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Still Trying to Integrate Running and Project Management
December 26, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Musings
Still Trying to Integrate Running and Project Management
By Ed Hammerbeck
Back in October, I wrote on the topic of approaching my running like a project. Being a project manager and a writer, I thought it would be a fun little intellectual exercise, if nothing else. Some writers will go to great lengths to make an analogy, metaphor, or allegory work, and sometimes it works great — as in The Tao of Pooh. And then there’s me trying to hammer out “Running is like…” stuff that makes me cringe even as I type it. So I’ll freely admit my attempts at cleverness are far from perfect, but given my chosen profession, I cannot stop trying to make running and project management gel together into a coherent essay.
Some ideas:
- Races as milestones. In project management, a milestone is a significant event or deliverable that is absolutely must be delivered on a given date to be considered successful. They are frequently used to motivate teams to keep moving forward and demonstrate progress. And that is precisely why I sign up for races. It certainly ain’t to win, considering I consistently finish in the 75th to 85th percentiles and seldom do speedwork. But I do schedule races to keep myself motivated and training.
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Quality or phase gates are tools used in project management to, among other things, decide whether or not the project is worth pursuing further. It allows you to quit a troubled project early before irrecoverable costs mount too high. Now, I may not write it out on paper, but I know that if I have not done so many miles and so many long runs by such-and-such a date, then I had better not run that half marathon. I used the phase gate concept to decide not to run the Louisville Half Marathon this month. I looked forward to running it since my last half marathon, but I would not risk the suffering of running it unprepared. It’s my own fault for not being consistent with my training. Nobody to blame but myself.
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Stakeholder management is the concept of a) identifying everybody that could conceivably be affected by or have an interest in your project and b) ensuring that their concerns are thoughtfully considered, if not fully met. After all, you can’t make everybody happy. Who are my chief stakeholders? My wife and my daughter. I have to arrange my running in a way that interferes least with their lives. I cannot, for example, run 13 miles on a Saturday — burning through a whole morning — when my wife is needing me to help around the house that day. I certainly cannot whine and complain and limp around all day and not expect beatings. I cannot be a 100% runner but an 80% father/husband. If I cannot do both at 100%, then I have to adjust my running schedule. The project isn’t a success if the chief stakeholders hate me.
Ed Hammerbeck, PMP, is a software/business analyst for the Louisville/Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District. For nearly ten years, primarily in the public sector, he has led cross-functional teams through software implementation projects ranging from small database applications for departments and workgroups to enterprise software implementations.
Over the last couple years, as his interest in technical details has waned, his interest in the human and business side of IT has increased. IT-business alignment, user advocacy, agile project management, and change management have been recent obsessions of his.
He is an active volunteer leader for the America’s SAP User Group and his local PMI Chapter. He also is a devoted father, husband, and runner. His chief claim to fame on the internet is a seldom-visited, irregularly-updated running blog called A Viking Running.
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