August 12, 2022 • 53 mins
Project management always has and always will be a crucial function in any organization. In life sciences, that function is changing. Project Managers need to adapt to ensure their teams continue to deliver successful projects in the face of a shifting technology and methodology landscape, while still ensuring compliance. Join us this episode for a fantastic interview with Project Manager extraordinaire, and Founder and CEO of MustardSeed, Steve Curry!
Steve Curry's LinkedIn
MustardSeed's LinkedIn
MustardSeed's Website
Steve Curry, PMP has a passion and calling to help lead projects, programs, teams, and businesses to tremendous success by increasing their maximum potential of operating efficiency through the utilization of program management best practices. He is equally passionate about communicating with clients when project risks and issues arise. It comes from Steve’s extensive experience and background in managing projects and programs of all sizes and his experience in finance, sales, business analysis, and management. Steve has had the benefit of working in PMOs in four different industries. Having spent nearly 20 years in the field, he has dedicated himself to collecting, organizing, compiling, and implementing today's best PM practices. Today Steve leads MustardSeed as Founder and CEO. MustardSeed provides project management services to life science companies.
*Disclaimer: Podcast guest participated in the podcast as an individual subject matter expert and contributor. The views and opinions they share are not necessarily shared by their employer. Nor should any reference to specific products or services be interpreted as commercial endorsements by their current employer.
This is a production of ProcellaRX
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (00:02):
Well, welcome, Steve. Thanks for
joining me on an episode ofsoftware quality today.
Steve Curry (00:07):
Of course, it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for
taking the time.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (00:10):
Yeah, well, everyone, we have Steve
curry today from Mustard SeedCEO and founder and, Steven,
I've been working together for acouple almost a year. Now I'm
helping source some projects,and project management roles
that I've led. And I'm happy tohave him here today to give a
good talk with you about somebasic principles and project
(00:31):
management, some trends andthings that are going on in the
industry. And I thought it'd bereally interesting to chat with.
So with that, I would like towelcome Steve, tell us a little
bit about yourself.
Steve Curry (00:43):
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Thanks, Tori. So I'm aprofessional project and program
manager, I've spent my entirecareer nearly 20 years managing
projects in four differentindustries, and five different
companies now. So I foundedmustard seed a little over a
year ago with the idea thatproject management needs to be
elevated within the lifesciences. Some of the program
(01:04):
management best practices thatare common in aerospace attack,
and construction, really aren'tuniversally applied within the
scientific community. Given theglobal pandemic, it seemed like
the right time to start thecompany and help out the
scientific community withsomething that, in my view was
was desperately needed. So it'sa really exciting time to be in
(01:29):
the scientific community. And wejust try and help where we can.
So it's great to be on thepodcast today and share some
knowledge and, and be a part ofthis community. Great. You know,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (01:41):
one of the things that really drew,
draw me to you, when we startedthinking about working together,
was that your business model,right, and really, the added
value of bringing PMS that hadbroader experience than, than
others that I've seen in the inthe community. So can you tell
me a little bit about how yourecruit for that?
Steve Curry (02:02):
Yeah, yeah, great point. So, you know, when I hire
project managers, it's reallyall about leadership, it starts
and ends with that. So I'm laserfocused on finding people that
can get things done, and thatothers like to, to be a part of
their teams. And so I found whenI worked, I spent about six
(02:24):
years prior to startingmustardseed, working in the life
sciences, supporting bigpharmaceutical companies,
particularly around their laboperations. And what I found was
that it's very difficult tobreak into a life science
company if you don't have ascientific background. And I
think that's a common mistakethat a lot of companies make
(02:48):
when they're hiring projectmanagers, because, you know,
lifelong learners want to learn,you know, their their subject,
they want to learn their newjob. And if you find the right
person who's always leaningforward, who's a leader, who is
easy to get along with peoplelike them, they're smart, it's
very easy for them to pick upthe subject matter within your
(03:11):
company, and with your clientbase. And so oftentimes, there's
an assumption that that takes,you know, too long, it takes
years, it might take years tomaster it, certainly. But to be
quite proficient, it may takemuch less time than that, that
same time, you've, you've openedyourself up to a tirely, more
(03:31):
broad base of project managementprofessionals.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (03:36):
So what do you see as the role of a pm
or program management?
Steve Curry (03:42):
Yeah, I see the role is, is kind of a few
things. One, you need to be aleader and be constantly trying
to accomplish things, right.
Your goal is to deliver upon thescope of work. And so leadership
is certainly number one, butcommunication, need to
communicate out, both out toyour team, the individuals who
(04:02):
are the subject matter expertsgetting the work done, we need
to be able to communicate out topeers and up through leadership
and executive management. So howyou communicate, not just like
you and me are talking throughtheir words, but also how do you
structure emails and how oftenyou send those emails? And do
(04:23):
you do give two sentences? Or doyou give five slides in a
PowerPoint presentation? Youknow, as humans, we're really
visual creatures. So I've alwaysbeen a big believer that the
more visuals you can show tokind of paint that picture, the
better. So metrics and KPIsreally become super important.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (04:43):
Yeah, so I'm shaking and nodding my head
as you say that because one ofthe things I struggle with as a
pm and program management formany years is getting my
customer to remember whatthey've agreed to. Right. You
And so one of the I know, one ofmy gaps is is those emails that
(05:03):
you were talking about, rightreally being articulate with
them. I can articulate verbally,really well. But articulating
via email is hard for me. So Ican see how, you know, when when
the things that you're saying isthe combination of all those
things, right, in conjunctiontogether paints a bigger
picture, right? A fullerpicture?
Steve Curry (05:26):
Absolutely, absolutely. And you bring up a
great point about making sureeveryone's on the same page, in
an electronic fashion. When Istarted my career, we it was in
the construction industry, and,and we used to send faxes,
because you had to have somesort of paper trail, and the
folks we dealt with didn'talways have email. So yeah,
(05:50):
yeah, however, you can get itdown on paper electronically, is
very important, because youalways have that in your back
pocket that you can go back toit.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (06:01):
And then I also find learning styles is
really different for differentpeople, right. And so it's
interesting when you were sayingabout, when you were, when
you're starting, when I started,I started a manufacturing floor,
I was a chemical processengineer, right. And every shift
change, we have to shiftchanges, because we did 12 hour
shifts, right, every shiftchain, we would all sit
together. And we would gothrough the list of everything
(06:23):
that was running, right. And forme, that's just kind of how I
was brought up in this industry,right. And so that's kind of
normal. And when I think aboutsome of the, we'll get into,
like, the scrum principles andstuff like that, like, but
that's just the way I'm wired,right? Like, I'm used to verbal,
you know, sit downs talk throughand move on through my day, I
(06:46):
know my day, right? Not the samefor everybody.
Steve Curry (06:50):
That's very true.
And, and, you know, those, thoseearly jobs you have in your
career really influence how yousee the problems to deal with at
work. I'm influenced in much thesame way where I'd much rather
have a conversation about it,because you and I can solve
something in about four minutes,that we can solve an email in
(07:12):
four days, with probably acombination of 90 minutes of
email time between the two ofus. And the five minute
conversation is much morepleasant. Because we saw cost
Dori Gonzalez-Aceved (07:25):
effective.
Like when I think about all thethe dollars that go into back
and forth and emailing, itdrives me a little bit crazy.
Because, yeah, that two minuteconversation, we can get a lot
done. And also, I know throughCOVID It's been hard in this
virtual world, right? Where manyfolks have had to do this now,
you know, in a different waythat they're not normally used
(07:47):
to. And, and that also posed alot of challenges. All
opportunities, right? But but atthe same time you learning for
everybody?
Steve Curry (07:59):
Yeah, and, and picking up the phone or just,
you know, scheduling 10 minuteson Zoom, whatever you prefer.
It's, you know, the the phonecall these days, it's almost
like a lost art. It's kind oflike a handwritten note, right?
Just you just
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (08:15):
texting.
So I get, you know, individualtexts from customers to now
right. So now it's like theyhave another avenue to to get in
first it was the email they canget me now it's through to my
personal cell phone, which ischallenging, I can't even
communicate with my husband overtext. I don't think I do very
well with the customer.
Steve Curry (08:36):
That's right.
That's right. Yeah, so So you'reright, the communication method
is is super critical, and thecadence as well. So your your
meetings in the factory whereevery day or twice daily, that
was super critical for you to doand, and so some people might
say, well, that's a lot ofmeetings. You know, people get
bogged down by that. But what itdoes is, it makes sure that if
(09:00):
you have a thought that pops inyour head that you need to
communicate with people, youdon't send an email away to 510
individuals, you save it forthat meeting, and you can get it
answered like that, right. Soit, you know, there are
meetings, that and other linesof communication, and I find
those meetings to be the mostimpactful. So, weekly project
(09:21):
management meetings, forinstance, if everyone takes them
seriously and brings to themeeting items that have come up
throughout the week, you know,that's a really valuable use of
everyone's time. Is is that thathour, that two hours, whatever
it says,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (09:40):
yeah. So if we switch to the
methodologies here, because Ithink one of the things I'd like
to talk to you a little bitabout and we've talked about in
the past around moving to anagile PM, sort of way of being
as a methodology as a philosophyand I'm kind of getting out of
(10:01):
the traditional waterfall waysof running projects. We all know
in life sciences, that's beenvery historic, right in a very
waterfall way of either CSP orother things, right. But it's
just a very transactional sortof way of being and moving into
more agile fashion of projectmanagement and program
(10:23):
management. What is yourexperience been? exploring this?
