Strategizing Project Delivery

The purpose of strategy is to provide direction and concentration of effort as organizations continually strive to improve their position or gain the upper hand within the marketplace. Basically, it’s a struggle for advantage, and the one with the best advantage wins. It’s that simple. On what areas must businesses concentrate? Businesses clearly have to:

• Gain new advantages that increase or improve customer satisfaction, which will differentiate them from their competitors
• Either eliminate or minimize their competitors
• Achieve speed to market
• Re-engineer business processes for improved competitiveness
• Align their organizations to the latest economic trends
• Implement the strategy through projects
• Evaluate the success of the strategy by measuring project success

From project management’s point of view, there is no need to manage any project if the project manager has no idea why it’s being done in the first place. It’s crucial for any project manager to address the larger issues of the business strategy and see where the project fits in the overall framework. It isn’t easy—but it needs to be done.

Therefore, organizations must focus on project management as the key business driver that will achieve these advantages for them. With sound project management methodology and processes in place, project management is able to support the overall business strategy of an organization with these logical benefits:

1. Reduced delivery costs. Project management can provide products and services more cheaply by following a structured and formalized project methodology and by ensuring that excessive costs are not spent without due consideration.

2. Quicker product to market. The advantage permits the business to deliver products or services more efficiently than the competitors and the business is able to react more favorably to market demands.

3. Focused advantage. The projects will be focused more on the client needs and products, instead of having a solution that does not deliver the expected returns.

4. Quality and timely deliverables. Project management builds quality into the products or services right from the start, ensuring that the right things are developed at the right specification.

5. Proven customer advantage. Project management gains advantages for their organization by working together with the customer and by accommodating their needs and requirements.

Summary

Today’s organizations are challenged, as they need to keep pace with competitive markets, client needs, and marketplace trends. Winning is basically about who has the upper hand – either with new technology or quicker project implementations. The only winners will be those executives who are able to reinvent their companies quickly enough to take full advantage of the efficiencies that solid project management practices can offer.

Defining Business Processes

When a large enterprise project kicks off, the hope of every project manager is that the customer organization has done a thorough and thoughtful job in defining their current business processes. Implementing a new enterprise solution usually means that some significant areas of the organization are going to change. Things have been done one way up until now and it is time that the organization change those things with the implementation of the enterprise solution that they are now incorporating.

To know exactly where they want to go and for you to know how to get them there, there must be an understanding of where they are coming from. That is usually going to come from subject matter experts (SMEs) within the customer organization and they will be the key individuals to define what those “as-is” business processes are so you can better understand how to get them to the “to-be” business processes that they want to experience.

Defining The As-Is Processes

Before a the customer can improve a process through a project such as we are discussing here, they must understand how it works. The most useful tool for studying the current process is a flowchart. There are other ways, but the key is they need to know how their business processes currently work in the area that will be affected by the project before they can truly help the vendor – your project team – implement an effective solution.

To develop an accurate flowchart, the team assigns one or more members to observe the flow of work through the process. If current SMEs are available, this step may be either unnecessary or very fast, but it has to be handled. It may be necessary for the observers to follow the flow of activity through the process several times before they can see and chart what actually occurs. This record of where actions are taken, decisions are made, inspections are performed, and approvals are required becomes the “as-is” flowchart. It may be the first accurate and complete picture of the process from beginning to end.

Here is a very vital piece of the puzzle: as the team starts work on this first flowchart, they need to be careful to depict what is really happening in the process. They don’t want to fall into the trap of flowcharting how people think the process is working, how they would like it to work, or how an instruction or manual says it should work. Only an as-is flowchart that displays the process as it is actually working today can reveal the improvements that may be needed. It’s easy start thinking too early about the “to-be” processes…the focus must be on the “as-is” processes.

When teams work on processes that cross departmental lines, they may have to talk to people at all levels across the command who are involved in or affected by the process they are working on. It is even more important to get an accurate picture of these cross-functional processes than those whose boundaries are inside a work unit or office.

The team can define the current situation by answering these questions:

• Does the flowchart show exactly how things are done now? If not, what needs to be added or modified to make it an as-is picture of the process?
• Have the workers involved in the process contributed their knowledge of the process steps and their sequence?
• Are other members of the command involved in the process, perhaps as customers? What did they have to say about how it really works?

Summary

This is one way to go about it – and it may be done before you even get the project handed to you. However, it’s been my experience nearly 50% of the time that the customer organization has not done a very thorough job of defining their business processes. The overall affect to the project usually plays out in added resource effort resulting in a budget issue and added timeframes up front resulting in project timeline issues.

If the layout of processes is non-existent, it may even be necessary for the project manager to request a delay on starting the project to give the customer SMEs sufficient time to adequately analyze the current business processes in the organizational areas to be affected by the project. That will be painful, but it will pay huge dividends in the long run.

