Skip to main content

Tag: Leadership

Challenges and Sustainability of the Program Management Office

Written by Ricki Henry on . Posted in Articles. 7 Comments on Challenges and Sustainability of the Program Management Office

What’s a Program Management Office (PMO)?  Good question and one that’s at the heart of why many seemingly successful PMOs fail to thrive.  That is, they haven’t clearly stated why they should exist and exactly what they are supposed to accomplish.

Having established a PMO in the IT department of a local government, been a member of a team that established the PMO in a travel department of a fortune 500 company, and established many of the processes in an IT PMO at a gaming company, it’s no surprise to me that so many PMOs are born then die within a relatively short time.

  • 2006 PMI survey: Only 17% of PMOs have been in existence for more than five years
  • PMI 2007 white paper analyzing the current state of play: Almost 50% of survey respondents indicated the existence of their PMO was being, or had recently been, seriously questioned.
  • PM Solutions 2010 survey shows 50% of PMOs closed over the prior four years.

When you hear about seemingly successful, yet ultimately failed PMOs, you’ll find these recurring themes:

  1. No clear mission
  2. Lack of the right sponsorship
  3. Lack of compliance to PMO processes
  4. Failure to integrate into the business
  5. Lack of mature project, program, and/or portfolio management
  6. Failure to establish metrics and success criteria

1. Off-Target – No Clear Mission

The PMO must have a charter with a clear mission and vision statement so there is no confusion as to its aims and value.  Each PMO is different so it’s essential to the success of the PMO to identify what it will do in your organization.  Which areas will the PMO govern?  What specific objectives do you want the PMO to achieve in each of those areas?

Your sponsor didn’t request a charter for your PMO? – do one anyway. 

The business’s identifies their strategy, that is what they want to accomplish, and their tactical action plans, aka projects, define how they will accomplish it.  It is imperative to see a major objective of the PMO as the business unit’s key partner in achieving their tactical action plans.  If you do projects as an order taker, ‘tell me what you want’, without understanding the business need, you leave yourself vulnerable to implementing solutions that fail to achieve the business need.  If at the fundamental level your PMO is all about processes and not about helping the business achieve their plans, you’re on a road to failure.  It’s not about templates or dashboards it’s about enabling the business to achieve their business strategy through projects. The PMO must be seen as the enabler of business change.

2. Who’s Driving the Bus – Lack of the right sponsorship

When the PMO is viewed as a process organization it is often placed under a lower level manager.  This is consistent with PMOs that lack a business aligned mission, fail to report metrics, and with the perception in the organization that the PMO is just project process cops.

It’s easy to see, then, why when budget cuts come around the PMO is high on the list for elimination.  With no high level sponsor to fight for the continued value of the PMO and lack of understanding how the PMO is essential to achieving business strategy, PMOs become dispensable.

Clearly it’s not just having a high level sponsor, but having one that believes and understands the PMO mission.  In fact, to be safe, assume they have no idea what project management is, let alone what program and portfolio management is, nor what a PMO can do.   Remember that most people are unaware that project management is an approach to doing projects that requires special training and experience.  Worse yet, they believe that they do know what project management is.  After all they know what a ‘project’ is and they know what ‘management’ is, therefore they believe they know what ‘project management’ is.  I call this “the Donald Trump version of project management” a la the way he assigns a project manager in his Celebrity Apprentice show.  You know the “Hey you.  You’ve done projects before and you’ve managed before, right?  You’re the project manager”.

3. If Momma aint’ happy – Lack of compliance with PMO Processes

You know the expression “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”?  Well the same is true for project managers.  If the project managers ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.  For the PMO to be successful projects need to be successful.  For projects to be successful, program, project and portfolio management needs to be successful.  For these to be successful, project managers need to be successful.

If the project managers perceive the PMO processes to be just over head with little value, then they’ll do everything they can to short cut those processes.  So be sure the processes work for them and they’re not working for the processes.

Adopting new processes is a cultural change and it’s important to address how you will effect that change in the PMO implementation and sustainability strategy.  How are changes introduced?  Did the PMs have any input?  How were the PMs trained?  What support do the PMs have now?    

