Project Governance – Maturity Level III

Project governance is an oversight function that is aligned with the organization’s governance model and that encompasses the project life cycle.  Project governance framework provides the project manager and team with structure, processes, decision-making models and tools for managing the project, while supporting and controlling the project for successful delivery.

                                                                                                - PMBoK v5 (p34)

This is the third post in my series on governance in the project context.  In the first post I introduced my arbitrary, tongue-in-cheek governance maturity level (gml) and in the second post described gml-II Solution, the first level of maturity of project governance.  With this post, we advance to describing gml-III.

Remember from the previous post that minimal project governance is focused on the project solution.  Advanced project governance, in contrast, is focused on project delivery.  Rather than just being concentrated on Executing Process Group (PMBoK v5 section 3.5) activities, gml-III governance covers the entire gamut of process groups:  Initiating, Planning, Monitoring and Control, and Closing.

At gml-II, governance activities were directed at the product deliverables.  At gml-III, in contrast, expect the governance team to examine the project charter, statement of work, status reports, meeting minutes, and all deliverables in the organization’s methodology, all the way through to the project retrospective and closing.  Not only will they be looking to see that the work product was produced, but that the proper template was used, the content conforms to standards, it was distributed properly (both audience and time), and that approval authorities are correct.

While governance processes may be similar to those at gml-II, the tools used at this level are ratcheted up.  Periodic audits with formal auditing checklists, scoring models (i.e., a project that is not conforming to process is higher risk than one that does), and public, structured project reviews are all normal practices.  These audits and reviews are distinctive in that performance is not determined by time, cost or scope;  performance is exclusively measured by conformance to process and proper use of tools by the right people.

At this level, there are also differences from the previous level with the governance team.  All governance is a form of “Check and Balance” to assure credibility.  At gml-II, project governance is within the project delivery methodology, for example, stage gates.  As such, it is contained within the department or division;  it might even be within the PMO.  At gml-III, in contrast, the concern for credibility goes much higher in the organization, thus governance is completely separate from the project delivery organization.  At a pharmaceutical company, for example, governance may report up through the legal department;  at a financial institution, depending on what department the project team is in, governance may report to legal or to the CFO;  in a large (completely projectized) consulting firm that I worked for for many years, the governance team reported directly to the COO.  That is, the project delivery organization existed, with branches, branch managers, PMs, Delivery managers, divisions, VPs, etc.  But governance was completely independent of the project delivery organization.  The project auditors that worked at the branch level did not report to the branch managers, but reported up through their own hierarchy that reached directly to the company president.  This demonstrates that gml-III is the appropriate governance level for the consultancy PM.

My final comments on gml-III are that, because the governance elements are formal and process-ized, the environment is positioned for continuing process improvement.  The project audits will encourage post-project reviews and documented Lessons Learned.  These will, in turn, be fed back as inputs into the project audits, resulting in improvements to the checklists, tools, templates and training.  This virtuous cycle represents the capstone of gml-III maturity.

In my first post in this series, I mentioned that we would explore governance in the project context.  So far, we’ve been exclusively discussing project governance, but with the next post, on gml-IV Alignment, we will step outside the project to see what penultimate governance looks like in a project organization.

When governance is discussed, someone usually bemoans the inefficiency, the overhead, the burden.  Does your organization have too much, too little or just the right amount of governance?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Project Governance – Maturity Level II

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it”

                                                                                                - Frank A. Clark

In my previous post, the first post in this series on governance in the project context, I introduced my arbitrary, tongue-in-cheek governance maturity level (gml) and described gml-I Chaos.  With this post, we advance to describing gml-II, the first maturity level where governance is contributing to project success.

Effective governance is external to the project (and therefore to the project team).  I’ll dwell on this more in a later post in this series, but this means that project governance cannot be performed by the project manager;  governance is someone outside the project looking at what the project manager and the project team have done.  Other requirements for the organization to be at gml-II are a project methodology, project standards, and deliverable templates, since, for governance there must be something to govern to. 

At the lowest level of mature project governance, the attention is on the project solution, the product or service , such as in the Product & Service Delivery (P&SD) organization.  Governance at this level is focused on the Executing Process Group (PMBoK v5 section 3.5) activities and the product deliverables.  Examples of project governance activities at this level include architectural reviews and stage gate reviews.

Another factor I check is how the project managers are measured and incented.  This is a topic I touched briefly a while back (How Should a Project Manager be Measured?), so I won’t dwell on it here.  Suffice it to say, though, that if the organization has a methodology and standards and the PM is not measured (and incented) based on those standards (rather than the PM Triple Constraints), then the organization is most likely still at gml-I Chaos.  After all, the organization is sending a mixed signal on whether they want the PM to follow the standards or to abandon them to deliver the product or service solution any way they want.

