Tag: Program Management

Part II: A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity

Written by Conrad MacCue on April 7, 2021. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Part II: A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity

Abstract

This paper is Part II of the paper entitled “A Simplified Approach to Determine IT Project Complexity”, (MacCue, C., 2021, March 5). Its purpose is to further explain the rationale behind the Core IT Complexity Model within the framework of the broader topic of IT project complexity. It will discuss why the Core IT Complexity model is a good approach for most IT organizations and why it is important to determine project complexity as an ongoing and integral part of the Change Management and Risk Management process.

Keywords

Project Complexity, Project Risks, Managing Projects, Project Complexity Formula, Project Difficulty, Risk Management

Introduction

There are many details and intricacies to consider when managing a complex project to its successful outcome. While that may seem obvious to many IT PM professionals, that is not necessarily the case with many business executives looking for payback from their expensive IT department. IT Executives are constantly justifying their department to the C-Level executives’ cries to exactly why “does IT need so many people, and what do they actually do”? IT is perceived by many as this black box where work gets done, but no one outside of IT really knows how. This is why many IT organizations are under constant pressure to re-organize or transform to new project management approaches to managing projects, improving visibility, and showing their contributions. Much credit should be given to organizations like the PMI Institute. They have made a science out of project management as much as possible and have provided roadmaps for maximizing the potential for success to the greatest extent possible. Most companies now seek project managers who follow the PMO processes like Waterfall or Agile and many C-Level executives support the PMO process. However, a formally adopted PMO process to implement and closely monitor projects and portfolios does not account for everything occurring in IT. And while meeting objectives in a project may be pleasing to stakeholders, it may not answer the question as to why does it take so long to do something that appears to be very simple? Or why can’t a task be done today rather than waiting for some other task to be completed first? Why can’t we add in a bunch of other projects to do so that an IT person can work on those when they are not doing anything? It’s this constant struggle of demonstrating an ROI from IT that makes the life of a CIO challenging. This is the reason for relatively high turnover rates of CIO and the adopted tag of ‘Career is Over’. Even IT executives who have come from the Non-IT worlds may have this perception and might explain why there is sometimes distrust within IT organizational management.

For this, and many other reasons, as part of an overall risk assessment, the subject of project complexity should be taken seriously by executives when considering new IT projects. An understatement of a project’s magnitude can lead to an inaccurate ROI is where many IT Organizations introduce risks and instability into an IT organization. It will not eliminate all the CIOs problems, but it can help identify the projects upfront that have the greatest risk in the Initiation Phase before a project is launched. It can also indicate potential risks to existing projects. As viewed in this model, project complexity is intended to be a recurring process of evaluation and not a one-time fixed assessment at the beginning of the project. Moreover, the information derived from determining complexity can be used to rationalize overall work efforts in IT.

Background

This paper is not intended to provide readers with a holistic view of what project complexity is. There are hundreds of papers already written on that subject. One such paper “Profiling Project Complexity: Insights from Complexity Science and Project Management Literature.” (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A. 2016) synthesized views from 42 relevant papers on the subject matter and was able to classify them into 17 categories. That paper and the authors cited is a recommended reading for anyone interested in an all-encompassing view of project complexity.

To familiarize the reader with the subject of project complexity, below are three (3) important points from that paper.

A complex project is not the same as a complicated project. “The distinction between the two is the nature of the relationships between the elements of the project system (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A.,2016)” as explained by Chapman. “For instance, large-scale engineering and construction projects are considered to be complicated projects, but they may not necessarily be complex projects (provided that the interactions with and the influences of the environment are trivial or rather predictable). If the nature of relationships between various elements of a project is such that interactions between elements are non-linear and, therefore, will result in emergent behavior of the system, then it has been referred to as a “truly” complex project (Whitty & Maylor, 2009; Maylor et al., 2008)”.
The field of Project Complexity is wide-open and not well defined. (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A., 2016) state “However, our review of the literature reveals that such broad generalized statements about project complexity to be somewhat inadequate or incomplete, in terms of providing any guidance for project management practice or the development of appropriate tools and techniques to deal with complexity”.
The natural progression for the subject of project complexity is to narrow it to a specific industry. (Kiridena, S. & Sense, A., 2016) states “There have also been several recent attempts at developing frameworks or models for capturing and measuring project complexity within particular industry sectors (Chapman, 2016; Lu et al., 2015; Dunovic et al., 2014; Lessard et al., 2013)”.

