Tag: Project Management

From the Sponsor’s Desk – Ignore These 7 Lessons at Your Project’s Peril

Written by Drew Davison on April 11, 2017. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on From the Sponsor’s Desk – Ignore These 7 Lessons at Your Project’s Peril

I have a passion for proven best practices. They are the collective wisdom of others who have gone before.

They can improve performance, reduce risk, accelerate delivery and increase satisfaction. They can be revised or discarded as appropriate. New ones can be added. But they should never be ignored.

In the following case, you’ll see how one project faired when the CEO dictated a certain course of action. Those charged with carrying out the project chose to carve a new path and ignored the lessons learned by others. They paid an all too familiar price.

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

The Situation

This industrial services company had grown successfully over the years through a practical strategy of strong organic growth and complementary acquisitions. The company’s head office serviced the northeast. Five other regional offices covered the major metropolitan areas in the rest of the country.

The new CEO recently hired to replace the retiring leader, found the culture somewhat foreign. He was used to a fast paced, competitive, often combative environment as head of marketing in his old firm. At his new company, the pace was slower, more collegial, almost familial. But, what irked him most was the almost complete lack of instant access to key corporate performance indicators. Three of the regional organizations had been acquired. Business processes and supporting technologies were a hodgepodge of disparate purchased and home grown solutions. Getting an accurate and timely view of enterprise operations was costly and time-consuming.

His old firm had been a much larger organization. Prior to his arrival, it had implemented a full spectrum Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution that covered all the vital corporate functions including customer management, sales, procurement, distribution, inventory, accounting and human resources. It also provided executive dashboards so senior management could tap in and drill down on actual corporate performance at will. This capability wasn’t available at his current company.

The CEO was frustrated with this lack of access to operational information. While his senior management team and the regional general managers didn’t seem to be bothered by the current situation, the CEO knew they could do a much better job of managing the company’s performance with better access to information. So, he launched a priority project to remedy the situation, holding the VP of Information Services (IS) responsible for making it happen. The CEO called the project “Insight.”

The Goal

The goal of the Insight project was to deliver a comprehensive ERP solution covering head office and the five regional offices within eighteen months. The project was to use the software and vendor services that the CEO’s previous firm had used. The project’s scope would cover customer management, sales, procurement, distribution, inventory, accounting and human resources functions. All senior managers were to have access to the executive dashboards.

The Project

The VP of IS and the vendor’s Sales Director met to review the CEO’s challenge. They agreed to proceed as follows:

The vendor would appoint an experienced senior project manager to run the overall project.
The project manager would report jointly to the vendor’s Director of Contract Management and the VP of IS.
The project would include the functionality specified by the CEO.
The VP of IS would ensure that sufficient subject matter expertise was available from the affected head office and regional office business and IT groups.

When the vendor’s project manager was on board, he contacted the VP of IS and the regional managers requesting subject matter experts from the affected business units and IT to participate in the project. He proceeded to build his own team with analysts, programmers, database resource, and training staff. He also started to build a high-level plan based on his experience in two previous ERP implementations with the vendor. He knew the eighteen-month target would be a challenge, so he developed a strategy to accelerate delivery as much as possible:

Use the vendor functionality as delivered out of the box to reduce the need for revisions and custom code.
Any deviation from the standard functionality would need to be approved jointly by the VP of IS and the vendor to minimize scope creep.
Deliver the change as one major implementation to avoid the incremental time and costs that could be incurred to phase delivery by function and/or location.

The PM proposed that he could deliver to the stated goals in the targeted eighteen months at the cost of $2.5 million. He received approval from the VP of IS and the vendor on his overall strategy and plan and so proceeded accordingly. He immediately ran into challenges:

The subject matter experts were not available or late in arriving.
Many of the so-called subject matter experts assigned weren’t experts.
Each of the locations had its own unique processes, applications, and technologies. That meant six conversions instead on the one he had planned.

