? The Benefits of Going Public
Beginning in October, Cadence will launch the fall season of our Essentials Series in Project Management Public Seminars. These seminars are focused on the issues plaguing project teams, designed to help remove the roadblocks that impede project progress.

• Develop a project plan and implement with a sense of confidence and control
• Decrease frustration on Projects
• Accelerate your projects through effective planning
• Learn how to influence people who do not report to you
• Learn how to do status meetings in 30 minutes or less
• Discover the power of meeting Cost, Schedule, and Performance
• Work on REAL projects from companies in the class to produce draft project plans

All the points above resonate as key strategic outcomes of this seminar. But it’s the last point that shines as a true benefit of the public seminar forum. Our graduates tell us that learning with project managers from other organizations helps them grasp concepts, understand tools and processes, and remind them that they are not alone in working to overcome project frustration.

Everyone wants to be rich. A lot of people want to be successful. Yet, only a few people are willing to pay the price. There is a price to success as there is a price to failure. Here are 5 reasons that keep people from accomplishing their dreams.

A lack of motivation. Success comes from loving what you do. Is your current job your passion? When your study highly successful people, you understand that they have at least 1 thing in common: they love what they do and they do what they love. Is this the case for you? If the answer is no, you can start by identifying your passion. This is the best way to get motivated.

A lack of faith. Faith is a firm belief in yourself, God or others that you can do it. Build up a strong vision of what you want to accomplish. In developing a vision, the law of attraction is going to work for you. You are going to attract people, opportunities and money that will allow you to develop an unstoppable confidence.

The fear of failure. The fear of failure doesn’t exist. Neither does the fear of success. Fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Michael Jordan said himself that “Fear is an illusion”. It is hard to overcome fears. One simple way to overcome the fear of failure is to read inspirational stories and quotes of people that achieved their dreams. Read one every morning. That will give you strength and hope.

The wrong strategies. When you want to build a business, to achieve something really big, you need to have mentors. You can’t allow yourself to loose time, money and energy. Mentors are people that will give you the right strategies; they will provide the right information and will inspire you. They will coach you through the process. Choose correctly your experts, your models. Work with them and adopt the same thinking patterns, the same strategies, the same beliefs. If he did it, you can do it too.

Limiting beliefs. Often times we have limiting beliefs about what we want to achieve. For example, you can really want to achieve a goal but at the same time something tells you: “It’s not for you, you don’t deserve that” or “You can’t do it, remember”. These thoughts pollute our minds and darken our life. A quick way to stop these damaging thoughts is to use the power to say no! First, represent in your mind the “limiting belief” and say NO! to it. Now, represent in your mind what you want in its place and say a big YES! You will be amazed how your attitude suddenly changed about the old belief. Can you remember it?

I have just shared with you strategies to overcome the TOP 5 things that prevent people from success. When you apply these recommendations, your life will be enriched. You deserve success because you are special and unique. Everyone of us is. The fact is that we are potential geniuses. But the other fact is that often we refuse to admit it because it pushes us out of our comfort zone and most people don’t like that. Get out of your comfort zone; this is the only way to succeed in life.