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.

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.

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.

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?

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

Reconstructing Project Management (1 of probably 9)

Does project management cover the management of the project front-end, the definitional, development stages, or is it concerned essentially only with execution delivery?  What should it be responsible for?  How far does it stretch into concept definition at one end and operations at the other?

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

With this post I embark on what I hope will be a series of nine posts, which diverge considerably from how I have historically presented content on this blog.  My focus has been on PM Best Practices and, as a practicing PM, my posts – at least from my perspective – have been intended as practical guides for the functioning PM in the trenches.  For the next couple of months, however, I’m going to wander into the (cue theme from The Twilight Zone) wilderness of PM Existentialism.

Peter Morris authored Reconstructing Project Management (2013) and was invited by PMJ to encapsulate the book for its readers.  If permitted (I’ve asked the publishers of PMJ for permission, which is still pending, to quote from the article for this series), I plan to take nine questions that Morris highlights in the article (Figure 3 Current issues in project management as a discipline, p13) and add my commentary and color, hopefully without getting too lost.

However, I don’t want to give the impression that Morris’ article is these nine questions (which, by the way, are also on page 111 in the book) or, even, that they are the central theme.  In the article’s eighteen pages, Morris condenses, presumably, the topics, points, arguments and themes of two-thirds of his book.  I’m pulling these nine questions, then, completely out of context and I encourage you to read the article (and the book) to understand his thesis.  When I read these nine questions, though, they spoke to me so deeply that I felt compelled to explore them beyond the (here I avoid the use of “mere” or “just”, maybe “unadorned” works) concrete expression that Morris has given us.  Further, I believe there is a tenuous link to my series on Governance.

By tossing these questions, like grenades, on the floor without further expanding on them, Morris challenges us to face the assumptions and core values that define our profession.

Practically a post’s worth of preamble, so let’s get to it…

Enterprise leadership holds their quarterly off-site to review strategy.  They return and the business line VP needs to replace the legacy, proprietary application with a cloud-based SaaS application that is the market leader.  She assigns a director responsibility for accomplishing this, who engages a manager to lead the day-to-day tactical project delivery effort.  The manager, following the company’s methodology, prepares a business case, a charter, a staffing plan and a time and cost schedule.  These are approved by the Director and the project kicks off.

Who is the project manager for this project?

There is so much depth and complexity in Morris’ first question (above).  When I took the PMP certification exam, the model project manager we were told to visualize was the construction PM for whom a sponsor provided money in exchange for a commitment to scope and time.  At that time I worked for a large IT consulting and project management company with aspirations of offering clients responsibility to deliver their projects – high value contracting based on responsibility for deliverables, not time and materials.

Fast forward to the world of today:  that company is limping along as a has-been, ne’er-heard-of-‘em firm and the PM community is bifurcated between reality and wants.  As a profession, we want responsibility for the projects, but in an enterprise reality where, instead, we are just responsible for delivery for someone else.

Executives, managers, and operations leadership make the strategic decisions about what projects to run and have ownership of the operational project decisions (funding, scope, who will be on the team and whether to pull the plug when things go akilter).  They don’t want the mundane tactical responsibilities (and risks) of project delivery, but at the same time there are three market factors that prevent the elevation of professional project leaders into that sphere.  First, those operational leaders, having gotten where they are, are not going to trust someone else with the responsibility (and esteem) for success with their vision.  Second, without projects, their jobs are just, let’s face it, boring.  Projects are the spice to the same daily gruel they otherwise consume (and that consumes them).  They live vicariously through our efforts.

The third condition that reinforces the status quo is that, if other project managers are anything like me, we love delivering projects and don’t want those boring, mundane operational responsibilities.  We are too happy doing what we’re doing to want to trade this for the better world where projects are run by project professionals, but at the cost that we are tied down to quarterly budget cycles, annual personnel reviews (which, btw, should be annual budget cycles and quarterly personnel reviews), product support and maintenance, and enforcing all the petty practices and policies of the very model of a modern major enterprise.

So we take the bones we’re fed, we deliver the project to scope, time and cost (or, in a more mature organization, to process), celebrate the successful delivery, hand it over to them to support, and happily walk away to pre-storm with our next project team.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

What is the Most Important Skill for a Project Manager to Have?

Srini was a veteran project manager, but had never coached a junior project manager before.  Sarah was a newly hired junior PM who had the right credentials and some experience.  They were at lunch and Srini was describing the organization, the key people Sarah needed to get to know, and the background for their project processes.  He was winding down when Sarah asked him, “What is the most important skill I should develop to be a successful project manager?”  With the cynicism that years of political maneuvering had created, he thought, “How can someone be so innocent?”

The introductory paragraph is fictional, but I encounter this question regularly on LinkedIn group forums.  I almost always want to throw my hands in the air and scream at the person who asked this question how they could be so naïve.  Or maybe they are intentionally trying to cause trouble and controversy.  Either way, the question is just So Wrong.

But then I sit back, let my breath return to normal, and pop a few Metaprolol (no, I don’t really do that).  When I’ve calmed down, I realize there is an appropriate answer to this question.  (Before reading further, do you agree that there is an answer?  If so, what would you say is the most important skill for a PM?)

Let’s break this question down.  A PM has to have a variety of skills across several domains:  political skills (for navigating successfully within an organization), social skills (for dealing with stakeholders and motivating team members), emotional skills and technical skills in both the project and product domains.  How can anyone say, conclusively, that any one specific skill in any one of those areas is most important over all of the others?

