Sometimes it happens. Or it doesn’t happen. The cause is irrelevant because no matter what, at some point we must deliver bad news to our project sponsors or contacts. Even project managers with the most impeccable track records run into trouble every now and then—it’s part of risk. There are plenty of materials out there on dealing with and mitigating risk, but sometimes we have to face the situation.

There are some best practices to handling this scenario. It’s not a guarantee that no one will become upset or that it will save your project, but at the very least, these are a series of actions that you may take to get the best results out of a bad situation.

1. Get the facts together. Never walk into a situation without knowing the lay of the land and all the available information. This will help to keep you in a position of expertise and help to alleviate some stress.
2. Gather solutions. The best thing you can offer your client contact after delivering bad news is some actionable items to rectify the problem. It shows that you are aware of the issue and on top of solving it.
3. Be proactive. The more time that passes between discovery of the problem and informing your client, the worse the results will be. Do not ever wait for your clients to discover the issue on their own.
4. Be objective and pragmatic. The client sometimes gets upset; it is inevitable. Your job is not to battle them, but to work through the situation and get to a solution as quickly as possible.
5. Don’t get emotional. This may be the most difficult rule to abide. When problems arise, tensions mount, stress rises, and sometimes hurtful things are said. You must always remind yourself that this is a business situation—not a personal one and that to persevere, you have to push whatever feelings you have aside and get the job done.
6. Blame can wait. You may want to blame someone on your team or even on the client’s team. The client will probably want to do this even more than you do, but this is not the time. Finding fault before the problem is solved only wastes time and further complicates the issue. There is always time during performance reports, debriefs and meetings to worry about post-resolution responsibility.

You may encounter situations that require different approaches, but following the above tactics will help you to brave what can be a very difficult task during a project. Never forget to be proactive and to act as an expert and you will experience success, despite unavoidable problems.

Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.

Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.

Most of the time, as a project manager, change requests must go through you before they can be approved. That way, you have the ability to adjust the scope, schedule, and cost and keep the entirety of the project properly maintained. But we’ve all seen this situation: the client or sponsor gets a hold of someone other than the project manager and all of a sudden there’s major scope creep. I’ve noticed two critical areas where this tends to occur:

Someone breaks the communication structure and contacts a project team member directly, getting them to commit to additional scope.

A higher-ranking person in your company (usually someone involved in sales) makes a promise to the client without consulting the project team.

Once one of these scenarios has occurred, the additional scope is the least of your worries because now the client not only expects the extra work but also that it will not affect time or cost. Dealing with these new challenges is difficult, but not impossible.

Of course, the best method is prevention. Ideally, the project manager will be proactive at the beginning of the project, carefully explaining the change request process to all stakeholders and making it very clear that no additional scope will occur without proper approval, no matter who promises it. It is important to get this documented and signed by the client. This will not completely mitigate all instances of scope creep, but it should eliminate a good 80-90% of cases.

If a proactive approach still results in scope creep, the project manager can always use direct communication with the client to try to stop it by explaining that, although someone on the project team or someone on your side made a promise, it cannot be honored because it was not made through the proper change request process. If you’ve made sure to have the client sign a document outlining the change process, this shouldn’t pose any problems. You’ll also want to discuss unofficial promises with the stakeholders on your side to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Unfortunately, we’re sometimes stuck honoring an unofficial change one way or another. If it has come to this, there are some tricks that can help maintain the project’s momentum. Fast tracking tasks and creating work overlaps will help to keep the schedule together. There might also be some opportunities at reductions in other areas of the project if there are non-essential activities that could stand to be cut. Finally, try using some of the buffers that you’ve built into different areas of the project to handle these new changes. All of these techniques carry risk, but if successful, can keep your project on track.

Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.

Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.

Congratulations to Christopher K. Schulz, Off Peak Training’s Security Programs Director for getting the latest certification from ISACA, Certified in the Governance of Enterprise Information Technology (CGEIT). This certification is intended to recognize a wide range of IT professionals for their knowledge and application of IT governance principles and practices. It was designed specifically for professionals who have management, advisory or assurance responsibilities as defined by the CGEIT Job Practice consisting of IT governance related task and knowledge statements.

The CGEIT exam consists of 120 questions and it covers domains which are roughly broken up as follows:
• Domain 1—IT Governance Framework (25%)
• Domain 2—Strategic Alignment (15%)
• Domain 3—Value Delivery (15%)
• Domain 4—Risk Management (20%)
• Domain 5—Resource Management (13%)
• Domain 6—Performance Measurement (12%)

To earn the CGEIT designation, candidates must:
• Have at least five years of experience supporting the governance of an
enterprise’s information technology. This experience can be achieved entirely through IT governance experience, or through a combination of IT governance experience and management experience.
• Pass the CGEIT exam, which is offered twice a year in June and December
• Adhere to the ISACA Code of Professional Ethics
• Agree to comply with the CGEIT Continuing Education Policy

http://www.offpeaktraining.com/courses/security/

Off Peak Training is in the process of developing a security training course for the CGEIT and is expected to have a bootcamp course available early 2010. If you are interested in learning more about Off Peak Training Education please contact us: http://www.offpeaktraining.com/contact-us/
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offering public and private classes to help prepare business professionals for the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and much more. www.offpeaktraining.com