When project managers short cut PMO processes, the whole house of cards falls.  To ensure PMO processes are being followed, mandatory Toll Gate Reviews can be very valuable.  

PMOs that are involved in project manager quality, not just processes, are more likely to succeed.  Involvement can mean hiring the project managers (regardless of who they report to), providing skill development, and providing coaching and mentoring. 

PMOs who believe they exist to maintain dashboards and reports for upper management don’t get it.  Your key to PMO sustainability is to ensure that project managers are successful.

4. Because I said so – Failing to integrate into the business

Project participation from the business unit is essential to the success of projects.  Stakeholder representation, subject matter expertise, project champions, deliverable reviewers and verifiers, are business roles.  If the PMO has developed its processes without considering the impact on each business unit, then cooperation and support from the business will be hard to come by. 

Like the PMs, if the PMO expects the business to adopt new processes then this is a cultural change and it’s important to address how you will effect that change in the PMO implementation and sustainability strategy.  How are changes introduced?  Did the business have any input?  How were business representatives trained?  What ongoing project support does the PMO provide?  How do the PMO processes fit with the way the business operates? 

An overly burdensome project request process can alienate the business.  PMOs that require very little information at request time will be more accepted by the business than those that expect the business to provide highly complex and detailed information at request time.  It’s more business friendly to meet with the requester after the request is received and assist them with whatever additional information you need.  Don’t make them provide volumes of information up front just to get a request submitted.  It’s essential that the PMO is perceived as a partner of the business, not an adversary.  Be what helps them get things done.  Don’t be the biggest road block they have to getting things done.

5.  You can’t build the building without a firm foundation – Lack of mature project, program, and/or portfolio management

Expecting to implement a mature PMO with a “big bang” approach is another set-up for failure.  Assess your company’s maturity in project, program and portfolio management.  Then if there are major gaps to where you should be, address those gaps first.  It’s not uncommon for a sustainable PMO to take several years to reach a high maturity level.  Just be sure to bring value at every step along the way by ensuring the organization’s pain points are alleviated early in the PMO’s life.

Become successful in project management before working on program management.  Be sure your project manager’s skills and capabilities are at a level for them to succeed.  When that foundation is strong, develop a mature portfolio management. 

Don’t forget Resource Management.  This can be a real deal breaker for many PMOs.  PMOs that fail to do good resource management will be perceived as being ineffective.   The challenge is that you cannot manage resources effectively without being able to accurately estimate project durations so that you know when resources will be available.  Understanding this means ‘estimation capabilities’ rise to the top of the PMO’s ‘to do’ list and are critical to Project, Program and Portfolio success and therefore to PMO success.

Assess whether the PMO is nothing more than a repository of tools and templates, or if it is an enabler of achieving business benefits.  When the business perceives the PMO as the essential organization that enables them to achieve project benefits, then you have arrived.  If you’re viewed as process cops, you’re doomed.

To avoid being perceived as no-added-value overhead, be sure to have the right balance of process and governance with flexibility.  Take “lean” to heart and get the paperwork down to the bare bones.  Become the ‘go to’ people when projects are stuck or in trouble and any time a project manager needs assistance.  Never ever let PMO compliance be the cause of project delays.  Create scalable processes that vary by project type and size. 

6. You can’t manage what you don’t measure – Failure to establish metrics and success criteria

No one asked you to establish metrics for your PMO? – do it anyway.  No one asked you to define the success criteria? – do it anyway.  The concept that you have to “sell” the value of a PMO comes up in many PMO articles.  But if you look at other business units in your company they don’t sell the value of their unit, do they?  What they do is show their value in reports and scorecards. 

To do that they need to have their target goals (criteria of success) and their metrics that shows where they are against those goals.  You’ll see the sales goals and their current sales.  You’ll see Human Resources reporting their personnel retention goals vs. the number retained. 

Then when the ‘what have you done for me lately’ question comes up in budget cutting discussions, units that have consistently shown their value are not hit as hard as those who have not demonstrated value.  It’s no wonder that PMOs who do not continually and consistently show their value to the company are often the first to go in hard economic times. 

