Significant changes are taking place in management and especially project management today. We hear that organizations, like the New York Times, Tribune Co., Ernst & Young switched from the so-called top-down management style to bottom-up management. Others, including some of the world’s biggest corporations, such as Toyota and IBM, implemented bottom-up management style elements in some of their departments. The popularity of the bottom-up approach to management is growing. In spite of this fact, the discussions about the two major approaches are still hot. Why have organizations become so anxious about changing their management style? If we compare the two management approaches, the answer to this question will be clear.

Managing projects top-down

The top-down approach remains extremely popular in contemporary project management. The phrase “top-down” means that all the directions come from the top. Project objectives are established by the top management. Top managers provide guidelines, information, plans and fund processes. All of the project manager’s expectations are clearly communicated to each project participant. Following this approach, ambiguity opens the door for potential failure, and the managers should be as specific as possible when communicating their expectations. Process formality is very important for this approach.

Examples of the top-down approach applications can be found in many organizations. One of such example is the New York Times, a leader in the newspaper industry. Several years ago, American Journalism Review (www.ajr.com) reported that The Times’ executive management felt that they were far from what was necessary for creation of a vibrant workplace and a successful organization. Power was centralized and masthead editors experienced overall control. Editors introduced the same management pattern in the projects for which they were responsible. One person’s emotions and opinions influenced all the project decisions, and this person was the project manager. What was the result? Team members felt that they weren’t listened to, that their voices didn’t count. There was no effective collaboration between the journalists. They were not morally motivated to do their jobs. The managing executives then realized that they needed to give more freedom to the teams and change their management style. It took quite a while to introduce bottom-up management to the organization. But, obviously, it was worth the time and effort, as New York Times employees say that collaboration became much more efficient, and team members now work together more productively.

Similar problems caused by utilizing the top-down approach can be observed in many organizations with a traditional management style. Experience shows that this top-down management often results in reduced productivity and causes bottlenecks or so-called lockdowns. A lockdown gives the project manager total control over his team. Such lockdowns can lead to unnecessary pain and significantly slow down a project’s completion.

Bottom-up project management options

The factors mentioned above may play a vital role in a project’s failure, and this is the reason why numerous organizations have turned to a bottom-up management style or at least some of its elements. The New York Times is one of the good examples. The bottom-up approach implies proactive team input in the project executing process. Team members are invited to participate in every step of the management process. The decision on a course of action is taken by the whole team. Bottom-up style allows managers to communicate goals and value, e.g. through milestone planning. Then team members are encouraged to develop personal to-do lists with the steps necessary to reach the milestones on their own. The choice of methods and ways to perform their tasks is up to the team. The advantage of this approach is that it empowers team members to think more creatively. They feel involved into the project development and know that their initiatives are appreciated. The team members’ motivation to work and make the project a success is doubled. Individual members of the team get an opportunity to come up with project solutions that are focused more on practical requirements than on abstract notions. The planning process is facilitated by a number of people, which makes it flow significantly faster. The to-do lists of all the team members are collected into the detailed general project plan. Schedules, budgets and results are transparent. Issues are made clear by the project manager to avoid as many surprises as possible. Bottom-up project management can also be viewed as a way of coping with the increasing gap between the information necessary to manage knowledge workers and the ability of managers to acquire and apply this information.

However, despite all its the advantages, the bottom-up style alone will not make your projects flourish.  According to many experts, the bottom-up approach is not the perfect solution, as sometimes it lacks clarity and control. The best way is to find a balance between the two opposite approaches and take the best practices from both of them.

Perfect balance

If you have tried introducing the best bottom-up practices to your organization, you have probably found it difficult to do that while utilizing traditional tools for project management. Traditional project management software, like Microsoft Project, was mostly designed to fit the use of the top-down approach and is not meant for the bottom-up management style. This software is focused on the project manager and places him or her in the center of the project communications. Team members very often have read-only access to the project plan and cannot make any contributions or changes. The employees send their updates to the project manager in disconnected files via e-mail. The project manager then has to collect all the data and put the information manually into the project plan. After that, he or she has to communicate the changes to the corporate executives. All these routine procedures lead to a situation where the project manager’s talents often are buried by the routine work. The huge amount of mechanical control/synchronization work often leaves little very time for leadership from the project manager.

The good news is the situation is changing thanks to the transformations going on in how people share and receive information. More methods for the successful implementation of the bottom-up management best practices have emerged. These methods include are Enterprise 2.0 technologies – wikis, blogs, social networks, collaboration tools, etc. They come into organizations and change the original way of executing projects. They turn traditional project management into Project Management 2.0 and bring new patterns of collaboration, which are based on collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is a collection of valuable knowledge from different fields that each project team member is an expert in. This knowledge is now successfully collected and shared shared in a flexible, collaborative environment brought by second-generation project management software. The project manager is the one to conduct the work of his team and choose the right direction for the project development, based on the information received from the individual employees.

