Change Management – The Process (Part 2)

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
                                                                                                                                - Lao Tzu

This post concludes the series on change management that started with a discussion about what’s so confusing and is a continuation of my previous post on the process of project change management.  That post described the conceptual activities in project change management and why there are not explicit change management processes in the PMBoK.  Now it is appropriate to review what is in PMBoK and how it aligns with the conceptual activities.

The following PMBoK processes relate to project change management:
·         Develop project management plan
·         Plan [Knowledge Area] management
·         Direct and manage project work
·         Monitor & Control project work
·         Perform integrated change control

“Develop project management plan” and “Plan [Knowledge Area] management go hand-in-hand.  The project management plan includes each of the knowledge area management plans.  Each knowledge area plan (scope, time, cost, etc.) needs to include how change to that component will be managed.  In addition, the project management plan should describe how change requests are submitted, processed, reviewed and decided.

One thing I haven’t yet discussed is the two types of change.  There are, for example, changes to the product or service that is produced in “Direct and manage project work” and variance and compliance changes that are recognized in “Monitor and Control project work.”  We encountered both of these in a previous post on the philosophical dilemma of project change.  The project plans should,, of course, address how this dilemma is recognized and resolved in the “direct and manage” and “monitor and control” processes.

“Perform integrated change control” is the key to having project change work effectively.  It is here that change requests are received and processed.  As I mentioned in the previous post, this process is like initiating a complete mini-project for each request.  That’s why I have a dissonant response to Table 3-1 on page 60 of the PMBoK every time I pay attention to the location of 4.5 Perform Integrated Change Control, in the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group column.  Realistically, this step spans all five columns, from Initiating to Closing.  Not only does this span all process groups, but because a change to one functional group will trigger cascading changes in other functional groups, this activity also spans all functions (scope, time, cost, etc.), which is why it is integrated change control.

As I now bring this series to a close, the most important point to emphasize is that change will occur on your project, it will happen, and it must be planned for, you must prepare to have change, and you must have the processes and practices in place to effectively include, manage and control change in your project.

So now that you know everything I know about project change, what tips do you have for other PMs?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Change Management – The Process (Part 1)

“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”

                                                               - Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Continuing my series on Project Change Management, it is now time to drill into the change management process.  As I explained in my previous post in this series, the change management process is unlike other project management processes because it is not neatly contained, either by PMBoK knowledge area nor, except for one Monitoring and Controlling process, by PMBoK process group.  This post will attempt to demystify change management by examining what is in place, how it works, and what it could look like.

In the PMBoK (5^th ed), other than “Perform integrated change control” in the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group, the remaining change management activities are spread across and buried within the Knowledge Areas and Process Group activities.  So there’s a “perform” process, but how do you know what to “perform” if you don’t plan for it?  How can you “perform” an activity if you don’t recognize it?

Let’s start with an understanding of what, conceptually, project change is.  In a project, if you could alter the plan indiscriminately, there would be no need for a change management process.  The change process would be “do whatever you want, whenever you want” and, thus, the project would equally be “do whatever you want, whenever you want.”  Similarly, if there’s no plan, then there’s nothing to change.  So, project change is the formal approach for replacing an agreed-to plan with an amended agreed-to plan.  Since the plan establishes stakeholder expectations, change management is the structured approach for resetting expectations.

The word we usually use for “agreed-to plan” is baseline.

Let’s step through this from the beginning of a project:  The project is initiated, chartered and planned.  A project plan (time, cost, procurement, HR, scope, change, etc.) is produced, agreed to by the appropriate authorities (baselined) and published to stakeholders.  At this point, all stakeholders should be operating on the same expectations and you, the PM, should be reporting status, progress and variance based on the plan.  Now, someone comes along with a request to add a new feature (or get it done quicker, or cheaper, or without a key resource, or ….).  At that point, the project change management process is used.

The requestor submits the request according to the approved change management process.  The interesting thing here is that, regardless of how it’s described, the change activity is like a mini-project with all of the steps.  The change request is equivalent to a Charter.  The project team evaluates the request, estimating how the current project activities will be altered (new tasks, changed tasks, eliminated tasks, etc.) and creating a revised project plan, which must then be reviewed and approved (at which time it becomes the new baseline plan) or rejected (and the current plan remains effective).

