PM Best Practice

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (8 of 9)

Is Agile a project management discipline or really just a form of task or workstream management?

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

Agile is a mindset, not a methodology (or a process). PMBoK defines a Body of Knowledge for creating a methodology (and processes), but it is not a methodology. Agile is a way or practice or technique for delivering products or solutions. So are SEI’s Capability Maturity Model – Integrated (CMMI) and the Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF). Neither Agile, nor CMMI nor MSF are disciplines for delivering projects. (For more on the relevance of this, I refer you back to an early series on the P&SD PM, the Consultancy PM, and the philosophical relevance.)

Agilists are special only because they are so sensitive to anything that hints of management or structure. Working with agile teams is similar to working with many creative types: artists, painters, novelists, musicians and designers, for example.

What do we learn from this? That there is so much market demand for a product delivery solution with PMI’s imprimatur that PMI has responded by offering the PMI-ACP®. Should PMI also offer specialized domain-specific certifications for pharma research, product design, architecture, prototyping, etc? Likewise, should they offer project management certifications for CMMI and MSF shops?

So I wandered off the trail and fell off a cliff. Let’s get back on the main trail and respond to Morris’ question: What Agile is is really not relevant. That it’s not a discipline for delivering projects is all that matters. And PMI is losing focus by responding to these distractions.

I get to drill deeper into that last comment in my next post.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (7 of 9)

Is program management just the management of projects with shared aims and possibly resources or does it have some special ownership of delivery of the business case benefits? If the latter, why? Shouldn’t projects also have this concern?

This is the seventh in my series of posts
commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal. We are nearing completion of this series, with just a little wrap-up remaining.

In my previous post, I described a vision (or maybe it’s just a prediction) where senior leadership of the enterprise recognizes the value of enterprise (organizational) change management and the Project Management Office (PMO) is a strategically positioned general business service, on the order of Finance and HR.

In today’s world with generally weak PMOs, project management is in place to serve as agents of other organizational leaders – leaders who have strategic responsibility and delegate the tactical delivery to the PM agents. As PM continues to mature and organizations recognize the value of organizational change, PMO oversight and management of the organizational portfolio will elevate PMO leadership first to valuation of the profit-loss (revenue vs cost) of the change portfolio and eventually to recognition of the asset value of the project portfolio. This should happen naturally and organically, much as Finance moved from obscure back-office accounting responsibilities a century ago.

The real question is whether the leading project management organizations of today (such as PMI), recognize this evolution and take proactive measures to guide the future, or do they keep their feet securely grounded in the traditions of the profession and slowly wither into obscurity, or do they flounder reactively, without vision or philosophy, responding to the latest fad (to foreshadow the next post), until organizations realize that the value and esteem of the credential are so diminished that it is no longer relevant.

Here’s where I break with Morris: What’s the point of this question? What is a task? What is a project? What is a program? Yes, PMI has its definitions, but are they adequate? A project is composed of Deliverables, Activities and Tasks. A well-defined task has a single owner. It is a black box delegated to one person. But, let’s say an executive tells his assistant “I’m going to the convention. Get me a flight, hotel and car.” Is that a project or a task? It meets all of the components of the definition of a PMI project.

My point is that there is really nothing to distinguish a task from a project, except hierarchy. Further, if you conceptualize a well-defined program as consisting of projects and deliverables (within those projects), then there is nothing really to distinguish a project from a program except hierarchy. We have a natural recursive-descent system that just happens to have different names for nodes based on arbitrary values of size and scale (if you think that’s not true, compare your programs, projects, deliverables and tasks to NASA’s).

I realize Morris is trying to make a point about how PMI defines and explains these terms. But he’s fixated on arbitrary labels. To assume they’re inappropriate and then try to make sense of them just confuses me. If they’re wrong, just say they’re wrong and offer up the improved definitions, conceptual framework and explanations.

So project management, whether that’s managing programs, projects, tasks, activities, deliverables or recipes (just tossed that one in to see if you’re paying attention), as I’ve explained over the past several posts, has to have a tactical delivery component and, at some level and possibly formalized at some point in the future, the strategic organizational-benefit elements. It isn’t either-or. Though it may be temporally not now, but then.

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.)?

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.

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.)

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.

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?)

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.

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?

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.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Reconstructing Project Management (2 of 9)

If it does not cover the front-end (a) is it fit-for-purpose (b) do we need an enlarged discipline or body of knowledge to cover what we need to know about managing the overall project? (Since managing the front-end is key (i) in building-in value (ii)in building-in [or out] future problems.)

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

In my previous post, I noted that I have started a series of posts commenting on nine questions that Peter Morris asked in his October article in Project Management Journal. This post takes up the second question, above, which is a continuation of the previous post: what is the “scope” of project management?

Some executives are tossing around ideas for boosting revenue. They float this idea. They float that idea. At some point, somebody says, “That sounds good. Let’s do a quick reality check to see if we should commit budget for it.” If it doesn’t pan out – if it’s dropped without going through planning, execution and commission – was it ever a project? If not, then when does something become a project? When does this activity transition from on-going operational strategic leadership to a temporary endeavor?

If it does become a project, the vision, exploration and creation were surely part of the project, as was conceptualization, strategy, and the operational activities of enterprise leadership that normally precede “Let’s get a PM assigned.” But are these exploratory and creative activities part of what we would call the project before the fact? If they are, should a project management professional be engaged at these early stages?

How many project ideas have you known to originate from speculation about spending: “If we do this project, we’ll be so much better off because our expenses will be $xxx.” No, the project driver for discretionary projects is revenue and the factor that chills the enthusiasm is spending. So it is that Morris talks about the front-end activities – the pre-project activities – that are not considered project management and are the responsibility of executive leadership, whereas the PM is responsible for controlling spending.

Yet, how can you separate the Yang of expenses from the Yin of revenue? It wouldn’t be a project if it weren’t for the expected benefits. But Brent Flyvbjerg lists a host of reasons why technological (longest, tallest, fastest), political (monuments and attention), economic (making money off the project) and aesthetic (design and iconism) sublimes can lead project originators to exaggerate the benefits and underestimate costs and difficulties (“What you should know about Megaprojects and Why: An overview,” Project Management Journal, April/May 2014, vol 45 #2, 6-19).

Further, as Peter Taylor explained in the December 17, 2013 webinar (PMI and INPDCoP membership required) “The Journey of Expectation Management” for the PMI Innovation and New Product Development Community of Practice, expectations (and constraints) for projects are often set and locked in before the project manager is engaged. Yet, as Taylor goes on to say, it is the PM who is held responsible for project failure (often true even when the product is a resounding success: the PM for the Ford Taurus project was reprimanded for going over budget; the architect of the iconic, and 1,400% cost overrun, Sydney Opera House was so publicly humiliated that he never led another development of consequence).

Think about a bridge design where an artist and a financier draw up a bridge concept, go through the business case approval, then only bring in the engineer to monitor and control the construction. Would you want to cross that bridge? When we come down to it, isn’t that exactly what we have with projects? Engineering is a professional discipline and has licensing, legal precedent and authority for being engaged in civil projects. Is that what it would take to get PMs engaged at the start? Is that what it would take to eliminate Chaos from projects?