According to Gartner, IS organizations that properly implement a PMO will experience half of the project cost and schedule overruns compared with those who do not.  Metrics can show the business value (e.g. 95% of project KPIs are achieved in 90% of projects), functional performance value (e.g. rework is reduced by 15%) and service level value (e.g. Customer satisfaction 90% satisfied or very satisfied) the PMO brings to the organization.  Metrics are essential for getting needed support.  They demonstrate progress, value, and productivity.

And don’t forget to celebrate.  Celebrate project successes, project manager successes and PMO successes.

It’s unbelievable the number of apparently successful PMOs that end up closing their doors after a few years.  There’s no need for yours to be one of them.  

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Ricki Henry,

  • 19+ years as a project manager
  • Established the PMO at Clark County NV, co-developed two other PMOs
  • PMP, Six Sigma Green Belt, Certified Scrum Master, MS Project Server Black Belt, PMP exam preparation Trainer
  • Speaker on BA and PM topics


Project Success; It Begins and Ends with Leadership

Written by Lisa Anderson on . Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Project Success; It Begins and Ends with Leadership

In today’s global economy, project success can make or break any company, as the race is more challenging than it’s been in decades to grow the business and continue to find new ways to trim costs.  Every company I consult with has already addressed low-hanging fruit.  It will no longer be as easy to find ways to be competitive.  Thus, when there is an opportunity, there’s nothing more important than ensuring it delivers results – project success.  And, as my HR mentor used to say, “Success begins and ends with leadership.

To make matters more difficult, it is increasingly hard to find effective leaders.  One would think with unemployment as high as it is in the U.S. and even worse in the manufacturing hubs, it would be simple to find leaders.  It’s not.  I’ve talked with a half dozen executive recruiters in the last month, and they have all said that it remains a tall order.  What do the best leaders do differently than the rest

Clarify Targets/Objectives.

It is amazing how overlooked and simple yet incredibly important this secret to success is to achieving project objectives.  Interestingly, in hundreds of projects I’ve participated with over the years, those with clear objectives have had an 80% greater chance of success than those without them.  So, why in the world don’t project leaders clarify objectives more frequently?  I’ve found that it isn’t as simple as it sounds, as it often requires unwavering commitment

For example, on a recent integration project, the objectives seemed clear.  As usual, project teams start off on the right foot.  However, at the first sign of trouble, the objectives become less clear.  Politics entered the scene.  If the project leader stood by the clarity of the objectives, he stood the chance of taking the heat for side impacts for other departments, which could result in unhappy employees as the workload would be temporarily increased.  Of course, overall, this was similar to a $100 investment to save $100,000, and if he communicated it effectively, it might not be a problem; however, it was uncomfortable.  Thus, he wavered, and the project team became less sure of the objectives – and less successful. 

Ability to Translate the Target/Objectives for the Team.

This is not nearly as simple as just repeating the objectives, stating support and threatening if required.  A project leader has to be able to translate the objectives for the team in a clear and insightful manner.  It doesn’t require that the project leader understands the entire subject matter; however, he/she must be able to ask effective questions and be respected by the team.  Otherwise, it’s likely to result in immediate failure.  

For example, I’ve participated in two projects where the project leader wasn’t too familiar with the details of the subject matter.  In one case, the project leader asked effective questions and was able to lead the project to an early delivery with better than anticipated results.  In the other case, the leader was in over his head and resorted to threats.  This project team not only made lackluster progress at best but was extremely frustrated. 

A Focus on Results.  

Last but not least, the project leader must focus on results.  One of the most common mistakes I see with my clients is getting distracted with thousands of non-essential details.  Instead, those who are successful maintain a rigorous focus on the critical path – in essence, just those tasks required to achieve the project objectives. 

For example, I’ve often seen project teams distracted with the optimal way to use project tracking software, or what format to use for tracking progress yet little to no time is spent proactively communicating with project team members.   Instead, a steadfast focus on the project objectives can achieve wonders.  