The PM filed bi-weekly status reports for the vendor and the VP of IS using the vendor’s standard reporting format. His first report, two weeks after his assignment to the project showed green for schedule, cost and scope. His second report, in one month then showed red for schedule, cost, and scope. Every subsequent report showed red across the board. He couldn’t get the staff he needed, with the skills he needed, when he needed them. As each of the locations began to understand the functionality available in the standard offering, the change requests escalated into the hundreds and eventually thousands. The vendor management and VP of IS were slow to rule on the requests. They rejected the initial onslaught out of hand to preserve the CEO’s eighteen-month target. That resulted in local escalations to head office and regional office business executives who vehemently descended on the VP of IS and the CEO.

The first project manager was replaced after six months with two PM’s, one from the vendor and one from the Information Services organization. Still, everything the project did was focused on meeting the eighteen-month target. When it became obvious that was not achievable the emphasis was still on the delivery date above all else, still marching to the original PM’s strategy.

The Results

The Insight project took more than five years to complete, at the cost of almost $7 million. A disastrous attempt at a one time, big bang implementation two and a half years into the project contributed to a 27% corporate revenue decline. The initiating CEO and VP of IS were fired. The first two and a half years of the project up to and including the failed implementation and subsequent recovery burned through $5 million.

After the failed big bang implementation, the new CEO and VP of IS brought in a consulting firm to take on overall control of the project. The consulting firm’s approach was to treat the initiative as a program, with six separate and discrete projects covering head office and the five regions, all moving to a consistent, common business, application, data and technology infrastructure. The CEO was the executive sponsor. The five regional general managers were sustaining sponsors. Each project was run in parallel, in accordance with the capabilities and priorities of the target organization. Each project was phased in on a function be function basis to reduce risk and build a continuous delivery culture. This part of the project was completed successfully in two and a half years, at the cost of $2 million.

How a Great Leader Could Have Succeeded

There are more than a few failed ERP project examples. You’ll probably get over half a million or so items if you do an internet search. There may be some duplication in there, but it’s still a sufficiently large number to suggest the need for caution and some thorough research on how to avoid the pitfalls.

To help you on that quest, here are the critical lessons learned from this case. And, they’re relevant to any project, not just ERP endeavors.

This was not an IT project – Yes, the project involved technology change. These days, most do. But more importantly, it required significant changes in business processes and practices throughout the organization. To give responsibility for the project to the vendor and VP of IS sealed the project’s downfall from the beginning.
Build and manage the guiding coalition – The consulting organization that ran the second part of the project had the players right. The CEO was the overall sponsor. Sponsorship can’t be delegated. The company had a long history of local control and local solutions. The regional GM’s had an enormous part to play to help transition disparate operating environments to one common platform. In the first fateful stage of the project, they were reduced to human resource providers. Culture eats change for breakfast.
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else – So said, Yogi Berra. The simplistic dictate from the CEO emphasizing time to delivery was lunacy. The fact that nobody challenged it was evidence that the right players weren’t sitting at the table. The regional GM’s would have objected strenuously. They would have insisted on factors like sustaining and improving customer service, minimizing operational disruptions, affordability of the target solution, return on investment, and other relevant and essential targets.
Decision making is an ongoing exercise – A project starts out as a shady gray blob with little in the way of the necessary details. As it progresses, the gray blob gradually gives way to light and insight. Each bit of light added requires a decision to move the understanding, and the project, forward. Therefore, clarity on the decision-making roles, responsibilities and accountabilities is paramount. The first PM attempted to circumvent the need for progressive decision-making with his strategy to use the functionality out of the box. Consequently, in the early stages of this project, that clarity and some key decision makers were missing in action. It just got worse from there.
Small is beautiful – Frequent implementations are a must, to provide learning opportunities, to build a culture of success, to manage risks, to deliver value incrementally. We also know that small implementations have a much greater track record of success.
Skills, skills, skills – One of the early warning signs identified by the first PM was the lack of human resources with the necessary knowledge and skills. Having a lovely software suit may be necessary, but it’s not sufficient to deliver a lasting solution. Enough people with the right skills at the right time is the force multiplier. That issue was only resolved when the regional GM’s were brought on board, and they had a stake in the game.
The medium is the message – The first PM prepared and distributed his status reports for the vendor and the VP of IS every two weeks. Using the same status reporting process repeatedly might be efficient, but, in this case, it didn’t drive the necessary reactions and remedies. Status reporting needs to adapt the timing, content, and delivery to the circumstances to gain the attention of diverse audiences and the reactions needed to fix the challenges identified.

