Author: Drew Davison

Drew Davison is the owner and principal consultant at Davison Consulting and a former system development executive. He is the developer of Project Pre-Check, an innovative framework for launching projects and guiding successful project delivery, the author of Project Pre-Check - The Stakeholder Practice for Successful Business and Technology Change and Project Pre-Check FastPath - The Project Manager’s Guide to Stakeholder Management. He works with organizations that are undergoing major business and technology change to implement the empowered stakeholder groups critical to project success. Drew can be reached at [email protected].

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Six Strategies to Manage Project Chaos

Written by Drew Davison on January 22, 2018. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Six Strategies to Manage Project Chaos

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Author

I’m sure we’ve all been racked by project chaos at one time or another – too many conflicting priorities, lack of clarity, directional changes, unanticipated influences, not enough resources or not enough of the right skills, technology troubles… And then there’s the old squeeze play, an immoveable target date and lots of unanticipated and mostly uncontrollable delays.

But sometimes, out of chaos comes clarity – new awareness, new insights, new skills, new confidence, great new relationships, and the realization that, in spite of how dark the situation looks, there are almost always paths to success. That’s where the six strategies to manage project chaos come in.

In this story, we’ll hear about the actions taken by an individual, his team and his organization to extricate his project from certain doom. We’ll see how those actions turned a potentially disastrous outcome for his company and its client into a successful achievement. And we’ll discover the new capabilities and realizations the experience delivered for the individual and the organization.

Thanks to Ian MacGillivary for the details on this story.

The Situation

This small North American technology services company provided custom software development and infrastructure deployment services to a variety of clients. A niche service was the development and installation of kiosks with custom software for trade shows and sales demonstrations.

The company was approached by a major telecommunications vendor to develop and deliver a smart phone application in support of a new service they were launching in four months time. The demo app was to be installed on 4,500 phones and 500 Android and Windows tablets each.

Ian MacGillivary was the Infrastructure Deployment Specialist. When the request was received from the telecommunications company, Ian was asked to provide a plan and estimate for the rollout work. This project was on a much larger scale than their usual contracts but, using his experience on similar but much smaller projects, he figured 15 minutes per device would do the job. He developed the estimate and plan and passed the information back to the Vice President responsible for their bid.

They were awarded the contract!

The Goal

To develop and install the custom demonstration software on the smartphones and tablets and ship them to 2000 target sites by the target date four months hence within the parameters of the fixed price contract.

The Project

Ian had recognized that his firm did not have the staff nor the facilities to handle the volume of smartphones and tablets the customer required. He had recommended contracting with another firm with those capabilities. He interviewed three firms who had the experience to provide the services they sought but their estimates for the effort required varied widely and differed substantially from his own. He passed on his recommendations and waited for a decision.

Concurrently, the signing of the contract with the client was delayed. That meant that the development of the software, the shipment of smartphones and tablets from the client and the delivery of the location addresses and specific guidance on smartphone and tablet disbursements were also delayed. But the target date stayed the same. What started out as a four month duration project was being compressed daily.

Ian went back to the drawing board and redrafted his plan from the target date back. The reworked plan provided ten weeks to get the job done versus the original sixteen weeks. When the contract was finally signed, there were just seven weeks left to the target date. The plan was reworked again, this time with even more activity overlap and compressed time frames.

A vendor was selected to manage the build process, one that Ian had not interviewed. As he brought them up to speed on the project and started to assign work, they stumbled. Ian stated “They assumed it would be a simple install the device, put it in box job. We sent them the initial installation steps, and the initial configuration, and we could cut the tension with a knife.” It became apparent that they weren’t up for the job.

Another vendor, one of the ones that had been interviewed and the most expensive, agreed to take on the job. They were accomplished at large scale rollouts. They immediately pointed out gaps in the plan:

Security: 5000 or so devices have a book value in the millions of dollars. That required security guards, cameras, a metal detector.
Space: How much space does 5000 devices take up? Where are they going to be stored? How are they going to be moved? With the numbers involved, a loading dock was essential for shipments in and out.
Packaging: were the devices going to be packaged individually or by destination?
Shipping supplies: How many shipments? How many boxes and plastic envelopes? How many mailing labels?
Desk space: how many people configuring and packing devices?
Process control: How do you plan on ordering the work, on tracking the work?

As the challenges mounted, the client added another wrinkle: they wanted to track usage of the devices by location. That meant an analytics function was required and each individual device needed to be assigned to and tracked by location. Another surprise: the plans assumed the Windows tablets would be Android tablet sized.

When the very large boxes arrived, it was discovered they were all-in-one Windows PC’s with 18” screens. The plans and procedures were reworked again.

And the work continued.

The Results

In the end, the smartphones and tablets equipped with the demonstration and tracking software were received by all target sites prior to the planned launch date. Only one problem was reported – a device went to the wrong location. The location had been closed prior to the project but the destination list had not been updated by the client.

Unfortunately, the profit targets for the project were not achieved because of the switch in vendors, the compressed time frame and the added costs involved. But, the company did have a satisfied client and a boatload of lessons learned.