The (3) three points above provide a basis to move forward then with the Core IT Complexity Model to achieve the objectives of:

(1) Expanding knowledge into the field of Project Complexity, drilling down into and applying it to the IT Industry,

(2) Using the guiding principle and common theme prevalent in all prior work on this subject in defining complexity as “non-linear interactions”.

Current Methods

Current methods for evaluating IT project complexity are limited and seem to fall into three (3) Tiers.

1. Tier 1: Non-existent. No assessment or evaluation. One can imagine a small to medium sized company with a few IT associates that are mostly supporting networking, desktops, mobile devices, where complexity is not relevant. It could be labeled production support.
2. Tier 2: Simple bucketing of low, medium, and high categories determined by someone who most likely has a “feel” of the project’s size. This individual would most likely be someone in the organization that has a good sense of the work involved and enters the data point into a system or spreadsheet associated with the project. Information is most likely not utilized for decision-making and has no supporting data.
3. Tier 3: Companies who have made an ongoing program out of determining project complexity. Methods are characterized by teams that have established a series of complexity criteria tailored to their environment and use spreadsheets or custom-developed applications. Their complexity modeling could be part of a larger overall Risk Management process.

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The Core IT Complexity Model in this paper fits somewhere in between Tier 2 and Tier 3 and is not intended as a replacement for Tier 3. If a company should choose to use a Tier 3 approach, it could lead to significant paybacks. One such method was successfully developed at Intel (McBride, M. 2014). Not only were they able to evaluate complexity, but they also used the data to estimate resources and project duration in a matter of minutes. It deployed a sophisticated approach referencing historical information and a scoring tailored to their environment. Another IT organization, Department of Information Technology, City of Seattle, Seattle, Washington, wrote a paper entitled “Early risk assessment in IT projects: integrating risk research into project management practice.”, (Taylor, H. A. & Artman, E. 2014). They included project complexity as a part of their comprehensive risk assessment program. There are other examples of deploying Tier 3 methods that can be found on the internet and in journals.

When appropriate, a Tier 3 model is best, but most companies do not adopt a structured method, particularly small and medium sized companies. One can imagine that the value of a Tier 3 approach would increase dramatically if it could be sponsored and accepted by business executives who could actively participate.

Proposed Method

The Core IT complexity Model states that key complexity factors of the number of resources, roles, allocations, calculated team stress, and communications provide the most valuable information in determining project complexity for a Tier 2+ approach. Chart I depicts many of the factors that have potential to affect IT project complexity, how it affects complexity, and the compensating actions. There may be other factors, however, I do not believe that it would alter the analyses in this paper. The complexity factors are presented in time order sequence, identified by their project phase using phases from the PMI institute of Initiation, Planning, and Execution. The phases of Controlling and Closing are not applicable for the purposes of this paper.

Again, the common theme for project complexity is “non-linear interactions”, as cited under the Background section above. More predictability (linear) will mean greater anticipation and preparedness to deal with the situation, identify it as a risk before it becomes an issue.