You’ve heard these points before. They’re not new. They’re not magic. But they do work. So, be a Great Leader and put these points on your checklist of things to consider on your next project so you too can achieve great results. And 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.

OUTSIDE THE BOX Forum: A Higher Order View of Project Management

Written by Robert Wysocki on April 5, 2017. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on OUTSIDE THE BOX Forum: A Higher Order View of Project Management

Project managers have been fixated on the PMBOK. The number of PMPs and the popularity of training programs to help project managers pass the certification exam is testimony…

but PMBOK is only a small but necessary part of this story. Open your mind to the following possibility.

In the complex project landscape, the most effective project management approaches will be ones that are flexible, and that will be determined by:

the characteristics of the project
the organizational environment
the external market situation

All three of these are dynamic, and when any one of them changes, the project management approach might also change. The objective will always be to maintain the alignment of the project management approach to the project in order to achieve maximum business value and minimization of the risk of project failure. In other words, projects are unique and so should the best fit model for managing them also be unique. That is suggestive of a higher order view of projects and project management that has not been developed by the project management thought leaders. That is, not until the business model introduced here came to be.

The Characteristics of the Project

That higher order view of projects is a four-quadrant landscape of project types as shown below.

Figure 1: The Complex Project Landscape
These four quadrants define projects that are very different and that require very different management approaches. But know that these approaches will draw heavily on the 5 Process Groups and 10 Knowledge Areas of the PMBOK.

Traditional Projects
For these projects, both the goal and solution are clearly known and completely defined at the outset. A WBS and project schedule can be developed and used to manage the project effectively. Few changes are expected. Life could not be simpler.
Agile Projects
For these projects, the goal is clearly known and completely defined but how to achieve it (the solution) may be almost completely known, partially known, or hardly known at all. A WBS can’t be generated nor can a project schedule. These projects are managed in iterations where each iteration is designed to learn and discover missing pieces of the solution. Hopefully, all the missing pieces can be discovered before the time or budget runs out. These a higher risk than the Traditional Projects and an acceptable solution may not be found.
Extreme projects
For these projects, neither the goal nor its solution is clearly known at the outset. R&D projects are usually typical of these projects. These projects are also managed in iterations where each iteration is designed to learn more about the goal and possible solutions. The results usually reduce the scope of the goal and identify possible solution paths for the updated goal. In the end, the goal and solution converge.
Emertxe Projects
For these projects, a solution to some problem exists at the outset, but the goal to which they align is not clearly known. The project is done in iterations where each iteration is an attempt to discover or define the goal. The resulting deliverable goal may or may not have business value.

The big question is where does your project fall in these four quadrants?

The Organizational Environment

Management can entertain all sorts of new business opportunities, and envision processes and practices that work perfectly. Someone has to pay attention to the ability of the enterprise to deliver on these dreams. In most organizations, human resource capacity, among all other resources, usually happens by accident rather than as the result of a human resource management system that aligns resources with the strategic plan of the organization.

Market opportunities can only be exploited within the capacity of the enterprise to support them. Two of the big questions for senior management is how to spend current enterprise resources for maximum business value, and how to grow those resources to align with future strategic portfolios.

Enterprise capacity is both a constraining factor and an enabling factor. As a constraining factor, what the enterprise should do is limited by what the enterprise can do in the near term, and finally, leads to what the enterprise will do. As a counter measure to the constraining factor, the enterprise needs to assure the alignment of not only resource supply but also resource availability against the business demands for those resources. So enterprise capacity is a dynamic tool that can be adjusted as a deliverable from the planning exercises. Expanding or enhancing resources will reduce the schedule contention between resources, but that is a business decision that arises during the fulfillment of the strategic plan.

As an enabling factor, resource managers collaborate with functional business managers and line of business (LOB) managers to creatively solve resource availability problems and enable the exploitation of new business opportunities. These collaborative efforts result in the commissioning, scope revision, rescheduling, postponement, and termination of projects, programs, and portfolios. This is the reality imposed by the ECPM. We have no choice but to deal with it!