As businesses struggle to stand out in the crowd in the “new normal” business environment, there’s no doubt project success is vital to maintaining and improving profitability.  Although there are several keys to achieving success, there is nothing more important than leadership.  I’ve never seen a project succeed without an effective leader – at a minimum, there was an informal leader who drove project success.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Work the Problem, Not the Solution

Written by Chris Vandersluis on . Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on Work the Problem, Not the Solution

Work-the-problemPeople are always coming to me asking for my help designing a solution they’ve already designed.  It’s not their fault of course.  Project management software vendors have become very adept at creating marketing materials that make it look easy to deploy an enterprise project management solution “out-of-the-box” so if you find some solution for a particular problem in the marketing literature, it seems an easy decision to make.

Take an example I had recently.  A project manager in a service business called asking if I could help deploy a server-based EPM system.  I started to ask the questions I always ask: “What kind of projects are they?  How do you manage these projects now? How big are your projects, how many do you have?  How many people are resources in the system, how many people would be users?” only to have the person stop me in mid-stream to tell me that the answers to these questions weren’t important.  They’d “already chosen the solution,” he told me and just needed someone to make it work.

I explained that I was in the solution business and if I couldn’t understand the problem, I wasn’t the person to deploy the solution.  We talked a little longer and the problem the client kept describing was that they had outgrown the scheduling they’ve been doing manually using Outlook calendars and now needed to “upgrade”.

It’s not the first time I’ve been confronted with this exact request.  Could we migrate a manually-driven Outlook-calendar resource scheduling system to an “automatic” Microsoft Project Server system?  The answer to this is almost always no.  This answer shocks and upsets everyone who gets it.  “But there’s an Outlook module/connector in Project Server,” they explain to me patiently.  Perhaps if I’d only known this I’d see the light and deploy what they want.  They seem more upset when they find out that I’m aware of the Outlook connector and other Outlook tools.

The challenge in these situations isn’t the technology involved.  This person was quite right.  Microsoft has a new Outlook connector as part of Project Server 2010 that links to Microsoft Exchange Server.  There have also been Outlook connectors in earlier versions of Project Server.  The problem this person has is that he wants to move a relatively small organization which has allocated resources to tasks more or less manually with a single person or a person per large department, sliding tasks manually into calendars in an organization where project scheduling, centralized resource capacity planning, resource conflict resolution and an enterprise project management process and associated tools are all automated to the point that the work happens automatically.

That’s a corporate culture and process change, not a technology change.  I understand how tempting it seems when the solution for all the organization’s challenges seems only a software purchase away. But software is better considered as the potential for a solution rather than a problem-solved.  Getting the software to the point where the problem that was originally encountered goes away may take a lot more thinking as well as resources, time and money.  In the end, sometimes going with the large EPM deployment makes perfect sense and other times not.

Let’s take the original problem encountered by the organization that called me.  What is the problem exactly?  When we dig a little deeper, it seems that the problem is that the challenge with scheduling manually is when work occurs out of sequence or is delayed.  When that is the case, then connected tasks such as we’d naturally think of in a logic-driven schedule don’t automatically move.  Ok, anyone who’s done a basic course in project management and critical path theory can get that.  Then, when we look a little deeper, it turns out that several division leaders are trying to share these Outlook calendars at the same time and doing so means that they can’t determine the priorities of different projects.

Well, if we could centralize scheduling into an actual project schedule, we might do well with having a small project office with one or two co-located schedulers.

But presenting that to the organization immediately generates resistance.  What now surfaces is that the client loves how Outlook presents the tasks to the users and how users get these tasks by email even when they’re changed on short notice.  This is why they went to looking at the big centralized enterprise project management system in the first place.

If we just take the problem though then there are lots of ways to build a solution:  First of all, if we stay in a strictly Microsoft world, Project Professional 2010 can read and write the tasks from a SharePoint list.  Outlook users can subscribe to such lists and even get email notifications when the list changes.

Next, if we just look at using a copy or two of MS Project centrally, we can use a tool like Housatonic, EasyTaskSync or EasyTaskLink to move data back and forth between Project desktop and Outlook.

Lest we keep the whole conversation Microsoft-based, similar tools exist for Oracle-Primavera.  PRMLook for example links a Primavera schedule with Outlook.