What a Great Team Learned

Think about it! A project involving the custom configuration, packaging and delivery of thousands of devices across the country, originally planned for 16 weeks and ending up with less than half of that, and still successfully delivered! Ian looks back on the following lessons learned:

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The Human Factor – As Ian stated, “At the end of the day, everyone pulled together. Directors were at Kinkos getting papers printed at 3:00 am, developers were running our staging floor and Vice Presidents were bringing coffee. Everyone, when the chips were down, did everything needed. To me, that was the only way we could have survived and executed the project successfully. Everyone wanted things to succeed and for us to do well. The buy in of the organization, and of the people in the organization was, in the end, the key factor”.
Getting the scope right – Locking down the scope is essential, especially in fixed price contracts. More time up front with people who had the experience would have helped immeasurably. According to Ian, “one big problem with the project was we under-scoped the logistical arrangements. I still have my original plan, and even that was scarily under scoped. Even the project team was under-scoped. A lot of people had too much span and not enough depth. We always had to go back and add in more space, more people, more, more, more”. At the end of the project, the Vice President stated “next time we decide to be ambitious or try something new, we do it as time and materials”.
It’s the little things – The little things are what cause projects to go off the rails. It is the classic “for want of a nail”. According to Ian “Not understanding one word in a statement of work caused hundreds of hours of heartache, misery, and nearly caused us to miss the deadline. Not communicating about the requirements for networking, cost tens of thousands of dollars in direct cost, and lost productivity. Not looking at box size caused a massive overrun in costs. Fortunately the client was willing to swallow that. Not adding in a QA / Documentation person caused things to be left until the last minute. All of that was overcome, yet if we had taken more time, more attention, and focused on the little things, we would have avoided it all.”
Early decision making – Decisions made earlier cause less issues with the project than decisions that are put off until later. As Ian stated, “We always had the problem of not making decisions quickly enough early on. We never were able to get ahead of the 8 ball. Things cost more in a rush. By the end of it, we would have paid double if we had to. Decisions often times became bogged down in the mud. This cost us time.”
If it’s a priority, treat it that way – Unfortunately, the practice at the company was to assign staff to multiple projects based on availability to maximize productivity and minimize bench time. As demand escalates, the work load on individuals also increases. Ian and a number of staff involved in the project put in 100 hour weeks. Tired people make mistakes. Fatigue costs productivity.
The importance of simulation, gaming and tabletop exercises – Gaming out scenarios, simulating, having the project team run and talk out tasks on a tabletop would have allowed for better optimization when executing the project. According to Ian, “On the project, we simulated a lot of things. However, they always were limited. We weren’t able to look at the whole install procedure until late in the project. We never stopped to play things out. We were forced to do things haphazardly or in small chunks to react to problems. If we all had sat in a room and ran a table-top exercise of how this would work from start to finish, everything from box opening, to shipping, we would have been able to find our holes and our weaknesses and actually have a realistic understanding of what was required. One of the big things was that there was never an entire team simulation, from start to finish.” As Ian explained “I wanted my 78 year old aunt to be able to read the process and be able to execute.”

These six lessons learned helped Ian and his organization survive a very challenging situation. Hopefully they will also inform their actions going forward, serving as proven strategies for managing project chaos.

So, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can conquer, or preferably avoid project chaos. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group (including the key stakeholder roles), the decision management process and Decision Framework best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has willingly shared their experiences for presentation in this blog. Everyone benefits. First time contributors get a copy of one of my books. Readers get insights they can apply to their own unique circumstances. So, if you have a project experience, good, bad and everything in between, send me the details and we’ll chat. I’ll write it up and, when you’re happy with the results, Project Times will post it so others can learn from your insights. Thanks

From the Sponsor’s Desk – The Great Canadian Payroll Debacle

Written by Drew Davison on December 18, 2017. Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – The Great Canadian Payroll Debacle

“The beginning is half the whole.”

Pythagoras (est. 569bc-475bc)

Greek philosopher and mathematician

In last month’s post, Start Your Project with PACE, we talked about the need to start projects properly. Projects need the right stakeholders involved and engaged at launch. Those stakeholders have to take a comprehensive view of the planned change and consider all necessary and relevant decisions. They have to be supported and equipped with the practices, processes and resources that will allow them to guide a change to a successful conclusion. And, those conditions need to persist from the get go to the project’s end.

This month’s story, the Canadian federal government’s payroll project, has been in the news for a while now. Unfortunately, it’s another one of those all too frequent multi-million dollar initiatives that didn’t go nearly as well as promised. We’ll take a brief look at what was planned, how the change proceeded and the results achieved to date. We’ll also look at the lesson learned in the hopes that a project failure of this magnitude won’t be repeated, at least by the readers of this blog.

But, before we go on, I have two questions:

Why do we continue to lead projects to failure, wasting millions of dollars, time and opportunity in the process and then conduct audits and lessons learned studies post mortem to determine what went wrong?
Why don’t we, instead, do a pre-check, leveraging the wisdom applied and gained through all those project post mortems, and build our wisdom and insight into the planning and execution of our projects?

Project success shouldn’t be a surprise. It should be planned that way!

Thanks to R.A. for the idea for this story.

The Situation

In 2009, the Canadian federal government decided to replace a payroll system that was increasingly costly to operate and maintain and had been in place for forty odd years. The new system would be used to pay some 300,000 Federal government employees.

The scope was huge. According to a report entitled Government of Canada Transformation of Pay Administration (TPA) Initiative prepared by Public Works and Government Services Canada, there were over 100 different departments and agencies affected, involving 27 collective agreements requiring 9 million annual transactions for more than $20 billion dollars.

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The TPA initiative involved two projects. One component, referred to as Pay Modernization, was the implementation of new technology based on a PeopleSoft payroll application. Another element of the change, referred to as Pay Consolidation, involved the reduction of in excess of 2000 payroll advisors spread across the country to 550 staff housed in a new processing center in Miramichi, New Brunswick.