Discussion

In reviewing the complexity factors in Chart I, we can see that one of the major challenges is that much of the information helpful to assess complexity is not known until later phases of a project. For example, how many lines of code, number of tasks, number of issues, number of task dependencies, the exact number of requirements, and whether or not they are understandable. And therefore, an IT department needs to use the little information it can gain based upon high-level discussions about the project, its goals, and high-level requirements. This could be the function of a PMO board that has a list of initial scoping questions that would be asked of SMEs. Whether there is a formal PMO process or not, ultimately, the assessment will require the involvement of IT department heads when projects enter the Initiation Phase. This leads to one of the fundamental understandings when applying the Core IT Complexity Model to a project.

IT Management intuitively thinks in terms of resources, roles, and time when assessing project complexity. IT Management department heads and managers understand what is going on in their departments. They understand the inventory of skillsets, resource knowledge, approximate utilization of resources, and the backlog in their departments. Moreover, when evaluating a new project, IT management will typically enlist knowledgeable resources to tackle the early initial determination of a project’s magnitude, feasibility, and high-level costs. They will involve other department managers and SMEs who will have a series of meetings as required to discuss feasibility and overall level of effort. The feasibility of using internal resources will be heavily weighted by the novelty of the technology being implemented. That will in turn determine whether outside consultants will be required. If the project initiation analysis continues, an overall scope will take shape. Over the course of time in the Initiation Phase, depending on the magnitude of the project, details will become more apparent, and a high-level Charter stating goals and deliverables can be developed. For experienced and mature department heads and their reliance on internal knowledge and past experiences, they will be able to formulate an overall resource plan along with a ballpark cost estimate. And this can be done without knowing the details of the project plan. For example, take an IT eCommerce project; anyone experienced in this field will know right off the top, that it would need roles of business analysts, database engineers, application engineers, infrastructure server engineers, networking engineers, IT security and architects to name a few. One can safely estimate that at least 10% of the time will be needed by the department managers to understand the high-level requirements. Before the project exits the Initiation Phase, most experienced managers can provide roles and time estimates for their resources to participate in the requirements gatherings. Once requirements are understood, a good ballpark estimate can be made for detailed engineering resources.

Therefore, as we can see from the above flow, resources, roles, and rough allocation of resources can be estimated early in the project life cycle. As the project matures, other qualitative and quantitative information will help right-size the team to keep pace once the project duration has been determined.

In some cases, for novel technologies where there are no prior experiences, consulting firms will need to be brought in to perform the analysis, and therefore resource and time estimations may take longer.

Compensating factors ultimately affect resources and/or allocations. Some other important observations can be made about the complexity factors in Chart I. The compensating actions for many of the complexity factors result in an adjustment to resources or allocations of time. For example, if we look at the number of systems interfaces, we see that having the correct number of resources and time to handle the scope of the interfaces would be required. Having clear requirements means that we have the right number of BA resources allocated to the team. Similar reasoning can be applied to project duration, time zones, number of detailed tasks, number of task dependencies, number of lines of code. Each would ultimately result in an adjustment to resources or allocated time to right-size the team for the tasks at hand.

There are qualitative complexities that this model does not address and cannot be solved by increasing resources, allocation of time, or adding more roles.

Knowledge of resources
Team organization
Communications (Value-added
Changes in Scope

Knowledge of resources is, of course, very important. A project with knowledgeable resources will be more likely to complete tasks on time with fewer issues and be less likely to introduce chaos into the project. Team organization is about adopting the suitable project management methodology for the project at hand and adherence thereto, recognizing that no one approach will fit each project. For example, using an Agile process for an Infrastructure project is not a good fit. Nor is using a highly structured planned-based (i.e. Waterfall) methodology for a highly dynamic software project (Butler, C. W., Vijayasarathy, L. R., & Roberts, N., 2020). But adhering to the steps established within the framework of the project methodology selected by the company is key and deviating will add more chaos affecting all team members. Communication that adds value to the project goals is key to a project’s success.

Conversely, communication that does not add value will steal time and resources away from the project and could potentially add confusion and chaos. A team with many roles will need more value-added communications between team members to collaborate and work on interdependent tasks. Communicating status to the team’s project manager and the executive team for risk and issue identification and resolution is critical to a project’s health. But of course, the more communication required, the greater the interactions required, and the greater the complexity. Finally, Changes in Scope need to be controlled to minimize impact on the overall project goals and timeline.