Steve Curry (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, great question. And, and it's, it's
one that a lot of people areasking now, especially with the
different software toolsavailable for project managers,
it used to be 15 years ago, it'sMicrosoft Project. And that's
about all it is, unless you workat a company that has 1000s of
(10:50):
lines to schedule, and then youmight get into something like
premier errors, P six, but eventhat is very similar to, to
Microsoft Project, and, and allthose have traditionally come
with a waterfall approach. Soyou know, in the last 10 years
or so there's been this movementtowards Agile projects,
tradition, particularly aroundsoftware development. And I
(11:12):
think for software developmentprojects, and agile approaches
is really something that folksshould consider, because of the
nature of the work. If you havefixed deliverables, over a fixed
period of time, I'm always moreof a traditionalist or I would
lean towards a waterfallapproach, we have to be open to
the agile approach as well. Andjust because you're managing it
(11:34):
as a waterfall, doesn't mean youcan't also look at it in an
agile. So software tools daysmartsheet.com. And there's,
there's so many others, you canwith a click of a button toggle
between your waterfall scheduleto a Kanban board or planning
board with dates. And I thinkthose visuals are really
(11:55):
important for folks to realize,you know, because it's, it's not
always a beautiful visual, ifit's a Gantt chart, right. And
so it's critical for folks to,to look at all options with that
respect, and, and then scrummeetings. So Scrum and Agile
kind of get mixed togethersometimes, but scrum meetings to
(12:17):
me are let's just meet reallyoften. That's, that's what it
is, and used to have thosemeetings in your factory. And we
used to call them daily standups. But scrum meetings are all
about getting the team togetherevery day, generally, sometimes
twice a day, three times a day.
And working out details in areally fast format. The
alternative will be occasionalmeetings or figure it out via
(12:41):
email. But those are much, muchslower. So the scrum approach,
I'm a huge fan of in the sensethat we need to get folks
together and get them talking.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (12:54):
I like what you're saying, because it
actually circles back to youroriginal points around
leadership, right? So leadershipcommunication, and that constant
feedback loop, right. And ifwe're not meeting regularly, if
we're not all talking the samelanguage, doesn't matter what
approach we're using, whether itbe waterfall or agile, like the
(13:16):
tasks that need to get done, orneed to be understood or
prioritized, or not getting thatconstant attention. I know, that
is one of the things thatworking with complex teams, if
we have customers, and we haveexternal parties, and sometimes
we have teams that you know,could be at least you know,
(13:38):
three or four differentorganizations working together,
right, that you have tosynchronize across lots of
different demands and needs, andhow to do that effectively, is
hard. So while I think agile inthe software development space,
that's kind of like the Easywin, right? Using a more of an
(13:58):
agile program managementperspective, in more complex
programs, I think, can add a lotof value.
Steve Curry (14:09):
Absolutely. And, and there's, you know, a
significant number of lifescience organizations that are
moving towards agile, it's justcritical for what they do. So
it's important to build a teamof project management
professionals that havedifferent experiences, right?
Because if you have an entireorganization that's just done
(14:30):
waterfall, project managementbefore, they're not going to be
open to the suggestion, they maynot be open to suggestions for
an agile approach. So I'dencourage those that are a part
of project managementorganizations or hiring project
managers to get folks withvarying skills and varying
experienced because it really iscritical to look at it from
(14:53):
every angle. And just because1pm hasn't been able to
successfully manage Agileproject in that way doesn't mean
it can't be done. So it's alwaysgood to share ideas and best
practices in that way.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (15:06):
Yeah, so it's almost like having a scrum
of scrums, right, like you wantto. You also want to manage your
PMS in such a way that they knowthat they have access to other
ways of thinking. Right. I alsooften see in life science, the
big, the big ones, where they'reso siloed, right. PMS are off by
(15:29):
themselves, right? Working on ayear long project or more right,
and no access to others withinthe PMO office, because they're
just so overburdened withwhatever. In the task lists are
long for them. And could belonesome.
Steve Curry (15:49):
Absolutely, and, and that, that becomes
problematic, right? Because thatindividual isn't staying current
with the rest of the team andsome of the best practices and
that they're involved with, insome of the tools they're
utilizing. And they just becomelaser focused on on supporting
the team and their, theirclient, which is super
(16:11):
important. But it's also nice totake a step back and to share
ideas, best practices. industrydoes change.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (16:21):
It does.
It really does. And I thinkthat, you know, COVID has
illustrated that, and it'swhether or not we want as an
industry to capitalize on on thelessons of COVID. Right. I mean,
one of the things we've all hadto done is pivot and learn how
to pivot well, and prioritize,look at risks. One of the things
I've talked about a lot on thispodcast is about folks not not
(16:44):
understanding risk enough andand really being willing to have
those nuanced conversationsabout risk, anything around risk
management that you give as, asbest practices for your PMS.
Steve Curry (16:59):
Yeah, it's a great point, because risk management
is so often overlooks within theindustry, right? We talk so much
about the schedule, and how arewe meeting the schedule? And can
you show me, you know, a KPIthat matters, too, but risk
management is critical tomanaging projects that you have
(17:20):
to do it. So the question isjust how often, and how
detailed. My experience, youknow, depending on the type of
project, project manager shouldbe at least capturing those
risks in Excel, you could dosomething basic like Excel, but
a lot of the project managementtools today have risk management
options. And, and it's best tolook not just at the risks, but
(17:44):
the issues and opportunities. Soissues are realized risks, and
opportunities are the inverseof, of risks, and that they're
positive, right, you have anopportunity to do something
really good. So in terms of riskmanagement, I think you have to
really quantify it, and manageit on a weekly basis. So you may
(18:05):
meet less frequent than me thanweekly. But the project manager
needs to constantly be askingthose questions. And in those
scrum meetings, and weeklyproject management meetings,
what are our risks here, orthere's a conversation going on
on the side, that sounds like arisk. Let's capture that. You
don't have to give me all thedetails, but we're going to note
(18:26):
it and we'll talk about it onThursday at a risk meeting.
Those are the sorts of thingsthat they don't make. They don't
cost that much time. But theymake a huge difference over the
period of a project. And I'msure you've seen that time and
time again, throughout yourcareer, that in the last thing
I'll say about risks that isn'tgenerally well done, but it's
(18:46):
fairly simple to do is tocommunicate them and communicate
them to leadership because youcan't manage secrets. And so
executive leadership is alwayslooking to the project
management team to manage theproject, but also to escalate
those risks, because so often,they may exist in more than one
location. So those risks,although they may seem simple to
(19:10):
an individual project manager,if there are a team of project
managers with the same risk, youmay have more luck, and success,
mitigating those risks, becauseyou get the executive
sponsorship to do that.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (19:25):
So part of what you're saying is also as
you're assessing that risk andescalating that, at some point,
there has to be a decision madebased on that risk. Any tips or
our thoughts about that? How toget an actual decision made
based off of the risks that youguys have evaluated?
Steve Curry (19:47):
Yeah, what I've seen work well is once a risk is
identified, the risk ownershould be able to put a plan
together to mitigate the risk.
Right and you If they can'tmitigate the risk, then it
becomes an issue because it's onmitigate double, or it can just
go into the category of acceptedrisk, right. But generally
(20:08):
speaking, you should be able tomitigate those risks so that
they're not as severe if they doissues. So a detailed plan is
really important. And it doesn'thave to be anything elaborate.
But something as simple as theseare the five steps, I'm going to
take in here, the dates, I'mgoing to meet those deadlines
to, to mitigate that risk, andto eliminate it or reduce it.
(20:33):
And then the project manager candecide those risks for the
project those steps, the stepsto mitigate the risks should go
into the schedule, or we'regoing to manage them separately,
but either way, there should bea tracker in place for risks and
the dates. As you step thosedown from a, maybe it's this
(20:54):
risk severity five, and once Icomplete this milestone, next
Friday, that reduces thatseverity from a five down to a
four, and I do the next step andreduce it to three. So really,
it's it's that it's a commonmisconception to lay out those
steps in such a detailed way.
(21:15):
But if you think about it,that's what has to get done.
Either way, whether you write itdown formally or not. The only
way to mitigate the risk is tohave some leadership and
actively mitigate it.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (21:30):
One other point when you were saying that,
I thought interesting, so. Soalso what you're prescribing is
a metric formula to meet to tomeasure risk. And I don't see
that often in a lot of thecustomers that I work with,
right. So can you tell me alittle bit about that? Because I
think metrics are important parthere.
Steve Curry (21:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Generally, its severity
and impact. So you go on a scaleof one to five, what's the
severity, what's the impact. Andso, you know, the worst case
risk would have a severity of afive and an impact of a five.
And so that total risk would befive times 525, if you were to
exercise it, but also, you couldsee it in in a grid format. So
(22:16):
if you summarize fewer largeprojects, you might want to put
something like this together,and there's templates online,
you could find in Excel, it'sbasically a five by five matrix
that is kind of green in thebottom left and red in the top
right and in yellow in betweenwhere it's, you know, severity
and impact on the X and Y axis.
And you would, you know, have adot for each risks, risk in that
(22:39):
category. And so, at a summarylevel, you'd be able to see,
okay, this project doesn't haveany really bad risks that we
need to worry about today. Or,yeah, it does. And on an
individual project level, that'simportant as a project manager,
but if you're leading a projectmanagement organization, if
you're leading IT organization,if you're leading a company, you
(23:01):
may want to think about thatsort of a roll up and format for
your organization, because itreally provides the visibility
in a simplistic way to all thedifferent risks that are going
on within a program.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (23:18):
Great, thanks for that. Um, that also
comes back around to KPIs, Iguess, as one of the things that
I did want to talk to you about,because I was listening to
another podcast this weekend,and someone was saying about
their work. They had came in andit was like 30 KPIs. And they're
like, What does this even mean,you know, and it's like, that's
(23:39):
great question like. So what aresome of your recommendations
around KPIs around projectmanagement?
