4 Model Secrets to the Project Management MPM model
The purpose of this blog post is to cover an overview of the concept of the Manager Project Mastery (MPM) model and discover four model secrets within the MPM model.
The MPM model shows how to view all of the Project items or Pieces essential to delivering a successful project, to provide the detail to the Tools that are utilized by the simple strategies and Steps to successfully manage a project on a daily and weekly basis.
The MPM model shows how to view essential Project pieces and also
how to manage a project
Project Management has Many Moving Parts
There are a lot of moving parts in project management
It is easy to forget to do something.
You need a simple model to see where everything fits to make it easier to remember how to start your project, what to do on a daily and weekly basis, and how to complete it.
No model is perfect, and a model is never reality. It is just a lens through which to view the world, to make sense of it, to make it easier to understand reality and see some beneficial patterns.
Always be Improving how you Deliver Projects
Many projects do not succeed, so it is important to improve how projects can be managed, especially for managers upon whose back the organization rests because they lead the teams and deliver the products and services.
Invariably as an organization delivers products and services, and leads people, improvements are required. Projects are the mechanism by which these improvements are implemented.
Projects have a lot of moving parts
There are always more projects than people to do them. Always. At least that has been the case in the thirty plus organizations I have worked in sixty projects across 20 industry domains.
Projects are always competing for priority for the scarce resources available.
The better you are at completing projects, the greater likelihood that your projects get priority and commitment.
A reputation for excellent project management proves to the organization, and yourself, that projects with your leadership are a good use of resources and money, as you are seen as someone whose leadership delivers a high probability of success.
There are Always More Projects than Resources
There will always be projects to lead; those temporary initiatives that take time, money, and resources to achieve a change and improvement to how the business operates.
The goal here at Simple PM Strategies is to give you the tools so you can be the kind of manager whose project management leadership can be trusted to have a high probability of success.
The goal is to continue to improve the small habits that make a successful project manager, and the MPM model can help understand the path to improvement.
Models only represent reality
I remember when our kids were young, before they started preschool, I had a program that taught them to read, which we called the reading game, and it wasn’t just small words and simple sentences; it had compound words. So, they all knew how to read at a grade 3 level before they started school, but it had a secret approach, a representation of real words.
Just like the MPM model, the reading game I used provided a model of reality that presented the kids with a model of real words and sentences.
A model only represents reality
The model helped the kids understand the fundamentals, and in some cases the model created a representation of reality, that was not quite reality, however they easily ignored those “non-reality” representations, once they understood the fundamentals.
For example, in the reading program, the hard “c” or “k” sound that you find in the c of cat or the k of kite, was always represented as “c” no matter what the word was. That meant that “milk” was initially spelled as “milc”, and that is how they learned to read that word.
The model created a representation of reality in order to facilitate the learning of the fundamentals. This is the model introducing consistencies through simplification in order to aid learning.
One of the things that makes learning difficult is understanding all of the variances and inconstancies that exist in the real world. However, a model abstracts us from that, and we learn the fundamentals first, then introduce the inconsistencies.
That is why the reading program was so successful. I remember our oldest child on her first day at pre-school. She immediately picked out her own name tag and then proceeded to stand at the name tag table and hand out the name tags to all the other children as they came in. And there are many inconsistencies in names, but the model had helped her learn her way through those.
Her mind learned how to deal with the inconsistencies because it first learned the fundamentals. During the reading program, her mind first learned that any words that had the hard “c” sound were always spelled with that letter. Gradually the reading model, began spelling the word “milc” as “milk” and she didn’t even bat an eye. Just kept on reading. And I know she doesn’t spell it the wrong way today.
The mind had learned the fundamentals, was comfortable with it and then could handle the anomalies.
That is what I want for you in Simple PM Strategies. Understand the fundamentals and then you can handle the anomalies.
The MPM model simplifies the fundamentals for Project Management and abstracts from the real world anomalies to facilitate and aid learning.
Four secrets to the MPM model
The first secret is to start with the questions you always start with when embarking on a new knowledge quest: who, what, where, when, why and how. The model alters it slightly to be why, who, what, how-much, where, and when. But the alteration is slight, so your mind can accept it.