Conclusion

As shown above, the Core IT Complexity model uses key quantifiable data elements of resources, roles, allocations, and communication (channels) that are most likely to be estimated early in the project lifecycle to calculate a value for complexity. This approach is an improvement over a simplified Tier 2 level. (It does require that the IT department collect this information). It does not replace all the other strategic and qualitative decision-making that no system could ever replace. Applied effectively, it could be used to estimate a project’s complexity, provide useful input into the project initiation process, assess the impact on other projects being executed, and rank projects relative to each other in the portfolio. This data taken together with other qualitative information will provide company executives with better information to make decisions on project initiatives.

Five Ways Leankor’s Enterprise Work and Project Management Solution Transforms Complexity to Profitability

Written by Brad Egeland on March 31, 2021. Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Five Ways Leankor’s Enterprise Work and Project Management Solution Transforms Complexity to Profitability

My next installment in this exclusive Project Times series on project management related tools and services looks at Leankor’s offering that promises to make projects more profitable while also making them easier to manage during these remote PM and virtual project teams real world times.

Remote teams. Tighter budget controls. Efficiency mandates. For enterprise organizations already navigating the complexities of large-scale initiatives, 2020 brought further complication with the disruptive effects of a global crisis. And while some degree of the former normal may eventually return, the heightened pandemic-era pressure to accelerate delivery while driving profitability is here to stay—regardless of where teams work.

Fortunately, as the world changed, enterprise organizations have been able to rely on Leankor’s sophisticated enterprise work and project management solution to seamlessly transform operations and combat the challenges that have resulted from this evolution. With super-charged collaboration features, Leankor’s next-generation solution transforms complex, interconnected workflows and business processes into easy-to-manage plans for faster delivery and profitability. Here are five ways Leankor helps teams do their best work.

Closer Collaboration When Teams Are Farther Apart

While the future of the remote workplace is still evolving, collaboration among distributed teams will always be critical to enterprise work and project management success. According to a December 2020 PwC survey, 87% of employees say the office is important for collaborating with team members. Salesforce research finds 96% of workers believe lack of collaboration is the source of workplace failures.

To bridge the collaboration gap, Leankor’s sophisticated, cloud-based work and project management solution links distributed internal and external teams with full transparency into planning, execution and strategy. For the most complex, large-scale projects, stakeholders must align from kickoff to delivery, and often even as early as the opportunity development stage. That includes not only remote office employees but also contractors, field services teams and even customers. Leankor empowers teams with tools to conduct virtual discussions, brainstorm and quickly solve problems from anywhere.

360-Degree Visibility for Clear Context in Uncertain Times

Remote collaboration requires all team members to have access to the same, updated information for context and effective decision making. When distributed teams can sync and share files in one central location in the cloud, it eliminates disconnected spreadsheets and disparate servers, mitigating the risk of decisions based on the wrong data. Because we live in times marked by uncertainty, the data-driven context and clarity provided by Leankor’s next-level solution help guide individuals, teams and organizations to more certain and better outcomes.

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Flexible Work Management Aligned to How People Work Best Now

McKinsey research suggests 70 percent of companies use the Agile methodology in some form to run their organizations. But that doesn’t mean Agile-only support is sufficient for effective work and project management. For optimal efficiency, most organizations operate with a variety of methodologies and use hybrid approaches across projects and departments. However, some organizations are still using time intensive, manual approaches to manage their complex projects.

To support the way an organization works best, Leankor allows multiple methodologies to co-exist, including Kanban, Lean, Agile, Gantt, Waterfall, hybrid, pull-planning and others, adapting and translating for streamlined project and risk management. All methods can be interconnected and unified in a virtual platform to communicate with ease, making progress seamless. This can happen even when people are socially distanced in home offices or in clusters of teams in regional satellite locations.

