“And the award goes to” – a PPM/PM/PMO retrospective of the past two years

While there might not be a King’s Speech amongst the articles I’ve written for this blog since its Inception, the effort of trying to be creative on a weekly basis could be perceived as True Grit, and those that can engage an audience on a domain that can be as academic and dry as PPM or PM are as rare to find as a Black Swan.

Punning aside, I felt it might be a good idea to highlight some of the articles I’ve felt were notable (in no specific order).

1. One of the many articles I wrote about my “pet” PMBOK knowledge area: Taking risk management seriously

2. I’m sure there’s more than seven, but I’ve encountered all of these at multiple clients: Seven deadly sins of scheduling

3. Agile is a mindset that can be applied to nearly any type of project: Applying agile principles to COTS implementations

4. A main cause of PMO failure is the inability to demonstrate tangible value – being more strategic can avoid that risk: Evolve or go extinct – taking PMOs beyond the Triple Constraint!

5. Why a purely financial-based approach is not ideal for valuating IT project portfolios: Challenges with achieving business value from technology projects

6. PPM is about process, technology & people, but it is facilitated with appropriate structure and process ownership: PPM without a PMO – exceptions do not make the rule

7. Too often, failure of projects, PMOs or improvement initiatives can be traced to poor leadership: Being a good leader means making hard decisions – especially when PPM/PM is concerned

8. Ten years ago, few companies were setting them up, now they are legion: Virtual PMOs – a survival guide

9. My vote for the #1 cause of schedule delays and budget overruns on knowledge-based projects: Building unpredictability with resource availability into project schedules

10. According to the groundhog (all of them) Spring is just around the corner, so tee it up with Five lessons that project managers can learn from golf

And to close out on a (only somewhat) tongue-in-cheek topic that had nothing to do with PPM, PM or change management:

11. Coffee, tea or anesthesia – this goes out to all the road warriors and frequent fliers

 

 

 

 

 

 

Six reasons to NOT punt kickoff meetings

Holding a kickoff meeting as the first “real” event on a project should be a fait accompli, but you’d be surprised as to how many projects launch without one.  This mistake is growing in frequency as the proportion of projects with virtual and/or global stakeholders & team members increases.

The causes for skipping kickoff meetings could include:

• The project has been “on hold” or pending resource availability for so long, that there is no patience to do a true kickoff as everyone just wants to “do it”.
• Everyone is so busy that it is impossible to schedule everyone’s time (especially across international time zones) to hold it.
• So much effort has gone into the pre-project justification or sales work of developing a business case or negotiating the Statement of Work or contract that the kickoff is perceived as an academic activity.

To counter these excuses (because that is really what they all are!), here are some legitimate benefits of holding a proper kickoff meeting (preferably in-person):

1. First and foremost, it’s the best opportunity for the project sponsor to present the vision and purpose for the project to the overall team (many of whom might not have been assigned during the pre-project phase) and to sell them on the benefits the project will bring to the organization and themselves.
2. It’s a chance for the project manager to review project rules of engagement with all stakeholders and team members, and to be able to get the project sponsor to back him/her up visibly!
3. It’s an opportunity to have a very quick, informal “fear, uncertainty & doubt” – the formal risk identification session will likely come later, but this meeting does give the PM the chance to start to understand the risk biases of project participants.
4. While not a formal planning session, it can be used to voice and discuss assumptions and constraints to ensure they are in fact, valid.
5. It presents the PM with the first real chance to see the body language and interpersonal behaviors of the team members and stakeholders.  If the PM has not worked with this group before, long running department or individual conflicts might start to become apparent.
6. It starts the team development process in (what should be) a non-threatening and neutral environment.

Skip your kickoff meeting, and your project could end up as flat on its back like Charlie Brown!

A guide to systematic business process improvement

Why is it that organizations invest significant effort in implementing methodologies, modifying processes or initiating and executing projects without fulfilling their desired purpose?

This is a question that Angelo Baratta analyzes in great detail in his book, More Perfect by Design – The Science of Designing More Perfect Business Processes.  Angelo and I served for many years on the board of the PMI Lakeshore Chapter, and helping organizations through improved approaches to process design has been a passion of his for as long as I have known him.

The book tackles many of the challenges that organizations face including:

• The tendency for functional units to focus on fixing local (to their area) “low hanging fruit” issues that then might result in new problems occurring in other areas or with no net improvement from an organization level.
• The practice of frequently switching methodologies or redoing processes without quantitatively assessing whether progress is being made
• The difficulty in logically moving from purpose to objectives to strategy and all the way down to changes to functional processes

Angelo dissects the problems at length, and presents a systematic approach to address them.

The book does not focus on formulating purpose, objectives or strategy.  But by presenting the concept of a Valueflow which bridges the gap between strategy and functional processes as well as the constructs of Value and Capability Chart of Accounts to objectively understand the current state and desired end state,  the reader begins to learn how a cross-functional value-focused approach to process design can succeed where “gut feel” based functional process engineering exercises have not.

One of the concepts that struck a chord as the Master Valueflow Map which presents the need to look beyond just managing customer value (which tends to be the focus of most organizations and their improvement initiatives) to considering the need to manage shift (looking forward and setting direction) and manage drift (keeping us on course).

This book is not light reading hence Angelo provides guidance in his introduction on how best to digest the knowledge.  While there are some examples (and humor) injected to lighten the material, the book would benefit from a companion guide containing multiple case studies to illustrate the practical application of the principles.  Of course, this book was derived from Angelo’s research and professional consulting, so it is quite understandable that he might not want to make it too easy to apply his methods!

Having spent much of my career to date witnessing organizations struggle trying to improve their PPM and PM capabilities, this book has presented a number of insights that increased my understanding of this situation.  As such, I’d recommend this book to anyone that is involved in sponsoring, formulating or executing change within their organizations.