If we look outside the box some more, TrackerOffice is a project management tool built around Exchange.

I’m not advocating any of these solutions but my point is that there are a lot of paths to get to a solution that may be appropriate and the best selection is going to have more to do with the exact nature of the enterprise, and the challenge they’re facing than it is with the brochure of whatever software is being most heavily promoted on a given day.

“Work the problem, not the solution” we tell our consultants.  It keeps us focused what ultimately makes a difference.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Chris Vandersluis is the founder and president of HMS Software based in Montreal, Canada. He has an economics degree from Montreal‘s McGill University and over 22 years experience in the automation of project control systems. He is a long-standing member of both the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE) and is the founder of the Montreal Chapter of the Microsoft Project Association. Mr. Vandersluis has been published in numerous publications including Fortune Magazine, Heavy Construction News, the Ivey Business Journal, PMI’s PMNetwork and Computing Canada. Mr. Vandersluis has been part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Partner Advisory Council since 2003. He teaches Advanced Project Management at McGill University‘s Executive Institute. He can be reached at [email protected].

A Program Manager is More than a Great Project Manager

Written by Ruchira Chatterjee on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on A Program Manager is More than a Great Project Manager

The project management practice environment consists of Portfolio, Project and Program management. To date, significant progress has been evident in organizations’ awareness and adoption of portfolio and project management, but advances in program management have lagged behind. In an earlier article, we explored how Program Management is a key solution to closing the gap between strategy formulation and strategy execution; we defined programs and program management and outlined six steps to getting started on implementing a program management environment in an organization. A critical factor in ensuring program success is entrusting the management of programs to individuals with key skills and experience. In this article we explore in detail the attributes and requirements of the successful program manager, and outline how to develop program management competency within an organization.

Profile of a Successful Program Manager

If programs are held primarily responsible for realizing benefits, then program managers have a critical role to play in effective strategy execution.

What makes a successful program manager and why? Great project managers don’t always make great program managers. The attributes of a successful program manager – below – are all very important, but the order they are listed in indicates the conscious priority that we place on the senior level of consulting and general management expertise as opposed to strictly project management capabilities.

  • Business manager
  • Seniority of experience
  • Change Management expertise
  • Superior communication skills
  • Objectivity and fairness
  • Risk Management capability
  • Project management expertise

The following table explains each attribute in further detail:

Attribute Explanation
Business Manager Initiatives are ‘business’ investments – a program manager must be cognizant of how the program is expected to change the business and to be able to make it happen. They need to transcend functional boundaries; ensure alignment and continual assessment and adjustment of program outcomes in line with strategic objectives; be business savvy – Market, industry and product/service knowledge, financial and business knowledge, competitive intelligence, organizational systems and undertake benefits planning, assurance and sustainment.
Seniority of Experience A program manager may succeed based entirely on innate ability but more likely has had a richness of business experience to be able to manage proactively.
They need to anticipate and manage issues; bring authority and influence to the team; be able to leverage lessons learned from past experiences.
Seniority of Experience A program manager may succeed based entirely on innate ability but more likely has had a richness of business experience to be able to manage proactively. They need to anticipate and manage issues; bring authority and influence to the team; be able to leverage lessons learned from past experiences.
Change Management Expertise Programs by their very nature are instruments of change – the program manager therefore must be a change agent with the key responsibilities. They will need to define goals of the change; develop internal commitment; develop trust; understand current and target culture and take explicit steps to transform; build organizational capacity for change; prepare for and deal with resistance.
Strong Communication Skills Given that programs cross functional and organizational boundaries are complex initiatives with large teams and many moving parts, strong communication skills are critical. Program managers will need to manage a multitude of stakeholder expectations; ensure that appropriate governance processes and structures are in place; facilitate timely and effective decision making; undertake critical negotiations with entities, internal and external to the organization; resolve inevitable conflict and motivate the team to get goal commitment and excellence in execution.
Objectivity and Fairness  In order to stay focused on the goals and objectives that are the purpose of the program, program managers will have to make difficult and unpopular decisions. It is essential that they demonstrate a rational, fair and supportable approach to resolution of issues; selection of corrective actions; resource and funding allocation and prioritization.
Risk Management Capability Risk management at the program level is not simply a consolidation of constituent project risks. The alignment of programs to strategic outcomes introduces a level of business risk that must be handled at the program level through identification, assessment, development of mitigation strategies, monitoring and corrective action.
Project Management Expertise Program execution must reflect project management best practices. The program manager can be likened to a symphony conductor, leveraging project management skills, organizational strategy and business know how to deliver maximum value where the whole is significantly more powerful than the sum of its parts. Key elements would be integration of component projects; resolution of inter-project dependencies; development and tracking of program roadmaps, milestones and schedules; continual assessment and adjustments of resources and funds; contract negotiations and centralized vendor management and consolidated program status reporting.