When Agile work methods exist with traditional Gantt project planning processes, Leankor allows organizations to create projects using traditional methods and for work and tasks to be executed at the team level using Agile approaches. This means teams work the way they want from a single system while increasing organization-wide efficiency, control and velocity.

Interconnected Resources to Drive Profitability—from Opportunity to Delivery

When teams, data and customers come together, efficiency translates to profitability. Amid global economic uncertainty, on-time, on-budget has never been more critical, and neither has customer satisfaction and loyalty. For large-scale, long-lasting projects across multiple sites, Leankor can have a direct, positive order-to-cash revenue impact. It’s a user-friendly uber orchestrator, managing interconnected resources, timelines and workflows.

When powerfully integrated with Salesforce applications like Service Cloud, Einstein AI, Community Cloud, CPQ, MuleSoft, Field Service Management, Vlocity, Chatter and QUIP, Leankor goes far beyond traditional project management to become a comprehensive enterprise work management solution, transforming large-scale project complexity into efficiency. And ultimately, that translates into profitability.

Analytics for the Agility to Manage Now and What Comes Next

Leankor’s powerful analytics are designed for users of all technical levels. They empower people to make informed decisions throughout the project lifecycle and improve the outcomes of work. From streamlining request-for-proposal (RFP) processes for multi-service-point quotes to enabling customer-centric master dashboards for better customer service and P&L insight, Leankor drives revenue from opportunity to delivery. Individuals meet timelines and budget expectations with robust analytical and reporting features. Executives get visibility into resource allocation and financials to better manage profitability. Teams identify risk with AI, advanced reporting and predictive, next-best actions to eliminate or mitigate costly issues before they occur. Informed decision making throughout project lifecycles provides the agility to manage for project success and long-term organizational success.

A Next-Gen Solution for the New Age of Work and Project Management

The pandemic and resulting global economic crisis have made work and project management especially challenging for organizations across industries and around the globe. But with the right solution to manage people, processes and technology, any organization can drive efficiency that empowers teams to do their best work, keeps stakeholders informed and accelerates delivery. The result is greater profitability across projects and elevated work enterprise-wide. It’s an approach that will help organizations thrive in this crisis and through whatever lies ahead.

Summary / more about Leankor

Leankor is a highly visual work and project management solution built on the Salesforce Cloud. Designed for the enterprise customer, Leankor helps companies execute complex projects at scale. A transformative solution, it links different styles of methodologies and processes, empowering people to work more effectively. Leankor enables teams to organize, manage, collaborate and deliver better projects, helps decision-makers measure effectiveness, and allows companies to deliver quicker revenue cycles. Leveraging the power of Salesforce, it brings together customer, project, and resource data, extending the Customer 360 vision. Leankor is used by many of the world’s leading brands with focused solutions for industrial enterprises in Manufacturing, Construction, Solar, Energy and B2B Telecom, with additional emphasis on R&D, quality management, product launches and manufacturing for Biotech, Medtech and Pharma.

The Paradox of Patience, Planning and Expectations

Written by George Pitagorsky on November 18, 2020. Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on The Paradox of Patience, Planning and Expectations

If your goal is optimal performance, cultivate the mindful awareness that enables clarity and responsiveness. Accept and work with paradoxes to embrace both-and thinking.

A well-respected mindfulness meditation master, advised that “A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” Following this advice would leave most of our projects at sea without a rudder. That is the problem with a great deal of the mindfulness teachings that have become common in the project management and general business communities – over simplification. The wise embrace both-and thinking.