Steve Curry (23:46):
Yeah, KPIs, I find are really important. But
they're really important ifpeople understand what they
mean, just like you said, and Icould show you a whole bunch of
KPIs that mean a lot to me andnot much to you. So it's really,
it's really taking a bottoms upapproach to the organization and
the KPIs that you utilize. Soyou have an internal project
(24:08):
management office, what are theKPIs we've always used to people
understand them? If they do, weshould try and refine them a
little bit, maybe. But that's agood place to start. What
doesn't really work well isparachuting in a new approach
that no one's seen before. Andyou rip the old one out, put the
new one in and say, these areyour new KPIs. Hope you like
(24:29):
them. That generally does notwork. So I would say, you know,
the KPIs that that are reallymost effective are the ones that
people understand. And you canstart small say, Look, we want
to build our KPIs. Here are thefirst five we're going to
introduce, let's get buy in onthem. Let's tweak them as
needed. But let's start smalland get agreement and once we're
(24:52):
all comfortable with these, wecan introduce some more. But so
it's really about gainingmomentum.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (24:56):
But But I think the part of the key I
wonder if you Think about thisis, is the bottom up versus the
top down approach to what thoseeven mean? Right? So getting the
buy in from the people that dothe day to day work, right? I
think is, in my opinion, morecritical than what an upper
(25:17):
management folks think thatshould be measured. And this
needing to be a more transparentor leavin listening to the day
to day worker to understand thetrue pain points. I'm a firm
believer in gamble walks andright really like walking in the
shoes and understanding as aleader, because if you don't, I
(25:40):
don't know what we're reallytrying to accomplish. And at the
end of the day, there are peopledoing this, right.
Steve Curry (25:48):
Yeah, it's a great point. And sometimes there's a
lot, there's a few layersbetween the subject matter
experts that are doing the workand have to provide status that
feeds those KPIs. And thoseindividuals who are looking at
at those KPIs and metrics and soI, I totally agree with your
sentiment, you know, gimble,walks, having executive
(26:11):
leadership sit with subjectmatter experts. While we
collectively agree on KPIs,that's certainly a best practice
that that is recommended.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (26:23):
So I know that there's a lot of new tools
out there. Are there things thatyou look for in setting up a
program? More or less tools evencome into play? Or do you think
about other things first, how doyou think about setting up a
PMO?
Steve Curry (26:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think within a PMO, the
tools are important, but I'dprobably put them third, you
know, that the right people,I've always found is most
important. And then it's reallythe the processes that you put
in place. So we're talking aboutrisks, just agreeing that risks
are important for yourorganization, to manage, I think
(27:05):
is an important step. And onceyou have those people and you
agree on what's important withyour processes, I would look at
the software to kind of helpwith the communication and the
management of all of that. Andit's easier now than it ever has
been to get lost in whichproject management software to
(27:27):
use. I'm glad you're laughingbecause I went down this, I went
down this deep dive to find theperfect project management
solution. And 47 softwarepackages later, I was still
scratching my head. So
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (27:44):
there's a big pet peeve of me on all tool
front, right, like tools ortools or tools, right? It's what
you want to do with them andwhether or not you use them,
right? I was just doing internaltraining on my team for Agile.
And, you know, Microsoft Excelhas 40 Plus features. 40,000
(28:06):
sorry, 40,000 Plus features,right? How many do we use on an
average day to day basis? Right?
Seriously? And so it is only asgood as what we do. I love that
there's lots of tools out there.
No one, you have to find theright one that's works for you.
(28:26):
Right?
Steve Curry (28:28):
That's right. And so you have to really define
what it is you want out of yourproject management software. Or
else you will get lost veryquickly in the in the sea of
options that you have. And the
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (28:45):
really big learning just just I want to
just hone in on this for onesecond. Because understanding
what you want. I think that'sthe fundamental message if
anything we can ever get out onthis podcast is you need to
understand what you want out ofa tool in order to be able to
use a tool. It's reallyimportant. None of us spend time
(29:08):
thinking about that. It's apainful conversation. I think
for some people.
Steve Curry (29:12):
It's very true that I bet if you were to go back to
your first job, you hadrudimentary tools might have
been a pen and paper. If myfirst project management role,
it was pencil and paper. And theteam did a great job with that
as long as it was the rightpeople and the right price, the
whiteboard.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (29:29):
That's all we had. We had a whiteboard,
we do for you know, 10 reactortrains on the whiteboard, and we
track them every day. That was,you know, it, it worked because
that's the goal. We just neededto know that information. Right.
So what is the goal? What is theactual intended use of what you
want to do? A lot of these toolsgotten really powerful, right?
Steve Curry (29:53):
Yeah, they're really powerful. And they're,
they, when you first start tolook at them, they're all kind
of similar But then you start torealize that there are many that
are quite different. And theprice points are different too.
But yeah, listing therequirements as specifically as
you can, really is critical, Iwent into looking at the
(30:13):
software packages with what Ithought was a pretty defined
list of requirements. And then Irealized it needed to be even
more detailed, because of howmany options there are. So I
would just encourage folks tounderstand that the journey to
find the right software for yourprojects may take a while if
(30:37):
you're going to look at so manyoptions. But there's a lot of
good project management toolsout there and, you know, find
out what's important to you Isit is it, I need to manage a
schedule. But I also want tomanage risks, I need to
communicate out to my team. Sowe need to share information,
share status, also communicateup through leadership, really
(30:59):
list out what those are, it alsoreally matters how big your
schedules are. So I would say ifyour schedules are going to be
over 1000 line items long 95% ofthose schedule, project
management software packagesprobably aren't for you. But
most people manage schedulesthat are 1000 lines or less. So
(31:24):
the majority of the projectmanagement software packages
would generally be acceptable.
So really is critical tounderstand specifically your
your use case for your company.
And that you also may need morethan one software package
depending on how complex yourwork is.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (31:42):
Let's talk about that detailed work
breakdown structure you're justtalking about. I cringe when
when you said 1000 lines. Ipersonally like to do more on
the milestone basis and leavemore flexibility within the team
to be able to manage their dayto day task. That's just mine. I
(32:02):
don't like to micromanage I trymy best not to. But I'm sure
I've been accused of as well, onboth sides. But so what is that
balance? How much should youreally get into your project
plans?
Steve Curry (32:17):
Yeah, great question. The general guidance
on duration, and hours for atask or a line item, as it just
referenced would be, you know,two weeks or less, and generally
eight hours or more. So I thinkyou could still accomplish what
you're describing notmicromanaging someone's work. If
(32:37):
you gave them a 10 day 10working day project task, right,
you wouldn't be in the day today details. But you know, at
the end, they would accomplishx. And so how they do it is up
to them. And so there are a lotof companies, you know, drug
development, perhaps may have athree year program with three
(32:58):
year program is likely to have acouple of 1000 lines if you
detail it down to the one to twoweek work package. level. And so
at one point in my career, I hada 50,000 line schedule that I
was managing. And every singleweek, I'd run a critical path
chart, you know, top five top 10critical paths to each of those
(33:22):
milestones. And so that level ofdetailed schedule requires
specific software. But thesedays, it's much more of a
collaborative work environment,I would encourage every one to
think about the role theproject, right? A lot of the
software packages today, makeproject management, a team
sport. And we have projectmanagers. So that subject matter
(33:46):
experts don't have to projectmanage. And so when you're
picking your software packagewhen you're developing your
project management team, thinkabout that. Do I want my lead
scientists or my IT personreally spending their time in
monday.com, updating status andmoving things around? Maybe, but
(34:10):
maybe not. Maybe you want theproject manager to own that
schedule. And the only thingthey rely on the subject matter
experts for is status. How didyou do today? How did you do
this week? And that's what I'veseen work really well as the
role of the project managergives back time to those on the
team? Because that's a largepart of of their roll.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (34:32):
Yeah, I find that when that's done well,
it works really, really well.
And I think that takes a lotmore time than one thinks. I
think this is part of themindset that I'd like to see
shift is, you know, PM 2pm. Andthe way that you've described
it, have a more central role ina team and not just thought of
(34:54):
as, oh, just 10% or 20% of Thetotal time, it's actually a full
time job. And keeping up on thatwhen you're utilizing your
sneeze in that way. Becausethere's a lot of other
background stuff that you haveto go and put together and piece
together and make sense of andyou might have to reach out to
five different people in orderto understand everything that's
(35:17):
going on together. And oh, whenthen do the communication and
make sure that everyone's awareof all of that, right? Like,
there's a lot of maintenancethat goes behind the scenes that
I think is underappreciatedundervalued and often
shortchanged in life sciences.
Steve Curry (35:37):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's it,
sometimes we get into thesituation where we have these
project managers who aren'ttrained as project managers,
they're very good at their, youknow, their SME role. And they
are excellent communicators, sothey get put into a pm role. So
all of a sudden, they're anaccidental PM, and if that's
(35:59):
what they want to do with theircareer, that's terrific. You
know, and they can go down thecareer path of of training and
things like that. But so often,those folks are uncomfortable in
those situations and, andactually really liked the
subject matter expert role thatthey were in before. So it is
critical to make sure that, thatyou're intentional about who's
fulfilling those projectmanagement duties, because if
(36:22):
it's pm by committee, if it's10% of the total SME hours, and
everyone does it, or if it's theproject manager, but still
everybody does it, that can leadto some culture issues, and some
folks that are not as happy intheir role as they could be if
they were just left to do theirwork. So I think of large part
(36:45):
of what makes a pm successfulis, you know, kind of like an
iceberg, you see on top five10%. But the majority of it is
below the sea. And that's what agood pm does is take the
information in that meeting. Butthen you spend an hour or two
digesting it, disseminating itto the team communicating in and
(37:08):
out, really, a lot of that workis done on an individual basis.
Because you're not taking thetime others will be doing.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (37:16):
I also think that there's there needs
to be the authority that goeswith that. Right. And what I
mean by that is, I often alsosee PMs in a variety of roles
and organizations not haveinfluence or the ability to
(37:36):
influence direction that isneeded, even though the
collective may be saying, oh,yeah, this is a risk over here.