The External Market Situation

The feeding frenzy that has arisen from the relentless advances of technology and the Internet has had several disruptive effects on the business climate. These effects are global and have unknowingly put many businesses in harm’s way. The Internet is the gateway for anyone, anywhere to create and sell their products and services! Business sustainability now depends on how effective a business can erect barriers to entry for new competitors, and how it can “out create and outpace” the competition. Anyone, regardless of their physical location, can be a competitor. Even if you don’t sell in the international markets, your competitors can and do, so you are pulled into the global marketplace and may not even be aware of it. Your business decisions must consider actual and potential global impact.

Market opportunities will come and go, and not on a schedule that organizations can predict or even be able to accommodate. Whatever project environment your organization embraces, it must be able to respond immediately. The opportunities can be internal (problem-solving and process improvement to maintain or improve market position, for example) and external (new product, service, and processes for meeting the needs of an expanded customer base, for example).

The Higher Order View of Project Management

That higher order view of project management is captured in the 3-phase model:

Ideation Phase
- What business situation is being addressed?
- What do you need to do?
- What will you do?
Set-up Phase
- How will you do it?
Execution Phase
- How will you know you did it?
- How well did you do?

Embedded in the Ideation Phase are such activities as Brainstorming, Business Cases, and Requirements Elicitation. Embedded in the Set-Up Phase is PMBOK and the portfolio of project management life cycle (PMLC) models to which it applies (Traditional, Waterfall, Incremental, Prototyping, Scrum, FDD, PRINCE2, DSDM, etc., etc.). Embedded in the Execution Phase are 5 processes: Define, Plan, Build, Monitor Control and Close.

The ECPM Framework that drives all of this is shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The ECPM Framework

Project Success and Organizational Culture – Part 1

Written by Lawrence Suda on April 4, 2017. Posted in Articles. 64 Comments on Project Success and Organizational Culture – Part 1

The concept of organization culture has been with us now for many decades. Over these years, the influence of culture on organizations has been the focus of significant research and study, and for a good reason.

Culture shapes the organization’s decision patterns, guides actions, and drives the individual behavior of all members. In its most obvious form, it is “The way we do things around here to succeed.” Less visible, it encompasses the shared beliefs, norms, symbols, values, attitudes that permeate all parts of the organization. These enduring patterns help provided stability – an important benefit – for the organization. But, a strong culture can also erect barriers to getting the results needed to remain competitive. Culture is potent. It can block an organization’s (or project) strategy or catalyze it.

Project leaders who lack cultural awareness can become restricted and handicapped by the values and beliefs of the base organization’s culture. They can have difficulty understanding and adapting to different norms and behaviors across the organization. By contrast, enlightened project leaders have a strong connection to their cultures. They are more sensitive and capable of interacting with other kinds of cultures and are more adaptable, flexible and effective.

This paper discusses what culture is and is not and how it influences behavior in three parts. Our purpose is to help project leaders gain a better understanding of organizational culture, its underlying process, how it develops, identify the characteristics of the core culture types, how to develop ways for recognizing, changing and adapting their own behavior while working with dissimilar cultures. This knowledge can help project leaders become more effective and get the planned project results. In Part 2, we discuss ways to describe culture, the attributes of the “Core” culture, and the critical link between strategy, culture and leadership behaviors. This paper is grounded in theory and is both descriptive and prescriptive. In Part 3, we offer some suggestions that can help project leaders understand their culture and that of others as an aid to making projects more successful.

What is Organizational Culture?

Basically, an organization’s culture is its personality. It’s comprised of assumptions, beliefs, values, norms, and tangible signs (artifacts) or organization members and their behaviors. Culture is a very powerful force and is multi-dimensional. The same person placed in different organizations (or parts of the same organization) would act differently because a strongly embedded culture creates social ideals that guide individual behavior. These ideals are manifested in a number of ways. A strong culture can generate commitment to the organization’s values. In high performing organizations (Collins and Porras 1998) strong cultures endure and are a means by which organizations can strengthen their performance, adapt to change and to change environments while increasing their chances of survival and maintaining their competitive performance. Culture is a means by which messages about what the organization stands for is conveyed to employees and other stakeholders. When individuals become committed to the organization’s beliefs, those beliefs become internalized, and individual members hold them as their personal beliefs. Whether we as individuals are aware or not, the internalization process occurs and, if congruent, can be a means of personal satisfaction. In other words, our organization’s personality becomes our personality and vice-versa.

