Matthew Lane of Fios once again takes up the cause of project management against the forces of evil. In a "recent" (okay, yes, it's taken me a week to get to it) blog post entitled Bringing Order to Chaos: The Proper Pace of Project Management Push, he sounds as if he's a martial arts master using his opponent's energy to pull him in and then applying force to his opponent's momentum to push him where he wants him. He writes:
Those of us championing project management are eager to encourage the use of tools and techniques we feel will add value to our clients. Finding the right pace of introduction is important as is understanding that the pace of adoption will be different for each individual and firm. Pushing project management information too quickly may result in rejection from overload. Move too slowly and the project management seedling may wilt from lack of care and feeding.
While I hate pulling punches when introducing project management to other lawyers, I do realize that us legal project managers often find ourselves in the role of David battling a Goliath-sized resistance. So when a battle-hardened giant slayer like Master Lane proffers advice, I listen.
His blog post points out the challenge, but how and with what do we respond to that challenge?
"Ah Grasshopper, I've recently published a White Paper all about it."
Okay, I'm paraphrasing. He didn't use the word "grasshopper." But he has a Ph.D. and a PMP so that's how I read it: in the voice of Master Po. (As an aside, I always read "Ph.D., PMP" as "FUD Pimp," which I know is entirely inappropriate and that I'm in for a drubbing if our paths ever cross.)
Mr. Lane's White Paper, Reducing Chaos in Electronic Discovery Projects, discusses how effective use of project management knowledge, skills, and tools can help prevent e-discovery projects from deteriorating to a state of chaos. It is not intended to be a project management primer, but rather it seeks "to introduce practical project management concepts and tools that can be easily leveraged with current litigation support expertise to increase project success."
Before discussing the weapons, let's first know our enemies. Mr. Lane lists five agents of Chaos (now I can't get the Get Smart theme song out of my head):
(1) high sense of ugency and expectation within the firm and with the client,
(2) diverse opinions regarding success definition.
(3) a lack of defined and stable initial scope,
(4) siloed perspectives across various functional groups and
(5) the difficulty of identifying appropriate project roles and staffing.
The five weapons for battling these foes are:
(1) communication,
(2) scope management,
(3) requirements documentation and management,
(4) developing and managing schedule, and
(5) the triple constraint model in anaging electronic discovery projects.
Mr. Lane's discussion of these five concepts draws upon the Project Management Institute's A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge and his 15 years of project management experience. This highly readable (rare for a White Paper), 8-page paper introduces some useful principles to those who have had little exposure to formal project management. He strikes a good balance between completeness and accessibility. He neither overwhelms the reader with PMI-isms nor dumbs it down to truisms.
On Communication, he writes "[i]t is often stated that project management is 95% communication. That percentage is low."
Very true. But just being a good communicator is not enough. A good project manager has a plan--including a plan on how, and when, and with whom to communicate. He provides an outline of what a communication plan should contain and also shares some helpful communication tips.
When discussing scope, he correctly notes that it is a black and white concept: things are either IN the scope or OUT of the scope. Frequent changes in scope are generally seen as a sign of poor project management. In practice, however, this is difficult for litigation support professionals, especially those working in a law firm, to live by. They often are not empowered to enforce any formal change management and are often at the mercy of attorneys-"in-charge" who may not plan e-discovery in the first place, much less stick to a plan.
This of course, makes communication and documentation that much more important. It would be nice, however, if this section acknowledged the plight of many litigation support professionals when it comes to defining scope and controlling scope creep. Most formally trained project managers have it drilled into them that THEY are responsible for the project and are responsible for its success or failure. This is an important part of the project management mindset and if you don't have the authority or assertiveness to push back and set reasonable expectations, you should fire yourself. Yet project managers writing for or speaking to litigation support professionals, paralegals, and junior attorneys often fail to account for the reality their audience lives in.
Mr. Lane's discussion of Requirements Documentation and Management is particularly good and he fits a lot of good advice into a couple of pages. As does the Developing and Managing Schedule section, the first sentence of which sums up the topic nicely: "Knowing that a major milestone is going to be late should never be a surprise to anyone." He covers an impressive number of important scheduling concepts in a few short paragraphs. The white paper ends with a discussion of the "Triple Constraints" of time, cost, and scope: the "iron triangle" of project management.
All in all this white paper is definitely worth a read if you are a litigation support professional, paralegal, or attorney with little project management experience. It is also good to see folks like Mr Lane continue to raise awareness of project management in the legal community.
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