But then there's a bigger riskover here, and the PM, for
whatever variety of reasons notnecessarily have the authority
to then say, okay, we need toshift and move over here. And
(37:57):
I'm wondering how this playsinto with an agile framework
where there's, if we do agileproject management, right,
there's a product owner, if youwill, right, that should call
the shots and should provide thedirection of the roadmap. Right?
But what is the role of a pm andan agile framework?
Steve Curry (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's great question, when you have
those product owners, it's, it'scritical for the P, the project
manager to work closely withthem. And it's a matrix
organization, most likely,that's how most organizations
are now and, and so the projectmanager is responsible for
delivering without the authorityor the direct employees
(38:40):
underneath him or her. And so Ithink it is it is critical to
have a structure within yourcompany so that a project
manager can operate within amore matrix organization. But
the culture is such that aproject manager can raise their
hand and say, I need help.
Product Manager, executiveleadership, I have something
(39:01):
here that I can't solve myself.
And that needs to be looked atas a strength rather than
weakness, right? An organizationthat has people raising their
hands for help, is a veryhealthy organization. And so I
would just encourage folks to,to, you know, it's not easy to
do, it's easy to say, but, butto continue to have project
(39:24):
managers who are comfortableraising their hands to ask for
help. And product managers,executive leaders that are
always looking for those handsto be raised that they can jump
in and assist.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (39:37):
It's really important and I
completely agree with you andit's hard to get everyone to be
on the same page, especiallywhen you have multiple
organizations all playing thosethose roles sometimes. One of
the things when you were talkingalso, maybe think of the in
terms of how, how many projectsshould a Single PM, kind of
(40:01):
manage versus the size of theproject? Is there a way in which
you balance that? How do youthink about that?
Steve Curry (40:09):
Yeah, it really depends on the type of project
I've seen as many SMEs toproject manager, as, you know,
maybe 20, to 130 to 130, SMEs to1pm. But I've seen some projects
that require those daily scrummeetings, and they're, they're
(40:30):
super fast in nature, maybethey're on the it and that are
probably closer to five to oneor six to one, SMEs project
manager. So it depends largelyon what you're focused on what
your deliverables are, yourscope of work. And then how
autonomous the team is. So thestructure that project manager,
(40:53):
is it project management bycommittee, but you have a PM, or
is it project manager is, isreally managing quite a bit. And
so all those factors play intoit. But I'd also encourage folks
to think about projectmanagement in a non binary way,
oftentimes, within yourorganization, you can find a
partial project manager. And soit's not all or nothing. And the
(41:17):
earlier you get a projectmanager involved, the less you
may need them over time, a lotof times project managers bring
in, brought in to rescue aproject. But if there's a
project manager who properlyscopes it upfront for contracts
assigned before the project iskicked off, a lot of times you
can mitigate the need to projectrescue. And so your your overall
(41:39):
pm hours will be less.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (41:43):
So when you look towards the next couple
years, are there any trends orthings that you see in the
industry that that you guys, youguys are prepping for or in
terms of like, you know, maybechanging how you do things from
a pan perspective?
Steve Curry (42:00):
Yeah, I think the the evolution of Agile is
certainly going to continue, Ithink you bring up a great topic
there. And so the next fewyears, I think the majority of
of the change will be in thatarea, but also the software that
accompanies that, I don't thinkthe software packages that are
available today are done. Thoseare SAS based businesses that
(42:22):
are always going to continue to,you know, look to improve. So
you probably will see someconsolidation in that, in that
industry. You know, I mentioned47 Different software options
today, I think that'll be lessin five years, but there'll be
some clear winners there. But Iwould like the industry to get,
(42:44):
you know more back to basics,more back to the best practices,
you brought up risk management.
But, you know, a completeintegrated master schedule,
change management, changecontrol, that is so often
overlooked, maybe not in yourworld as much as I've seen
elsewhere, but it's very oftenoverlooked. And then we don't do
a whole lot of Earned ValueManagement in life sciences. But
for large programs, you know,EVM, or EVM light is, as it's
(43:07):
sometimes referred to, if youkind of do EVM tell me more
about can really be beneficial.
Yeah, or value managementbasically just, you know,
keeping track of time of eachSME, and making that time they
spent, you know, better costaccounting with that, but also
gives you a percent complete,you can measure and roll up
(43:29):
quite easily. Those are thingsthat that are infrastructure
changes for a lot oforganizations to implement that,
I'm not going to say it's easyto do. But for larger
organizations are ones that youreally need to keep track of
your costs. And knowing theexact percent complete, might be
important to you. Those sorts ofthings should should certainly
(43:50):
be considered. Yeah,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (43:52):
it's interesting, because one of the
things I get asked a lot of whenI'm engaging with someone was,
how much time is my team reallygonna have to spend with you?
Right? It's almost like, tryingto, and, you know, it's not
like, they're not spending a lotof money. They're spending money
for something that they say thatthey want. And then it's like,
(44:14):
how much do I really have to getaway with? Like, is it 5% of my
time, but you know, like, and itleads me to think, you know, one
is I know, we're, a lot of usare short on time and resources,
right. And so everyone's tryingto do with what they have. But
(44:34):
it also I see that tiedintimately to the quality and
the output of things that theywant to produce, right. And so
if you're wanting to engage in aprogram and do a true
transformation and agile, right,software testing, for example,
there's a lot of things thathave to go into that
transformation, other than ahiring a consultant or a company
(44:58):
to come in and give you thetools to do that, right? And so,
when I look at agile pm ngright, I look at it at a much
broader level to things thatyou've pointed out, like the
change management and how do wehow do we do that? How do we
continuously adjust and look forthat added value? But if the
companies organizations aren'ton board, full wholeheartedly
(45:21):
with that, that a transformationmeans an investment in their
people in their processes andtheir technologies? And the
whole thing? I don't know whatwhat we're really doing
together, right? Because it willalways then only be superficial,
right? It will be, oh, we getthis nice, fancy tool. Right.
(45:44):
But it doesn't go anywhere withit, or the adoption doesn't get
there. And they don't get theirtheir ROI that they they even
think about even when you'retalking about these 47, you
know, the new tools out there.
We see that a lot to themimplementing these some of these
new project management tools,which are great, but it's
everything that comes afterimplementation, I guess, is my
(46:07):
point. Right. And typically, therole of a pm is doing some
implementation. Right. And Ithink of it a little bit more
holistically, and I suspect youdo as well, right? There's an
ongoing program associated tothose tools that are getting
implemented. And it's not just adiscrete task.
Steve Curry (46:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
Right, and, and how it fitswithin the organization's
critical. Know, I'm sure you'veseen some of your clients,
they've implemented a project orprogram. But another group
within the organization wouldbenefit as well, they either
didn't know or didn't have thefunding, and there wasn't the
sponsorship, at a high level tomake that dream become a
reality. I think projectmanagement within the industry
(46:52):
is what you put into it. And youknow, another best practice,
it's so often overlooked is thelessons learned review. So we
did all this great work project,it's done, let's spend 90
minutes talking about what wentwell, what didn't go well, what
we would change moving forward,and how valuable it is for the
(47:12):
executive sponsor or the CEO.
You know, whoever's in charge atthe organization to have a
repository of lessons learnedfrom the last 12 months, or the
last five years, I think that'sinvaluable as an organization
grows, to kind of keep ahistory. But also, just to get
(47:34):
better for the next project. Idid a lessons learned a few
weeks ago, and the team hadnever done one and they were
thrilled. This is great. We'regoing to pull this out on you
know, right, it
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (47:43):
doesn't have to be fancy at all. It's
just literally what you said,what went well, what didn't
work. Well, what are we going todo moving forward? That's it
three questions to ask everyone.
I do get some input more thanothers. But it also gives folks
a chance to articulate you know,that, again, back to our
beginning of our conversation,learning styles are different,
(48:04):
right? Not everything works thesame way for everyone. And if
they don't have a chance tocommunicate that back in a
feedback loop, there is nochance for change.
Steve Curry (48:17):
Exactly, right.
That's exactly right. And thatupfront, upfront planning is, is
critical. And, you know, oneaspect that haven't seen a whole
lot of recently is the formalGate Review process, right? When
when there's funding in placefor these large initiatives, a
gate review, either technical orfinancial, or both to say, let's
(48:40):
make sure that before we proceedwith this money, this time, is
effort that the VP of this areaplus his supporting functions
all sit down in a room andapprove it. And that gate
reviews on our schedule. And sowe're tracking to it, and we're
(49:02):
getting all those things done toit. And so it's really taken a
comprehensive overall, look at,you know, the company's approach
to managing projects andprograms. That I think is
critical. Project management, tome isn't just someone that you
hire for an individual group.
It's how do you how do youmanage the company from a
(49:23):
programmatic standpoint? Becausea lot of the principles that
make sense for a simple $10,000project that last three weeks,
really do apply for a companythat is, you know, could be a
multi billion dollar.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (49:38):
Yeah.
Well, Steve, it's been apleasure chatting with you. Can
you leave our audience withlike, one or two key nuggets
that you wanted to make surethat we reiterate what's
important?
Steve Curry (49:53):
Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, if you're in a
role to hire project managers,please think outside the box
folks from other indies STS maybe really looking to get into
the life sciences and may have aunique perspective on project
management that can really addvalue to your organization. I
was one of those individualsabout 10 years ago, I caught a
(50:15):
break and landed a role at alife science company. And, and
I've been the beneficiary ofthat, and hopefully my clients
have as well. So I'd say ifyou're in a hiring role, please
think outside the box for forthose resumes that come in from
other industries. And if you'restanding up a project management
organization, I'd say, you know,think big, make sure it's, it's
(50:35):
the best practices that you'regoing to apply to your
organization are going to, youknow, transmit throughout the
organization and think if you'regoing to be in a functional role
versus, you know, delivering theprojects, all that is critical
as you set up the team. So,hopefully, that is useful to all
of you listening today.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (50:55):
Great.