Understanding the culture of your organization is critical to running successful projects. Culture resides in every fold of an enterprise, influencing the dynamics of how people perform, relate and perceive the organization’s impact on their lives. The organizational psychologist Edward Schein defined organizational culture as “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.

Schein’s definition is insightful. Shared assumptions are the heart of any culture. It references problem solving and adaptation, which differentiate organizational culture from other types of cultures not bounded to business. Finally, it highlights the generational nature of culture, recognizing that succeeding groups of organization members learn about the culture from the current generation.

What Internal Forces Shape Culture? Linking Strategy, Culture, Leadership, and Performance

Powerful external and internal forces shape an organization’s culture that impact projects.

Vision, Mission, and Strategy

The vision, mission, strategy whether well-conceived and communicated or not are played out by the organization. For example, in some organizations like Southwest Airlines, every employee can tell you precisely the organization’s strategy. And, it has a profound impact on the success of that organization’s culture and performance. Some organizations have as their strategy to dominate the marketplace and have the only product, technology or service and strive toward maintaining stability. Others strive to have the most superior products or services and are extremely adaptive.

Organizational Structure

Structure affects culture. For example, rigid, formal and command and control structures can promote functional efficiency at the expense of collaborative innovation (projects). Within the structure of the organization subcultures typically exit. Subcultures grow out of different locations and occupations and the provision of services. Even within the same organization, subcultures may be starkly different from the base organization’s culture. For example, the marketing department may embrace values even more fervently than the base culture, whereas the research department may challenge the dominant values of the corporate culture.

Leadership Actions

Leadership actions communicate beliefs, values and assumptions and what is most important. A leader’s actions far outweigh newsletters, memos or policy manuals. Leadership spending time walking the corridors and speaking and listening to employees and customers communicates a powerful message. Some leaders emphasize incentives and rewards. They foster individual and group competition. Other leaders encourage working in a collaborative manner and synergist relationships.

Human Resources

Human Resource practices such as who gets hired and promoted, who gets terminated or demoted, who gets counseled and coached, who goes to training. Are people handled humanely or treated as an expense line item on the budget. How are people rewarded and how their performance is evaluated all send powerful messages and shape culture? Who gets rewarded?

Performance Measurements

Performance measures play an enormous role in determining an organization’s culture. What gets measured – profits, costs savings, behaviors? Is individual or team contributions emphasized? Is short term or long term thinking and decisions emphasized?

External Forces

External forces also shape culture and are very powerful since organizations reflect transnational, national, regional, industry and occupational ideologies. These may take the form of religion, science, political ideologies, and environmental concerns (nuclear energy, wildlife, world hunger). The substance of an organization’s culture may reflect many beliefs, only some of which originate within the organization.

These elements listed above affect how people perceive the organization and how to behave within that organization.

Worry Less, Succeed More in Project Management – Tips for Working Smarter

Written by Brad Egeland on April 3, 2017. Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Worry Less, Succeed More in Project Management – Tips for Working Smarter

Worry, worry, worry. I used to lay in bed at night worrying about my projects. It was like I was back in the eighth grade all over again.

Making notes for myself before I fell asleep of things I needed to be sure I took care of in the morning – only now I was putting notes into my smartphone. It is the same old dog with just a few new tricks. After hitting high school, my life became fun, and I worried less because I got smarter about a lot of things.

So, let’s just say I finally hit high school in terms of project management. Or better yet college (now that was more fun than everything combined, and I made it out alive, with good grades, successful…and best of all…in just four years!). There are some tips I’ve learned and mastered to make this whole PM mess of a world easier to live in and succeed in. Consider…

Manage Projects in 60 Seconds a Day

This is one of those things that is definitely from my personal category of “work smarter, not harder.” I even have a video about it as part of my “60 Second PM” video series, and it’s called “Manage Projects in 60 Minutes a Day”. The basic premise is you can get most of what you need to get done on each project you manage each and every day in just 60 minutes. Don’t bother multi-tasking. Most of us are bad at it. Set aside an hour and knock out everything you need to do that day on a given project. If you’re managing five or six projects at a time, like I often am, it may be the only way to keep your head above water. Don’t procrastinate and stay away from Facebook for that hour and focus on revising the project schedule, checking your project financial health, revising and sending out the status report, prepping for upcoming meetings, sending2 out a quick daily status email to all key stakeholders and you’re basically done. I know I’ve simplified it a bit here, but for many projects, this will be enough on many days of the week.