As the Payroll changes were being planned, developed and implemented, three other major changes were occurring across the government; the consolidation of data centers and staff across the country into the new Shared Services Canada organization, Human Resources Services Modernization and the implementation of My Government of Canada Human Resources.

Announced in 2011, Shared Services Canada (SSC) was to modernize, standardize and consolidate IT resources across 43 departments, reducing the number of data centres from almost 500 to 7, consolidating and securing 50 overlapping networks, ensuring all emails were managed through a single common infrastructure, and equipping departments and agencies with updated hardware.

The Human Resources Services Modernization (HRSM) initiative was also launched in 2011. The objective was to modernize human resources services to reduce the number of HR systems to one for the entire government. Included was the implementation of Common HR Business Processes, to bring consistency to the delivery and management of HR services.

My Government of Canada Human Resources (My GCHR), introduced in 2015, was the Government of Canada version of a PeopleSoft Human Resources Management System, which was meant to replace over 70 different HR systems. The synchronization to this new platform was meant to increase automation, standardize and streamline HR processes across departments, increase self-service options and facilitate information sharing. As of June 2017, My GCHR was introduced in 44 organizations and there are an additional 31 different HR systems remaining in operation.

In summary, the government was undertaking a massive change that affected all of its organizations and employees, the related business policies, processes and practices, the underlying technology platforms and interfaces and relationships with its unions and vendors. And it was doing this while other major technology and process changes were occurring.

The Goal

The government’s stated goal was to ensure the long-term sustainability of Government of Canada pay administration and services. When fully implemented, the initiative was to generate savings of over $70 million per year. The total cost was estimated at $309.5 million, $186.6 million for the pay modernization component and $122.9M for the Pay Consolidation.

The Project

The system was called Phoenix. Massively complex, the changes involved 22 different employers – the core public administration plus separate agencies – with over 80,000 business rules governing wages and salaries.

The timeline presented here has been dredged from a variety of sources including government documents, the Auditor General’s report on Phoenix Pay Problems, a Lessons Learned study conducted this year by Goss Gilroy Inc. and a multitude of reports and commentary in the news media.

Spring 2009 – Approved Transformation of Pay Administration (TPA), including two projects Pay Modernization and Pay Consolidation.
February 2010 – Issued request for proposal for System Integrator.
August 2010 – Announced Pay Centre installation in Miramichi, New Brunswick.
June 2011 – Contract issued to IBM for system integrator and PeopleSoft’s Payroll software.
December 2011 – Internal project re-allocation and departmental transfers. The 46 departments to consolidate pay services identified.
Fiscal Year 2012 to 2013:
- Removed funding for change management from the project, to be a departmental mandate.
- Approved Pay Modernization (representing $186.6M of the $309.5M).
- System integrator proposed implementation in 2 rollouts (1 release) versus original plan to launch in 1 rollout.
- Independent review conducted and indicates go ahead to move to Pay Modernization’s implementation phase.
Fall 2013 – Combined Pay Modernization and Pay Consolidation governance committees for TPA.
March 2014 – Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer confirmed that all departments were aligned to the Common HR Business Processes.
June 2014:
- Phoenix design complete.
- Instance of PeopleSoft to be used for Phoenix changed from 8.9 to 9.1.
- Delay in roll-outs of departments moving to My GCHR causing modifications to which departments and agencies were in each Phoenix roll-out.
- SSC experienced delays setting up network connectivity to the Quality Assurance environment for testing purposes.
- Independent review Health Check completed and indicated okay to continue.
December 2014 – Public Works and Government Services Canada signed Memorandum of Understanding with 4 community colleges for professional development programs for compensation advisors.
Spring 2015 – Modified planned July pilot with Natural Resources Canada to become an internal pilot to conduct parallel pay runs for additional reconciliation testing.
Summer 2015 – Deferred functionality enhancements because of timeline pressure
September 2015 – Departments received readiness checklist for Phoenix.
Fall 2015
- Moved roll-out from October and December 2015 to February and April 2016. Moved testing to January 2016.
- Independent review signals things are okay to go live.
January 2016 – Public Service Management Advisory Committee consulted and those present indicate departmental readiness to go live. Phoenix had 109 defects at go-live with none identified as being critical.
February 2016 – First roll-out: 34 departments, 120,000 employees.
April 2016 – Second roll-out: 67 departments, 170,000 employees. Hired 50 resources for telephone support team in Miramichi.
May 4, 2016 – First full payroll from Phoenix for nearly 300,000 employees.

And then the complaints began.

The Results

The Office of the Auditor General of Canada completed an audit of the Phoenix pay problems in September, 2017. Among its findings were the following:

“Overall, we found that a year and a half after the Phoenix pay system was launched, the number of public servants in departments and agencies using the Miramichi Pay Centre who had an outstanding pay request quadrupled to more than 150,000. Departments and agencies have struggled with pay problems since the launch of Phoenix. However, it took Public Services and Procurement Canada four months to recognize that there were serious pay problems, and it took the Department about a year after that to have a better understanding of the problems.

“The problem grew to the point that as of 30 June 2017, unresolved errors in pay totalled over half a billion dollars. This amount consisted of money that was owed to employees who had been underpaid plus money owed back to the government by other employees who had been overpaid.

“In addition, departments and agencies struggled to do the tasks they were responsible for in paying their employees under Phoenix. Public Services and Procurement Canada did not provide sufficient information and reports to help departments and agencies understand and resolve their employees’ pay problems.”