So, if a stakeholder can submit a request to change the schedule, why isn’t there an “Evaluate schedule change request” or “Perform schedule change,” and likewise for all of the process groups?  As you – an experienced project manager – well know, all the project parts are connected:  you can’t tweak one area without somehow changing some other area.  Therefore, there is no time (or scope or cost or HR or procurement, etc.) change activity:  there is, reasonably, “Perform integrated change control.”

So I want to pause here:  I will continue this subject in my next post on this, where I will discuss how the current PMBoK activities relate to change management.

Does your organization have an effective and manageable project change management process?  How does it work?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Project Change Management – Process Overview

"Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.”
                                                                                                - Robert C. Gallagher

Now that we have the confusions and dilemmas of change management behind us, it’s time to drill into the change management process. 

The one thing you can count on to stay the same when running a project is that there will be change.  Yet, the PMBoK (5^th ed, p60) identifies nine knowledge areas and change is not in the name of any.  And change is not in the name of the five process groups.  There is no process that says “Plan Change Management.”  If change is so prevalent, what is the process and where is it documented?

Some examples of change include:
·         We need to complete the project sooner.
·         We need to reduce the project budget.
·         We need to add this feature to the project scope.
·         This person has resigned, but we still need to complete the project.

In fact, there are eight broad areas where change can occur:  Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, HR, Communications, Risk, Procurement and Stakeholders.  This list, no coincidence, corresponds to eight of the PMI knowledge areas (PMBoK 5^th ed, p60).  But there is no “Deal with scope change” or “Handle HR disruption.”

As any practitioner of project management quickly learns, everything is connected to everything else and nothing happens in isolation.  It’s like there’s a seven dimensional pyramid (eight nodes), where there are 28 connections between the nodes.  (This concept also applies in communications management and communications planning related to the project team size.)  This means that if, for example, you need to complete the project sooner, that has a potential impact on all seven of the other knowledge areas that needs to be evaluated (and each impact to one of those has a potential impact on the other seven, etc.).  So, a “Deal with scope change” process cannot be done in isolation from time, cost, quality,….

Thus, we have, in the wisdom and experience of the PMI, the ninth knowledge area:  Project Integration Management with the process Perform Integrated Change Control.  This is the only practical technique for addressing project change – holistically across all areas.  But “perform” omits “plan” and “evaluate.”  It’s still not complete.

In the next installment of this series, I’ll drill deeper into the change process and how it works.

Has it occurred to you before that change management and communication management have this mathematical relationship?  What consequences can you foresee from this?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Project Change Management – A Philosophical Dilemma

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.”
                                                                                                - Sydney J. Harris

Now that we know we’re discussing project change management, it’s time for a decision on how approved change will be addressed in the project.  Let me describe a scenario to help illustrate the two schools of thought.

You start a project and complete and baseline the plan.  It is a six month project.  Three months into the project, you are now one month behind when a key stakeholder requests a significant change to the project scope (a new feature).  You do the planning for this new feature and it will add two months to the project.  What is the new completion date?

One school says the new baseline is the former baseline plus the new change, meaning the project is now baselined as an eight-month project and still one month behind.  The other school says that the new baseline is current actual plus the new change, meaning the project is now baselined as a nine-month project and on schedule.  Advocates for the first method argue that the baseline shouldn’t absorb the delay just because they’ve proposed a change – and they’re right.  Advocates for the second method say that it doesn’t make sense to publish a new baseline with an inaccurate end date – and they’re right.  The ultimate choice depends on subjective considerations over which of the two better fits the organizational culture.

Since there is no absolute “right” or “wrong” choice between these schools, the participants should all understand how change management will work in this scenario (this would be a key section of the change management sections of the Time Management Plan and Cost Management Plan).  While this may not be a critical decision for a P&SD PM, for a consultancy PM or a contracted third-party organization providing PM services, this could be significant given that compensation (penalties and bonuses) may depend on whether the project is early, late or on schedule.

Like many controversies where there is no absolute “right” or “wrong,” this too will have practitioners who have an intuitive and firm position one way or another;  they may have difficulty understanding or even acknowledging the other view.  This can make discussions on the topic difficult because they can get emotional.

