Chapter 1 Notes: The Job to be Done Now

 Hedda Rising is unexpectedly tasked with fixing her company’s slow

drug-approval process after repeatedly losing to faster competitors.
 We are seeing more frequent organizational transformations, faster
development of new products, quicker adoption of new technologies,
and so on. This is a global phenomenon. In other words, we must be
nimbler and far more responsive to customers than we used to be.
 Too many projects take too much time, cost too much, turn out to be
useless, frustrate everybody, and make the world worse. That’s a “big
whammy.”
 Modern work has shifted from fixed roles to project-based
responsibilities—“we are all project managers now.”
 Most people managing projects are unofficial project managers with
little or no formal training
 Only about 35% of projects succeed, largely due to unclear goals, poor
planning, weak leadership, and unrealistic timelines/budgets.
 Many project failures stem from ignoring “simple things”—lack of
clarity, skipped communication, and unmanaged expectations.

Chapter 2 Notes: Principles of Project Success

 Three governing principles: Create Value, Lead People, Manage

Processes. Creating value—not just finishing on time/budget—is the top
priority.
 “Value first”: success is defined by delivering meaningful outcomes,
not merely finishing on time/on budget.
 Highly skilled project teams can and do produce rubbish—in fact,
according to the Harvard study mentioned in the previous chapter,
they do so about two-thirds of the time.
 As project manager you must constantly keep in the forefront of your
mind why people care about your project, how much they care, and
how your project aligns with the larger vision or purpose of the
organization.
 Value includes quantitative (ROI/NPV) and qualitative (customer
satisfaction, trust) benefits.
 Informal authority: Comes from your character and capabilities. You’re
a good listener. You’re clear about expectations. People trust you
because you’re trust worthy.
 Your role as project leader is to inspire people to follow you and the
project management process willingly and enthusiastically.
 Leading people relies heavily on informal authority rather than job
titles.
 People naturally want to matter—and they want to make a contribution
that matters.
 Success depends more on informal authority than formal titles; leaders
must practice the Five Foundational Behaviors. The Five Foundational
Behaviors drive team performance: Listen First, Clarify Expectations,
Extend Trust, Practice Accountability, Demonstrate Respect.
 Emotional maturity is more important to project success than the
chosen methodology.
 One reason projects fail is that people involved lack a shared picture of
what is expected. Fuzzy expectations can be fatal to the project.
 If you avoid delegating tasks, if you don’t let team members make
decisions, if you’re always giving negative feedback, if your project
drags on forever—you have a problem trusting people.
 Practicing accountability is not about punishing people. It’s about
helping them keep their commitments.
 Good leaders avoid micromanagement and abandonment—balance
support with accountability. Some ineffective managers abandon the
team, leaving them to struggle through on their own
 Respect yourself first, then you can respect others. Respect is its own
reward. If you’re honest with yourself and others, if you hold on to your
integrity, you’ve succeeded regardless of the outcome of the project.
You can hold people accountable respectfully by talking straight with
them.
 Project processes blend Waterfall (structure) with Agile (adaptability).
 This traditional project management process is a step-by-step
approach known informally as the “Waterfall Method” because the
resulting project schedule looks like a waterfall:

 The Agile Method started in the world of software development, where

products undergo constant change and improvement as functions and
features are added.
  Success formula: Value + People + Process executed consistently.
 The Franklin Covey approach blends Waterfall and Agile into a practical
five-step process: Scope → Plan → Engage → Track & Adapt → Close.
 Closing the project is done by celebrating success and lessons learned.

Chapter 3 Notes: Scoping the Project

 Scoping = establishing a shared and measurable set of expectations.