The Goss Gilroy Lessons Learned study is a searing indictment of the project’s conduct. The report summarized the challenges this way:

“It is our view, that it was the underestimation of the initiative’s complexity that led to its downfall. Had the initiative been managed recognizing the wide-ranging scope of the transformation, not limited simply to a system replacement or the movement of personnel, then the initiative definition, governance and oversight, change management, outcomes management, project management and capacity management principles underlying the 17 lessons learned could have been established and closely followed.”

The report goes on to sum up with these thoughts:

“Furthermore, perhaps more important than capacity and capabilities is having the appropriate culture within which to undertake a complex transformation. Agility, openness, and responsiveness are key features of a culture that needs to be aligned with the magnitude and challenge of the transformation.

Finally, in our view, these are lessons that are yet to be learned, not lessons that have been learned through the course of the management and implementation of the TPA. It will be critical for the government to actually apply these lessons in future transformations and more immediately in the transformation challenge currently before the government in addressing the multitude of issues with pay administration today.”

The Goss Gilroy Lessons Learned study found a litany of errors and omissions. A few examples:

The overall management of the end-to-end process transformation was not in place.
No comprehensive plan for transformation of business processes, people/skills, organizational culture, services and functions, quality and timely provision of HR data and related HR systems was ever developed or implemented.
The Common HR Business Processes were not implemented to a sufficiently detailed level in order to ensure government-wide consistency.
One result of the too-narrow scope was an incomplete accountability framework for the transformation. The roles and responsibilities were not effectively designed, documented nor implemented as part of an overall accountability framework.
There was no overall governance body for the TPA as a whole.
There was limited independence of those tasked with the challenge role.
The culture was not open to risk and did not reward speaking truth to power.
Phoenix was not fully tested. In fact, a planned pilot with Natural Resources Canada was cancelled because testing had not been completed. Testing volumes and coverage were reduced in the final stages due to time and budget pressures.

There is much more in the Goss Gilroy report to explain the problems encountered in the Phoenix implementation. Perhaps the most significant finding: failure was built into the project from the start. It didn’t have a chance! Needless to say, it was not and is not yet successful. The project will exceed budget. By how much is yet to be determined. The amount of annual savings is a question mark. Will Phoenix rise from the ashes of this debacle as did the legendary Phoenix of Greek mythology? That remains to be seen.

How a Great Leader Could Have Succeeded

The Goss Gilroy Lessons Learned study provides a terrific framework for rectifying the ills of this particular flawed venture or, for that matter, planning and managing any project. The framework presented in the study includes six major lesson areas and seventeen specific lessons as shown below.

While not as granular as Project Pre-Check’s PACE reviewed in last month’s post, it still covers the essential transformation questions. Had the TPA Initiative used this Goss Gilroy framework at the beginning to address the questions it poses, the project’s chances of delivering a successful outcome would have been greatly enhanced.

Finally, Roger Martin, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, provides some insightful advice about the roles and responsibilities of senior managers in managing transformative change. In a recent article entitled CEOs Should Stop Thinking that Execution is Somebody Else’s Job; It Is Theirs, he states “The common perception is that strategy is done at the top of the org chart, and execution is done below. It is exactly the opposite.” He goes on to suggest that “the things that happen in the activity called ‘strategy’ and the activity called ‘execution’ are identical: people are making choices about what to do and what not to do.”

According to Martin, there is an interconnected cascade of choices in any major change initiative, from the most senior management levels through to first line managers and staff. The information and engagement about the decisions being taken has to flow both ways, from senior managers to reports and back, to ensure the choices fit and reinforce one another. Martin’s advice for managing the cascade effectively?

Make only the set of choices you are more capable of making than anyone else.
Explain the choice that has been made and the reasoning behind it.
Explicitly identify the next downstream choice.
Assist in making the downstream choice, as needed.
Commit to revisit and modify the choice based on downstream feedback.

If such a practice had been in place on the TPA initiative, clear accountabilities would have been an obvious and essential prerequisite. Speaking truth to power would have been an institutional feature. Issues and concerns would have been more eagerly voiced and more readily accepted. It’s certainly more nuanced than the command and control world that existed for most of this undertaking. But it was and is desperately needed.

Oh, and about those two questions I asked at the start of this post, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

So, be a Great Leader. Look for and promote decision-making cascades. Use a framework like Goss Gilroy Lessons Learned or Project Pre-Check to answer the critical who, when, what, where and why questions. Put the energy up-front into laying out a route that everyone commits to follow. Keep asking those “beautiful questions” and checking your answers throughout the project. And, put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can deliver a successful change.

Remember, Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks cover the key stakeholder group (including the key stakeholder roles), the decision management process and Decision Framework (PACE) best practices right up front so you won’t overlook these key success factors.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Start Your Project with PACE

Written by Drew Davison on November 27, 2017. Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Start Your Project with PACE

Agnes Allen’s Law: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of

If you want to deliver a change successfully, start your project with PACE.

When we have a new idea about a product or service or a solution to an existing problem, the natural tendency is to want to get it done as soon as possible. We tend to think about the desired change as a straight line, from problem or opportunity to remedy. And that’s usually where we get ourselves into trouble. Instead of casting a wide view up front to ascertain and understand the implications, we charge ahead with oblivious tunnel vision. Or, at least that’s what the projects that fail tend to do.