Worry Less About What You Can’t Control

Surprise! Project management is just like the real world. Much of what happens and affects us is beyond our control. Worry more about what you can control and less about what you can’t control. The budget is getting out of hand. You may be able to control it by talking to your team members about the tasks they are working on and where they are charging their time for all their work on your project and on all the other projects they are working on. But if a vendor is going to be late delivering a key material or service for the project, roll with it. There isn’t much you can do. Adjust the schedule and tell the client. Create an action plan to manage the vendor more directly if possible. Be aware you just may be stuck with the vendor being late. If the vendor is managed by your purchasing or contracting office, inform them of the delay and move on.

Rock the Meetings and Other Things Just Flow Better

Communication is possibly the most important ingredient to project success. So are good requirements and meetings with a key communication focal point. Have good meetings, go into them organized and know what you need to get out of them. Take good notes and follow up to ensure everyone understood what was discussed and assigned. That will make the rest of the project goes much more smoothly. Use meetings to get a lot of work decided and done. Then stick to the 60 minutes a day concept.

Delegate Well and Get More Sleep

You can’t do it all yourself. And guess what? No one wants you to because you aren’t that good at everything. Let go and delegate. That’s what you’re supposed to do, and that’s why you have teams and stakeholders who you are responsible for and who are supposed to care about the project. Use them – wisely and as much as possible.

Make the Project Client Your Ally

By definition the all-important and always correct inter-web definition of ally states, “To unite formally, as by treaty, league, marriage, or the like. To associate or connect by some mutual relationship, as resemblance or friendship. A person, group, or nation that is associated with another or others for some common cause or purpose.” It may feel like the project customer is breathing down your back all the time, but in reality, they do want you to succeed. So use them as a means to that end. Assign them tasks, force key decisions and info gathering on them, keep them involved and accountable. You won’t be sorry.

Senior Management Is Important, But So Is the Customer.

What your senior management wants and needs directs you to do what is important. They do after all sign your paycheck. But your customer is extremely important, and I’ve succeeded better by putting their needs and wishes first. When I’ve allowed myself to go against my better judgment and follow management’s directions in those tough situations it is more often than not I later realize that I should have stayed focused on my customer’s needs and wishes instead. Hindsight is 20/20. Plus, not following senior management direction – even in those tough spots when they are asking you to withhold info from the customer or do something you know is going to harm the project – can lead to you being out of work. That isn’t the end of the world but be mentally prepared if you ever have to take a firm stand.

Let the Bad Clients Go

I’m a consultant and I’m here to say, there are bad project clients out there, and they can make your life miserable. So, if you have a chance, let them go because you will never turn a bad or difficult client into a good or easier or compliant customer. It just won’t happen. But be prepared for the backlash – just like with senior management – if you take an unpopular stand. However, you will probably sleep better for it.

Summary

At the end of the day, project management isn’t rocket science. Project management is hard enough. We need to be looking for real world ways to streamline the work more, get more things off the project manager’s plate and on to a team member or stakeholder’s plate, and focus on success rather than pleasing everyone all the time. Then, you’ll find happiness.

Readers – what are your thoughts on my list? Do you agree – what do you have to add? Please share your thoughts and discuss.

3 Things Great Project Management Offices Do Differently for Awesome Customer Experiences

Written by Tarryn-Leigh Frans on March 30, 2017. Posted in Articles. 9 Comments on 3 Things Great Project Management Offices Do Differently for Awesome Customer Experiences

When considering the mandate of traditional project management offices (PMOs), the territory of customer service and thus a great customer experience (CX) is usually left uncharted.