Well tell us how can we findyou?
Steve Curry (50:59):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking company that I lead
is mustard seed. We have awebsite, www dot Mustard Seed
pmo.com. And you can alwaysreach out to me at Steve at
Mustard Seed pmo.com.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (51:15):
Awesome.
Great, Steve. Well, thanks somuch for a lovely conversation
today.
Steve Curry (51:20):
Thanks, Tori.
Appreciate the time. All right.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (51:23):
Take care.
Well, welcome, Steve. Thanks for
joining me on an episode ofsoftware quality today.
Steve Curry (00:07):
Of course, it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for
taking the time.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (00:10):
Yeah, well, everyone, we have Steve
curry today from Mustard SeedCEO and founder and, Steven,
I've been working together for acouple almost a year. Now I'm
helping source some projects,and project management roles
that I've led. And I'm happy tohave him here today to give a
good talk with you about somebasic principles and project
(00:31):
management, some trends andthings that are going on in the
industry. And I thought it'd bereally interesting to chat with.
So with that, I would like towelcome Steve, tell us a little
bit about yourself.
Steve Curry (00:43):
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Thanks, Tori. So I'm aprofessional project and program
manager, I've spent my entirecareer nearly 20 years managing
projects in four differentindustries, and five different
companies now. So I foundedmustard seed a little over a
year ago with the idea thatproject management needs to be
elevated within the lifesciences. Some of the program
(01:04):
management best practices thatare common in aerospace attack,
and construction, really aren'tuniversally applied within the
scientific community. Given theglobal pandemic, it seemed like
the right time to start thecompany and help out the
scientific community withsomething that, in my view was
was desperately needed. So it'sa really exciting time to be in
(01:29):
the scientific community. And wejust try and help where we can.
So it's great to be on thepodcast today and share some
knowledge and, and be a part ofthis community. Great. You know,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (01:41):
one of the things that really drew,
draw me to you, when we startedthinking about working together,
was that your business model,right, and really, the added
value of bringing PMS that hadbroader experience than, than
others that I've seen in the inthe community. So can you tell
me a little bit about how yourecruit for that?
Steve Curry (02:02):
Yeah, yeah, great point. So, you know, when I hire
project managers, it's reallyall about leadership, it starts
and ends with that. So I'm laserfocused on finding people that
can get things done, and thatothers like to, to be a part of
their teams. And so I found whenI worked, I spent about six
(02:24):
years prior to startingmustardseed, working in the life
sciences, supporting bigpharmaceutical companies,
particularly around their laboperations. And what I found was
that it's very difficult tobreak into a life science
company if you don't have ascientific background. And I
think that's a common mistakethat a lot of companies make
(02:48):
when they're hiring projectmanagers, because, you know,
lifelong learners want to learn,you know, their their subject,
they want to learn their newjob. And if you find the right
person who's always leaningforward, who's a leader, who is
easy to get along with peoplelike them, they're smart, it's
very easy for them to pick upthe subject matter within your
(03:11):
company, and with your clientbase. And so oftentimes, there's
an assumption that that takes,you know, too long, it takes
years, it might take years tomaster it, certainly. But to be
quite proficient, it may takemuch less time than that, that
same time, you've, you've openedyourself up to a tirely, more
(03:31):
broad base of project managementprofessionals.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (03:36):
So what do you see as the role of a pm
or program management?
Steve Curry (03:42):
Yeah, I see the role is, is kind of a few
things. One, you need to be aleader and be constantly trying
to accomplish things, right.
Your goal is to deliver upon thescope of work. And so leadership
is certainly number one, butcommunication, need to
communicate out, both out toyour team, the individuals who
(04:02):
are the subject matter expertsgetting the work done, we need
to be able to communicate out topeers and up through leadership
and executive management. So howyou communicate, not just like
you and me are talking throughtheir words, but also how do you
structure emails and how oftenyou send those emails? And do
(04:23):
you do give two sentences? Or doyou give five slides in a
PowerPoint presentation? Youknow, as humans, we're really
visual creatures. So I've alwaysbeen a big believer that the
more visuals you can show tokind of paint that picture, the
better. So metrics and KPIsreally become super important.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (04:43):
Yeah, so I'm shaking and nodding my head
as you say that because one ofthe things I struggle with as a
pm and program management formany years is getting my
customer to remember whatthey've agreed to. Right. You
And so one of the I know, one ofmy gaps is is those emails that
(05:03):
you were talking about, rightreally being articulate with
them. I can articulate verbally,really well. But articulating
via email is hard for me. So Ican see how, you know, when when
the things that you're saying isthe combination of all those
things, right, in conjunctiontogether paints a bigger
picture, right? A fullerpicture?
Steve Curry (05:26):
Absolutely, absolutely. And you bring up a
great point about making sureeveryone's on the same page, in
an electronic fashion. When Istarted my career, we it was in
the construction industry, and,and we used to send faxes,
because you had to have somesort of paper trail, and the
folks we dealt with didn'talways have email. So yeah,
(05:50):
yeah, however, you can get itdown on paper electronically, is
very important, because youalways have that in your back
pocket that you can go back toit.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (06:01):
And then I also find learning styles is
really different for differentpeople, right. And so it's
interesting when you were sayingabout, when you were, when
you're starting, when I started,I started a manufacturing floor,
I was a chemical processengineer, right. And every shift
change, we have to shiftchanges, because we did 12 hour
shifts, right, every shiftchain, we would all sit
together. And we would gothrough the list of everything
(06:23):
that was running, right. And forme, that's just kind of how I
was brought up in this industry,right. And so that's kind of
normal. And when I think aboutsome of the, we'll get into,
like, the scrum principles andstuff like that, like, but
that's just the way I'm wired,right? Like, I'm used to verbal,
you know, sit downs talk throughand move on through my day, I
(06:46):
know my day, right? Not the samefor everybody.
Steve Curry (06:50):
That's very true.
And, and, you know, those, thoseearly jobs you have in your
career really influence how yousee the problems to deal with at
work. I'm influenced in much thesame way where I'd much rather
have a conversation about it,because you and I can solve
something in about four minutes,that we can solve an email in
(07:12):
four days, with probably acombination of 90 minutes of
email time between the two ofus. And the five minute
conversation is much morepleasant. Because we saw cost
Dori Gonzalez-Aceved (07:25):
effective.
Like when I think about all thethe dollars that go into back
and forth and emailing, itdrives me a little bit crazy.
Because, yeah, that two minuteconversation, we can get a lot
done. And also, I know throughCOVID It's been hard in this
virtual world, right? Where manyfolks have had to do this now,
you know, in a different waythat they're not normally used
(07:47):
to. And, and that also posed alot of challenges. All
opportunities, right? But but atthe same time you learning for
everybody?
Steve Curry (07:59):
Yeah, and, and picking up the phone or just,
you know, scheduling 10 minuteson Zoom, whatever you prefer.
It's, you know, the the phonecall these days, it's almost
like a lost art. It's kind oflike a handwritten note, right?
Just you just
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (08:15):
texting.
So I get, you know, individualtexts from customers to now
right. So now it's like theyhave another avenue to to get in
first it was the email they canget me now it's through to my
personal cell phone, which ischallenging, I can't even
communicate with my husband overtext. I don't think I do very
well with the customer.
Steve Curry (08:36):
That's right.
That's right. Yeah, so So you'reright, the communication method
is is super critical, and thecadence as well. So your your
meetings in the factory whereevery day or twice daily, that
was super critical for you to doand, and so some people might
say, well, that's a lot ofmeetings. You know, people get
bogged down by that. But what itdoes is, it makes sure that if
(09:00):
you have a thought that pops inyour head that you need to
communicate with people, youdon't send an email away to 510
individuals, you save it forthat meeting, and you can get it
answered like that, right. Soit, you know, there are
meetings, that and other linesof communication, and I find
those meetings to be the mostimpactful. So, weekly project
(09:21):
management meetings, forinstance, if everyone takes them
seriously and brings to themeeting items that have come up
throughout the week, you know,that's a really valuable use of
everyone's time. Is is that thathour, that two hours, whatever
it says,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (09:40):
yeah. So if we switch to the
methodologies here, because Ithink one of the things I'd like
to talk to you a little bitabout and we've talked about in
the past around moving to anagile PM, sort of way of being
as a methodology as a philosophyand I'm kind of getting out of
(10:01):
the traditional waterfall waysof running projects. We all know
in life sciences, that's beenvery historic, right in a very
waterfall way of either CSP orother things, right. But it's
just a very transactional sortof way of being and moving into
more agile fashion of projectmanagement and program
(10:23):
management. What is yourexperience been? exploring this?
Steve Curry (10:28):
Yeah, yeah, great question. And, and it's, it's
one that a lot of people areasking now, especially with the
different software toolsavailable for project managers,
it used to be 15 years ago, it'sMicrosoft Project. And that's
about all it is, unless you workat a company that has 1000s of
(10:50):
lines to schedule, and then youmight get into something like
premier errors, P six, but eventhat is very similar to, to
Microsoft Project, and, and allthose have traditionally come
with a waterfall approach. Soyou know, in the last 10 years
or so there's been this movementtowards Agile projects,
tradition, particularly aroundsoftware development. And I
(11:12):
think for software developmentprojects, and agile approaches
is really something that folksshould consider, because of the
nature of the work. If you havefixed deliverables, over a fixed
period of time, I'm always moreof a traditionalist or I would
lean towards a waterfallapproach, we have to be open to
the agile approach as well. Andjust because you're managing it
(11:34):
as a waterfall, doesn't mean youcan't also look at it in an
agile. So software tools daysmartsheet.com. And there's,
there's so many others, you canwith a click of a button toggle
between your waterfall scheduleto a Kanban board or planning
board with dates. And I thinkthose visuals are really
(11:55):
important for folks to realize,you know, because it's, it's not
always a beautiful visual, ifit's a Gantt chart, right. And
so it's critical for folks to,to look at all options with that
respect, and, and then scrummeetings. So Scrum and Agile
kind of get mixed togethersometimes, but scrum meetings to
(12:17):
me are let's just meet reallyoften. That's, that's what it
is, and used to have thosemeetings in your factory. And we
used to call them daily standups. But scrum meetings are all
about getting the team togetherevery day, generally, sometimes
twice a day, three times a day.