In this story, we’ll look at a cable company’s attempts to deliver an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service to respond to their competitors’ offerings, the choices it made and the unfortunate and costly end that resulted. We’ll also look at what it could have done differently to realize a more acceptable result.

Thanks to R.H. for the details on this story.

The Situation

In the early twenty-first century, traditional phone companies ventured into the cable companies’ territory by launching IPTV services. This allowed them to deliver television services to multiple screens – smart phones, tablets, desktop and laptop computers and smart televisions – over their internet networks. That left the cable companies at a competitive disadvantage.

The company in question decided to develop their own IPTV solution rather than acquiring an off the shelf offering. They believed a custom platform would provide a better long term service for their customers, offer the flexibility and agility to keep pace with changing technologies and better serve the appetites of television consumers.

The Goal

Develop and deliver an open-ended, flexible and adaptable custom built IPTV solution by 2015.

The Project

The company launched the IPTV project to great expectations in 2011. They built up their in-house house team and started contracting with vendors to provide the numerous technology elements required for a robust, high performance, competitive solution.

However, the development effort struggled and missed numerous deadlines. The company’s engineering team had to coordinate with over 70 external vendors for a wide array of software, network and hardware components. Over 1,000 people worked on the project, although less than 200 of those were company employees.

Interestingly, in spite of the missed deadlines, progress reports from the numerous teams continued to report green status. Leaders who reported issues were replaced to remedy the problems. The culture became more and more dictatorial, less and less collaborative. And still, deadlines were missed.

As the final deadline approached with an expected launch in the near future, extensive training sessions were offered to those affected within the organization. This exposed the fact that many of the affected departments were not ready. The growing number of defects identified through testing was not being addressed in a timely manner. That meant that the final product could not be shown or used in training sessions. As well, because of the number of vendors involved and their web of relationships, the contract landscape to support such a complex solution was extremely difficult to manage. The Operations teams targeted to support the product did not have adequate time to understand the solution or determine which support contracts to trigger.

And then the plug was pulled!

The Results

Over a year after the IPTV solution was to have been delivered, as they were closing in on the finish line, senior management realized that the solution they had built would not meet the initial business objectives – to be more flexible and agile, to keep pace with changing technologies and the appetites of television consumers.

The solution was so complex that it would be very difficult to support and very laborious and expensive to continue to enhance. They realized after looking at what they had built that partnering with a bigger, more established partner in the space would deliver a higher quality solution with much less overhead.

The company’s board sacked the CEO and cancelled the in-house development effort after five years of work, taking a write down of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company then partnered with an IPTV vendor to deliver a solution by early 2018.

How a Great Leader Could Have Succeeded

Any time we see a sizeable project failure like this, we can be pretty sure that the causes for the costly catastrophe were in place at the very beginning. How does your project avoid that fate? Start your project with a framework like PACE, an acronym for the Project, Assets, Change and Environment domains in the Project Pre-Check Decision Framework. It is powerful, proven and wonderfully productive.

PACE is a checklist with related practices. It presents vital questions for stakeholders to consider, to shape and guide their desired change. If you’re not familiar with the amazing value a well-designed checklist can deliver, check out an earlier post, The Checklist Champion.

What does a checklist do? It asks questions! Matthew E. May, in his article The Power of Asking the Right Questions on americanexpress.com, reviews Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. “Berger takes us inside such red-hot businesses as Google, Netflix, IDEO and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into these companies’ organizational DNA. He also shares dozens of inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them by starting with a beautiful question.”

Berger defines a beautiful question as a question that challenges assumptions, that shifts the way we think about something and often sets in motion a process than can result in change. The intent of PACE and similar frameworks is to pose those “beautiful questions”, to ensure, in response to a desired change:

All key stakeholders are identified and engaged
All the relevant decisions are identified and addressed
All key stakeholders agree with the relevant decisions, throughout the project.

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Let’s take a look at the four domains – Project, Assets, Change and Environment – and some of the factors that would have been addressed on this project if the project’s stakeholders had used a framework like PACE. Also consider how their inclusion early on could have changed the outcome for the better.

The Project Domain covers the project management parameters to enable effective decisions on time, cost and function delivery. It includes twenty-two Decision Areas within the Planning, Organization, Control and Communication factors. While all of the Decision Areas appear relevant to this project, four in particular are noteworthy: business and technology alternatives, release plan and risk plan.
The Assets Doman includes the people, processes, products and tools that can be leveraged to support a planned project or may require changes for the project to succeed. In essence, the Assets Domain is the supply cabinet to the project world. It includes forty-six Decision Areas within the Resources, Delivery, Project Management, Business Operations, Security Administration, Technology Operations and Infrastructure factors. Again, most of the Decision Areas look to be relevant. Some that would have sparked healthy discussion and debate early on include resource procurement, contract management, management of change, software delivery and technology change. In all cases, the question would be what do we do presently and what do we need to do in the future to manage the upcoming change effectively. Beautiful questions!
The Change Domain encompasses the factors that enable the stakeholders to shape the planned change to deliver a responsive, cost-effective, quality solution that maximizes value. Its focus is to ensure change parameters are fully defined, assessed and controlled in the context of sponsor, change agent and target expectations and capabilities. It includes forty Decision Areas within the Dimensions, Stakeholders, Investment Evaluation and Quality factors. While most of the Decision Areas in this domain are probably relevant to the IPTV project, the key ones include worth (how much the company can afford to spend), phasing and staging, stakeholder roles and responsibilities, the questions around sponsor, change agent and target commitment and capability and competitive advantage and risk.
Finally, the Environment Domain addresses key dimensions of the current state enterprise, the future state target and the business plan that will move the enterprise from the current state to the desired future state. It covers seventeen Decision Areas in the Current state, Future state and Business Plan factors. I expect, if the company had an opportunity to go back and consider this venture all over again, they’d want to address each and every one of those seventeen questions.