Honouring innovation projects

Mark and Ravi Kant, who collected the award

Some great projects were honoured at The Economist’s Eighth Annual Innovation Awards Ceremony recently, held in London in the Flight Gallery of the Science Museum.

It’s a unique event, focusing on the interface between innovation and business, and of course, projects are at the heart of a lot of business change and innovation.

The event was sponsored by PMI (who invited me as their guest), and Mark Langley, PMI’s executive vice president and COO, awarded the prize for Business Process Innovation to Ratan Tata, Chairman of the Tata Group.  Unfortunately, Mr Tata couldn’t be there, so Ravi Kant collected the award on his behalf.

“Innovative ideas are everywhere,” said Mark. “What we salute with the Business Process Award is rarer: the implementation, through effective projects and programs that translates ideas into lasting change. Tata Motors’ Nano challenges the way automobiles have been made and marketed for a hundred years. The application of project management is testimony to Tata Group’s record of refining its processes, from boardroom to manufacturing floor, and promises transformation of an industry facing a billion new customers over the next generation.”

It was a really interesting evening, and we learned about projects to improve water quality in developing countries, to develop sustainable energy sources, and of course the work at Tata that led to them winning their award.  Tata were honoured – with Mr Tata at the helm – for forging a company that is shaping businesses across the globe and changing the way Indian companies conduct business. The company is also responsible for inventing the Tata Nano, the world’s lowest-cost car. Innovative methods through which the car is designed and manufactured enable Tata Motors to offer a more affordable, safe and efficient form of mobility to families in emerging markets.

At the conference we could see one of the first Nano cars, ready to roll onto the streets.  Mark was speaking at the conference too, about the impact that good project management practices can have on being a more successful business.  It’s not just new products and services that move a company forward, he said.  It’s also about new business proceses “to take the friction out of the system.”  Good project management methodologies help by systemising the innovation process – you don’t have to worry about how you are going to innovate, as you already have an approach for moving a project through one phase to the next.  And portfolio management ensures that you are investing in projects that have a good potential return, and that you are using your capital effectively to take ideas to market.

Strategies for Managing a Mobile Team

I ran across a great document put together by Terrence Gargiulo for Makingstories.net. Mr. Gargiulo discusses what he feels are the top ten strategies for managing mobile workers. His full document is a very good read because he also discusses things such as risks and issues to consider when managing mobile workers.  You can access his full document here.

I’m sharing this here because so many times as project managers we are overseeing the work of a very geographically dispersed team. In the past three years I’ve only managed one project with a team that I could see on a daily basis. Dozens of others involved remote workers all around the country.

Here are Mr. Gargiulo’s Top 10 Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers as described in his document.

Top 10 Strategies for Managers of Mobile Workers

1.    Focus on building relationships

You are now in the business of managing relationships. Once a quarter audit your time. How much time are you spending engaged in activities meant to foster stronger relationships with your mobile employees? Rate each relationship on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is weak and 10 is very strong. Craft a strategy for continuing to develop your strong ones and triage the weak ones. Ask yourself why they are weak and what you can learn from them. Avoid finger pointing and hold up the mirror to reflect on your own opportunities for improvement. Extreme cases of under-performance do not warrant time or effort. These however are few and far between.

2.    Streamline communications

Consolidate and prioritize communications. Use email and IM (instant message), texting, blogging, threaded discussions, etc. for relationship-driven communications (i.e., staying in touch and being personal). Communications of an important nature should be cohesive and never delivered in fragmentary pieces that have to be cobbled together by the receiver. Mutually assess the communication preferences of yourself and your team members to develop a communication plan. Avoid assumptions and revisit your plan on a regularly basis especially when the nature of the work is about to change.

3.    Incorporate less didatic forms of communications

Determining the right amount of detail and when to provide detail is an ongoing responsibility of a manager with a mobile worker. As a general rule, less is more. This leaves bandwidth for the times when lengthy, explicit instructions and information are essential for the work at hand. Try working with more story-based forms of communications. Sharing tidbits from the field and office in the form of stories, anecdotes, case studies (use cases), jokes, innocent productive gossip, and even metaphors will relay context, encode key pieces of information, and give mobile workers a sense of inclusion.

4.    Spend more time listening

Obvious, but counterintuitive. When you are out of easy reach and you are tasked with managing the performance of others it’s easy to get sucked into the trap of needing to transmit lots of information. In most cases the opposite is what is most productive. Make listening a priority. This is the hardest and most tiring aspect of managing others. It is also the single most important thing you can do accelerate the development of strong relationships. Listening is not enough. Keep an open mind. Be present and try to enter the perspective of the speaker. This will help you ask effective questions and identify what direction to go with your own needs and agenda. You’ll be surprised at what emerges.

