I’m so totally out of my depth! Surely they can’t expect me to know everything?

Dear Totally Out of my Depth

Congratulations on your new role, first of all.

Your question raises a really interesting issue – Is the Project Manager expected to be the expert in all parts of a project? Expertise in everything would be great, but is it realistic to expect the Project Manager to know about potential suppliers of every type of system, or to know what’s involved in deploying all systems in an organisation? Clearly not.

Likewise, must the Project Manager be a great persuader of reluctant staff to change how they work, while generating lots of time savings? Realistically, not all Project Managers will be able to do this, and you are not the boss, so cannot just ‘tell’ people to do things.

So, what is a new Project Manager to do, you might ask? You have asked, in fact.

The first thing to say is that you are correct in your assessment of the project brief, if it is anything like what you have described (It’s almost, “Go find the right system, buy it and roll it out”). It may honestly be the case that the organisation as a whole has little idea of the amount of work, decision-making and disruption involved in the project – and that’s if it goes perfectly!

It’s also clear that the task you have been given goes beyond ‘classic’ project management and goes into the area things that senior management should be doing.  You’ll need to push back on this to get a proper division of responsibilities, but more on this later.

I don’t usually promote our training courses as part of my Dear Savi  responses, but the fact is that our Managing technology change projects course covers exactly the areas you are asking about and a great deal more, so I would advise you to take a look.

I’ve got some specific advice on different aspects of the project to come, but the two main things you have to do are:

1. Research, research and research. Followed by
2. Making sure the organisation is fully briefed about the scale of the project, and prepared for what’s required to deliver it well.

On the first point – research. You have made it clear you have never run a tendering exercise to select a new system, and it is perfectly reasonable that you are not an expert on the current marketplace of modern Call Centre systems and suppliers.

So, before you report on the challenges and scale of the project to your management team, you need to find out about the challenges and scale of the project yourself.  The best sources of information about the realities of deploying a particular kind of new system are the suppliers and the existing customers of those systems – and it’s important to talk to both.

Start by searching for potential suppliers (yes, Google) and noting their existing client case studies or logos on the website. Do any of them look like your organisation in terms of size or market area? If not, move on, if yes, contact the sales team. When you are talking to a human being, be honest with them and tell them where you are in your buying process. Ask them frank questions about what the implementation project looks like, how long it takes, how much work is there at the client-side, where the risks are, and so on.

Of course, they will try to move you towards a sale, but you have a long way to go yet, and it’s all good information. Do this with multiple suppliers. You will definitely find people who have been in the business for many years, have helped multiple customers through their projects and will tell you a lot about it just for goodwill. You can also ask them for a customer you can contact to hear their side of it. Most won’t give you this info at an early stage, but you never know.

This research will typically consume a fair amount of time, but the information is gold dust, when it comes to your own learning and preparing for your own project.

Continuing with research – what suppliers cannot tell you much about is how to run a successful tendering process, so I have put some pointers below.

Once you have done your research, you then you need to prepare a report for your manager and the wider management team. Underpinning what you put in this report should be the classic GetSavi question for all Project Managers taking on a new project, “Do I have everything I need to deliver this project, in terms of time, budget, resources, and expertise?” If the answer to any of those questions is, ‘No’, then you need to state what you need in your report and make it clear where you do not currently have it.

For instance, if you have learned that a typical deployment is XYZ months, then make sure you are allocated for this time plus a contingency.

If you find that a typical client-side project team includes multiple roles and a high volume of days across multiple business areas (IT, business analysis, training, testing), then be as specific as possible and put estimated numbers to it where you can, and indicates where you do not currently have this resource.

Remember, as a Project Manager, it is not your job to do everything on a project, but to make sure it gets done.  That means it is your job to identify any resourcing or other gaps and flag them to the management team (with suggested resolutions where you can).  They might think this is you giving them bad news, but it is your direct responsibility to do this, and it is a vital part of avoiding expensive mistakes on projects.

I said, I would give you some specific points on running a tendering exercise, so I have listed them below. Again, they are all covered in our course, Managing technology change projects which could save you a great deal of trouble going into your project.

1. Form a procurement team: Do not try and do this alone. The decision on why supplier and system to choose is a business decision, not one for the project manager. Your job is to facilitate the process and make sure there are no misunderstandings. This group should include representatives from all affected business areas, plus a member of the senior management team
2. Carry out requirements gathering: This is where you really need your colleagues to be on-board as they need to invest time in the telling you what they need from the project. Any omissions here will bite you later. It’s a good idea to get your Project Sponsor to provide their support when asking for people’s time. Documenting clear requirements at the right level of detail is a specialised area so consider demanding a Business Analysis resource to help you if you can.
3. Create a tender document and clear evaluation criteria:  Make sure there is clear agreement on how you will evaluate potential suppliers and who will attend the meetings
4. Invite suppliers to bid: My strong advice here is always to keep the list of suppliers as short as possible and ideally to no more than 6. Choose them based on their track record of projects with organisations like your own. Try and resist people asking to evaluate everyone they can think of as you “might as well add them”. Evaluating suppliers properly is very time consuming, and if you include too many you will exhaust your teams and deny yourself the time you need to evaluate any of them properly. With your small list of suppliers, arrange presentations to your teams and take up references.
5. Evaluate carefully: Your evaluation should include a wide range of soft and hard scoring criteria, including client reference feedback, your team’s feedback from presentations with the supplier, pricing and information in their tender document response, and delivery approaches.
6. Make the decision: Remember, the Project Manager does not choose the supplier, but makes sure the decision is fully informed by the relevant business stakeholders.

I applaud you for recognising that there are areas where you do not have sufficient expertise and reaching out for help. This is the start of being an excellent project manager.

The final thing I will say is that I think it is important you have a frank conversation with your manager. You are newly promoted, and this is an end-to-end project requiring a wide range of different skills and areas of knowledge. Be clear to your manager that you would like extra support and see if you can arrange a regular meeting (perhaps weekly to start, then less seldom), where you go through the detail what you are planning for the next period and ask for advice or anything your manager would do differently.  From your description, it sounds like your manager should have proposed this to you, so your request is a constructive approach to solve a problem.

I wish you every success!