Finding the Right Program Manager

Given the skills and expertise that are required for a successful program manager, where could we find the best candidates in an organization? More often than not, other than in very project management mature organizations, it is difficult to find one individual with all the requisite skills. An effective approach is to use a combination of two individuals

  • A business leader partnered with a project management practitioner or
  • A seasoned project manager assisted by a senior business leader

Option 1. Business leaders partnered with PM expertise: As program managers are tasked with ensuring strategic alignment and benefits realization, first and foremost they need to have a high level of business acumen. As a result, business leaders in an organization are best suited for this role. Recognizing that these individuals may not have the PM expertise, assigning an individual with senior PM expertise to work together is an effective strategy.

Option 2.  Seasoned project manager assisted by a senior business leader: The second option is to select a senior PM to lead the program partnered with a business leader with knowledge of the business area impacted by the program.

The option selected should be based on strategic importance, magnitude of business change, technical complexity, and number of constituent projects. If the program involves business process innovation, significant organizational change management and realization of business outcomes, option 1 would be more appropriate. On the other hand, if the program involves new technology, outsourced components, project management expertise becomes more critical and option 2 may work better.

Building Program Management Capability

Since it is important for organizations to move towards program management as a means to successfully execute strategy, it is critical to develop a core competency in the program management discipline.

  • Recruiting: Program management expertise, though not professionally recognized till recently, has been developed through practical application by individuals. These program managers are highly sought after, especially if they have industry knowledge and experience – recruiting this talent may be a viable option.
  • Temporary outsourcing: Engaging the services of a consultant program manager is the second option. Consultant program managers who offer an unbiased perspective, typically can bring both senior experience and expertise to an assignment. Being external to the organization, they can more easily make unpopular but necessary decisions. If knowledge transfer is included as an integral part of a consulting program manager’s responsibility, this option can be both cost effective and help build internal capabilities.
  • Training: In recognition of the role of the program manager. The PMI has relatively recently developed a professional designation and supporting curriculum and standards. Expert opinion says ‘the jury is still out’ on their effectiveness. The ‘newness’ of these efforts are reflected in the number of PgMPs (Program Management Professionals) to date. As of June 30, 2009 there were only 294 PgMPs compared to 360,000 PMPs worldwide. In addition to PMI, there are a few commercially available courses from other education service providers.

Conclusion

It is becoming widely recognized that managing initiatives as programs that drive strategy and do not compromise on execution excellence or benefit realization is an important capability for an effective organization. Entrusting this responsibility to the right person(s) either internal or external to the organization is critical. Given the business climate today and lessons learned from the recent economic crises, can we afford not to take a step in the right direction?

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Ruchira Chatterjee is a Managing Consultant at SPM Group Limited with over 30 thirty years of experience managing progressively larger departments and more complex programs and projects in both private and public sectors. She has held senior positions such as Program Director in Wealth Management, Director Client Services in IT, Director Model Operations in Property Casualty Division, managed Application Development and Business Systems functions and most recently has been a Managing Consultant with SPM providing consulting and program management services to clients. .Ruchira holds a Masters in Economics and is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) as dgnated by the Project Management Institute.

Resources

PMBOK 4th edition

Managing Strategic Initiatives in Turbulent Times, White Paper, SPM Group Ltd., February 2009

PMI Program Management Standards – second edition

PMI Annual Report 2008

Gartner Research Paper – Publication Date: 5 December 2007 ID Number: G00153349

IBM’s Making Change Work Study, 2008

Do You Know Where Your IT Projects Are? Part 4.