5.    Let mobile workers define communication and reporting practices they want to follow

Structure is critical. Adopt rules of engagement that place people at the center of their own decisions. Managers provide the boundaries and constraints but let employees define the working and communication styles, tools, and processes that will help them perform at the best. Set expectations on two fronts. First, treat these employees’ defined practices as privileges that can and will be modified if key performance metrics are not hit. Second, let employees know there will be times when a projects or work require less flexible, employee-driven communication and reporting practices.

6.    Manage deliverables, not activities

Lots of project-oriented work is well suited to mobile workers. Even roles that are more task driven can be effectively managed if they are broken into deliverables. For mobile workers this may mean collapsing some of the activities of a business process or workflow that had manual checkpoints and controls associated with them into deliverables. Automation where possible can be used or batching activities into larger groups can transform task oriented jobs into deliverables. Realize that there can be many facets of people’s jobs that need to be adjusted to accommodate a mobile work style.

7.    Engage in more frequent and informal performance management activities

When you manage mobile workers, relationships are at the heart of your job. Performance management does not need to be a loathsome, “administrivia” obligation. Designing some unstructured, informal ongoing dialogs with mobile employees about their performance goals and personal development plans is a great way to strengthen communications, and shows an active interest in employees and relationships. This might look and feel very different from one employee to the next. This is another tangible way managers can adapt their style to match the needs and preferences of employees. It works best when the performance management conversation flows in both directions.

8.    Give complete trust until given a concrete behavioral reason to do otherwise

According to a recent survey conduct by HR.com and ic4p, listening and trust are the two most important factors to virtual and remote teams. Without trust, relationships are bankrupt. Abuses of trust can always be found but these occur in spite of whatever systems we put in place. Mobile workers thrive when managers give them complete trust. In some respects managers of mobile workers have no other choice. Use trust to create strong relationships. When some concrete behavior and not just someone else’s word of mouth shows that trust has been violated, then take it away, but not until then.

9.    Use adaptive management styles tailored to individual workers

Every employee is different. Mobile workers make it easier for managers to take a more personalized approach in how they work and interact with members of their team. It takes more work and effort on a manager’s part but the results can be phenomenal. Understanding what enables each employee to perform at his or her best is the most important responsibility of a manager.

10. Leverage technology

Technology drives and supports managing mobile workers. Using technology well is not as simple as it appears. Standard models of communication and transaction should not always be mapped in a simple one-to-one way. Communication and collaboration technologies offer new and exciting models. These need to be purposely exploited in order for organizations to realize the full extent of benefits these wonderful new capabilities and features offer.

Beyond email, IM and phone, Web conferencing plays a key role in virtual team enablement. Take an inventory of “stuff” you need to collaborate on with your virtual team. If the list includes Word docs, spreadsheets, software applications, or anything else on your desktop, Web conferencing will be critical for collaborating in real time. You’re projects will lag if you can’t be on the same page with mobile workers.

Defining Strategic Projects

In his book, “Project Management Nation,” Jason Charvat looks into Strategic Projects, what they are and how we translate corporate “strategy” into the projects for the organization.

What are Strategic Projects?

Where the project is a component of a broader business sense, it should be assessed as an integral part of the strategic program. All the normal financial assessment rules should be applied. The executive team should pay close attention to those parts of the proposed solution that clearly show the benefits of proceeding with the solution. Managers should ensure that detailed plans for achieving the benefits, and specific responsibility for delivering them, are in place.

IT planning must take account of the intended direction of the business, financial constraints and criteria, and human resource (HR) plans and policies. It must also be flexible enough to cope with any likely response from competitors over the whole project life cycle. Project managers should have a clearly communicated policy for the way to collect, use, and store information in support of the business objectives and the way the systems will enable them to harness the value of this information in the future.

Translating Strategy into Projects

Once the strategy has been determined and has been approved by the company executive team, the responsibility of the project success does not fall only at the feet of the project manager. The chief executive officer (CEO), chief information officer (CIO), directors, functional management, and staff all have specific tangible and intangible roles in the project. In this manner, mutual expectations can be met and benefits realized. For a successful transition from strategy to project, the business must have in place:

• Agreement on what needs changing, and why (this should be clearly supported by the project sponsor)
• A common “language” for analyzing and describing requirements, based on a shared understanding of the business processes across “client,” purchasing, and information systems (IS) departments (don’t assume this is the case)
• Agreed processes that involve the users in the selection and design of systems solutions (consider making a “client,” rather than an IS specialist, the program manager responsible for delivering the business benefits)
• The support of a skilled, experienced technology project manager

Each and every project should have some sort of a mission. The mission identifies the client’s requirements and clearly defines the purpose of the project. A project’s mission must be completed for success of the project. Objectives define the success criteria for the project. The objectives relate directly to the completion of the project’s mission. Completing all of the objectives should accomplish the project’s mission. Measurable objectives provide a method of quantifying the results and establishing quality standards to evaluate the success of the project.