The full quote is:
“Notice every time the mind is eager for
results and remind yourself of the right attitude.
You need to practice patience.
Only when the mind is simple, can wisdom develop.
A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” Tejaniya

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to objectively observe everything occurring within and externally. It is beneficial, based on many studies and personal experience. Mindfulness techniques – formal and informal meditation methods – increase mindfulness and concentration. Mindfulness enables responsiveness as opposed to reactivity. Concentration brings calm, relieves stress and enables focus in the face of distractions. Together with effort mindfulness and concentration promote wisdom.

But how many project managers will sign up for simple mindedness? How many organizations will hire simple minded project managers who are not eager for results? Not many.

The Wisdom of Paradox – Eager and Patient

Yet, there is wisdom in the master’s advice. Like all quotes it is taken out of context. No meaningful statement about the nature of mind and mindfulness is absolutely true. There is paradox – events or ideas that are unlikely to coexist. Paradox is “seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true:” Oxford Dictionaries.

Investigating more deeply, we can know that to be aware of the eagerness for results and to have patience is good advice. Over eagerness in projects leads to rushing to complete, by-passing risk management, testing, and other parts of planning and controlling the project. The over eager stakeholder is more likely to make mistakes and set unreasonable expectations. The eager stakeholder is motivated to achieve.

Right Attitude – Patience

The “right attitude,” is to be both eager and patient. Patience is a tough one, particularly when faced with high ranking stakeholders who are eager for results. Patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset:” Oxford Dictionaries

Patience requires a stepping back to mindfully observe the uncomfortable feelings that get in the way of consciously taking stock of the situation, planning, communicating, and establishing the most effective foundation for performance. Alan Lokos, in his book “Patience:The Art of Peaceful Living” makes the point that patience is not passivity. Patience is taking control of thinking, speech, and action so that what you say and do makes good sense and gets the results that you want. Patience is an ingredient for effective project management and performance.

Practicing patience requires effort. It requires the ability to notice and be able to accept the urge to dismiss the annoying functional manager or team member who is ‘obstructing’ progress. Noticing and accepting are part of the practice of mindfulness. When I teach meditation practices, I often recommend “sitting with an itch,” patiently waiting for the itch to change or disappear on its own rather than scratching it. Try it the next time you have an annoying itch. It builds the patience “muscle.”

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Who Wants a Simple Mind?

Now lets turn our attention to “Only when the mind is simple, can wisdom develop.”

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Albert Einstein

To have a simple mind does not mean to be simple minded. A simple mind, in the context of mindful awareness, is a calm mind that sees things objectively, as they are. There is elegance in simplicity. The simple mind can integrate the sophisticated, complex skills and thoughts needed to manage and perform complex tasks in a complex, changing environment. The simple mind is free of the unnecessary noise of biases, confusion, and obsessive thinking.

Bertrand Russell said, “Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.” The simple mind, the mind that is mindfully aware, sits behind it all, open-minded, free of the comforting convictions. It observes objectively. The simple mind is like the eye of the storm – calm and clear while the storm rages. The flies are still there but they no longer get in the way of clear, focused thinking. In fact, mindful awareness promotes greater clarity and focus.

We can have a simple mind and simultaneously achieve objectives by applying our intelligence, skills and knowledge.

Planning, Expectations and Wisdom

To say that “A mind which thinks, expects, and plans, blocks off wisdom.” is overly simplistic. It is misleading. It is the kind of thing that can drive people, particularly project managers, away from the practice of mindfulness and the benefits it brings. The meaning is clarified by saying that a mind that is distracted by thinking, that unrealistically expects, and over-plans blocks off wisdom.

Wisdom is seeing things as they are and having wise intention. Wisdom can be blocked by Russell’s “flies.”

In Buddhist thought, things are impermanent, imperfect and the result of a continuous process of causes and effects. Wise intention is to give up the causes of suffering, cultivate good will, do no harm, and to ethically achieve objectives to benefit stakeholders.

Expectations are normal. Planning is necessary if you want to successfully achieve project goals and satisfy stakeholder expectations. However, having irrational, unrealistic expectations leads to disappointment and suffering. Constantly changing the plan moment to moment, gets in the way of being in the moment and performing optimally.