Governance models that describe governance maturity level II are Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) and the SEI Capability Maturity Model – Integrated (CMMI), which are both solution-focused methodologies.

In my next post, we’ll move slightly up the food chain to gml-III Consultancy, which will discuss a more advanced implementation of project governance.

Does your organization have effective project governance?  How does it stack up so far based on this description?  Do you think I’ve fairly described minimal project governance?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Project Governance – Maturity Level I

"Good project governance provides just enough oversight, process, guidance, and rigor to efficiently and effectively use project resources, deliver a solution, and handle trade-off decisions while optimally balancing adherence to a set of potentially changing project constraints.”

- Michael S. V. Turner, Microsoft Solutions Framework Essentials: Building successful technology solutions.  p271.

With this post I start a new series on governance.  Project governance, yes, but not just project governance.  Governance in the project context, though.  This should be a fun exercise, and I invite you to join the conversation.  Project managers historically have a love-hate relationship with governance, but it shouldn’t necessarily be so.

I have worked in the financial, pharma (GxP), and government domains, among others.  These are all high-governance environments and, with that experience, I can say that governance is a project manager’s good friend.  Understand that both you and the governance team have the same objective – project success.  If you don’t grasp that, then the yin-yang balance between advocate and adversary will be lost for you;  you’ll see governance only as an adversary to your success.  This will not be to your (or, more importantly, the project’s) benefit.  One thing in particular that keeps me on my toes is that, in these environments, I know someone who knows what they’re doing is going to be looking over my shoulder and evaluating my results critically.

There is probably some governance professional organization with its own body of knowledge and well-defined formal maturity levels for governance.  I wouldn’t know.  With apologies to that organization and to SEI and, completely tongue-in-cheek, I’m creating for this series an arbitrary set of maturity levels.

The first governance maturity level (gml), then, is one where any of the following are true:  there is no formal project governance process or methodology;  the project governance methodology is ineffective or insufficient;  or, the project manager perceives the project governance as (substantially) an adversary to success.  This is generally, in the maturity level worlds, called the state of chaos.  And that epithet clearly applies.

In the next post, I’ll advance to gml-II Solution and expound way too long on the characteristics of the first level of project governance maturity.

I would love to hear your stories on governance.  Have you found it to be an ally or an adversary?  What guidance do you have for fellow PMs?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Measuring Software Productivity

Enhancing the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Application Development.  Michael Huskins, James Kaplan, and Krish Krishnakantham.  August 2013.  (registration required)

I just read this recent article from McKinsey and Company that extols the virtues of software productivity metrics, compares several alternative methods, and offers their recommendation.

I find it amazing that in the several years I have been publishing this blog, I have never discussed software productivity metrics – but after a review today, that is exactly what I found.  As an avid advocate and proponent of metrics, the topic has certainly been on the list for discussion.

Had I written the article before today, I would’ve advocated Function Points.  Function Points have several advantages, including being the most consistent, accurate and reliable of the various methods and the one most appropriate for evaluating and measuring vendor software.  In particular, if you are comparing building a package versus buying a commercial (COTS) package for the same capability, then FPs offer an objective measure for comparing both features and cost to determine the appropriate path.  Likewise, it is similarly appropriate when comparing products from multiple vendors.

As the McKinsey article explains, though, FPs are expensive and challenging to introduce.  For organizations that rely primarily on software development (rather than purchasing vendor offerings), the McKinsey authors introduce a new (to me) method called Use Case Points, compare this to Lines of Code, Story Points, and FPs, and describe how to introduce UCPs into the organization.  Further, the article notes that UCPs are comparable across applications and teams.  And UCPs can be used with both agile and waterfall development methodologies.

I encourage you to take a look at this article for your application development environment.  Metrics add a valuable tool to your toolbox.  And metrics are an absolute, foundational necessity for continuous improvement.

Have you worked in an organization that uses software productivity metrics?  What benefits did you find?  What problems did you encounter?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

The Project Status Report – The Bad News

"It not knowing what to do, it's doing what you know.”

                                                                                                - Tony Robbins

Over the last couple of posts, I’ve discussed the “what” of the project status report (i.e., the content).  In this post, the conclusion of this three part series, I discuss the “why” of the PSR, but focusing on some of the less obvious benefits.