And working out details in areally fast format. The
alternative will be occasionalmeetings or figure it out via
(12:41):
email. But those are much, muchslower. So the scrum approach,
I'm a huge fan of in the sensethat we need to get folks
together and get them talking.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (12:54):
I like what you're saying, because it
actually circles back to youroriginal points around
leadership, right? So leadershipcommunication, and that constant
feedback loop, right. And ifwe're not meeting regularly, if
we're not all talking the samelanguage, doesn't matter what
approach we're using, whether itbe waterfall or agile, like the
(13:16):
tasks that need to get done, orneed to be understood or
prioritized, or not getting thatconstant attention. I know, that
is one of the things thatworking with complex teams, if
we have customers, and we haveexternal parties, and sometimes
we have teams that you know,could be at least you know,
(13:38):
three or four differentorganizations working together,
right, that you have tosynchronize across lots of
different demands and needs, andhow to do that effectively, is
hard. So while I think agile inthe software development space,
that's kind of like the Easywin, right? Using a more of an
(13:58):
agile program managementperspective, in more complex
programs, I think, can add a lotof value.
Steve Curry (14:09):
Absolutely. And, and there's, you know, a
significant number of lifescience organizations that are
moving towards agile, it's justcritical for what they do. So
it's important to build a teamof project management
professionals that havedifferent experiences, right?
Because if you have an entireorganization that's just done
(14:30):
waterfall, project managementbefore, they're not going to be
open to the suggestion, they maynot be open to suggestions for
an agile approach. So I'dencourage those that are a part
of project managementorganizations or hiring project
managers to get folks withvarying skills and varying
experienced because it really iscritical to look at it from
(14:53):
every angle. And just because1pm hasn't been able to
successfully manage Agileproject in that way doesn't mean
it can't be done. So it's alwaysgood to share ideas and best
practices in that way.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (15:06):
Yeah, so it's almost like having a scrum
of scrums, right, like you wantto. You also want to manage your
PMS in such a way that they knowthat they have access to other
ways of thinking. Right. I alsooften see in life science, the
big, the big ones, where they'reso siloed, right. PMS are off by
(15:29):
themselves, right? Working on ayear long project or more right,
and no access to others withinthe PMO office, because they're
just so overburdened withwhatever. In the task lists are
long for them. And could belonesome.
Steve Curry (15:49):
Absolutely, and, and that, that becomes
problematic, right? Because thatindividual isn't staying current
with the rest of the team andsome of the best practices and
that they're involved with, insome of the tools they're
utilizing. And they just becomelaser focused on on supporting
the team and their, theirclient, which is super
(16:11):
important. But it's also nice totake a step back and to share
ideas, best practices. industrydoes change.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (16:21):
It does.
It really does. And I thinkthat, you know, COVID has
illustrated that, and it'swhether or not we want as an
industry to capitalize on on thelessons of COVID. Right. I mean,
one of the things we've all hadto done is pivot and learn how
to pivot well, and prioritize,look at risks. One of the things
I've talked about a lot on thispodcast is about folks not not
(16:44):
understanding risk enough andand really being willing to have
those nuanced conversationsabout risk, anything around risk
management that you give as, asbest practices for your PMS.
Steve Curry (16:59):
Yeah, it's a great point, because risk management
is so often overlooks within theindustry, right? We talk so much
about the schedule, and how arewe meeting the schedule? And can
you show me, you know, a KPIthat matters, too, but risk
management is critical tomanaging projects that you have
(17:20):
to do it. So the question isjust how often, and how
detailed. My experience, youknow, depending on the type of
project, project manager shouldbe at least capturing those
risks in Excel, you could dosomething basic like Excel, but
a lot of the project managementtools today have risk management
options. And, and it's best tolook not just at the risks, but
(17:44):
the issues and opportunities. Soissues are realized risks, and
opportunities are the inverseof, of risks, and that they're
positive, right, you have anopportunity to do something
really good. So in terms of riskmanagement, I think you have to
really quantify it, and manageit on a weekly basis. So you may
(18:05):
meet less frequent than me thanweekly. But the project manager
needs to constantly be askingthose questions. And in those
scrum meetings, and weeklyproject management meetings,
what are our risks here, orthere's a conversation going on
on the side, that sounds like arisk. Let's capture that. You
don't have to give me all thedetails, but we're going to note
(18:26):
it and we'll talk about it onThursday at a risk meeting.
Those are the sorts of thingsthat they don't make. They don't
cost that much time. But theymake a huge difference over the
period of a project. And I'msure you've seen that time and
time again, throughout yourcareer, that in the last thing
I'll say about risks that isn'tgenerally well done, but it's
(18:46):
fairly simple to do is tocommunicate them and communicate
them to leadership because youcan't manage secrets. And so
executive leadership is alwayslooking to the project
management team to manage theproject, but also to escalate
those risks, because so often,they may exist in more than one
location. So those risks,although they may seem simple to
(19:10):
an individual project manager,if there are a team of project
managers with the same risk, youmay have more luck, and success,
mitigating those risks, becauseyou get the executive
sponsorship to do that.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (19:25):
So part of what you're saying is also as
you're assessing that risk andescalating that, at some point,
there has to be a decision madebased on that risk. Any tips or
our thoughts about that? How toget an actual decision made
based off of the risks that youguys have evaluated?
Steve Curry (19:47):
Yeah, what I've seen work well is once a risk is
identified, the risk ownershould be able to put a plan
together to mitigate the risk.
Right and you If they can'tmitigate the risk, then it
becomes an issue because it's onmitigate double, or it can just
go into the category of acceptedrisk, right. But generally
(20:08):
speaking, you should be able tomitigate those risks so that
they're not as severe if they doissues. So a detailed plan is
really important. And it doesn'thave to be anything elaborate.
But something as simple as theseare the five steps, I'm going to
take in here, the dates, I'mgoing to meet those deadlines
to, to mitigate that risk, andto eliminate it or reduce it.
(20:33):
And then the project manager candecide those risks for the
project those steps, the stepsto mitigate the risks should go
into the schedule, or we'regoing to manage them separately,
but either way, there should bea tracker in place for risks and
the dates. As you step thosedown from a, maybe it's this
(20:54):
risk severity five, and once Icomplete this milestone, next
Friday, that reduces thatseverity from a five down to a
four, and I do the next step andreduce it to three. So really,
it's it's that it's a commonmisconception to lay out those
steps in such a detailed way.
(21:15):
But if you think about it,that's what has to get done.
Either way, whether you write itdown formally or not. The only
way to mitigate the risk is tohave some leadership and
actively mitigate it.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (21:30):
One other point when you were saying that,
I thought interesting, so. Soalso what you're prescribing is
a metric formula to meet to tomeasure risk. And I don't see
that often in a lot of thecustomers that I work with,
right. So can you tell me alittle bit about that? Because I
think metrics are important parthere.
Steve Curry (21:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Generally, its severity
and impact. So you go on a scaleof one to five, what's the
severity, what's the impact. Andso, you know, the worst case
risk would have a severity of afive and an impact of a five.
And so that total risk would befive times 525, if you were to
exercise it, but also, you couldsee it in in a grid format. So
(22:16):
if you summarize fewer largeprojects, you might want to put
something like this together,and there's templates online,
you could find in Excel, it'sbasically a five by five matrix
that is kind of green in thebottom left and red in the top
right and in yellow in betweenwhere it's, you know, severity
and impact on the X and Y axis.
And you would, you know, have adot for each risks, risk in that
(22:39):
category. And so, at a summarylevel, you'd be able to see,
okay, this project doesn't haveany really bad risks that we
need to worry about today. Or,yeah, it does. And on an
individual project level, that'simportant as a project manager,
but if you're leading a projectmanagement organization, if
you're leading IT organization,if you're leading a company, you
(23:01):
may want to think about thatsort of a roll up and format for
your organization, because itreally provides the visibility
in a simplistic way to all thedifferent risks that are going
on within a program.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (23:18):
Great, thanks for that. Um, that also
comes back around to KPIs, Iguess, as one of the things that
I did want to talk to you about,because I was listening to
another podcast this weekend,and someone was saying about
their work. They had came in andit was like 30 KPIs. And they're
like, What does this even mean,you know, and it's like, that's
(23:39):
great question like. So what aresome of your recommendations
around KPIs around projectmanagement?
Steve Curry (23:46):
Yeah, KPIs, I find are really important. But
they're really important ifpeople understand what they
mean, just like you said, and Icould show you a whole bunch of
KPIs that mean a lot to me andnot much to you. So it's really,
it's really taking a bottoms upapproach to the organization and
the KPIs that you utilize. Soyou have an internal project
(24:08):
management office, what are theKPIs we've always used to people
understand them? If they do, weshould try and refine them a
little bit, maybe. But that's agood place to start. What
doesn't really work well isparachuting in a new approach
that no one's seen before. Andyou rip the old one out, put the
new one in and say, these areyour new KPIs. Hope you like
(24:29):
them. That generally does notwork. So I would say, you know,
the KPIs that that are reallymost effective are the ones that
people understand. And you canstart small say, Look, we want
to build our KPIs. Here are thefirst five we're going to
introduce, let's get buy in onthem. Let's tweak them as
needed. But let's start smalland get agreement and once we're
(24:52):
all comfortable with these, wecan introduce some more. But so
it's really about gainingmomentum.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (24:56):
But But I think the part of the key I
wonder if you Think about thisis, is the bottom up versus the
top down approach to what thoseeven mean? Right? So getting the
buy in from the people that dothe day to day work, right? I
think is, in my opinion, morecritical than what an upper
(25:17):
management folks think thatshould be measured. And this
needing to be a more transparentor leavin listening to the day
to day worker to understand thetrue pain points. I'm a firm
believer in gamble walks andright really like walking in the
shoes and understanding as aleader, because if you don't, I
(25:40):
don't know what we're reallytrying to accomplish. And at the
end of the day, there are peopledoing this, right.