First model secret – start with fundamental knowledge questions
It is all the same questions, maybe just in a slightly different order that what we learned in school, and it is a reference to something our mind already knows and accepts as true (the questions), so it doesn’t have to create a new space for that knowledge and doesn’t have to work to understand it.
It just fits in with what it already knows. That is the first secret to creating a model. Make it based on something you already know.
The second secret is to represent it in a familiar picture or visual to make it easier to remember, which in this case is a shape that looks like a familiar stop sign. The stop sign is meant to make you stop and think through what step you are in, what tool that step needs, and what project piece detail is needed by that tool.
A stop sign is common model, so it is familiar. Nothing new to create in the mind.
Second model secret – Add the six questions into a physical representation with a structure
That’s then something our mind can accept and doesn’t have to find a new home for. We take a familiar object like the clover, and merely place our fundamental questions around the leaf segments starting at the top and going clockwise.
We are left with a familiar diagram, with familiar words and not too much new stuff there. This makes the representation more acceptable.
Then the third secret is that it slots in the 3 domains and 6 segments of knowledge being explored, and in our case, it is project management, and that means those questions translate into: Motive, People, Outcomes, Financials, Map, and Timing.
The model then adds in the 3 domains and 6 segments of project management knowledge
Now we have domains of knowledge into which we can fit the specific items of the subject we are exploring.
This helps establish a structure, that takes all of these seemingly unrelated project management items and groups them into common domains and specific segments.
And really, that is what you need to do for any knowledge domain. You are finding specific pieces that match those universal questions.
Use the model to understand abstract ideas
Here now the model brings in some value that you cannot get without the model, and that is secret four. Use the model to understand new concepts that would otherwise be abstract and hard to remember.
On a daily and weekly basis, success within project management depends on doing simple habits on a daily and weekly basis.
The model provides lens through which to view the project management daily and weekly responsibilities in terms of Steps
However, when you are going through the weekly three middle steps, you’ll be viewing the pieces and segments from one domain, but still cognizant of the other domains from that domains perspective.
For example, for a particular responsibility or segment, such as People, while you are viewing the project from the perspective of People, you are still looking at the Outcomes your project is creating, how much Financials you are spending such as on the cost of the people to do the work and the Timing and Schedule of how they are doing; but your lens is through the People.
Look from People for example you see the other project segments and pieces through that lens though they aren’t in LEAD
Seeing all of the project pieces through the lens of People helps you understand that those items involve communication and adoption with and through people, even though those items are not in the LEAD segments.
Summary
A model is just a representation of reality, and the model gives us a lens into reality that helps us see and learn without needing to first understand the idiosyncrasies of the real world that the model represents.
There are four model secrets that allow the MPM model to help a manager with project management. It starts with the fundamental knowledge questions, then adds them into a common physical structure, then adds in the knowledge domains, segments, and pieces specific to project management and that provides insights that wouldn’t be there without the model.
Action Steps / Apply This Knowledge
- Review the fundamental questions and the project management domains and then start with a fresh diagram and see if you can write in the six domains without referring to the documentation.
To approximate the model just draw a stop sign and then for the middle vertical part of the sign draw two horizontal lines to isolate that middle part. Then at the middle of the top horizontal line just draw five lines out to each 45 degree corner and the midpoint between those corners, and then you have the segments.
- After writing in the segments, write the domains (LEAD, OVERSEE, PLAN)
- Now see if you can remember some of the project pieces by thinking about what their gist is, what purpose they serve.
It can help to write them in as it affirms which domain they are under and they answer a knowledge question that supports doing project management. - Prompt engineering guidance for AI GPTs such as chatGPT: “I’m a business leader managin a project whose purpose is X, and it is delivering Y and Z. What are some critical project management pieces of knowledge that need to be defined and kept in mind while the project is progressing?”
Learn More to Do More
Business evolves through change initiatives otherwise known as projects. The key to managing these change initiatives so you have more time, and less stress is to use simple strategies and tools.
Check out the Learning Hub’s other Articles with Actionable Steps, organized with a busy leader in mind, by topic or main idea, and with some AI GPT (e.g. ChatGPT) prompt engineering suggestions under the Action steps: https://simplepmstrategies.com/learning-hub-index
MPM – Model Secrets
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