The Bottom-line

In the spirit of both-and thinking, we can say that we can both be patient and take skillful action. We can keep the mind simple and apply complex skills and knowledge to complex problems. And we can expect and plan and be in the moment, performing optimally, while allowing wisdom to develop.

Mindful awareness is the foundation for optimal performance. Cultivate it by practicing to focus the mind and open it to the full range of internal and external experience. Practice both-and thinking.

Hey Project Managers: Got BA?

Written by Andrea Brockmeier on September 4, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Hey Project Managers: Got BA?

The tempo of change and level of uncertainty on many levels keeps organizations constantly having to strategize to sustain their customers’ interest and remain competitive.

Similarly, project professionals have to strategize to keep their organizations’ interest in keeping them on board. It’s an effort that constantly requires learning new tools and developing new skills to remain competitive in the workforce.

For project managers these days, this can be a little angsty as it often seems that interest in projects, per se, is yielding to a focus on products and product delivery. Indeed, PMs today can feel a bit adrift trying to find their place in a product-driven world.

Obviously, agile is a key driver to how organizations orient themselves and their team members to achieving organizational goals. If my students are any indication, nearly all organizations are on some kind of agile journey in at least some parts of the organization. At the very least, an agile mindset is resonating with people at all levels of the business, inspiring them to rethink how they respond to change and uncertainty, and informing the decisions about how to apply resources to achieve business goals.

So what is the best investment of time and money for a project manager, particularly one who may have grown up professionally in traditional, project-driven, plan-driven environments? Projects and the skills and tools employed to manage them aren’t going away. Certainly PM training and certification are always good options. And it goes without saying that any training or skills development related to agile is time well spent.

The other discipline that savvy project managers are wise to invest in today is business analysis. Rather than trying to figure out how to be a project manager in an agile, product-oriented environment, PMs serve themselves and their organizations well by evolving their skills and knowledge to include business analysis.

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Business analysis, the activities done to support solution delivery, alignment to business goals, and continuous value delivery, has long been a domain distinct and yet inextricably integrated with project management. The BA role that does those activities typically works closely with the PM, but they are separate efforts; the PM is the custodian of the project and the BA is the custodian of the product. Typically, much BA work is done in the context of projects or programs, so it can get messy as to where the boundaries are, as many hybrid PM-BA practitioners can attest.

A key incentive for PMs to develop BA skills is that those skills and tools are heavily used in agile environments. The various agile frameworks used to handle uncertainty and solve complex problems are customer and product-centered, as opposed to project-centered. PMs struggling to figure out how they fit into agile environments often frustrate themselves and others because they are looking through a different, project-oriented lens. The more organizations mature in their agile practice, the more frustrating this can become.

Business analysis, on the other hand, is used ubiquitously in agile environments and is more fundamentally agile than is project management. BA skills and tools are largely about discovery, facilitating conversations, establishing alignment, and getting to consensus. Project management tools and techniques are, of course, employed in agile environments, but the translation of the role is not as simple and clean. BAs don’t have to figure out how they fit in agile environments like PMs do. The work of business analysis is needed everywhere.

Further, and for a variety of reasons, business case development and pre-project activities, as well as solution evaluation and post-project activities, are often done superficially. PMs who can actively engage in these extra-project activities elevate their value proposition for their organizations.

PMs who are paying attention recognize that a top core competency for just about anyone working in organizations today is business analysis. If you are a PM and don’t know much about business analysis, or if you have not had an opportunity to do BA work in your environment, do yourself a favor and explore how you can develop those skills and get experience doing more BA work. The more you learn, the more likely you will be to see where your PM work has included BA activities. Bonus: Refining your understanding of business analysis will make the distinction between the BA and PM roles clearer and make you better at both!