Steve Curry (25:48):
Yeah, it's a great point. And sometimes there's a
lot, there's a few layersbetween the subject matter
experts that are doing the workand have to provide status that
feeds those KPIs. And thoseindividuals who are looking at
at those KPIs and metrics and soI, I totally agree with your
sentiment, you know, gimble,walks, having executive
(26:11):
leadership sit with subjectmatter experts. While we
collectively agree on KPIs,that's certainly a best practice
that that is recommended.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (26:23):
So I know that there's a lot of new tools
out there. Are there things thatyou look for in setting up a
program? More or less tools evencome into play? Or do you think
about other things first, how doyou think about setting up a
PMO?
Steve Curry (26:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think within a PMO, the
tools are important, but I'dprobably put them third, you
know, that the right people,I've always found is most
important. And then it's reallythe the processes that you put
in place. So we're talking aboutrisks, just agreeing that risks
are important for yourorganization, to manage, I think
(27:05):
is an important step. And onceyou have those people and you
agree on what's important withyour processes, I would look at
the software to kind of helpwith the communication and the
management of all of that. Andit's easier now than it ever has
been to get lost in whichproject management software to
(27:27):
use. I'm glad you're laughingbecause I went down this, I went
down this deep dive to find theperfect project management
solution. And 47 softwarepackages later, I was still
scratching my head. So
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (27:44):
there's a big pet peeve of me on all tool
front, right, like tools ortools or tools, right? It's what
you want to do with them andwhether or not you use them,
right? I was just doing internaltraining on my team for Agile.
And, you know, Microsoft Excelhas 40 Plus features. 40,000
(28:06):
sorry, 40,000 Plus features,right? How many do we use on an
average day to day basis? Right?
Seriously? And so it is only asgood as what we do. I love that
there's lots of tools out there.
No one, you have to find theright one that's works for you.
(28:26):
Right?
Steve Curry (28:28):
That's right. And so you have to really define
what it is you want out of yourproject management software. Or
else you will get lost veryquickly in the in the sea of
options that you have. And the
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (28:45):
really big learning just just I want to
just hone in on this for onesecond. Because understanding
what you want. I think that'sthe fundamental message if
anything we can ever get out onthis podcast is you need to
understand what you want out ofa tool in order to be able to
use a tool. It's reallyimportant. None of us spend time
(29:08):
thinking about that. It's apainful conversation. I think
for some people.
Steve Curry (29:12):
It's very true that I bet if you were to go back to
your first job, you hadrudimentary tools might have
been a pen and paper. If myfirst project management role,
it was pencil and paper. And theteam did a great job with that
as long as it was the rightpeople and the right price, the
whiteboard.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (29:29):
That's all we had. We had a whiteboard,
we do for you know, 10 reactortrains on the whiteboard, and we
track them every day. That was,you know, it, it worked because
that's the goal. We just neededto know that information. Right.
So what is the goal? What is theactual intended use of what you
want to do? A lot of these toolsgotten really powerful, right?
Steve Curry (29:53):
Yeah, they're really powerful. And they're,
they, when you first start tolook at them, they're all kind
of similar But then you start torealize that there are many that
are quite different. And theprice points are different too.
But yeah, listing therequirements as specifically as
you can, really is critical, Iwent into looking at the
(30:13):
software packages with what Ithought was a pretty defined
list of requirements. And then Irealized it needed to be even
more detailed, because of howmany options there are. So I
would just encourage folks tounderstand that the journey to
find the right software for yourprojects may take a while if
(30:37):
you're going to look at so manyoptions. But there's a lot of
good project management toolsout there and, you know, find
out what's important to you Isit is it, I need to manage a
schedule. But I also want tomanage risks, I need to
communicate out to my team. Sowe need to share information,
share status, also communicateup through leadership, really
(30:59):
list out what those are, it alsoreally matters how big your
schedules are. So I would say ifyour schedules are going to be
over 1000 line items long 95% ofthose schedule, project
management software packagesprobably aren't for you. But
most people manage schedulesthat are 1000 lines or less. So
(31:24):
the majority of the projectmanagement software packages
would generally be acceptable.
So really is critical tounderstand specifically your
your use case for your company.
And that you also may need morethan one software package
depending on how complex yourwork is.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (31:42):
Let's talk about that detailed work
breakdown structure you're justtalking about. I cringe when
when you said 1000 lines. Ipersonally like to do more on
the milestone basis and leavemore flexibility within the team
to be able to manage their dayto day task. That's just mine. I
(32:02):
don't like to micromanage I trymy best not to. But I'm sure
I've been accused of as well, onboth sides. But so what is that
balance? How much should youreally get into your project
plans?
Steve Curry (32:17):
Yeah, great question. The general guidance
on duration, and hours for atask or a line item, as it just
referenced would be, you know,two weeks or less, and generally
eight hours or more. So I thinkyou could still accomplish what
you're describing notmicromanaging someone's work. If
(32:37):
you gave them a 10 day 10working day project task, right,
you wouldn't be in the day today details. But you know, at
the end, they would accomplishx. And so how they do it is up
to them. And so there are a lotof companies, you know, drug
development, perhaps may have athree year program with three
(32:58):
year program is likely to have acouple of 1000 lines if you
detail it down to the one to twoweek work package. level. And so
at one point in my career, I hada 50,000 line schedule that I
was managing. And every singleweek, I'd run a critical path
chart, you know, top five top 10critical paths to each of those
(33:22):
milestones. And so that level ofdetailed schedule requires
specific software. But thesedays, it's much more of a
collaborative work environment,I would encourage every one to
think about the role theproject, right? A lot of the
software packages today, makeproject management, a team
sport. And we have projectmanagers. So that subject matter
(33:46):
experts don't have to projectmanage. And so when you're
picking your software packagewhen you're developing your
project management team, thinkabout that. Do I want my lead
scientists or my IT personreally spending their time in
monday.com, updating status andmoving things around? Maybe, but
(34:10):
maybe not. Maybe you want theproject manager to own that
schedule. And the only thingthey rely on the subject matter
experts for is status. How didyou do today? How did you do
this week? And that's what I'veseen work really well as the
role of the project managergives back time to those on the
team? Because that's a largepart of of their roll.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (34:32):
Yeah, I find that when that's done well,
it works really, really well.
And I think that takes a lotmore time than one thinks. I
think this is part of themindset that I'd like to see
shift is, you know, PM 2pm. Andthe way that you've described
it, have a more central role ina team and not just thought of
(34:54):
as, oh, just 10% or 20% of Thetotal time, it's actually a full
time job. And keeping up on thatwhen you're utilizing your
sneeze in that way. Becausethere's a lot of other
background stuff that you haveto go and put together and piece
together and make sense of andyou might have to reach out to
five different people in orderto understand everything that's
(35:17):
going on together. And oh, whenthen do the communication and
make sure that everyone's awareof all of that, right? Like,
there's a lot of maintenancethat goes behind the scenes that
I think is underappreciatedundervalued and often
shortchanged in life sciences.
Steve Curry (35:37):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's it,
sometimes we get into thesituation where we have these
project managers who aren'ttrained as project managers,
they're very good at their, youknow, their SME role. And they
are excellent communicators, sothey get put into a pm role. So
all of a sudden, they're anaccidental PM, and if that's
(35:59):
what they want to do with theircareer, that's terrific. You
know, and they can go down thecareer path of of training and
things like that. But so often,those folks are uncomfortable in
those situations and, andactually really liked the
subject matter expert role thatthey were in before. So it is
critical to make sure that, thatyou're intentional about who's
fulfilling those projectmanagement duties, because if
(36:22):
it's pm by committee, if it's10% of the total SME hours, and
everyone does it, or if it's theproject manager, but still
everybody does it, that can leadto some culture issues, and some
folks that are not as happy intheir role as they could be if
they were just left to do theirwork. So I think of large part
(36:45):
of what makes a pm successfulis, you know, kind of like an
iceberg, you see on top five10%. But the majority of it is
below the sea. And that's what agood pm does is take the
information in that meeting. Butthen you spend an hour or two
digesting it, disseminating itto the team communicating in and
(37:08):
out, really, a lot of that workis done on an individual basis.
Because you're not taking thetime others will be doing.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (37:16):
I also think that there's there needs
to be the authority that goeswith that. Right. And what I
mean by that is, I often alsosee PMs in a variety of roles
and organizations not haveinfluence or the ability to
(37:36):
influence direction that isneeded, even though the
collective may be saying, oh,yeah, this is a risk over here.
But then there's a bigger riskover here, and the PM, for
whatever variety of reasons notnecessarily have the authority
to then say, okay, we need toshift and move over here. And
(37:57):
I'm wondering how this playsinto with an agile framework
where there's, if we do agileproject management, right,
there's a product owner, if youwill, right, that should call
the shots and should provide thedirection of the roadmap. Right?
But what is the role of a pm andan agile framework?
Steve Curry (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's great question, when you have
those product owners, it's, it'scritical for the P, the project
manager to work closely withthem. And it's a matrix
organization, most likely,that's how most organizations
are now and, and so the projectmanager is responsible for
delivering without the authorityor the direct employees
(38:40):
underneath him or her. And so Ithink it is it is critical to
have a structure within yourcompany so that a project
manager can operate within amore matrix organization. But
the culture is such that aproject manager can raise their
hand and say, I need help.
