Thursday, June 26, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (6 of 9)

Should project managers work to achieve effectiveness goals (value, functionality, business performance) or just stay with efficiency ones (on time, in budget, to scope, etc.)?

Morris, Peter.  Reconstructing Project Management Reprised: A Knowledge Perspective.  Project Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 5, October 2013, p13.  © 2013 by the Project Management Institute
This is the sixth in my series of posts commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal.  With this question, we transition to a new, much more comfortable, area of inquiry.

Is it possible to distinguish between what a project manager does and what project management is?
 
In these posts responding to Morris’ questions, I have generally taken a practical, realistic, down-to-earth perspective.  In one way that makes sense:  I’m a practicing PM who works in the enterprise;  Morris is an academician.  I am pointing out the practical, realistic flaws with what I see as his ideal vision.  But that approach appears to put me in opposition to Morris.

And that is what is neither fair nor appropriate.  I support his vision.  It’s my vision, too.  My comments are not for the purpose of shooting down and deriding Morris’ vision, but rather that in exposing the cracks, we can seal them and strengthen the foundation of a broader, more strategic profession of project management.
Mike Rother, in Toyota Kata (2010) describes the Toyota continuous improvement practice of establishing a target condition and then working to achieve it (chapter 5).  The target condition has to be some better state and the approach for achieving it has to be unclear, to be determined.  The target condition is some future ideal state that the worker then, in incremental, experimental steps, strives, with their supervisor, to achieve.

I hear in Morris’ questions:  Are these the ideal states that the profession should be striving for (working toward) as the future of project management?  If so, and I believe so, then what is the next incremental step to get us there?
I actually see us already progressing in the right direction, though fitfully and reactively, rather than strategically, proactively and guided by a philosophical/ academic vision.  In the world of our past, companies were uncomfortable with change (projects), so they temporarily brought in specialists (PMs) to manage and drive the change.  As companies become more comfortable with change, as they recognize that change is continuous and that it’s necessary for competitive advantage and survival, they are institutionalizing the organizational change capability into a permanent, operational component of the organization.  It is called the Project Management Office (PMO).

With this evolution, the project manager role is changing.  Historically, the PM’s value was as a hired gun brought in to deliver a higher-level vision – that is, deliver the tactical expertise for planning, managing and controlling time, cost and scope – for benefit of a change agent within the organization.  This was how they were valued, rewarded, measured and compensated.
The PM of the future, though, will be a resource within the PMO.  The PMO will be responsible for delivering the change and will have developed criteria and methodologies for doing so.  The PM of the future will be rewarded, measured and compensated for compliance to and practice of the processes, use of the standard tools, and appropriate knowledge, skills and capabilities of the tools and processes.

So the flaw in Morris’ question, above, is that it should be “Should project management work to…”  Project managers of the future will still do the same tactical activities they do now – maintain schedules, track costs, calculate earned value, identify and manage risks, etc.  But they will do them following the proscribed processes of the PMO, rather than as craftsmen imbued with a mysterious skill.  It is the PMO that will do the meta-activities of managing a project:  Plan cost management, plan schedule management, plan risk management, plan procurement management, etc.
It is the PMO that will have the seat at the table to drive the enterprise effectiveness goals of the project, the program and the portfolio.

Regrettably, the poor PM of the future will not even have the golden triangle of constraints to point to when describing what they do.  They will have to pull out a thick procedures manual instead.
The future is sunnier for the profession, but the professional suffers.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (5 of 9)

Does project management cover Estimating and Contracts and Procurement?  Are they parts of the discipline? (Organizationally, they are often not treated this way.)

Morris, Peter.  Reconstructing Project Management Reprised: A Knowledge Perspective.  Project Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 5, October 2013, p13.  © 2013 by the Project Management Institute
This is the fifth in my series of posts commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal.  Maybe I’ll finish this before the anniversary of its publication.




This is one of Morris’ questions that is a challenge to grasp because it seems the question is broken.  After all, Estimating is clearly defined in PMBoK planning processes for both cost and time management.  And Project Procurement Management is one of the 10 Knowledge Areas.  Therefore project management (at least, the PMBoK) does cover both of these topics and they are inarguably part of the discipline. What is Morris thinking?

Let’s think for a moment about how a government agency awards a contract for road or bridge building.  The agency will decide the road or bridge goes here, gets a budget allocated (estimation), buys up the necessary land (procurement) and only then issues the RFP for the engineering, design or construction firm to put steel and tarmac where the agency already decided it should go.
Lest you think that technology (my domain) is different, for large projects it is normal for executives to already have a cost limit, expected delivery date, expectation of technology partner, and whether the project will be done with in-house, outsourced or consulting resources – all before they let the project start through the official project methodology, phases and gates.

Morris expands further on this:  “similarly the project management team should provide input into commercial matters, beginning with the project strategy and the choice of contracting strategy;  in particular, what functions to contract out, what resources are available, and how risk should be allocated.  These typically come under the purview of the ‘Contracts and Procurement’ function but since they can all massively influence the way the project is managed, one would expect the project director (or equivalent) to be engaged, shaping thinking and decisions.  The alignment of supplier aims and practices with the sponsors’ aims should be a major objective in this new environment.”  (p18)
Are those activities project management?  Arguably, they are general (operational) business strategy and planning activities when they are done as part of business continuity, operations, development and growth.  But they are project management activities when done within the milieu of the project.  Should general business activities be project management when, ex post facto, they were done for what subsequently becomes a project?