Written by Yogi Schulz on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Do You Know Where Your IT Projects Are? Part 4.

In this last of four articles, Yogi Schulz completes his description of the 12 signs of impending IT project doom that are visible months before catastrophe strikes.

Change Management

Good – I lead the project team in addressing the introduction of new business processes and their impact on staff.  For example, the project team has been coaching business leaders in how to introduce and effect the required change to the order fulfillment process.

Bad – The project team is not introducing new business processes, despite my encouragement as project manager, to place more emphasis on this topic.  For example, the project team is totally absorbed in software development and data migration.  No resources and capacity are available to think about how the new system will change long-standing business processes.

Ugly – The project team doesn’t believe change management is required.  The project team believes change management will be handled informally by the business and is not part of the project scope.  For example, because the project team does not include individuals with the requisite change management experience, the team has rather flippantly said to the business:  You handle the change management piece.

The Fix

  • Recognize that almost every IT project introduces business process changes.
  • Insist that change management is in scope for the project to help the organization make the change.
  • Successful project managers ensure the project team competently executes change management tasks.

Project Technology

Good – The project consistently uses a short list of technologies.  I can conceptually describe the technology.  For example, the technology being used is .NET and SQL*Server.

Bad – The project uses an extensive and changing list of technologies.  Initially it was Microsoft; some months later it’s Java and more recently something called LAMP is being discussed.  For example, the project changed from .NET/SQL*Server to LAMP claiming shorter software development times.

Ugly – I observe the project team using lots of technology buzzwords in discussions. It’s not clear what technologies the project is actually using.  I’ve seen a flashy demo but I’m not sure how that delivers business value.  For example, some of the project team is using Java for the database layer, others are using .NET for the application layer and a few are using PHP for the presentation layer.  It appears the developers are using the tools they’re most comfortable with or the tools they want to explore.

The Fix

  • Select and stay with a set of technologies for the project.  Avoid revisiting technology selection as new glitzy products are announced.
  • Pick technologies where the IT organization demonstrates expertise and experience.
  • Successful project managers assertively insist that project team members stick with the selected technology.

Conclusions

For each of the characteristics, watch out for the signs that lead to project catastrophe and take action to ensure project success.

Recommendations

Address Project Success Factors in the Project Charter

As project manager, describe how you expect to execute the project in the project charter for discussion with the project sponsor and other members of the project steering committee.  For example, describe your project organization, status reporting plan and technology.

Use the draft project charter to drive discussions within the project team and with various stakeholders to achieve consensus on these key success factors.

Recognize Common Project Factors that Lead to Success or Failure

As project manager, keep a sharp lookout for these project failure factors.  Encourage the project team to draw the emergence of a project failure factor to your attention.  For example, when a project steering committee member resigns and no evidence of action to replace that person is apparent, what do you do?  Make a recommendation to the project sponsor.

Take Corrective Action when a Project Failure Factor Looms

By taking corrective action when project failure factors loom, you are ensuring that your organization achieves business value from its investments in the IT project.  You will also avoid the destructive finger pointing that is a consequence of most unsuccessful IT projects.  For example, what do you do when your project sponsor is promoted, transferred or fired?  Do you just meander along on your own?  No, as project manager you recommend to the project steering committee who will be the interim project sponsor and who the potential candidates for a new project sponsor are.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below

Yogi Schulz is a partner at Corvelle Consulting.  The firm specializes in project management and information technology related management consulting. Mr. Schulz holds a B.Com. from The University of Calgary, is a member of CIPS and holds its ISP designation. He has presented at many conferences, writes for the Microsoft web site and appears on CBC’s Wild Rose Forum. Mr.Schulz can be reached at [email protected].

References:
http://www.projecttimes.com/articles/do-you-know-where-your-it-projects-are-part-1.html
http://www.projecttimes.com/articles/do-you-know-where-your-it-projects-are-part-2.html
http://www.projecttimes.com/articles/do-you-know-where-your-it-projects-are-part-3.html