Product Manager, executiveleadership, I have something
(39:01):
here that I can't solve myself.
And that needs to be looked atas a strength rather than
weakness, right? An organizationthat has people raising their
hands for help, is a veryhealthy organization. And so I
would just encourage folks to,to, you know, it's not easy to
do, it's easy to say, but, butto continue to have project
(39:24):
managers who are comfortableraising their hands to ask for
help. And product managers,executive leaders that are
always looking for those handsto be raised that they can jump
in and assist.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (39:37):
It's really important and I
completely agree with you andit's hard to get everyone to be
on the same page, especiallywhen you have multiple
organizations all playing thosethose roles sometimes. One of
the things when you were talkingalso, maybe think of the in
terms of how, how many projectsshould a Single PM, kind of
(40:01):
manage versus the size of theproject? Is there a way in which
you balance that? How do youthink about that?
Steve Curry (40:09):
Yeah, it really depends on the type of project
I've seen as many SMEs toproject manager, as, you know,
maybe 20, to 130 to 130, SMEs to1pm. But I've seen some projects
that require those daily scrummeetings, and they're, they're
(40:30):
super fast in nature, maybethey're on the it and that are
probably closer to five to oneor six to one, SMEs project
manager. So it depends largelyon what you're focused on what
your deliverables are, yourscope of work. And then how
autonomous the team is. So thestructure that project manager,
(40:53):
is it project management bycommittee, but you have a PM, or
is it project manager is, isreally managing quite a bit. And
so all those factors play intoit. But I'd also encourage folks
to think about projectmanagement in a non binary way,
oftentimes, within yourorganization, you can find a
partial project manager. And soit's not all or nothing. And the
(41:17):
earlier you get a projectmanager involved, the less you
may need them over time, a lotof times project managers bring
in, brought in to rescue aproject. But if there's a
project manager who properlyscopes it upfront for contracts
assigned before the project iskicked off, a lot of times you
can mitigate the need to projectrescue. And so your your overall
(41:39):
pm hours will be less.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (41:43):
So when you look towards the next couple
years, are there any trends orthings that you see in the
industry that that you guys, youguys are prepping for or in
terms of like, you know, maybechanging how you do things from
a pan perspective?
Steve Curry (42:00):
Yeah, I think the the evolution of Agile is
certainly going to continue, Ithink you bring up a great topic
there. And so the next fewyears, I think the majority of
of the change will be in thatarea, but also the software that
accompanies that, I don't thinkthe software packages that are
available today are done. Thoseare SAS based businesses that
(42:22):
are always going to continue to,you know, look to improve. So
you probably will see someconsolidation in that, in that
industry. You know, I mentioned47 Different software options
today, I think that'll be lessin five years, but there'll be
some clear winners there. But Iwould like the industry to get,
(42:44):
you know more back to basics,more back to the best practices,
you brought up risk management.
But, you know, a completeintegrated master schedule,
change management, changecontrol, that is so often
overlooked, maybe not in yourworld as much as I've seen
elsewhere, but it's very oftenoverlooked. And then we don't do
a whole lot of Earned ValueManagement in life sciences. But
for large programs, you know,EVM, or EVM light is, as it's
(43:07):
sometimes referred to, if youkind of do EVM tell me more
about can really be beneficial.
Yeah, or value managementbasically just, you know,
keeping track of time of eachSME, and making that time they
spent, you know, better costaccounting with that, but also
gives you a percent complete,you can measure and roll up
(43:29):
quite easily. Those are thingsthat that are infrastructure
changes for a lot oforganizations to implement that,
I'm not going to say it's easyto do. But for larger
organizations are ones that youreally need to keep track of
your costs. And knowing theexact percent complete, might be
important to you. Those sorts ofthings should should certainly
(43:50):
be considered. Yeah,
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (43:52):
it's interesting, because one of the
things I get asked a lot of whenI'm engaging with someone was,
how much time is my team reallygonna have to spend with you?
Right? It's almost like, tryingto, and, you know, it's not
like, they're not spending a lotof money. They're spending money
for something that they say thatthey want. And then it's like,
(44:14):
how much do I really have to getaway with? Like, is it 5% of my
time, but you know, like, and itleads me to think, you know, one
is I know, we're, a lot of usare short on time and resources,
right. And so everyone's tryingto do with what they have. But
(44:34):
it also I see that tiedintimately to the quality and
the output of things that theywant to produce, right. And so
if you're wanting to engage in aprogram and do a true
transformation and agile, right,software testing, for example,
there's a lot of things thathave to go into that
transformation, other than ahiring a consultant or a company
(44:58):
to come in and give you thetools to do that, right? And so,
when I look at agile pm ngright, I look at it at a much
broader level to things thatyou've pointed out, like the
change management and how do wehow do we do that? How do we
continuously adjust and look forthat added value? But if the
companies organizations aren'ton board, full wholeheartedly
(45:21):
with that, that a transformationmeans an investment in their
people in their processes andtheir technologies? And the
whole thing? I don't know whatwhat we're really doing
together, right? Because it willalways then only be superficial,
right? It will be, oh, we getthis nice, fancy tool. Right.
(45:44):
But it doesn't go anywhere withit, or the adoption doesn't get
there. And they don't get theirtheir ROI that they they even
think about even when you'retalking about these 47, you
know, the new tools out there.
We see that a lot to themimplementing these some of these
new project management tools,which are great, but it's
everything that comes afterimplementation, I guess, is my
(46:07):
point. Right. And typically, therole of a pm is doing some
implementation. Right. And Ithink of it a little bit more
holistically, and I suspect youdo as well, right? There's an
ongoing program associated tothose tools that are getting
implemented. And it's not just adiscrete task.
Steve Curry (46:29):
Yeah, absolutely.
Right, and, and how it fitswithin the organization's
critical. Know, I'm sure you'veseen some of your clients,
they've implemented a project orprogram. But another group
within the organization wouldbenefit as well, they either
didn't know or didn't have thefunding, and there wasn't the
sponsorship, at a high level tomake that dream become a
reality. I think projectmanagement within the industry
(46:52):
is what you put into it. And youknow, another best practice,
it's so often overlooked is thelessons learned review. So we
did all this great work project,it's done, let's spend 90
minutes talking about what wentwell, what didn't go well, what
we would change moving forward,and how valuable it is for the
(47:12):
executive sponsor or the CEO.
You know, whoever's in charge atthe organization to have a
repository of lessons learnedfrom the last 12 months, or the
last five years, I think that'sinvaluable as an organization
grows, to kind of keep ahistory. But also, just to get
(47:34):
better for the next project. Idid a lessons learned a few
weeks ago, and the team hadnever done one and they were
thrilled. This is great. We'regoing to pull this out on you
know, right, it
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (47:43):
doesn't have to be fancy at all. It's
just literally what you said,what went well, what didn't
work. Well, what are we going todo moving forward? That's it
three questions to ask everyone.
I do get some input more thanothers. But it also gives folks
a chance to articulate you know,that, again, back to our
beginning of our conversation,learning styles are different,
(48:04):
right? Not everything works thesame way for everyone. And if
they don't have a chance tocommunicate that back in a
feedback loop, there is nochance for change.
Steve Curry (48:17):
Exactly, right.
That's exactly right. And thatupfront, upfront planning is, is
critical. And, you know, oneaspect that haven't seen a whole
lot of recently is the formalGate Review process, right? When
when there's funding in placefor these large initiatives, a
gate review, either technical orfinancial, or both to say, let's
(48:40):
make sure that before we proceedwith this money, this time, is
effort that the VP of this areaplus his supporting functions
all sit down in a room andapprove it. And that gate
reviews on our schedule. And sowe're tracking to it, and we're
(49:02):
getting all those things done toit. And so it's really taken a
comprehensive overall, look at,you know, the company's approach
to managing projects andprograms. That I think is
critical. Project management, tome isn't just someone that you
hire for an individual group.
It's how do you how do youmanage the company from a
(49:23):
programmatic standpoint? Becausea lot of the principles that
make sense for a simple $10,000project that last three weeks,
really do apply for a companythat is, you know, could be a
multi billion dollar.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (49:38):
Yeah.
Well, Steve, it's been apleasure chatting with you. Can
you leave our audience withlike, one or two key nuggets
that you wanted to make surethat we reiterate what's
important?
Steve Curry (49:53):
Yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, if you're in a
role to hire project managers,please think outside the box
folks from other indies STS maybe really looking to get into
the life sciences and may have aunique perspective on project
management that can really addvalue to your organization. I
was one of those individualsabout 10 years ago, I caught a
(50:15):
break and landed a role at alife science company. And, and
I've been the beneficiary ofthat, and hopefully my clients
have as well. So I'd say ifyou're in a hiring role, please
think outside the box for forthose resumes that come in from
other industries. And if you'restanding up a project management
organization, I'd say, you know,think big, make sure it's, it's
(50:35):
the best practices that you'regoing to apply to your
organization are going to, youknow, transmit throughout the
organization and think if you'regoing to be in a functional role
versus, you know, delivering theprojects, all that is critical
as you set up the team. So,hopefully, that is useful to all
of you listening today.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (50:55):
Great.
Well tell us how can we findyou?
Steve Curry (50:59):
Yeah, yeah, thanks for asking company that I lead
is mustard seed. We have awebsite, www dot Mustard Seed
pmo.com. And you can alwaysreach out to me at Steve at
Mustard Seed pmo.com.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (51:15):
Awesome.
Great, Steve. Well, thanks somuch for a lovely conversation
today.
Steve Curry (51:20):
Thanks, Tori.
Appreciate the time. All right.
Dori Gonzalez-Acevedo (51:23):
Take care.
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