Project Management

 

Of all the project management techniques and activities we’ve discussed in the past weeks in this blog series, this is the one that gives many people the most trouble.   There is no set of rules I can list that’s going to work well for everyone.  I can, however, give you some tips to consider that may improve your time management skills: 

• Be organized.  Use tools like calendars, to-do lists, email alarms and project management software to keep on top of all of the balls you need to keep in the air.
• When possible, follow a routine and work from a plan.  Start each day with your door closed for 15 minutes to plan your day.  Set reasonable goals for the day and include time to respond to emails, return phone calls, review status reports, and to deal with the inevitable, unexpected situations that arise.
• Delegate whenever you can.  For every thing you have to do determine if it can be delegated, to whom, and if that person can take it on.  If you delegate a task, define it well, give clear instructions, get agreement, make due-dates clear, and define authority levels (let the person to whom you are delegating know what they can make decisions on and what they need to come to you with).
• Keep track of what you are doing.  I always maintain a project diary where I document my activity.
• Effectively facilitate meetings.  Don’t let meetings for which you are responsible run over the scheduled time.  Prepare an agenda and distribute it.  Start the meeting on time.  Up front, state the purpose of the meeting and describe the goals.  Don’t let the discussion get off track.
• Use standard materials and templates, such as project planning meeting agendas and reports, questionnaires to collect case information, technology surveys, requests for proposals, and status reports.

Managing your time effectively is critical, and it will set a good example for your staff.  When I feel overwhelmed, I find that stepping back, prioritizing tasks and adjusting my to-do list helps.  Always keep the big picture in mind when you caught up in chaos, and don’t sweat the small stuff

What do you think?  Do you have good tips for managing your time?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

 

If you work in a law firm, your clients are in-house:  they are the litigation teams in your own firm.  It’s important that you maintain good lines of communication with them throughout a project and that you have a mutual understanding, from the start, of what’s expected.  That, of course, starts with setting expectations: 

• As a first step, gather the information you need.  You’ll probably need to know the schedule for the case, the expected size of the document collection, locations of the documents, contact information for litigation team members, and case management order requirements.  If you can, schedule a meeting to collect this information.  If that won’t work, make it easy for your clients to give you this information (you might use an easy-to-answer email questionnaire).
• Next, prepare and distribute a memo summarizing your understanding of the requirements.  Include a description of the deliverables, schedule and budget information, and a description of your approach.
• Don’t agree to the impossible or the unreasonable.  Try to talk them out of bad decisions.  If you can’t prepare a memo that describes what potential problems may occur.

Throughout the life of the project make sure to submit regular status reports that tell your client where you are with regard to budget and schedule and that highlight project points of interest.  Don’t wait to pass along important project information in a regular status report.  If there’s a problem that needs their attention, give them a call and put it in a memo.  Keep your clients current on what you are doing and on where things stand.

What do you think?  How do you manage your clients’ expectations?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

Yesterday, we discussed effectively communicating with a service provider before a project even starts.  To ensure successful results with service provider work, there are a few things you should do throughout the life of a project:

• Make sure that you are available:  It is likely that a service provider will have questions about your project.  If those questions are not addressed quickly, it could affect approach, schedule and costs.  Make sure that a decision-maker is available who can respond to service provider questions and who can make decisions quickly when issues arise.  This is especially important at the start of a project – that’s when the most questions are likely to surface.
• Review the work:  Just like with your own staff, you need to carefully check service provider work to ensure that they have understood your requirements and are doing the work properly.  Ask the service provider to provide small batches of initial work as soon as possible, and review that work and provide feedback right away.  It’s always better to catch problems early when they can be fixed before significant rework is required.  And spot-check work throughout the life a project.
• Monitor status:  Review status reports and talk to the service provider if it looks like they are getting off track with schedule and costs.  If schedule variances are caught early, the service provider may be able to reallocate resources and get back on track.

These techniques work well for most projects.  There may be times when you’ve got a small, rush job that needs to be done overnight or within a couple of days – and there won’t be time to check work and give feedback before the work is done.  When you are faced with a project like that, it’s probably best to work with a service provider with whom you have already worked and you know is reliable.

What do you think?  How do you work with service providers?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

 

Some of the tasks that you manage may be better handled by a service provider.  A service provider may be able to deliver high quality work on a schedule that might be impossible for you to meet.  This doesn’t mean that you need to give up control of a project.  In fact, you shouldn’t.  A good service provider will encourage you to stay involved and to communicate frequently with them throughout the project. 

Good, two-way communication is critical.  It needs to start up front — during initial conversations with a service provider – and continue through the life of a project.

Before a project starts, discuss these things with the service provider you’ll be working with:

• Project scope and requirements:  A good service provider will tell you what information they need so they can give you good price and schedule information.  Sometimes, the best information you’ll have will be ‘guestimates’ – in that case, you need to recognize that there are limits to how accurate cost and schedule information will be.
• Expected project costs:  Most service providers will provide you with unit pricing for the work they do.  In addition, talk to them about estimated total project costs based on project parameters that you provide.  A good service provider does not want any cost components to be a surprise any more than you do. 
• Project schedule:  Make sure the service provider clearly understands your schedule requirements and find out what they need from you (and by when) to meet those requirements.  Talk to them about the mechanisms they have in place for increasing project resources if the schedule starts slipping, and their policies regarding notifying you if a deadline is going to be missed.
• Invoicing and status reports:  It’s a good idea to look at sample invoices and status reports in advance, before a project starts.  Most likely, you’ll be responsible for reviewing and signing off on these documents, so it’s a good idea to review them first and ensure that you understand them.
• Getting in touch with the service provider.  Ask a service provider to provide you with contact information for project and management personnel involved in your project.  You want to be able to reach the right people quickly when a new project requirement or issue arises.