Everyone understands the theoretical or conceptual need for the project status report.  The client expects it, it may be obligated by the contract, and it may be in the standard process.  But it’s a burden to put together every week, to come up with newly creative ways to say you’re still behind on the project and you don’t have any tangible accomplishments to report.  We want a reason to do this activity – week in and week out – some reason larger than obligation to process;  some reason that overcomes the urge to make anything else we can be doing a higher priority than the Project Status Report.  We want something that gives this activity purpose and meaning.

There are a few good reasons for producing the weekly Project Status Report.  For example, a well-written PSR – succinct, factual, comprehensive – launches good discussions in the client project meeting.  It documents the action items and effects of non-compliance and non-responsiveness from the stakeholders.  It is an archive of the project trail.  But, there’s more.

On the LinkedIn discussion boards for Project Management that I follow, the question “What’s the best way to deliver bad news?” appears regularly.  This is a question I struggle with answering because the question those LinkedIn questioners are asking is not really “How to deliver bad news” but rather “How to deliver surprising bad news.”

The bad news I deliver to my project stakeholders is rarely a surprise to them because I publish the project status report religiously every week and I pack it with factual information about the project – the good and the bad.  I document the issues we are experiencing and the risks that present threats and opportunities.  I show where we have variances.  Sure, this is hard.  But it is a professional and ethical responsibility.  And if you don’t do this (think good risk management here), you are going to be struggling with the question of how to deliver surprising bad news to your stakeholders.

I can’t think of a better reason or a higher purpose than this.

Producing the project status report every cycle is a Project Management Best Practice.  What problems have you experienced when you ignored this practice?  What problems have you avoided by publishing it even when it didn’t seem like a healthy choice?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

The Project Status Report – Content That Matters

"Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.”

                                                                                                - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This is the second post in the series on The Project Status Report.  In this post, I get specific about the appropriate content of a PSR.  But first, while it is called a Project Status Report, it typically includes status (snapshot), trending, progress (accomplishments) and exception (variance) content.  Second, the PSR should not be confused with a person’s (individual) status report (ISR), which everyone on the team should be completing.  Further, the PSR is not a roll-up from the ISRs.  Finally, the PSR, when done properly, is aligned with and contributes to the overall Management by Objectives (MBO) approach.

This last point deserves emphasis.  The PSR does not and should not say what is going on.  I know this seems totally off base, but to ignore this point devalues the PM contribution.  Rather, the project has a plan and the PSR documents the consistency with or variance from the plan.  So rather than saying “what is going on,” the PSR should say what is going on relative to the plan, which is a key distinction.

I’ve found that the following sections are useful to have in the PSR:
·         Current snapshot
·         Dashboard
·         Performance to plan
·         Accomplishments
·         Planned for next period
·         Issues/ Variances
·         Acceptances
·         Change activity
·         Risk summary
·         Downtime

Not all organizations use all sections and not all sections are appropriate for all organizations.  Let me discuss each section.

Current snapshot

This optional section is status content and is the executive summary of the PSR.  It should be a very brief (no more than a few sentences) narrative.  Of particular significance is to use this section to emphasize areas where stakeholder intervention is required, such as resolving third-party bureaucratic or administrative interference, stakeholder non-compliance (failure to approve a deliverable or change request), failure of a risk or issue owner to act, or when intervention is needed to address a “red light.”

Dashboard

This optional section is status content (and is improved with trending indicators).  Despite their popularity, I’m not a big fan of “traffic lights,” those red-yellow-green circles to summarize status, primarily because there often is not a clear understanding by all stakeholders what the traffic lights mean.  Further, a single traffic light summarizes too much to be sufficiently actionable (for example, something I experience regularly is that we will start a project before all of the budget administrivia is complete, knowing that the executives have approved the project and it will go forward.  However, the project shows red because of the budget and, so, everyone ignores the traffic light.  But there may also be other factors that should be recognized that are concealed because of the attention to the budget.)

I’m OK with traffic lights when the following conditions are met:  1) all stakeholders understand what the lights mean (in particular, when their action or intervention is required);  2) that there are multiple lights providing sufficiently discrete information to the stakeholders (e. g., budget, schedule, scope, approvals, issues, risks).  Traffic light value is improved if there are trending indicators (for example, up/ down arrows) to communicate changes.

Performance to plan

This is required status content.  This should include a Gantt chart (showing variance from plan) or, even better, Earned Value (and Earned Schedule) graphs.  This is the meat of the status report.

Accomplishments

This is optional progress content, though it is universally included.  Equally universal is that the wrong information is presented.  This should report accomplishments, not activity.  Avoid muddy verbs, such as:  worked on, met, attended.  Instead, use only concrete verbs, such as completed, published, documented, tested, coded.  The activities associated with these verbs should be tasks or activities in the WBS (and thus on the project schedule).  Finally, include metrics whenever possible (e.g., completed 20 of 30 test cases).