If you follow the first scenario, the project team has an incentive to “game” the change estimates, especially if there is a subjective component to the estimate.  That is, if they are behind or over budget, this is their opportunity to catch up, so it may not make much difference which school you prefer.

If you follow the second scenario, there may be stakeholders who feel the project team is taking advantage of them to erase variances.  Thus, in the end it comes down to the ethical practices of the project manager and the project team.

Which method do you use and why?  Have you experienced any problems caused by this?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Change Management – What’s so Confusing?

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
                                                                                                - Robert McCloskey

With this post, I begin a series on change management.  Today I’ll make the effort to clarify what change management we’re discussing.  Next I’ll discuss a challenging philosophical dilemma posed by the choices of how change management is implemented.  Then I can settle in with actually discussing the “hows” of change management best practices.

When change management comes up on my projects, I always ask what “change management” the person is referring to.  I know of three different change managements that are commonly encountered on projects and there is invariably confusion because different project team members have different contexts where their specific change management label makes sense, but they often don’t realize that other groups use the same label, change management, to refer to something completely different.

In the HR and process worlds, change management refers to Organizational Change Management, the methods for transitioning people, teams and processes from a current state to a new future state.  This can involve realigning people, changing roles and duties, training, adding people, eliminating positions, streamlining job functions, etc.

In software engineering, change management refers to Systems Change Management, the practices necessary to successfully implement new software or update the installed software with new features.  This is better referred to as release management, but is frequently called change management by the practitioners.

When the PMBoK refers to change management, it means Project Change Management, which involves documenting and updating changes to the approved baseline project plan.  Project Change Management is neither difficult nor complex, but few organizations practice it effectively.

Note that an organizational change may involve a project and/or a software release.  A project can involve making organizational changes.  A project can involve implementing a software release.  A software release may be run as a project.  As I opened, it is not unusual at all to encounter all three of these change managements on a project and have different team members using the same terms and meaning completely different things.  Oh, the confusion you can sow.

For the remainder of my series on change management, I will be exclusively discussing project change management.  In my next post, I’ll take up one of the challenging philosophical questions about implementing project change management.

Are there any other change managements out there that I’ve missed?  Have you encountered confusion on projects when referring to change management?  How did you resolve the confusion?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Estimates, Schedules, Assumptions and Risks

"Though life is made up of mere bubbles, 'Tis better than many aver, For while we've a whole lot of troubles, The most of them never occur.”
                                                                                                - Nixon Waterman

With this post I conclude the series on scheduling and estimating that started with the basics of scheduling.  I hope that this series has successfully drilled into you that offering an informal estimate, without including all of the elements for success and properly qualifying the estimate with assumptions or risks, is an eventual path to damaging your credibility and the credibility of the PM profession.  Estimates should almost universally be presented as ranges with statistical probabilities.  (It’s a real disgrace that our tools generally don’t provide this capability.)

Estimates should always include estimating assumptions.  This is not a CYA point, but rather the estimating assumptions further clarify the scope and scope boundaries, establishing basis for (project) change control.  Change Management is a topic that I haven’t developed yet and is a good one for a future series.  Stay tuned for that one.

A well-formed schedule takes work to produce.   When done well it has a rational basis and a foundation in science.  And despite all that, it is still subject to failure.  That is no excuse, though, for us not to do the work that our profession calls for.  In fact, it is the reason that we should be as rigorous as possible in our duties.

Starting with my next post, I’m going to cover a few miscellaneous topics for a few posts before starting a new series.

What estimating and scheduling issues do you experience that I have not addressed in this series?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Estimate Confidence Buffers, Risk Buffers and Management Reserve

"If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius.”
                                                                                                - Larry Leissner

We’re nearing the conclusion of this series that started with the basics of scheduling.  I want to tie up a few loose ends, maybe clarify some inaccuracies and address some confusion I may have introduced.

As I developed this series on scheduling, leading up to the previous post on estimate buffers, I hopefully offered convincing arguments for including appropriate buffers.  In this post, I want to compare and contrast various types of buffers that are common.

