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860 days ago
In my industry, workflow is considered by many as a holy grail. Most leaders of litigation support departments feel that they can control risks, issues, schedules, and quality through one comprehensive workflow or even a checklist. It is tempting to think that a machine could orchestrate a project to such a degree of success that the humans involved cannot make errors. Unfortunately, there is no perfect workflow in our industry. Not a single litigation support manager I have spoken to feels that they have their hands around the problem. And so, we look at vendor after vendor peddling their software with a state-of-the art workflow system built in. So, why do these system's fail to achieve their promised goals? Here is my list of "gotchas" about attempting to automate your project management functions via workflow: Poor planning - insufficient involvement by everyone involved with the system (IT, front-line employees, and management) during the early evaluation ...
949 days ago
Craig Brown of Better Projects wrote an excellent post highlighting the reasons why a client might prefer to work with certain people even though other equally qualified people are available. "Patients will [...] cross the city to visit their preferred GP [rather than visiting the nearest available doctor]. Patients are not in a good position to assess the quality of medical advice they receive, so what makes them care enough about a doctor to make such efforts? The answer is the "bedside manner" which in the context of this [project management / consulting] is their empathy." Project managers and consultants need to empathize with their client, their employees, and other stakeholders. Through empathy, one can truly understand the issues that the other party is dealing with and respond with sincerity. Once, I was involved in a project where the client services manager had to relay a possible budget overrun to the client. Unfortunately, the client ...
949 days ago
In my previous article, Good Insights On Managing Knowledge Workers, I concluded that "Empowering an employee is the only way to harness the talent that the company has and is a very challenging feat." However, this is only the first step in the process. Since posting that entry, I have been researching the psychology of motivation. In psychology, the process of learning new behaviors or responses as a result of their consequences is called conditioning. I believe that the average employee has been conditioned to follow orders, to keep quiet, and do the minimum amount of work. Through their experiences at previous jobs or projects, employees have picked up an attitude that prevents them from accepting empowerment even if given full authority to make their own decisions. The first job of a project manager in this situation is to condition the employee to respond positively to empowerment. The PM has to encourage positive behaviors and diminish the negative ones. ...
953 days ago
Raven at Raven's Brain has posted a great quote regarding Good Insights On Managing Knowledge Workers that I think applies even more to the litigation support industry. Litigation support is part of the information and support economy and most of the people in this industry are knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are people who add value through their intellect rather than physical attributes. Because knowledge workers use intellect rather than brawn, old techniques of managing users by just assigning tasks and jobs has become harder. Workers are no longer doing one task at one workstation. They have valuable skills that should be fostered and used in the best possible combination. "A good manager doesn't tell people what to do or how to accomplish their tasks, but removes roadblocks and makes the way clear [for employees to be] more productive. [Another] important role that managers have is to identify and grow talent. Unfortunately, many managers ...
953 days ago
In my new role as a Director of Project Management at Legal Science, I have the responsibility of setting up our project management practices and helping our customers manage their litigation support projects. A few pain points that I hear often from our customers are the ambiguity of requirements, the short duration of projects, and the fast pace of litigation support projects. In fact, many have given up on requirements gathering and accept the fact that 50% of their projects will be over budget, low quality, or over schedule. However, all is not lost. Proper requirements gathering can set a project in the right course from the very beginning. Unfortunately, requirements gathering is a tricky process fraught with red herrings. Sometimes you interview a stakeholder and write down exactly what is said only to find out that is not what they intended. The trick here is to find out what the client "intends to do with the product" not how ...