To digress momentarily, be clear about what “completed” means.  I often have developers report they completed an assignment.  “Have you completed the unit testing,” I ask.  “No, I completed the coding.”  OK, but the task is not complete.  These types of grey areas compromise the accuracy and the credibility of your reporting.

Planned for next period

This is optional progress content.  The same rules as listed for Accomplishments apply.

Issues/ Variances

This is required exception content and is usually a table documenting current project issues, the issue owner, activity and plan for resolution.

Acceptances

This is required status and exception content.  This should be a table listing each deliverable that has been submitted but not approved and deliverables that will be submitted in the next few weeks.  Table columns should list the deliverable name, responsible approver, date (to be) submitted, date approval was (or will be) due, and status (Not submitted, Pending approval, Overdue, Approved).  Overdue approvals should be highlighted.  Once an approval is received, this is reported as complete on the next PSR, then it is removed from future PSRs.

Change activity

This is required exception content.  This, too, is a table listing each submitted, but not completed, project change request.  Columns should include PCR number, title, date submitted, date response due, and status (Submitted, Pending approval, Approved/ Denied, Project plan updated).  Once the PCR has been denied or after the project plan is updated following the approval, this is reported on the next PCR, then it is removed from the table.

Risk summary (key risks)

This is required exception content.  This section is formatted similar to the Issues section.  One thing important to add to the section heading is “Date last discussed.”  This should be the date that risks were most recently discussed in the Client Project Meeting with the stakeholders.  I find that these meetings rarely discuss risks because time runs out before we get to this agenda item.  Risks should be discussed at least monthly and, if they haven’t been, this discussion should be moved to the top part of the agenda.

Downtime

This is optional exception content and will rarely be seen except in the status reports of the top echelon consulting firms.  It really isn’t meaningful in a Product & Service Delivery environment, but may mean the difference between profit and loss for a Consultancy PM.  When the client is responsible for the infrastructure on which the project depends, any failure, downtime, or force majeure where they are billed for your services but no work is being performed because of their nonperfomance, should be reported in this section.  It should (hopefully) be rare to have content here, but it is important to report it when appropriate.  I have also seen this section used to report “thumb twiddling” time because a client has not given timely approval to a deliverable.

There are obvious direct benefits from issuing weekly project status reports.  In the next and final post on this series, some key indirect benefits that may not be obvious.

What benefits do you receive or would you expect from publishing a weekly status report with this content?  What project problems can be avoided?  Can you guess what points I’ll bring up?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

The Project Status Report

"Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.”

                                                                               - William Shakespeare (All’s Well That Ends Well)

It has been a few weeks since I last posted.  Not because I don’t have ideas to share, but rather that I have a whole list of “next topics” and I struggle with where to go next.  I mentioned the Project Status Report in a post long ago during my series on The Project Manager’s Cycle, which I encourage you to review to properly understand the context for this expanded discussion on the Project Status Report (PSR).  With this post, I want to revisit the discussion about the PSR, going into depth on both the content (what goes in the PSR) and the rationale for the content.

The PSR is a key component of project communications.  There are the day-to-day communications by the project manager (the activities in the Project Manager’s Cycle where the PM meets with team members to get updates, to encourage, to motivate and meets with stakeholders for behind-the-scenes discussions).  But these build to the three central communication practices of the Project Manager’s Cycle:  the project team meeting, the PSR and the Client Project Meeting.

One of the essential decisions that must be made about the PSR – and this will be documented in the Communications Plan – is whether the PSR is a stand-alone document or whether it is a discussion aid to supplement the Client Project Meeting.  As a stand-alone document, I mean that it has to comprehensively explain information without the need for a discussion.  I don’t operate this way and, as a best practice, I recommend, instead, that the PSR is an aid to facilitate discussion in the Client Project Meeting (and I don’t mean either that the PSR substitutes for the Client Project Meeting agenda).   Thus, the Client Project Meeting – or rather, the minutes from that meeting – is the record of decisions made about the status.

The content of the PSR needs to answer a few basic, but essential questions:  how are we doing relative to the plan;  what is being (or will be) done to restore the project to plan, if necessary;  what threats jeopardize the project;  what actions are needed from the project owners or sponsors.

In the next post, I’ll address common sections of the PSR and the appropriate content for each;  and I’ll follow with a post on some of the tactical benefits of regular, proper status reporting.

What problems have you avoided that were attributable to good status reporting practices?  What problems have you encountered from deficiencies in status reporting?

© 2013 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.