I think the discussion I offered on risk buffers is consistent with other authors and industry practices, so I won’t belabor that discussion.  I will point out that risk buffers are included in the project (time and cost) budget and are managed by the Project Manager.

Literature and practices for improving estimate confidence are much rarer.  Therefore, there may be some stakeholder pushback for including these buffers in the schedule.  However, you can demonstrate through logic, reason, science and ethics that, in order to have a realistic schedule, these buffers, like the risk buffers, must be included in the schedule.  Like risk buffers, these confidence buffers are included in the project budget and are managed by the Project Manager.

However, you don’t want to “double count” your risks.  Let’s say you do a lot of similar projects.  For these, there will probably be a common pool of risks that are included.  However, if your estimates are based on historical results and sometimes these risks occur, then there is the potential that your Pessimistic estimates will already account for those risks.  You will need to adjust either the estimates or the risk buffers so they are in the schedule only once.

In contrast to the confidence and risk buffers, some PMs Pad their estimates.  Some project managers, after over-running the project schedule a few times, learn that their estimates are never sufficient and start adding arbitrary amounts.  “We go over by 20% every time, so I’ll just start adding 20% to the schedule.”  This may sound logical on the surface, but is actually bad for their credibility and for the PM profession.  (Look for more discussion on this topic in a future discussion of The Toyota Way.)  Stakeholders learn that the PM is padding and, in response, start cutting the budget or otherwise compensating.  Pad is Bad.

In contrast, neither confidence buffers nor risk buffers are arbitrary.  Hopefully, if you’ve followed the discussion this far, the reasonable, logical and scientific justification for including these in the project are thoroughly explained and documented.

One last buffer that is sometimes seen in large, third-party project contracts is Management Reserve.  Management Reserve is separate from and distinctly different than estimate confidence buffers, risk buffers or pad.  Management Reserve is contingency funds allocated for use by the contract owner (sponsor).  These funds are not part of the project budget and are not available to the Project Manager except after approved project change control to authorize allocation to the project.

I hope this series has been interesting and informative for you.  One last remaining post and then we can move on to new topics.

Was this discussion scheduling and estimating clear and thorough?  Is there anything I missed that you would like me to address or anything that is still not clear that I should expand on?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

The Project Manager’s Cycle – Check Variances and Productivity

“Kevin, I see that for the Architectural Strategy Document, your task to track down all of the legacy systems we interface to is falling behind.  What’s going on?”

The next activity in The Project Manager’s Cycle takes as input the revised schedule from the replanning and rescheduling activity.  For this activity, the project manager compares the newly current project (cost and duration) schedule with the baseline to identify variances and develop appropriate response plans.

For example, the PM will review the current expected cost to complete each project deliverable with the baseline cost.  Not all shops track (dollar) costs, but resource hours can generally be used as a proxy for cost when effort-based scheduling is used.  (If you are not using effort-based scheduling, well, you are already behind the eight ball for best practices.)  For any deliverable where the current costs differ from plan by a designated percentage or dollar amount (say, 10%) plus or minus, the PM should investigate and document the reason for the variance.  As appropriate, prepare an action plan for addressing the cost/effort variances.

Likewise, for each project deliverable compare the completion dates with the baseline completion dates.  Again where the dates differ by a designated amount (say, two weeks) plus or minus, the PM should investigate and document the reason for the variance.  As appropriate, prepare an action plan for addressing the schedule variances.

As PM, you also want to review progress (effort and duration) at a more granular level to determine whether you are getting the performance and productivity from team members that you expect.  This is, of course, subjective.  Look at each active task and the team members’ recent reports for early warning signals that there is slippage or that you can act to prevent slippage.  Also look for patterns that should be factored into the remaining project schedule.  After all, you want to be already responding to variances long before the dashboard turns red.

Finally, having identified and explained the cost and schedule variances, consider whether project change management is appropriate.    That is, are the changes caused by the team or because the plan was faulty (absorb the variance) or because of scope, environment, risk, or client events (change is appropriate).

How high do you allow the variances to get before you step in?  How do you typically raise the need to discuss a variance with a team member?  When do you escalate?