Further, PMs operate across many organizations, industries, cultures, etc.  And whatever conditions may be appropriate with a specific team, they change and evolve over time.  So how can anyone say, conclusively, that any one specific skill is most important over all these different environments and at all times?

Realistically, they can’t.  Except…

Let’s take a momentary interlude here.  In one LinkedIn discussion I followed on this topic, the comments eventually reached the consensus that soft skills were the most important skill set for contemporary PMs.  I don’t disagree that soft skills are important for success, but, well, doesn’t the question assume that you have the hard PM skills?  And that if you don’t have those, you’re not a PM and, thus, the value of soft skills don’t apply?  Or, from another approach, can you say that, universally, soft skills are always more valuable than other skills in all environments at all times?  I think anyone stating that is naïve.  I mean that this way:  there are environments and times that demand other skills that are more important (even if you don’t encounter those conditions very often) and, if you haven’t, then you naively assume that what you’ve encountered is sufficient.

Getting back to the discussion then, what is the answer?  Is it flexibility?  I think that’s a good answer.  The PM often has to be flexible about how they mix and match the skills on a particular project or assignment, but, as good as this answer is, I don’t think flexibility is the best answer.

My vote for the best answer to the question “What is the most important skill for a PM?” is Balance.  Balance so accurately describes what we do:  we have to balance the inflexible demands of the iron triangle of scope, time and money.  We also have to balance our approach to each project to deliver precisely the right mix of soft and hard skills appropriate to that situation.  We even have to change at different times during the project which skills we present. 

If I answer otherwise – if I name any one skill – that indicates that I believe that one skill is universally more valuable than any other skill, which just is not the case.  It is the complete mix of skills, appropriately stirred, combined and presented in the right way at the right time that makes for a successful project manager over many projects over a long and successful career.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.

The Tailoring Rule

"Professionalism is knowing how to do it, when to do it, and doing it.”

                                                                                                - Frank Tyger

When people choose to complain about project management, one frequent refrain is the burden and overhead of all that process.  (I believe this is often a red herring, used by detractors who are concerned that project management best practices will expose their delivery weaknesses, but today’s discussion is to address the valid concerns for appropriate levels of process.)

A typical organization does many different types of projects of different sizes, styles and complexity.  For example, an IT department might have projects for:

• Infrastructure
• New software development
• Enhancement and maintenance
• Product selection, acquisition and installation

Since all projects, regardless of size, style or complexity have many common elements necessary for success, does that mean that the organization only needs one methodology?  Well, yes.  And no.

If the organization has one bloated methodology dictating that all projects must produce all deliverables from identical templates, then those people who complain about too much process have a (partially) legitimate complaint.  It’s legitimate because for most projects there will be too much process, but they are complaining about the wrong thing.

However, there are so many common and essential elements for project success that no organization wants to manage multiple (many?  dozens?) of different, but similar processes.  How to resolve this contradiction?

Both SEI’s CMMI and PMI’s PMBOK® Guide provide for Tailoring.  Tailoring is an important but rarely formally practiced principle.  In fact, in all of my years of consulting across a broad range of companies, I’ve encountered numerous cases where formal practices are ignored or circumvented because they are too onerous or just irrelevant, but in only one case have I worked at an organization that formalized process tailoring.

Even the description in PMBoK does little to suggest that the organization should establish tailoring in the formal processes:  Initiation and Planning includes “guidelines and criteria for tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes and procedures to satisfy the specific needs of the project” (27).  This description makes it sound like tailoring should be done inside the project to customize the organization’s standards rather than that the organization’s standards should specify the tailoring appropriate to different projects.

For example, an IT software development project, an IT software implementation project, an IT infrastructure project and a business process redesign project all have many similarities on how they should be run (they should all have charters, business cases, status meetings, risk logs, change management, etc.), but also significant differences (a new software development project won’t need the RFP activities in the implementation project and the BPR project will need a host of training and documentation activities that will not be needed for a back-office infrastructure project that has no end-user visibility).

Further, for a sufficiently small project, the charter could be fully contained within an email and the change approval process will need to be sufficiently streamlined, since long decision timeframes would jeopardize the delivery of the project.  In contrast, a long, complex, risky project wouldn’t want to make change decisions too informally or too quickly.

The process burden needs to be appropriate to benefit the project – designating those best practices that best assure project success – while addressing project risk without over burdening the project.  A requirements document for a small project might be a few pages, whereas the requirements document for a large, complex project could be a tome, with sections and subsections for business requirements, functional requirements, technical requirements, non-functional requirements, etc.

One size does fit all in project management, as long as that one size addresses the principles of successful project management.  (Is that a tautology?)  Organizations with best practices are clear about what processes are required and how those processes are customized based on type of project, complexity, size, risk.

The mistake often implied by those that complain about excessive process is that the situation would be better if there were no process.  But processes evolved because lack of process (chaos) could not be relied on to consistently deliver successful projects, whereas the use of the processes improved the project success rate.  The solution to excessive process burden (or bad process, for that matter) is not eliminating process.  Rather, the solution is to fix the process through lessons learned and continuous process improvement.

Of course, organizations are even worse at lessons learned and process improvement than they are at projects.  Look for my eventual series on lessons learned to address just this subject.

© 2014 Chuck Morton.  All Rights Reserved.