The week leading up to the latest installment of the PMO Forum (a special interest group for PMO Leaders and Executives), I got really excited to explore customer experience within project management offices. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CX) are more often associated with sales and marketing teams than with project management offices, but I was keen to understand how it could aid project management offices.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) reports that 90% of large enterprises have active project management offices. Furthermore, they report that 50% close in three years only to be replaced later by another PMO with significant time and cost to these organizations. In my view, the success of a project management office today relies not on better adherence to governance and methodologies, but the ability to demonstrate value, establish trust and build relationships with their internal and external customers.

Customer Experience Focus

With customer expectations continuously increasing, I’m finding that more and more businesses are dedicating significant amounts of time and effort to CX initiatives (both externally and internally) with the aim of achieving a strategic advantage over their competitors. Gartner’s surveys confirm that customer experience is the new battlefield with 89% of companies expecting to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience, versus 36% four years ago. So, why should it be any different for a project management office? The PMO may not need to get knee-deep in customer relationship management, but it does need to build trust and credibility with their stakeholders and focus on customer experience, which will become the secret to their success.

Here’s my view on what it takes to align people, process, technology and governance to build a customer-focused PMO that delivers a great customer experience:

1. Do you have the right people?

Your project management office’s identity is defined by its resources, especially when it comes to customer experience. If CRM and CX are not already part of what you do, this undoubtedly means you need a change in the vision for your PMO, so begin hiring for the vision. Start with hiring the right project managers, business analysts and project office support staff that are collaborative, responsive and put the customer (both internal and external) in the center of everything they do. It’s not always as easy as just employing new people; so if that’s not an option, then train for the vision. Introduce a strong onboarding process that re-enforces the new normal. Equip your resources with the soft skills and emotional intelligence training required to deliver customer-centric projects. Ensure your resources value customer experience above governance compliance.

2. Is the process killing the experience?

Over the years, I’ve witnessed a number of project management offices that are so focused on enforcing the project process, that they often lose sight of the fact that the process is just an enabler to ultimately delivering projects successfully. Don’t get me wrong, the process and discipline are key to a successful project management office, but the truth is that PMOs are too often seen as an expensive overhead from the business’ point of view, especially when there’s too much focus on the process with little real business value in return. Organizations with a project management culture that leans toward adherence to process, structure and policing of control mechanisms are likely to struggle to implement any customer-centric approach. Start by taking a critical look at your methodology and project processes, and consider the experience of your customer. Spend time engaging with your customers and understand their needs, their experience and perceptions of your project management office. Identify the processes that facilitate customer engagement and help you to get to know your customers better and prioritize these over maintaining the governance status quo. Having a cup of coffee with your customer outside the day-to-day pressures of the project will help gain a much better understanding of their experience and perception of your PMO.

3. Do you measure the things that matter at the right time?

We all know that too many project teams only turn their focus from time, cost and scope to the health of their customer relationships when stakeholders are already upset, or during project closure as part of the tick box “lessons learned” exercise. If this is your PMO, then I’m afraid your efforts will be falling short. PMOs measuring customer satisfaction throughout the process are much more likely to get more truthful and unbiased feedback than those that leave it to the end. Regular measurement also gives you the opportunity to take action, give feedback and improve the customer experience all year round. It’s critical that you keep the satisfaction scoring criteria simple, know what you’re measuring and be clear on what a happy customer looks like. Don’t confuse the measurement of project delivery, the project manager’s skills and competence with the customer experience. From my experience as a CEO of a Software as a Service (SaaS) company, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) process is the best to use. Start by asking “Would you recommend our project management office to a colleague?” and follow through on a process to measure and address the responses. I’ve done this with a number of our customers, and they find massive value in the experience and process.

In Summary

Adopting this mindset is a journey and better managing the relationships between the project management office team and their stakeholders will naturally keep them more engaged and excited to reach project success. This shift will not happen overnight, and the chances are that you’ll falter and fall back into the project tick box mindset when overwhelmed and under pressure. Don’t give up! Consider the only alternative, which is another PMO closed within three years. Contact me if you’re keen to explore the NPS survey as step one in driving greater customer experience within your project management office. Good luck!

Here’s to happy customers and thus greater customer experiences!