The whole point of a framework like PACE is for it to be ever present – to ask these questions at the start to launch the project effectively and to review each decision as the project progresses, as components are delivered and experience gained and as changes (external as well as internal) are assessed and introduced. That discipline ensures decisions are still relevant and appropriate to the current circumstances.

Stop Doubling Down on Your Failing Strategy, an article by Freek Vermeulen and Niro Sivanathan in the November-December 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review offers some interesting reinforcement to the potential power of PACE.

In the article, the authors described why people commit to a strategy, even when it appears flawed. “Escalation of commitment is deeply rooted in the human brain. In a classic experiment, two groups of participants were asked whether they would be willing to invest $1 million to develop a stealth bomber. The first group was asked to assume that the project had not yet been launched and that a rival company had already developed a successful (and superior) product. Unsurprisingly, only 16.7% of those participants opted to commit to the funding.

“The second group was asked to assume that the project was already 90% complete. Its members, too, were told that a competitor had developed a superior product. This time 85% opted to commit the resources to complete the project.

These results underscore the fact that people tend to stick to an existing course of action, no matter how irrational.”

In this story, even though some competitors had implemented IPTV solutions and others were well advanced, the company chose to build their own solution. It took five years and hundreds of millions of dollars before it decided to change that direction and buy a solution instead.

Vermeulen and Sivanathan identify six biases that contribute to these kinds of outcomes; the sunk cost fallacy, loss aversion, the illusion of control, preference for completion, pluralistic ignorance and personal identification. The descriptions are mostly self-explanatory. The biases were alive and well on this project.

The authors present six rules for overcoming these biases:

Set Decision Rules
Pay Attention to Voting Rules
Protect Dissenters
Expressly Consider Alternatives
Separate Advocacy and Decision Making
Reinforce the Anticipation of Regret

Again, the rules are mostly self-explanatory. What’s important to remember is these rules for overcoming decision-making biases are thoroughly enabled by frameworks like PACE. As the authors state, “overcommitted executives are prone to ignore signs of their company’s imminent collapse. That is precisely why companies need to establish organizational processes and practices of the kind we’ve laid out—to encourage managers at all levels to make decisions more objectively and explicitly consider alternative strategies and perspectives.”

While these rules and practices help immeasurably, the most significant condition for a successful project is still the commitment of key decision-makers to deliver on a common vision. Nobody articulates this need better than John Kotter, the renowned Harvard professor, consultant, author and thought leader. His 8 Step Change Model has been used widely and successfully across a range of industries and situations.

If we look at his model (at left), there are three steps that are most applicable to the IPTV case. Step 1 – Create a sense of urgency is tellingly absent from the evidence we have available. Five years to cancellation without any major implementations is not a sense of urgency. Step 2 – Build a guiding coalition across the affected organizations appears to be another significant gap. That helps explain why key segments of the business claimed lack of readiness to implement late in the game. Lastly, Step 6 – Short term wins is all about incrementally building the change. That didn’t happen here.

There is no question that building and delivering an IPTV system for millions of clients is a huge undertaking. By that very fact, it also needed massive due diligence right up front. Fortunately, there are innumerable best practice sources to help lighten the load and ease the journey to successful delivery.

So, be a Great Leader. Use PACE and those “beautiful questions” to start and guide all your projects. Put the energy up-front into laying out a route that everyone commits to follow. Keep asking those “beautiful questions” and checking your answers throughout the project. And, put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can deliver a successful change.

Remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group (including the key stakeholder roles), the decision management process and Decision Framework (PACE) best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors. Or those beautiful questions.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – People Don’t Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It

Written by Drew Davison on October 25, 2017. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – People Don’t Buy What You Do, They Buy Why You Do It

“Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything – for better or for worse.”
– Simon Sinek – Author, motivational speaker and marketing consultant

If you’re involved in change, as a sponsor, project or change leader, a champion or a target, you know two things for certain; the changes led by great, inspiring leaders are invariably wonderful experiences and, changes lead by the other kind of leaders can be dismal affairs.

As change agents, it’s vital that we understand what it means to be a great, inspiring leader. Simon Sinek’s quote above provides part of the answer. Culture is a key enabler. But how does a leader build the culture that delivers wonderful experiences? Sinek has an answer for that too – “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

In this story, we’ll look at a company with an incredible history of sustained growth and innovation, led by a man who had a passion for people. His motivation? To care for his families, both personal and corporate. If you’re not a CEO, you might be thinking, this doesn’t apply to you. And you’d be wrong. These days, if you’re leading or involved in a change in any way, there will usually be hundreds, if not thousands, of people affected by what you’re doing – your teammates, your customers, suppliers, partners, staff in affected organizations, regulatory agencies, IT experts, security staff, auditors, financial types, and so on. You need to think like your change’s CEO. The more you know about being an inspiring leader, the greater the opportunity to deliver wonderful experiences for all involved. Isn’t that something to strive for?

Thanks to A.B. for the details on this story.

