Speech held by Professor Marco Sampietro, SDA Bocconi School of Management at the NASA Project Management Challenge 2011. Project Followership is a recent Project Management discipline that looks at projects with a bottom up approach. While in fact the vast majority of Project Management publications are targeted to Project Managers, Project Followership considers team members as the key actors. Project Followership is not antagonist to Project Management but it is complimentary.

1. Project Followership
Prof. Marco Sampietro
marco.sampietro@sdabocconi.it
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2. Agenda
• Project Followership: Introduction
• Project Followership along the Project Life Cycle
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3. Followership
• The ratio of leadership to followership books is 120:1 (Bjugstad,
2004)
• One of the reasons followers haven’t been researched is that
there is a stigma associated with the term “follower” (Bjugstad,
2006).
• One-third of all executives are followers in some fashion. Yet,
rarely did any of the executives concede that they were
followers (Williams and Miller, 2002)
• Management and organizational behavior have been dominated
by the concept of leadership, which has assumed a
romanticized, larger than life role as a result (Meindle, 1987)
• Leaders only really accomplish something by permission of the
followers (Depree, 1992).
• Followers motivate themselves (Huges, 1998).
• A key to motivating followers is the concept of having them
realize how important their function is in a broad sense
(Blanchard and Bowles,1998) .
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4. Project Followership: boundaries
• Project Followership is mainly targeted at team
members that:
– Do not manage projects but participate to projects
– Manage project activities, sometime alone, other times
in small teams
– Mainly provide technical competencies
– Do not work full time on projects
– Do not need to know “everything” about project
management
– Sometime, they do not want to be project managers
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5. Project Management and
Project Team Members: the current situation
• The project management discipline is still based on a
top down paradigm:
– Traditionally, the project manager manages the team
– More recently, the project sponsor supports the project
manager
• Project Management training follows this dominant
paradigm
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6. Project Followership: What is it?
• Project Followership is a new project management
approach that puts project team members at the
center of the stage.
• Project Followership aims at actively and proactively
involving project team members in managing
projects.
• Project Followership aims at increasing the
satisfaction of project participants, by supplying the
knowledge and the tools to fully understand their role
in a project environment.
• Project Followership aims at increasing project
performance, by creating more effective relationships
between project team members and project
managers and by promoting positive behaviors.
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7. Agenda
• Project Followership: Introduction
• Project Followership along the Project Life Cycle
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8. Project Followership along
the project life cycle
Resource Usage
Control
Change
Risk Management
Scheduling and
Estimating
WBS
Requirements
Analysis
Kick off Lesson learned
meeting
Transfer Time
Conception Planning Execution
and Closure
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9. Kick off meeting
Low participation
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10. Kick off meeting
Low commitment
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11. Kick off meeting
Technical approach Project Followership
• Waste of time. It is not • Opportunity to ask
strictly related to my work, I clarifications, to understand
can read the meeting how my work fits into the
minute to get directly to the project.
point. • Opportunity to modify the
project before is too late.
• Ability to understand the
choices made at the C
level.
• Opportunity to “sell” myself.
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12. Requirements Analysis
How it should be
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13. Requirements Analysis
How it is sometimes
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14. Requirements Analysis
Technical approach Project Followership
• People that should provide • It is my duty to translate
requirements are not able to business requirements into
do so and it seems that they technical requirements.
do not speak my language.
• If requirements are • Making mistakes during
incomplete, I will define this phase will lead to huge
them by myself. I know our reworks in the future and
business. even to project failure.
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15. WBS
I know what to do…
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16. WBS
Interesting, lets see some detail…
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17. WBS
Interesting, lets see some detail…
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18. WBS
Technical approach Project Followership
• Why spending time on • Understanding the big
planning tasks that are not picture helps my tasks too.
related to mine?
• I have spent a lot of time • There is a huge difference
speaking about technical between identifying the
aspects not related to my Work Package and writing a
tasks. We did not spent To Do List.
enough time to discussing • Micro-planning lead to
my technical problems. inefficiencies.
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19. Scheduling and Estimating
I think we will still be within the tolerances…
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20. Scheduling and Estimating
Technical approach Project Followership
• Trying to provide good • Providing good estimates
estimates is useless, since increases the stability of my
the project schedule will agenda.
change many times and • In addition, my colleagues
priorities change every day. consider me a reliable
person and my reputation is
improving.
• The project manager • Understanding the activity
should manage the network facilitates the
interfaces between the communication with my
activities, otherwise why we colleagues. Reworks and
are paying him/her? conflicts are reduced.
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21. Risk Management
Panta Rei Approach Reactive Approach
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22. Risks Management
Technical approach Project Followership
• Risks happen, is a fact. We • Risks may happen but
have to live with them. many of them can be
managed before they have
a negative impact. A
proactive approach creates
a more stable environment.
It is easier to organize my
agenda.
• I cannot tolerate • Projects are dynamic
emergencies, they make environments, it is
me crazy. It seems that the impossible to completely
project manager is adding stabilize them, it is their
complexity, and not nature.
reducing it.
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23. Changes
Positive or negative change?
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24. Changes
Technical approach Project Followership
• Changes depend on lack of • Projects are dynamic,
knowledge of the Project changes are necessary and
Manager. they are not always related
to mistakes.
• If changes are related to • A change can be negative
my activities, I am the only at the activity level but can
person that can accept, add value at the project
modify and interpret them. I level. Before judging it, it is
know what is the best. better to look at it from
different perspectives and
ask for clarifications.
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25. Control
I will deliver perfectly on time!
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26. Control
• Technical approach • Project Followership
• Inserting data related to the • Calculating the work done
activity status is a waste of and work left increases my
time. I know where I am. ability to estimate and thus
The Project Manager my ability to organize my
should trust me. activities.
• Having data on the other
activities permit me to better
plan my work.
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27. Lesson Learned
It is not the single activity, is the interface
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28. Lesson Learned
Technical approach Project Followership
• I do not see the point to • I have a lot of experience
share my mistakes (if any) but taking time to
and my best practices. I systematize it is not so
know my job, I am able to common and can lead to
improve by myself, if new and interesting
necessary. discoveries.
• The optimization of a single
activity does not lead,
automatically, to project
success. Lesson learned
are helpful to reconsider the
project as a system and to
see how, sometimes,
mistakes derive from “local
best” decisions.
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29. Conclusions
• Project Followership is not the opposite of Project
Leadership, it is complementary.
• Project performances depend on the contribution of
all the subjects involved in the project.
• Project Followership aims at creating more
involvement and more awareness of the Project
Team Member role.
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