Colorado State Patrol
The goal: Coordinate law enforcement services with the Denver Police Department, the Secret Service, and other agencies for the Democratic National Convention on a $1.6 million budget.
The problem: The project manager, Korby Johnson, had a core planning team of just three people (including herself), more than 500 people to mobilize, and only seven months to prepare — half the time that’s usually required for a project of that scale. To complicate matters further, says Johnson, “I wasn’t prepared for the politics.” The Colorado State Patrol troopers made it clear when she arrived that they didn’t think they needed a project manager.
What happened: For the first three months, the troopers pushed back when Johnson tried to work with them. After she and her team assessed who would go to the DNC and who would provide coverage elsewhere, Johnson asked each office to submit operational plans. Then she waited. For officers who are used to responding quickly to emergencies, a seven-month planning timeline seemed like overkill. Many of them simply ignored the deadlines Johnson set. “They had 75 years of tradition doing projects their way,” she says. “They were insulted when I showed up with a different approach.”
Johnson knew she would never be able to get the troopers to work with complex project management software, but she still needed a way to track progress and hold the troopers accountable to deadlines. She finally developed a simple, shared spreadsheet to keep track of everyone’s tasks and deadlines. As a deadline approached, the trooper’s name turned yellow; if the date passed, the name turned bright red. You could even sort by name to find repeat offenders. The system worked, because everyone could see everyone else’s status and the highly competitive troopers turned it into a game that no one wanted to lose. In the end, Johnson had to write a few of the action plans herself, but that has its advantages, too: “You can do things your way if you put in the extra work,” she says. The final planning document topped 600 pages, but now it serves as the Colorado State Patrol’s model for project management.
Terminal 1, London’s Heathrow Airport
The goal: Refurbish Terminal 1 at London’s Heathrow Airport. David Buisson led the high-profile, $93.8 million project, which started in January 2006 and wrapped up in April 2009, to redevelop the arrival area and construct new check-in desks, retail facilities, baggage equipment, and business-class lounges.
The problem: The terminal had to continue to function at all times and not inconvenience the 20 million passengers who use it annually. Buisson’s construction team had a very limited window of time each night, normally between 11 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. The crew worked in an area of the terminal used by a number of airlines, including BMI, the second-largest airline at Heathrow. The team had about 21 weeks to renovate BMI’s part of the terminal. When they set to work on BMI’s tiled flooring, the construction crew ran into a big, unexpected problem: a completely degraded concrete floor and metal infrastructure underneath. There was no money or time budgeted to fix it. Buisson initially estimated it would take 20 extra weeks of work to fix it, on top of the 21 weeks the project required.
What happened: Buisson immediately brought all of the stakeholders to the project site, where they could better understand the size of the problem, the constraints the team faced, and the cost and equipment required to finish. Getting everyone together eliminated weeks of going back and forth via phone and e-mail to describe the problems, decide who would fix them, and obtain separate work approvals — the kind of piecemeal steps that can bring a project to a standstill. The team finished the project only one day later than originally scheduled.
Synovus
The goal: Spin off credit card processing giant TSYS from financial-services firm Synovus. In 2008, Scot Hanley led an $18 million project to separate the two businesses. Total assets managed during the project topped $100 million.
The problem: TSYS provided telecom service for the joint company, but Synovus had rights to telecom data, such as addresses and phone numbers. So who would get what after the split? The TSYS team offered Synovus a copy of the telecom software at no charge, but the Synovus team argued that it wasn’t up to snuff and that TSYS, as the owner of the service, should pay to upgrade the system. The TSYS team responded that its financial and technical support ended with the spin-off.
What happened: Initially, neither of the telecom leads from the two companies would budge. Hammering out the ownership issues required discussions over a six-month period. There was no single epiphany, Hanley says. Instead, most of the work happened through informal discussions and careful diplomacy: Hanley would meet with both sides to hear their concerns before formulating a game plan for the next group meeting.
Eventually, Synovus agreed that it would be cheaper and more cost-efficient for TSYS to transfer a copy of the telecom system in its current state rather than upgrade it. Synovus would use its own budget and people to set up the software. To seal the deal, Hanley helped broker other trade-offs. For example, if TSYS wanted something in the human resources department, it could barter for something Synovus wanted in the telecom area. Plus, both companies agreed to pay monthly fees to each other if they required additional tech support during the transition period. If the two companies hadn’t been willing to make these concessions, says Hanley, Synovus never would have been able to complete the spin-off and manage the shared $100 million in assets in as little as nine months.