 THE SCOPE IS THE “WHAT” of the project: “What are we trying to do
and what dowe need to do to get it done?”
 If we aren’t clear on the destination, we act like we’re blindfolded. We
end up “circling around” doing re-work, second-guessing, or getting
smothered by “scope creep”—the tendency of a project to get sucked
into a black hole.
 More simply, scope defines what you’re going to do to create value—
and what you’re not going to do.
 To do effective scoping, we:
o Identify key stakeholders.
o Interview key stakeholders.
o Document the project scope.
 Once we have identified all stakeholders, we identify key stakeholders.
They are the people who determine the success or failure of the
project. They are “decisionmakers.” They are people who can remove
roadblocks or exert influence where you can’t. They are clients,
regulators, legal advisers, political figures, community members, and
activists. They are critics, skeptics, consultants, experts, believers, and
disbelievers. They have “energy around” the project.
 Misalignment early on (“sensitivity to initial conditions”) is the top
cause of later project failure.
 Identify all stakeholders, then narrow to key stakeholders (D.A.N.C.E.)—
Decision, Authority, Need, Connections, Energy.
 Conduct frontloaded interviews to gather expectations early and
prevent rework.
 Use the Project Scope Statement: purpose, description, desired results,
exclusions, priorities, acceptance criteria.
 Project Purpose. “Why are we doing this project?” The purpose
statement should tap into the organization’s goals
 Description = “How would you describe this project?” Here you answer
the how, what, and when of the project.
 Desired Results = “What specific outcomes must we achieve to be
successful?” Outcomes should be described as specifically as possible
and link to a strategic priority: “A measurable increase in reading
fluency and comprehension.” How will you measure those things?
When will you be able to tell you’ve achieved the outcomes?
 Exclusions = “What is out of the project’s scope and should NOT be
included?”
 Feedback Loops = “Who needs to provide feedback? When and how?”
Feedback loops enable you to keep moving toward creating value.
Good feedback helps you keep your initial commitments and be agile
(within reason) so you can make needed corrections or enhancements
to the project’s value along the way
 The principle here is “frontloading,” which means getting as much
input as possible as soon as possible from as many key people as
possible.
 People Resources = “Who are the key team members?” When you
have the luxury of choosing some, or all, of your team members, think
beyond the obvious—whether they have the right technical skills
 Priorities of project = time, quality and budget
 Because by clarifying expectations and prioritizing the list of
constraints, it may give leverage to negotiate a bigger budget and
more resources
 Acceptance Criteria = “Who needs to sign off on the project—and
when?”
 Apply the Question Funnel (open → detailed → closed) to eliminate
ambiguity. I.e. starting from big picture and then getting more specific
and then clarifying if you understood what they were saying correctly.
 DOCUMENT THE PROJECT SCOPE. The outcome of your interviews
should be a Project Scope Statement. The document provides a
“compass” for getting where you need to go.
 Group interviews can surface synergy but require controlled
facilitation.
 Scope creep is avoided by documenting exclusions and aligning
expectations.
 Final scope statement becomes the team’s “compass,” not a rigid
rulebook.
Chapter 4 Notes: Planning the project

 Planning turns the scope into a clear roadmap for smart

decision-making.
 According to PMBOK, the plan document also “identifies the strategies
and actions required to promote productive involvement of
stakeholders in project decision-making and execution.” According to
project leadership expert Alexander Laufer, “Recognizing that firm
commitments cannot be made on the basis of volatile information, you
develop plans in waves as the project unfolds and information becomes
more reliable.”
 There are two steps to create a flexible project plan so everyone knows
what to do:
o Build a risk strategy.
o Create a project schedule.
 Build a risk strategy: Identify risks → Prioritize risks (impact ×
probability) → Plan for risks →TAME (Transfer, Accept, Mitigate,
Eliminate).
o Transfer: Shift the risk to a third party.
o Accept: Acknowledge the risk and deal with it if it occurs.
o Mitigate: Lessen the risk by reducing its probability and/or
impact.
o Eliminate: Remove the risk
 According to Murphy’s Law, “Anything that can go wrong, will.” It’s
much better to plan for the “what-ifs” than to deal with the pain of “if
only.”
 First, identify the risks to the project and then assess their impact. Do
this before you put together your project schedule.
 Impact and Probability risk score ranking:
o How serious is the impact of each risk factor? On a scale of 1–5,
would it be “worst case” (5)? Relatively important (4)? Minimal
impact (2)?
o How probable is the risk factor? Is it going to happen (5)? Is there
afifty-fifty chance that it will happen (3)? Is it unlikely to happen
(1)?
 Once you’ve planned how to manage risk, you can create the project
schedule. The purpose of creating a project schedule is to arrive at the
“critical path,” which is the longest sequence of activities that must
start and end on time and be done with quality.
 Project management programs should feature at least these few
basics:
o A project schedule that spells out who is to do what by when.
o Project tools or templates like the ones in this book.
o Secure file sharing so team members and key stakeholders can
share information.
 Here are the steps you take to create the project schedule and arrive
at the critical path:
1. Develop the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).
2. Sequence activities.
3. Identify and assign people to each activity.
4. Estimate the duration of each activity.
5. Identify the critical path
 The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) lists deliverables, components,
and the activities needed to produce them as it relates to project
success.
 Start a Work Breakdown Structure for your own project:
1. Brainstorm the project’s high-end deliverables.
2. Choose one deliverable and add components.
3. Choose one component and add activities.
 Sequence activities using dependencies (Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start,
etc.). Some activities can happen at the same time. Others are
dependent on other activities.
 Finish-to-Start dependency, where one activity must be finished before
another can start
 Start-to-Start dependency, the start of one task triggers the start of
another.
 Some activities can’t be finished until others are finished: This is a
Finish-to-Finish dependency
 Identify and Assign People to Each Activity. Now that you know what
needs to be done, who’s going to do it?
 Assign people based on the principle: “the goal defines the team.”
 A clear WBS enables people to take on activities that make sense for
them. It also builds your informal authority with your team: You don’t
always need to be the one “assigning” tasks. The team should review
the WBS with you and, when possible, volunteer for assignments. In
keeping with the Five Foundational Behaviors, when team members
get to participate in the scheduling, they buy in more readily and stay
engaged.
 Now that your Work Breakdown Structure is in place and team
assignments have been made, the next step is to estimate how long
each activity will take. Then you’ll know what budget you need and
what the actual schedule looks like.
 Work is the amount of time it takes to do the task. Duration is the
amount of time it will take.
 Duration is the time needed to get the work done, accounting for
everything else you need to do in real life. You do what’s possible. You
might schedule the painting in four-hour shifts over four days, so the
duration of the activity is four days, not sixteen hours.
 Estimate activity duration using realistic constraints; PERT formula
helps reduce bias.