I think it’s relevant to note a similarity that, in context, becomes, I guess, an analogy.  In technology, teams are generally matrixed and split responsibilities between projects and operations.  The operations responsibilities generally include support and maintenance.  Maintenance is planned and can be coordinated with project activities.  But support is on-demand and, on occasion, team members have to respond immediately to priority one situations that can take significant time away from the project.  And regardless of the project state, the support activity always takes precedence.  Ops trumps projects.  It’s just the way it is.  The point being, when the question arises, above, of whether these activities are operations or project, maybe ops trumps projects applies there, too.
© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (4 of 9)

Should there be, resources allowing (personnel, funds), one [senior] person responsible for, and in charge of, the project from beginning-to-end?  (What does ‘beginning-to-end’ really mean?)

Morris, Peter.  Reconstructing Project Management Reprised: A Knowledge Perspective.  Project Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 5, October 2013, p13.  © 2013 by the Project Management Institute
Well, yes, of course.  And with that I could be done with this post.

This is the fourth in my series of posts commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal.

 

The underlying intent of this question is, of course, much more complex and involved than a literal reading of the question indicates.

Morris, if I can presume to speak for him here, is implying that what we call project managers are only responsible for the tactical delivery of the project execution (monitor and control), but should be responsible for the strategic up-front initiation.  What I don’t know is if he believes that the Executive Vice-President of Finance, who currently has those up-front responsibilities, should be labeled the project manager or just that the PM should be seated at the table when the EVP is thinking about initiating this project.  I think realistic practice is that neither of those will (generally) happen any more than a department manager, who should be at the table when the executives are determining strategy for that department, will be there.  (Though it may evolve that the Chief Project Officer (CPO) of the enterprise of the future is at the table.)

In a top-down, command-and-control organization, someone at the top decides something needs to be done, when they need it done by, how much they’re willing to spend to get it done, and, in many cases, various levels of detail about how it will be done.  That executive who was there when the decision was made to start the project is  responsible and considers the project benefit to them, so they don’t want someone else getting the credit for the project’s success.  At the same time, that executive delegates, as they should, the tactical, day-to-day, delivery responsibilities of the project to someone who is qualified for that role and purpose.  I’m sure it’s only coincidental that the executive now has a scapegoat if the project goes south (we had a great plan that showed it was a major benefit;  it was only the delivery that failed).
So, executives should be held responsible just like bankers should’ve been responsible (i.e., paid the price) for the real estate collapse and financial meltdown, presidents should be held responsible for failed police actions and nation building across the globe, and officers shouldn’t get huge bonuses when their companies perform in the toilet.

I’m not being cynical (though I’m expressing cynicism with a broad, thick, dripping brush).  In fact, that is the reality of political maneuvering and a demonstration of the skills that successful people have and are able to apply.  If we called that top person a project manager and made them responsible, they’d still hire someone else for the delivery, delegate that responsibility to them and then take credit for the successful project while assigning responsibility for failure on the delivery technician, by whatever title.  Label the boxes what you will, it doesn’t change the results.
The bottom line is that I’m responsible for monitoring and controlling a project (which implies relative to a plan).  Delivering a result, a solution, a product or a service is not project management, whether it’s for an on-going operation or a temporary endeavor.  Those things can be done without project management (e.g., CMMI).

Something is a project if and only if there’s a plan for delivering it and there is monitoring and controlling relative to that plan.  The project manager is the person doing that monitoring and controlling, generally as a delegee on someone else’s behalf.
That’s what I do.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (3 of 9)

When and how can we get away from a PMBOK that is based around what was chosen as being ‘the knowledge that is unique to project management’ rather than that which we need to know in order to develop and deliver projects successfully?

Morris, Peter.  Reconstructing Project Management Reprised: A Knowledge Perspective.  Project Management Journal, Vol. 44, No. 5, October 2013, p13.  © 2013 by the Project Management Institute

This is the third in my series of posts commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal.  This post takes up the third question, above, which needs a bit of context.




In the earliest editions of what is now PMBoK, PMI’s focus was only on the knowledge unique to project management, thus excluding general and domain-specific knowledge (though even this has questionable elements).  So, to know what you needed to know to manage projects, you had to know the PMBoK content as well as other stuff.
Morris has a fixation on PMBoK, even though he identifies several other BOKs (APM, IPMA, ENAA and EPMF) that don’t have this omission or limitation he identifies.  What I find most frustrating, though, when reading Morris is trying to determine what he means by the distinction of knowledge unique to PM vs what “we need to know in order to develop and deliver projects successfully.”  This is a refrain from both the PMJ article and the book, but I struggle to find concrete examples of content that should be present but isn’t.

It’s frustrating because I want to agree with Morris that PMBoK is incomplete, but I don’t just want to know the disease, I want the prescription to treat it, too. 
I think Morris is on much firmer grounding with his ninth question (to get ahead of myself) that challenges the foundation of PMBoK:  is it a reactive response to what PMs do or is it grounded solidly and strategically on a valid logical/ philosophical model that defines and encompasses the PM domain.  My interpretation is that PMI has been struggling over the past several years because their foundation is the Project Manager, but the future focus is on the PMO.  That is, historically the PM was responsible for delivering the project and was therefore responsible for cost, schedule and scope.

In the future, the team and the sponsor will have responsibility.  The PM will be responsible for (and measured by) following the processes and applying the tools that the PMO defines as appropriate within that organization for delivering successful projects.
PMI, thus, has lost its footing and is stumbling as it struggles to make this transition from the importance of the PM to the importance of PM processes.  OPM3 has the potential to lead the way, but it goes back to Morris’ ninth question:  is the PMBoK descriptive of what we do (and there are a lot of us doing a lot of different things called project management) or is it prescriptive and defining what is the domain and the boundaries of project management?  The latter is strategic and provides the leadership and vision for the future.  The former is historical and will be useful in a few years to analyze the demise of PMI.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.