The subject of our story, let’s call him Roy, was the long term CEO of a construction company which had operations across North America. The company grew from a small operation forty years ago to thousands of employees today through smart acquisitions and organic growth. It was hugely successful in a tough, often cutthroat business. It was at the forefront of innovations in constructions practices and equipment development and evolution. It was always profitable and never laid off staff, in both good times and bad. It could count on significant repeat business from its public and private sector clients because of the competitiveness of its bids and the quality of its solutions.

But what characterized the company and Roy’s leadership most was the human touch. Roy knew almost everyone’s name, from the executive ranks to front line workers. When he didn’t know someone’s name, he’d ask. But, instead of first asking what job the person was performing, he’d ask about their family, their spouse, their kids, their hopes and aspirations. Sure, he’d eventually get around to the work discussion, but it was almost always in the context of the family, not the other way around.

He ensured he had lots of frontline contact in his busy schedule. That gave him time to know his people and the opportunity to shape his managers’ approach to the job. Roy always said that nothing was more important than his people. He walked the talk. His approach reminds me of Jim Goodnight, the Co-Founder and CEO of SAS, who once stated, “Ninety-five percent of my assets drive out the gate every evening”.

The culture Roy built in his company was pervasive. So what were the pillars of this empowering culture? There were nine:

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Look after the welfare of the family – Roy’s passion was the family – his own, his employees’ families and his corporate family. The work/life balance was zealously guarded. Communications were open, honest, straight forward and as broad ranging as required by the topic under discussion. Roy called one of his managers regarding his wife who had just undergone surgery to find out how she was doing and whether they needed anything. On Christmas day. Hiring focused as much on cultural match as skill fit. The company was consistently ranked as one of the best places to work.
Keep the customer satisfied – Roy’s focus on family carried over to his customers. Even though he was dealing with major public and private organizations and their senior executives, he treated them as extended family, looking after their welfare, their needs and their concerns. Customer satisfaction scores were almost always stellar.
Ensure the company’s success – You can’t safeguard the welfare of your family if the company isn’t a going concern. So Roy made sure that the company took the decisions, both long term and short term, to ensure his family members would always have a place to be engaged and valued. The corporate focus was on continuity, not just money.
Engage from the executive suite to the front lines – Roy ensured that his values were mirrored by his managers. When new projects were started, when new equipment was acquired, when new practices were implemented, when a smaller company was acquired, Roy and his local management team were there, engaging with and listening to front line staff. Everyone was on a first name basis. Discussions were held in the construction zones and local field trailers over coffee and sandwiches or pizza, in hard hats and safety boots.
Provide opportunities for growth – One of the key drivers for new projects and new acquisitions was staff opportunity. Roy recognized that his people needed the chance to build new skills and capabilities to keep them interested and challenged. That focus resulted in an amazing number of long service employees with in depth knowledge of company operations. It was great for the staff and great for the organization. Staff turnover was ridiculously low.
Obsess about safety – Construction sites are dangerous places with lots of heavy equipment and materials and often precarious or uncertain footing. Safety was a constant obsession in the planning and construction phases. When accidents did occur, management and front line staff reviewed the circumstances of the incident, changed equipment and revised their practices accordingly. Their record of safety was exemplary.
Provide good pay, benefits, bonuses and recognition – The company’s compensation package was competitive but not top quartile. However, staff were rewarded for contributions above and beyond through bonuses and recognition in the company’s various media sources. As well, an active employee suggestion system (remember those?) encouraged outside-the-box thinking and provided handsome rewards to successful submitters. And Roy thanked every submitter personally.
Engage in the community – Roy encouraged local participation in every community where the company had a presence. That could include involvement in charity events or support for local community services or facilities. The targeted events were selected locally and carried out locally by company staff. Over the years, they raised millions of dollars for good causes, increased community ties and built corporate camaraderie. And strengthened the family.
Be a leader in best practice and technology deployment – One of the key contributors to company success, providing opportunities for growth and delivering a safe working environment was a corporate obsession with best practices and the best equipment and technology for the job. The company was an early and continuous adopter on many fronts. Management and front line staff relished the opportunities provided.

These nine pillars used by Roy and his company can be leveraged by sponsors, project managers and change leaders to help their “families” survive and thrive. Will they make a difference? Absolutely! As vital contributors to team effectiveness, these nine pillars can help deliver an order of magnitude improvement in performance. But remember what Simon Sinek observed – “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Roy’s experience proves the point.

So, put these points on your checklist of things to consider, become an inspiring leader and deliver wonderful experiences for all. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group (including the key stakeholder roles), the decision management process and Decision Framework best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.

From the Sponsor’s Desk – 7 Actions to Wow the Client

Written by Drew Davison on September 26, 2017. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on From the Sponsor’s Desk – 7 Actions to Wow the Client

Every assignment, every interaction, every engagement presents us with opportunities to build capability, develop lasting relationships and wow our clients.

To take advantage of those opportunities, we need to recognize those interactions as moments of truth, to be leveraged, managed and banked.

In this story, we’ll discover one leader’s approach to building her company and serving her clients’ needs. Through strategically planned and executed services, she is able to leverage and build her organization’s capability while maximizing the value delivered. The business delivers that value through a project mindset. And therein lies lessons for all project and change managers.

The Situation

Ekaterina Sytcheva Is the owner of Prospect Solutions, a Vancouver based marketing and lead generation organization serving the small and medium sized business community. The company’s strategy is to serve as their clients’ marketing solution, encompassing every facet from web sites, to social media presence, diverse lead generation schemes and all facets of customer relationship management.

