I would like to start this article with a big shout out to Doug Rabold, ITIL, HDI. He gave a great presentation, “12 Step Project Management Program for Non-Project Managers,” at the recent MSP-Ignite Service Manager Peer Group face-to-face meeting.

IT Service Managers Manage a Fair Number of Projects

In essence, Doug took the hundreds of pages of PMBOKGuide –Sixth Edition (2017) (Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge) and boiled it down to just two slides for the IT Service Managers. Like Project Management Professionals (PMPs), IT Service Managers manage a fair number of projects (mostly between 5 to 20) before the company hires dedicated full- or part-time Project Managers. Unlike Project Managers, IT Service Managers have a wealth of other responsibilities. Most are considered to be higher priority than the projects they are responsible for. Given this conflict of focus, skill, priority, and mental gymnastics, it was no wonder that this was the number one topic the Service Manager Peer Group requested to be added to the agenda.

Someone in the IT Service Manager Peer Group surprised me with this comment…

What surprised me was when one Peer Group member commented, “Many IT Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are looking to do projects as a foot in the door offering, leading to new Managed Service Customers.” In the past, the position has been that we only do projects for our Managed Service Customers.”If this comment becomes a trend, as an IT Service Manager, improving Project Management skills is critical. Project Management Institute (PMI) is by far the world leader in setting project management standards. But I would recommend googling project management training and look for something a little lighter than a full PMP certification. The reason for the suggestion is, for IT Service Managers, project management is an added responsibility. This is not to say the added responsibility is not important or that it is not part of the Company’s #1 goal. It is to say, however, that until the company grows its Project Management expertise to hire Project Managers, the IT Service Manager is tasked with managing the projects. For this, a rich understanding of the process, as Doug Rabold laid out, is necessary, but a 100% focus is not possible (although it may be expected – see the article on “Managing Up”.Back in 2010 when I started at Systems Engineering, we did two projects at a time and about eight per year. Today, Systems Engineering does over a hundred projects at a time with a staff of four or five Project Managers and three Project Coordinators. Not sure every MSP is looking to grow their project management expertise to this level, but based on recent conversations it seems every MSP is planning on managing projects in the near future.

In IT, Projects Have Always Been King

IT Service Managers | IT Service Delivery | IT Project Manager

Now don’t get me wrong -- projects have always been king, mostly due to their lucrative markups. In fact some Resource Planning Analysts have made a career out of figuring out when and how to say yes to projects, so they do not crush supporting Managed Service agreements (which are the economic engine of a Managed Service Provider).   In so many ways our world is changing, and this includes the volume, type, and quantity of projects.  12 Keys to Effectively Managing Projects

The Main Takeaways from Doug Rabold’s Presentation

I. Project Governance is key #1: Everyone needs to know, weigh in, follow, and agree on: 

What defines a project

How projects will be managed 
Where projects fit in the IT service delivery portfolio

II. Triple Constraint:Time, Scope, and Cost. You can control two of the three, but not all three at once. III. Five phases of a project (right out of PMBOK):  

Initiation 
Planning 
Execution 
Controlling 
Closure

IV. Planning includes (recommend googling IT project templates):

Scope
Task
Duration (including Contingencies)
Budget (including Contingencies)
Resources (Engineers)
Communication (but of course)
Risks
Solutions
Procurement

V. Responsibility assignment matrix - RACI (recommend googling RACI templates): 360 communications or communicating to everyone involved with or touched by the project is critical. RACI charts takes communications a step further by identifying who the key people are, their role, or why they are being communicated with. The roles are identified by the list below, which form the acronym RACI. Does this mean everyone that needs to be communicated with is in the list? Should be, but there may be groups of people, such as people touched by only a phase or two of the project, or so fringed that they are overlooked. Like all living documents, a RACI chart should not be consider one and done. A good IT Service Manager tasked with managing a project should always reflect on each communication and ask the question, “Is there someone else that needs to know this information?”