In the next issue, we’ll be talking about working effectively with a service provider throughout the live of a project.

What do you think?  Do you have thoughts on effectively communicating with service providers?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

 

An important part of managing a project is effectively managing the people doing the work and keeping them motivated.  This is especially critical when you need a lot of people for a task – for example, a document review project.  One weak link can result in poor work that needs to be redone.

Volumes have been written on this topic, and it may be worthwhile to do some reading on management skills.  However, let me give you a few suggestions that have worked well for me:

• Know your people and make assignments that are in sync with their skills, strengths and preferences.  You will always get better results if you give people work at which they are likely to shine.
• Get people on board with the assignment.  Make sure they understand the bigger picture, where their work fits in, and why it’s important to the case.
• Give people clear instructions and good training.
• Be available to them.  Make sure your staff knows how to reach you.
• Regardless of what you are faced with, stay calm.  Panic on your part will instill panic in those doing work for you.  This never works out well.
• Ask for input, suggestions and opinions.  This has two benefits:  you are likely to get good ideas that you’ll want to implement, and your staff will feel appreciated.
• Don’t micro-manage your staff.  Monitor them enough to catch problems, but give them room to do their jobs.
• Give lots of feedback.  Make sure people know when they are doing a good job, and make sure they know when you want them to change the way they are doing something.
• Recognize and acknowledge good work.  When someone does a good job on a project that I’m managing, I write a thank you memo.  I describe the assignment, what they did, and how their efforts contributed to the overall goals and success of the project.  And I always copy senior people on that memo.  I have yet to find a better way to keep morale high for people doing good work.

What do you think?  Do you have some tips for managing people that you can share with us?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

 

Project documentation is a weakness that I’ve seen time and again in firms that I’ve helped.  And, I’ve seen it cause problems over and over again.

I’ve worked with attorneys who have done a great job of collecting and producing documents, but, nonetheless, they have trouble successfully resolving discovery disputes.   Why?  Because they didn’t keep records of what they did and how they did it.

I’ve seen litigation teams work on cases that came back to life after being dormant for five years.  No one knew what had already been done with the documents.  They had to start from scratch.

I’ve worked with litigation teams that lost team members, and in doing so lost the only people who had knowledge of certain case activities.

I’ve known litigation teams that couldn’t use significant evidence because they didn’t maintain adequate chain of custody documentation.

These problems cost litigation teams time and money, and in extreme situations, they can affect the outcome of a case  – all unfortunate results that can be avoided if good project records are kept. 

For each case, maintain a “case book”.  Start it at the beginning of a case with case overview information.  Create a form to capture this information:

• Case name and parties
• Date filed
• Client
• Client contact with phone and email
• Information for each team member (name, position, phone and email)
• Information for co-counsel (firm name and names, phone and email for individuals)
• Information for opposing counsel (firm name and names, phone and email for individuals)
• Schedule information (for example, discovery start and end dates, trial dates)

Create a section in the case-book for each document-handling task.  Create a form to capture this information:

• Name of the task (for example, “Collecting Documents”)
• The name, position and contact information for the person responsible
• Start date, expected completion date, and actual completion date
• The name, position and contact information for each team member that works on the task.
• A section for notes and summary information

File task documentation in the case-book (for example, include budgets, schedules, forms, logs, chain of custody records and status reports).

Good record keeping doesn’t have to take a lot of time, and it can be invaluable.

What do you think?  Have you worked on a case where poor record keeping caused problems?  Please share any comments you might have or tell us if you’d like to know more about a topic.

 

It’s critical to know where you are on a project so you can compare your progress to your budget and schedule and make adjustments if necessary.  Sometime the unexpected will cause you to fall behind.  In some cases, you’ll be able to take steps to fix problems and get back on track.  For example, you may be able to simplify a task without sacrificing quality or the utility of the work.

 

Here’s an example.  I once managed a coding project that was having problems.  The rate at which the staff moved through the collection was much slower than I had estimated.  At that slower rate, the deadline was going to be missed and the costs were going to skyrocket.  I met with the staff to determine why the work was taking so much time.  We determined that there was one field of information that was causing trouble:  coders were required to record the country in which certain types of activity occurred.  It was easy enough to record “United States” when something happened in New York.  It wasn’t so easy for the staff to record “Botswana” when something happened in Ghanzi.  I spoke with an attorney about the problem.  She determined that what they really needed to know was whether an activity occurred in the US, in England, or somewhere else.  We simplified the coding rule and we were able to get back on track.  If we hadn’t been monitoring daily progress on the project, we would have faced significant schedule and budget problems.

Changing the rules might not always be an option.  Sometimes you’ll have to live with an extended schedule and higher costs.  Knowing that sooner rather than later is always better.  If you can’t adjust the rules, you can at least adjust the expectations of those for whom you are doing the work.

Put a mechanism in place for monitoring status.  Look at production rates and throughput every day and see how the numbers compare to the assumptions you made when you created your schedule and budget.   A missed deadline or unexpected costs should never be a surprise that comes at the end of a project.

What do you think?  Have you missed deadlines and exceeded budgets?  Could it have been avoided?  Please share your comments or let us know if you would like more information on a topic.