Monthly Archive for May, 2008

What are you trying to achieve? Write it down….

Published
by
Ron
on May 29, 2008
in PID, Uncategorized, project management and project objectives
. 0 Comments

My accountant asked me if I would help out one of his clients. This was a partnership in a restaurant that was losing around £900 per week.

I went along and met the partners and talked about their business. After a walk around the premises I asked a number of questions including what they intended to use the basement area for? Along came two replies:

  • Reply 1 from partner 1: “As a bar pre meal and after the meal. I want to make this area really comfortable creating a good ambience”
  • Reply from partner 2: “I see this as a great space for folk music or karaoke and with the bar it will be a great place to attract customers.

You can see the problem; one business partner wanted one thing while the other wanted something completely different. This space had remained empty for about 7 months and there was no clear plan for making use of it. It is hardly surprising that they were losing a large sum per week. These two never resolved their differences and one of the partners sold out.

But, it raises the question are your project objectives really clear? When we look at this with clients or on courses the answer is often vague;

I think so….
maybe…
I think I know what we are doing…
it’s pretty obvious

All of these come to mind!

It still surprises me that projects and even business as usual activities have unclear objectives or in a lot of cases NO objectives. Some projects are complex and to develop a written set of objectives can take some time. However, how do you know how you are progressing if you do not have clear objectives? How are you going to measure success at the end of the project without a statement of what you are doing? It helps motivate the team; and points to stakeholders what you are and are not doing.

We recommend developing a PID (Project Initiation Document) which asks some difficult questions. Get your templates on the link: Free project templates

Delivering on time and to budget and with the right results means you must have clear objectives. Use the PID and make sure you have clear objectives no matter how time consuming or how pedantic you or others may seem. If you do not know where you are going you do not know where you will end up!

Take a bow the public sector…..

Published
by
Ron
on May 28, 2008
in project management
. 0 Comments

Wherever I work there is always one group of staff that are hit with criticism…..IT. Yes, HR (my professional institute!) also gets savaged but it really is the IT department that gets the most criticism. Now add to this open hostility by many commentators of the public sector. So when you are dealing with IT in the public sector…..

Well, you may be surprised to find that IT and the public sector have done well!! In a recently published report by the British Computer Society; “Success: Public Sector Projects Can Work” they list a range of It projects that have been delivered effectively.

Elizabeth Sparrow introducing the report says: “All too often media stories focus on high profile IT project failures, especially in the public sector. This hides the fact that there are many stories about fascinating success to be told”

We are telling that story and do pass around your collegues…take a bow public sector!! Read the full report here

 

Great job - look at the PROJECT GOVERNANCE responsibility

Published
by
Ron
on May 27, 2008
in Uncategorized, governance, leadership. project leadership and project management
. 0 Comments

I came a cross a great job in Australia. The job is based in good Rugby League country (my favourite sport - I have supported Leeds Rhinos here in the UK for many many years) and the role is really interesting. The main purpose of the role caught my attention and is shown below:

 Provide a single point of responsibility for the development and implementation of an integrated approach to improving project performance across the organisation.
 Develop and oversee the project operating model (roles & responsibilities, policies, processes, tools) that establishes the framework for the execution and governance of projects across the organisation.
 Lead the capability development of the community of project practitioners across the organisation.
 Provide an independent project review capability for assessing and advising major projects across the organisation.
 Provide advice and recommendations to senior leadership on key project intervention decisions.
 Undertake the analysis required to support project portfolio prioritisation and sequencing decisions.
 Establish the standards and processes for reporting upon meaningful project performance metrics and tracking project value delivery.

The introduction to the advertisement says:

“Each year this organisation makes a substantial investment in projects that are designed to support business strategies, refresh infrastructure and meet compliance needs. This position exists to ensure we get the best possible outcomes from the investment in those projects.”

How refreshing to see a company looking at the strategic ‘approach’ to projects in their business. Many of our clients would benefit from such a high profile appointment. However, what we see is that the strategy of the business is diluted because of a lack of leadership at senior management level. Project priorities are unclear, there are too many stakeholders with no overall project ownership, roles and responsibilities at senior management and even at a project level are unclear and there is little link seen between projects and value delivery.

There are lessons here for us all!

Well done I say to this company and if you want to know more or apply for this positions then click here or go to http://www.sapphireasiapac.com/page/jobs?id=268550

Do we really learn from failure

Published
by
Ron
on May 24, 2008
in Uncategorized, learning, project failure and projects
. 0 Comments

I came a cross a useful Blog about learning from failures. This Blog, written by Allan Kelly is really good and I have printed the first part of it here:

Its an often heard expression: “We learn from our failures”. Particularly when you’ve just failed at something: “Well put it down to experience.”

I’ve always had my doubts: if we can learn from failure can’t we also learn from success? But how often do you hear people say: “Great success! Now what did you learn?”

All too often we don’t stop, examine our failures, take time to reflect and actually do the learning from them. We’ve failed, failure is painful, we want to put that behind us, forget about it. Maybe we could make time but do we really want to? Who wants to dwell on what has gone wrong? Naturally, after a failure we are defensive, and when we are defensive our learning process aren’t at their most effective.

In the IT world failure isn’t an absolute. Its not like a football match, one side goes home knowing they scored more goals than the other and therefore “won.”

If an IT project delivers late is it automatically a failure? What if it succeeds in the other goals?
What if it is late, and costs more, but delivers more value to the business?

I often tell story I found when I was writing my MBA dissertation. For this project I interviewed a variety of software developers about past projects, one guys, lets call him Paul (because that’s his name), he said: ‘The project was a great success’

He went on to describe how the technology was good, the product did what the customer wanted and everyone was pleased with the outcome. Then I said: ‘You say the project was a success, but before that you said it took 12 months to complete, and how it was originally estimated to take 3 months. Some people would say a project that was nine months late on a three month schedule was a failure’

To which he replied: ‘I never thought of it like that’

Failure is ambiguous. So how do we know when and what to learn?

The whole blog can be seen here.

I’m really surprised that the accountants have not linked into project learning for cost and time reductions. Imagine that a project that does over-run and a formal review of learning that showed that the project has cost an extra 30% because of poor project management!! I’m even more surprised that senior managers can allow so many projects to go through without examining what was learnt.

As a previous blog asked: when will they ever learn? 

How healthy is your project?

Published
by
Ron
on May 22, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Get your project health check hereSome time ago I went to my own doctor. He is a sarcastic man who is an excellent diagnostician. I asked him a simple question;

Do you do health checks for males?” His answer rather startled me.

“Waste of time, you can have all the tests come back normal and while here in the surgery you could have a heart attack and die!”

I reflected that I felt OK!!

After my sobering walk home I asked myself what about clients’ projects? How healthy are they? Will their project suddenly drop dead? Are they being starved of nutrients -cash and resources?

I do not know the real answer to this question but I can probably guess:

  • which projects will struggle to deliver
  • which projects need more resources
  • which projects should be put out of their misery…..I’m not usually a proponent of euthanasia

    Clearly, some project boards do check that a project is progressing. But, this seems to be really short term i.e. are you going to hit your milestones? If yes, fine, but the key is what about the longer term

    Nor do organisations examine how healthy project management is within the company. Is it really working for the organisation? Is it really delivering those changes that the business wants?

    Too often we see that people are delivering in the same way as they always have done. The old saying is:

    If you always did what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got.

    Why not call me to talk about how healthy your project is or how healthy your project management approach is for the company? Click here to get in touch