Deja vu – an unwanted outcome of excessive multitasking on process change projects

I’ve written a few articles about the issues with too much multitasking, but one I had not covered to date was the impact it can have on transformational projects.

On tactical project that are aimed at refining an existing set of processes, excessive multitasking will usually only cause schedule delays or cost overruns.  While not an ideal outcome, for internal projects, this might be considered an acceptable compromise so long as scope and quality are spared.  The argument that could be made is whether the greater availability resulting from better focus on a smaller number of such projects would translate into productivity increases or would it be just be spent on Net surfing or water-cooler chit-chat.

However, on a change initiative that will result in fundamental transformation of the roles of staff or their daily practices, having the core team that is designing the new processes multitask at high levels will impact the quality of the new processes themselves.  The reason I say this is that such work requires a reasonable amount of “navel gazing” and focused analysis – neither of these are immune to the impacts of constant interruption or context switching that accompanies excessive multitasking.

Two analogies I would use are the well known (though likely apocryphal) tales of Archimedes and Newton.  Their breakthroughs occurred not when they were toiling in a lab or surrounded by others, but rather when they had the time for quiet introspection – Archimedes in his tub, and Newton under the apple tree.  With process design, a team has to be able to take the time to envision a future state and think through its full ramifications.  Such creativity can’t be forced, and requires significant base knowledge (e.g. existing processes, organization culture & constraints, system capabilities).

Under negative multitasking situations, you are more likely to get incremental tweaks to existing processes instead of the transformation that was desired.  On the other hand, if the design team insists on a high quality standard, project timelines and cost constraints are likely to be significantly violated and sufficient pressure will be brought to bear on them to compromise their ideals.

So are there methods that will not impact quality while acknowledging the reality of multitasking in today’s business environment?

One approach could be to time-box the creative component of process design, and ensure the core team that is involved in this activity is not excessively multitasking.  By doing this, it will create a sense of urgency that can help break through analysis-paralysis situations, but will also ensure the team is able to focus and will avoid the wastage of context switching.  If budgets allow, the team should work off-site to avoid the double whammy of undesired interruptions (“out of sight, out of mind”) and the potential for letting visibility of current practices cloud the definition of the desired future state.  This same approach might be applied for any other activities that require similar focus and could be a “sell-able” compromise to senior management.

While multitasking provides the illusion of optimal resource utilization, on transformational projects it can result in “Plus ça change plus ça reste la même chose“!
Postscript: two days after publishing this, Scott Adams showed that he is also not a fan of multitasking with the following Dilbert:

Team integration into deliverables makes good change management sense!

The July 2012 issue of PM Network provided some highlights from PMI’s 2012 Pulse of the Profession Benefits Realization In-Depth Report (try to repeat that title five times quickly!) – one of the practices identified in successful projects was having project teams take ownership for deliverable usage beyond their creation.

The challenge in justifying use of this approach is that most project team members are under pressure to commence the next phase of the project work or to move on to their next project.

The team members who have created the process or system outputs from the project are going to want to see those deliverables used. However, we know that changing people’s behavior takes time and if the only involvement the project team has had with the staff is the training sessions that took place prior to handover of the deliverables, then the responsibility for ensuring that the changes stick falls on the functional managers. Even if these managers are actively engaged in the project change management activities, they can’t solely be relied upon to ensure compliance. On the other hand, if the team members work hand-in-hand with staff over a period of time, the coaching moments that will occur will be much more effective than functional manager oversight.

Another advantage of taking this approach is the cliche of eating your own dog food. While not a panacea, if a project team knows that they will have to use the deliverables from their projects and have to defend their usage on a daily basis with the staff, usability and quality are likely given more weight than if the project team feels they can just toss the outputs over the fence.

Finally, while not a direct benefit of the approach, it does support the concept of rotational staff segregation to reduce contention between day-to-day operational work and project involvement. I’ve written previously about the significant threat that uncertainty regarding resource availability estimates poses to projects, hence removing one variable from the resource allocation equation should reduce the severity of this risk. This can also provide a good break for staff from the deadline pressure and uncertainties of project work and is akin to the good agricultural practice of crop rotation.

The specific duration of the operational involvement really depends on the complexity and nature of the process or system changes. Cataclysmic upheavals to established procedures will require significant elapsed time for advocacy and coaching, whereas minor changes could be addressed in the manner of a brief post-project warranty period.

Having a portion of your project staff support operational usage after deliverable handover may seem a luxury that most organizations can’t afford. However, ignoring this practice is a good example of penny wise and pound foolish!

 

Do PMOs still add value in organizations that are at a high degree of project management maturity?

A LinkedIn question from this week on the topic of PMOs in the future made me think about the benefits of having a PMO once a company has reached a high degree of project management maturity.  This is not as fantastic a vision as you might think – after all, PMI’s tag line is Making Project Management Indispensable For Business Results and it is not outside the realm of possibility that many organizations will (at some point in the future) have project management institutionalized as an organizational competency instead of a skill shared by a select few.

When such a time arrives (See, I can take a “glass is half full” position at least once every year!), will there still be a need for a PMO?  After all, if project management skills become as natural to staff as operational competencies, do we still have a need for a group focused on the discipline?

Absolutely!

The first analogy I would make is to quality.  Even those companies that have reached stratospheric altitudes of quality and have embedded this competency into all aspects of their organization would still have a staffed quality department.

Here are some of the benefits that a PMO can provide to higher maturity companies:

• Guardians of the methodology – even in a high maturity organization, if there is no PMO, who is responsible for the ongoing evolution of PM methodologies and the tools which support them?
• Consultation & facilitation – even the most skilled PM can benefit from an unbiased external observer when faced with tricky decisions.  PMOs can aspire to be “neutral territory” by providing consultative services to project teams such as delivery assurance reviews or risk identification & assessment facilitation.
• Support for portfolio governance - If the organization has embraced project portfolio management practices (which is highly likely if it is at a high degree of maturity), the PMO can facilitate governance practices such as intake reviews or prioritization discussions.
• Consistent, strategic reporting – No tool can (yet) replace the benefits that a centralized staffed process can bring to portfolio-level reporting.  The benefits go beyond the communication of project status to looking at trends, systemic risks and issues and key lessons and reminders that can be shared organization-wide.

No matter how good a professional golfer is, they will usually benefit from a coach to help them maintain their performance and to improve.  An effective PMO will still be a valuable coach to your  organization no matter how low your project management handicap goes!