The Project Manager’s Cycle – Change Control

“We missed one of the major requirements,” Don, the PM, was reporting to the owner in the status meeting.  “However, at this point we have very limited options.  If we add it now, we blow out the schedule and budget.”  “So what you are telling me,” replied Amy, the Finance Director and owner of this project, “is that I either have to live without this feature or I have to OK more money and it will go into production even later?”

The next activity in The Project Manager’s Cycle continues the “initiation” activities of the cycle.  We’re still collecting and building the inputs to the week’s monitoring and controlling activities that we repeatedly perform for the life of the project.  Therefore, this activity can be performed before, concurrently with, or after Validate the Metrics and Validate Task Status.

For this activity, Incorporate Approved Change Control, we are applying to our model the changes that have been approved in the prior week.  We then re-baseline those elements of the model.  The model is, of course, the project plan including the project schedule.  It’s appropriate to perform this activity now so that as we update the actual results based on team members’ accomplishments, the updates are made to the current, approved plan.  In addition, we want subsequent reports to reflect the approved plan – the one the stakeholder’s expect to see.

This activity completes the “initiation” activities of the weekly cycle.  We now begin taking these inputs as well as other outputs from the previous cycle to work the project.

I’m going to throw in a semi-unrelated aside here.  It’s unfortunate, but “Change Management” has two distinctly different connotations that lead to unnecessary confusion when we fail to make the intent crystal clear.  Specifically, there is “Project Change Management” and “Organizational Change Management.”  This post, as well as the PMBoK references to change management are for project change management – identifying, tracking, and applying approved changes to the baseline project plan.

Organizational change management, in contrast, is what we run into when we plan implementation of our project results – the people, process, and tool changes that our project makes to the organization.

The Project Manager’s Cycle – Validate Task Status

“Carilyn, your status report says that you completed testing, but the task has four more hours on it?”  “Yes, I ran one more test case this morning,” replied Carilyn.  “But, as of Friday, when you did the status and the time entry, the task was still open?  It’ll finish today, right?”  “Yes, but it was just one more test case.”

Validating the task status within The Project Manager’s Cycle is done concurrently with Validate the Metrics.  For this activity, though, you are reviewing each project team member’s status report (MSR) rather than the metrics that have been reported through tools.  While this series will touch on status reporting in several entries, status reporting itself is a much bigger topic that I’ll eventually address in a future blog series.

The assumption for this PM cycle activity is that team members are submitting status reports.  However, a “status report” can be tailored based on the project context.  I’ve led small efforts – projectlets that are just a few weeks and have 2-3 team members – where I just drop by periodically and get a verbal update.  The point is not the format, but rather the content you need and what you do with it.

First, the content of the MSR and the reported metrics are a “check and balance” against each other.  The reports between them should be consistent;  deviations should be noted and investigated.  For example, if the team member reports on the MSR that they’ve completed a task, but the metrics show forty hours remaining, which is correct?

From the MSR Accomplishments section, note specifically task completions and mark these tasks completed in the schedule.  In the Planned section, note tasks that the team member plans to start and make sure these are assigned to the resource, open, and available for time entry, including that the start date aligns for a near-term start.  These should also be noted for review in the project team meeting (see future post in this series).

Finally, review the schedule the other way.  That is, review open/active tasks for that team member and confirm the MSR documents task accomplishments (e.g., 12 of 15 test cases run successfully).  Also look at tasks in the schedule that are scheduled to start and verify that the team members list them as planned in the MSR.

Any discrepancies need to be investigated, either with a discussion with the team member or during the project team meeting.

Other items to look for in the MSRs include issues (anything that is preventing appropriate progress on a task), risks (anything that may affect a future task), blocked time (environmental problems that prevented the team member from working on any project task), change management (changes to scope, quality, or cost), and deliverable status (is approval tracking appropriately) or milestone status.

Having completed these first two activities of the cycle, you have begun your list of To Dos for the week.  Unexplained variances in the schedule and anything that raises a question or concern from the MSRs goes onto one of your lists:  Issue Log, Risk Log, Commitment Log, Project Team Meeting Agenda, new change request, or your personal checklist of things to follow up on and people to talk to.

Getting good status reports from team members is always a challenge.  Do you have effective techniques for getting them to provide the info?  I’ve listed some content that should be in the MSR.  Do you have additional sections that are useful?