One of the company’s recent clients is Vancouver’s Finest Coffee Service (VFCS), owned by local entrepreneur Kurtis Telford. The company was founded in 2011 to provide local businesses with a selection of quality coffees and equipment with convenient, hassle-free service. Since then, the company has expanded its offerings to include filtered water coolers and other beverage services.

Kurtis first contacted Prospect Solutions for help on the lead generation front. He was mainly interested in telemarketing solutions to grow their customer base. Learning about Prospect Solutions’ holistic perspective on modern marketing, Kurtis was intrigued. He decided instead to go with the integrated marketing solutions including redevelopment of VFCS’s web site, social media strategy, Linkedin prospecting and lead generation, email marketing, blog development and customer relationship management capability.

The Goal

Working with Kurtis, Ekaterina and her staff developed a program to increase VFCS market share and put them in a unique competitive position. The program would include development and operation of the firm’s web site, targeted lead generation initiatives, support for a VFCS blog and delivery and operation of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that would support all of VFCS’s dealings with their clients.

The Program

Prospect Solutions worked with Kurtis to establish the scope and priority of the components parts. The priorities established included an initial focus on lead generation, followed by redevelopment of the web site, social media, search engine optimization and CRM implementation.
In accordance with the established priorities, Prospect Solutions developed a Linkedin lead generation program to increase Kurtis’s personal connections, develop a targeted data base of prospects and generate high quality leads.

As soon as funds could be diverted from the Linkedin effort, Prospect Solutions proceeded to redevelop the VFCS web site with the active involvement of the owner. After the launch of the web site, an aggressive SEO initiative addressed blogging, social media and public relations aspects.

As the other elements of the program started to bear fruit, Kurtis realized the value CRM could bring to VFCS. He authorized the CRM initiative. Prospect Solutions worked with VFCS staff to implement and adapt Vtiger, an open source CRM solution that provided ample functionality at an affordable price to manage customer interactions. Modules included marketing, sales and service (inventory, ordering, invoicing).

Finally, Prospect Solutions identified potential subject matter for the company’s blog and worked with Kurtis to deliver the posts on the company’s web site.

Work is ongoing on a number of projects including SEO, blogging, Social Media, public relations and further CRM customization and user training. It is a most fruitful partnership.

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The Results

With Kurtis’s active involvement and support, the web site was up and running in three months. Access to the redeveloped site grew steadily. Two months after launch, visits increase tenfold. By the fourth month, the volume had doubled again. VFCS’s Google position for “Office Coffee Service” grew 50 points in those four months.

The Linkedin prospecting project took 60 hours of Prospect Solutions staff time and resulted in 3340 new connections and 31 leads.

The Vtiger CRM implementation took only 10 hours of Prospect Solutions staff time to go live. It is being used by the VFCS internal telemarketers to book appointments and will be used by delivery drivers to manage customer inventory and supply. It also will provide core management information to help run the business.

However, the most important testament to the value provided by Prospect Solutions is this testimonial from the client, Kurtis Telford:

“Ekaterina and her crew at Prospect Solutions are great to work with. I like the fact that they are on top of things and since I have been working with them, things have been happening. I can count on them to get the job done. Thanks for all the good work!”

How a Great Leader Succeeds

Ekaterina is successful in her market and able to retain and grow her client base because of seven fundamental practices she and her team apply every day, with each client, on every project.

Stay true to your strategy – Prospect Solutions believes exceptional results can only be achieved through a comprehensive marketing program that addresses a client’s overall relationship with its customers. Success isn’t delivered by one or two lead generation campaigns. It’s realized by providing a better way to manage the customer relationships and interactions that drive success. Prospect Solutions does that.
Focus on client needs – Prospect Solutions’ approach demands active and ongoing involvement from their clients’ senior executives and staff. That was evident in the VFCS engagement. It ensured that the solutions delivered were Kurtis Telford’s solutions and VFCS solutions.
Think big, do small – Having that overall strategy and a well-articulated vision for each client means Prospect Solutions can deliver a piece at a time, reducing risk and incrementally delivering value.
Rapid delivery – You’ll notice that the timeframes for the projects Prospect Solutions delivered for VFCS were in terms of hours, weeks or a few months, not years. The approach provides quick feedback cycles and enables directional changes if results warrant.
Measure – The way to demonstrate the value you are delivering to your client is by actually measuring the results achieved. That’s one of the reasons benefit realization management is getting much greater attention these days. When the results don’t yield the expected return, having the numbers allows appropriate rethinking with your client and a suitable change in direction.
Stay Current – the technology world is in a constant state of flux. New solutions appear rapidly. Previously viable options can disappear overnight. Prospect Solutions maintains market awareness and currency to ensure they can offer the best options for their clients’ needs. Because of that awareness, they were able to identify and offer Vtiger as a suitable, cost-effective CRM solution for VFCS.
Leverage the virtual resource pool – Prospect Solutions has four to eight permanent staff to support their core operations. To respond to clients’ project needs, they maintain and leverage an extensive network of marketing and technical expertise. That provides great flexibility to respond cost-effectively to the varying demands of the marketplace while ensuring timely access to top notch talent. That’s a Win Win!

Aren’t these same practices vital for a successful project management career? You bet! So, be a Great Leader. Put these points on your checklist of things to consider so you too can build your capability, develop lasting relationships and wow your clients. Also remember, use Project Pre-Check’s three building blocks covering the key stakeholder group (including the key stakeholder roles), the decision management process and Decision Framework best practices right up front so you don’t overlook these key success factors.