o It’s a simple formula: o is the most optimistic duration, p is the

most pessimistic, and n stands for “normal” or “most likely.”
 Identify the Critical Path—the longest chain of dependent activities
determining total project duration. Any problem on the critical path
threatens the whole project. If any activity on the critical path is late,
the whole project will be late.
 Milestones act as key decision checkpoints to avoid drifting off course.
 A good schedule reveals risk bottlenecks, slack time, and resource
requirements.
 If one critical Finish-to-Start activity isn’t done on time, you have a
bottleneck.
 Doing the work to identify an accurate critical path provides three
amazing benefits:
o First, the project schedule becomes a strategic management
tool. You can identify which team members are needed when,
move people around when pressures or potential opportunities
arise, and stay on target for delivering the value you promised to
deliver.
o Second, you can identify activities that could be done anytime
and are not part of the critical path (these activities are called
“slack” or “float”).
o Third, you can anticipate and plan for bottlenecks on the critical
path.
 In short, the second step in project management is planning. Here you
calculate the cost, take stock of the risks of failure, and create a
 project schedule by which you can lead the team to success on time
and on budget.

Chapter 5 Notes: Engaging the team

 Engagement hinges on accountability + empowerment, not authority.

 According to PMBOK, effective project managers lead their project
teams to “a high level of performance.” That requires team members
who are not only skilled but also highly engaged. There are two key
activities:
o Create a cadence of accountability.
o Hold Performance Conversations.
 But the principle of accountability is simple: When you keep your
commitments, you become a trustworthy human being. You gain the
trust of your team members, who will be encouraged to keep their
commitments as well.
 By keeping your own commitments regularly and consistently, you can
consistently hold people accountable for theirs.
 When team members choose their own commitments, they become
more engaged. When they decide for themselves how to balance the
project with their whirlwind, they become more laser focused.
 Teams suffer from the daily whirlwind unless held to consistent
commitments.
 The Team Accountability Session (short, frequent) has 4 steps:
1. Review the project schedule as a team
2. Report on commitments made in the previous session.
3. Make new commitments to keep the schedule moving.
4. Clear the path for each other
 Great project managers prove that every request, every commitment,
every missed deadline matters. And in doing so, they earn high levels
of respect and follow-through from the team
 Projects often stumble because people stumble. They get lost, they run
into roadblocks, they get diverted. Your job as leader is not to manage
them but to help them manage themselves. That means “clearing the
path” for them, making it possible for them to keep their
commitments.
 Regular cadence increases ownership, transparency, and peer
accountability.
 Leaders must model the Five Foundational Behaviors when holding
others accountable.
  Remember, your job is not just to finish a project—it’s also to build a
great project team. And that means building people up, especially
when times get tough.
 Performance Conversations address behavior gaps using intent, facts,
impact, and action items.
o Clearly, and in a firm but inviting tone of voice, state your intent
and the facts. This is clarifying the problem. Then pause. Give
the team member time to process the information and let it sink
in. Then listen—really listen—to their point of view on the facts.
o Listen with empathy. Put yourself in the team member’s place
and understand their point of view the best you can
o Once the person feels understood, ask them for suggestions on
how to solve the problem and clarify expectations
 Private, respectful feedback improves relationships and restores team
alignment.
 Specific praise (intent → facts → impact) increases intrinsic motivation.
Good way to acknowledge someone for a job well done.
 Successful engagement recognizes teams as human systems, not
mechanical workflows.

Chapter 6 Notes: Track & Adapt

 The Goal for Track & Adapt: “Manage scope with agility to ensure
value.”
 WHY DOES “TRACK & ADAPT” surround the process model? Because
we’re tracking and adapting all the way through the process.