Thus, the role the project manager plays in the project changes. Project Management 2.0 software facilitates delegation. It means that people become less dependent on the manager as a to-do generator. The project manager turns from a taskmaster into a project leader. His role is to facilitate the team communications, provide a creative working environment and guide the team. He or she becomes a visionary able to leverage the team strengths and weaknesses and adjust the project development, based on various external changes. Individual team members still have the freedom and responsibility to find their way to the next milestone.

With the help of the second-generation project management tools, managers can merge the advantages of the two management approaches. These tools help them to combine control and collaboration, clarity of project goals and visibility of internal organizational processes. 

Thousands of companies, such as Bell Canada, Sun and Yahoo now confirm that bottom-up project management, implemented with the help of Enterprise 2.0 tools, improved their business performance. Some companies created corporate blogs to streamline project communications; others introduced wikis to get their customers’ feedback. Even giants, such as  IBM,  realize the benefits of allowing contributors to have a more active hand in how collaborative work is organized.

My conclusion will be that democratizing project management is never an end in itself. The primary goal is always to find ways to make project management and project collaboration more efficient. New technologies applied to projects offer us the ability to make projects more successful and teams more productive. At the end of the day, projects are delivered faster, and this is to  everyone’s benefit.

About the author: Andrew Filev has been managing software teams since 2001 with the help of new-generation collaboration and management applications. His best practices are based on implementation of Enterprise 2.0 software in project management. Now Andrew is an expert in project management, a successful software entrepreneur and the CEO at Wrike.com, online project management software. Andrew is the author of some influential project management articles, including works for Cutter IT Journal, Web 2.0 Journal and Agile Journal. Andrew is often invited to speak at conferences, symposiums and seminars. Andrew has given speeches on new trends in project management and on implementing Enterprise 2.0 strategies. He spoke at such events as the PMI Silicon Valley Tools and Techniques Forum, Office 2.0 Conference, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Project Management Symposium and others. Andrew’s ideas about improving traditional project management are reflected in his popular Project Management 2.0 blog.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Top-down and Bottom-up Project Management: Leveraging the Advantages of the Two Approaches is a post from: Project Shrink.

This is an educational challenge. How to convince, to motivate, to explain.

I use a specific metaphor to explain this shift.

When roads cross, you can assign a traffic policeman to direct the traffic.

You can also put in a roundabout at the junction.

In most cases, the roundabout creates a very effective flow of traffic. Self regulating.

You see. There is a valid alternative to central control.

The roundabout only works when everyone uses the same rules. To determine who has priority, in which order cars will go, all drivers have to use the same traffic rules.

Accidents happen if they don’t follow the same rules.

With self-organization the rules of engagement become essential.

More about self-organization in teams.

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of talking to Esther Derby about self-organization in (agile) teams. What is it? What is it not? What’s the role of a manager in a self-organizing team?

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Self-Organization In Your Team: Roundabout Instead Of Traffic Cop is a post from: Project Shrink.

Help out this student by taking his survey

This week I got an email from Matthew Miller, a student from Loughborough University, with a request to put out the word about his questionnaire.

“This dissertation aims to investigate the level of success within IT projects within the last 3 years . The results will then be analyzed to find any common factors to success and failure, to see if some projects are destined to fail and to see if certain industries, type of projects or methodologies/models are more likely to fail. The final outcome will be statistically supported advice for IT project managers. This research is about both project success and failure. It is through understanding failure that we can begin to improve. As such, please do not view failure as a negative in this context and please include projects that have failed as these are very relevant to this study. “

If you participate, you will get a copy of the results.

Take the survey:

IT Project Managers
Anyone involved in an IT project

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Way-New Collaboration: What I Meant To Say is a post from: Project Shrink.

Planning? No!
Control? You wished… NO!
Communication… HECK NO!

The answer is… allocation of scarce resources.

Come again?

You have limited time, your money pit is not without bottom, you have only a handful of team members, you have all those elements that you can only deploy in a certain way, and it’s your job to allocate them in such a way that is most ideal in certain circumstances. ‘Allocation of scarce resources” is the name of the PM game.

To be able to do this you need those risk analysis logs.
You need list of requirements that are prioritized.
You need a plan to see how decisions might affect current ideas about the future.
You need a clear goal to have a beacon to steer your project towards to.
You need communication to get the right information to base your allocations on.

You all need that. And more.

Still, on top of all this… allocation of scarce resources.

It is like a game of chess, it is all about moving your pieces.

And before anyone asks… most important PM skill is the ability to negotiate.

Bas de Baar helps people find ways to enjoy the diversity of human interaction in their organizations so that they can get out of their own way and achieve their goals. - Most Important PM Task is a post from: Project Shrink.