PMs trying to keep their bearings on how they fit into an increasingly agile world must be looking to develop their skills and knowledge in business analysis. If your organization isn’t specifically on an agile journey yet, they are certainly being affected by it. As agile approaches become normalized and less of something everyone is trying to figure out, so too will the need for business analysis skills.

The Importance of Knowing When to Stop

Written by Jim Conroy on August 7, 2019. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on The Importance of Knowing When to Stop

We have all read the headlines about Crossrail’s overspend and now the spiralling financial projections for HS2.

These situations are the norm rather than the exception. When managing a portfolio of capital projects, it is inconceivably complex to try staying on track without the tools and organisational culture to make rapid, informed decisions.

A PwC analysis has found that these so called ‘mega-projects’ – investments of $1bn upwards – often exceed their budgets by 50% or more. But what about other capital projects? New plant constructions, offshore explorations, new product developments? They may have a lower public profile, but they are no less important for their investors and they are also at risk. According to a 3 year study by KPMG, just 31% of all capital projects came within 10% of initial budgets and as the complexity of projects increases, so do the risks. In the construction sector, a further analysis by the Construction Industry Institute into the performance of 975 light and heavy industrial projects in its benchmarking database, found that only 5.4% met its measures for “best in class” predictability in terms of cost and schedule.

Project issues leading to reduced share value

Taking the obvious financial implications out of the equation, a PwC analysis of capital project issues at public companies highlights the bigger strategic risks of project failures. This revealed that after a public announcement of a capital project delay or shutdown, the majority of companies experience a steady decline in share price. By the three-month mark following the announcement, the decline in share price averaged 15 percent and in the most severe cases, it rose to a 90 percent decline. These are the real repercussions of poor project and portfolio decision making and shareholders are now extra sensitive to failure given the global economic situation. Early warnings of possible conflicts have risen up the corporate agenda.

Capital projects require high levels of governance and control to support investment decision making and ensure they do not fail. Portfolio managers are responsible for ensuring the right decisions are being made, or a lot of money can be wasted. The challenge is less about making sure that the day’s ‘to do’ items get done, and rather, about getting immediate answers to questions like: ‘How are we progressing overall on the project?’, ‘Are we managing the significant risks that could derail the project?’ or ‘Are we managing over runs on the budget?’

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Appreciate an early warning

The organisation as a whole may also need to develop a culture of greater transparency to support people in the PMO if they need to report that a project is ‘in trouble’. It’s a classic case of not blaming the messenger and instead focusing on appreciating that although the news might not be positive, getting an early warning provides an opportunity to take corrective action.

However, many PMOs don’t have the tools to establish the right portfolio monitoring procedures and lack the visibility to spot these issues early enough. They don’t have an aggregate level view of what is going on and whether projects will indeed deliver the right business objectives as expected. Most importantly, they don’t have the visibility to quickly terminate floundering initiatives and save their resources for where they are best applied. This is always critical for new product developments, but an important issue for all capital projects. In the end, every initiative has an opportunity cost. If a project is not performing in line with projected value to justify the ongoing investment, it should be terminated. Being able to do this quickly requires strong governance and control, the ability to evaluate all aspects of a project and its position within an entire portfolio on regular – ideally quarterly- basis.

Quarterly management accounts

Many organisations can’t do this because although they have the day to day project tasks well under control, they rely on spreadsheets and disparate systems for their aggregated portfolio intelligence. They can’t collate the information easily and end up performing an annual review. That’s too infrequent, PMOs need the equivalent of quarterly management accounts to keep their projects on track and to be able to make quick decisions about whether they are meeting the requirements of the original business case, need to adjust the case to reflect events, or, at the worst case, terminate the project and recoup any losses.

A capital project is rarely derailed by a single problem; it usually takes a series of failed steps along the way. Providing visibility at all levels is a key part of the value to be derived from a PPM solution – helping to inform the strategic decisions business leaders need to make in order to avoid costly or at worst, failed and terminated projects.