 Throughout the life of the project, we keep track of our plan. We adapt
as needed to minimize problems, capitalize on opportunities, and
protect the critical path
 Tracking = monitoring execution; adapting = adjusting for value, risk,
or change.
 Proactivity is essential: anticipate problems rather than reacting to
them. That’s why we do risk planning early in the project. But to be
proactive is also to change things when they need to be changed
rather than to resist change—especially when a change greatly
enhances the project’s value.
 You can get buried by “scope creep”—the tendency of a project to grow
into an uncontrollable monster. Scope creep might happen because the
scope wasn’t clear in the beginning. Or you may be saying yes to
changes without thinking through their implications. The project
becomes a free-for-all.
 You may find yourself changing your objectives, your process, your
environment—all based on evolving stakeholder requirements that can
add value
 Use feedback loops (frequent, structured) to refine deliverables early
and often.
 The Project Status Report marks deliverables as green/yellow/red and
identifies needed support.
 Overall project health: Make sure stakeholders know whether the
project is on target to be delivered on time and on budget. Crucially,
indicate if the project is at risk or in danger of going off track entirely.
 Status reviews prevent drift, surface issues early, and leverage
stakeholder expertise.
 In the project status review, you should check whether the project is on
track to deliver the business value promised at the scoping stage. Are
you still in compliance with the financial plan? Do financial projections
still make sense? What are the financial implications of any proposed
changes?
 Even if things are going smoothly, just letting stakeholders know how
things are tracking can keep them calm and connected to the project—
and your level of informal authority will continue to rise.
 A black hole happens when one or more deliverables take up more
time and energy than expected, throwing the entire project off
schedule.
 What causes black holes? Maybe you didn’t scope the project properly.
Maybe you didn’t account for the complexity of a deliverable. Maybe
things just changed—stakeholder priorities, the market, technology,
available budget, and so on.
 Distinguish scope creep (cost/time added without value) from scope
discovery (new info that increases value).
 A high-value change will:
1. Increase ROI and/or NPV significantly.
2. Respond to major changes in the marketplace.
3. Speed up results substantially.
 Examine team behavior. Are there too many changes? Is the team truly
focused on the critical path, or are they constantly distracted or
 interrupted? Are they under pressure from a whirlwind of competing
priorities? Are they mistaking “good” or “slack” activities for “critical”
activities?
 The Project Change Request tool evaluates change impact on time,
quality, and budget.
 Proposed change. Define as specifically as possible what the proponent
wants to change in the project scope. Don’t settle for vague language.
A detailed description of the change helps stakeholders judge the
value and the impact of the change on the project plan.
 And be careful about even small changes, because you can get nibbled
to death if they start to mount. “You need to settle on a specification
and be ruthless about delivering things from the core list before
allowing others to be added in,” says one expert.
 There’s a big difference between scope creep and scope discovery. As
a project unfolds, you might learn things that make the original scope
statement inadequate for the real need. The smart project manager
pledges allegiance not to the scope statement but to the outcome the
project is intended to produce. Always, the real goal is to create value,
not to stay married to a project plan.
 Leaders should challenge vague or political change requests with
structured questioning.
 Adaptation must preserve focus on delivering stakeholder value, not
pleasing every request.

Chapter 7 Notes: Close

 The Goal for closing a project: “Celebrate and prepare for future
success.”
 It may seem the answer is obvious (“When it’s done”), but you won’t
really know if the project is over until you do these three things:
o Confirm project close.
o Document lessons learned.
o Celebrate!
 To “confirm fulfillment of project scope” means to walk through the
scope statement to make sure everything is finished. Do the same
thing with the approved change requests to make sure changes have
been done to specification. Projects end only when scope + approved
changes have been fully delivered.
 Construction people call it a “punch list”; they walkthrough the building
at the end of the project and list the little things that might still need
attention
 The Project Close Checklist ensures all scope, sign-offs, and
documentation are complete.
 True success is measured by value delivered, not just time/budget
performance.
 Conduct “project retrospectives”: what went well, what to improve,
unexpected risks, and project management process enhancements
(changes to meet future goals).
 Your lessons learned can help the next project produce value faster,
cheaper, and better.
 Lessons learned are “organizational gold” and must be archived for
future teams.
 Publish successes—helps morale, credibility, and recognition.
 Celebrate contributions; recognition reinforces positive behaviors and
future engagement.
 Even if you deem your project a “mixed success,” your lessons learned
constitute value to your organization and to yourself. It’s called
intellectual capital, and it’s often just as important as financial capital
to the future of your organization.
 Even partial failures can be valuable when analyzed honestly and
respectfully.
 And above all, make sure everyone understands the value they’ve
created—in measurable, concrete terms—so they will know that
they’ve made a meaningful contribution.
 Closing well ensures readiness for the next project cycle.