“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”

As a global practice, project delivery is rife with methods, practices, templates, and training courses.  At Transforming Solutions, we also have a framework for effectively delivering on projects. However, we understand that in the end, it is not about the framework, the certification, or the method of delivery. It is all about providing value.

Several years ago I was privileged to contribute to Dr. Harold Kerzner’s Project Management Best Practices book. Kerzner, professor, and Senior Executive Director at International Institute for Learning (IIL), developed some key thoughts on delivering value. Kerzner has written, spoken, and blogged on numerous topics, including delivering value. I found these seven to be revealing.

I’ve adapted the list from Dr. Kerzner:

1. It does not matter how well or how poorly a project is executed if you are working on the wrong project

Seems like common sense, right? Yet, we see many organizations work on the wrong project or work on a project that their organization is not yet ready for. In an effort to help combat this, we offer approaches for project prioritization and selection. In addition, we can help your organization understand if it is ready for change.

2. Being on time and on budget does not necessarily equate to success

Imagine, you’ve completed your project. You came in on time AND on budget. That is the definition of a successful project, right? Not necessarily. Successful projects should be measured on the value they provide to your organization. Have you aligned to all your stakeholders’ needs? Were all the appropriate requirements delivered? Is the organization set up and prepared for ongoing management of the post-initiative delivery (i.e., are supporting organizations ready to stand up and deliver once the project team goes away)? These, and a host of other questions, should be considered before claiming success.

3. Completing a project within the triple constraint does not guarantee business value.

Related to number two above, what is the end-state the initiative was designed to create? You may have managed well inside the lines of the triple constraint, putting in a new student registration system. However, if students are challenged using the new system and administrative staff cannot get the information they need out of the tool, you are not ready to celebrate yet. The end-state after all was not to “put in a new system,” but more closely aligned with to “enable student registration to be more complete, seamless, and accurate”.

4. Having mature PM practices does not assure business value will be there at the end of the project

Unfortunately, I have worked for too many organizations that invested in very heavy project management processes; however, they are still unable to deliver. One IT organization created a checklist of 140 required project management deliverables. This heavy-handed control culture did not add value to delivery. In fact, quite the opposite. Project managers were so consumed with completing administrative tasks that they had little time to focus on the outcome of the product deliverables.

5. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get” – Warren Buffet

To paraphrase Mr. Buffet, the project cost is simply the price that you end up paying. The value, on the other hand, is what your organization ends up getting from the successful completion of the project. Do you have a measure for the value of your projects, beyond the cost you paid or the savings you realize?

6. Value is what your customer perceives is worth paying for.

The value of expense is often calculated by doing a cost-benefit analysis. Sometimes value is left out of the equation when one seeks to find the cheapest solution. Before starting an initiative, work to make sure you understand what your constituents are willing to pay and why. A project manager should remember that value is a perception of one’s stakeholders, not how well they think we are doing.

7. Success is when value is achieved

Wrapping it up, one is not done until a value is realized. And, that value is recognized by the stakeholders (not the implementation team). If one attains the nirvana state of delivering value, then it is time to take a moment, celebrate your team, and get ready for your next trial. Since you’ve demonstrated success, folks are bound to come and ask you to replicate it.

At TSI we are always focused on delivering something of value. Remember Einstein’s words above and strive to be valuable. TSI wants to enable and support your success and we are ready to partner with you to deliver the value you need.

Contact us to learn more about getting value from your delivery initiatives.

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#1 – Hire a Consultant With Similar Values

This may feel obvious, but you want to be sure you are working with a consultancy with similar values to you and your organization. At TSI, we consider this the forgotten dimension of hiring a consultant.

Here are two quick questions for you to find out how compatible you are: how do your organizational values match up with the values of the consulting firm? How does the firm demonstrate its values?

Organizations that miss this evaluation process component risk poorly completed projects. In turn, poorly completed projects lead to an increased risk of projects not completing on time, on budget, or without error.

As a result, organizations end up spending more money to complete projects or fix errors, ending up over time and over budget.

Hiring a consultant who has similar values to your organization helps to assure that your projects are completed well and are cohesive with your current values.

#2 – Take Control of the Conversation

In the past, we have heard from more than a few clients that past consultants have come into their organizations and dominated the conversation around solution design. As a result, the consultants fail to take client feedback and insight into account. This resulted in the client’s team (in your case, you) feeling like their solution was pushed upon them. This is as opposed to the solution being developed with them.

So what happens next? The client puts the prior consultants’ findings on a shelf. They then will not look at the findings unless prompted to do so. As a result, the solution is not fully implemented.

And what does that mean? You guessed it. Time and money are wasted.

Hiring a consultant who includes you in the conversation around solution design helps to assure that you felt it was created specifically for your organization, instead of neglecting to use a solution that was pushed on your team.

#3 – Read the Reviews When Hiring a Consultant

Raise your hand if you always read the reviews before purchasing a product or service…just me?

Although you can find some people who simply want to blow off some steam on the internet, many reviews are quite helpful! They offer information around details that the maker or organization may have not known to include. They also testify to how valuable the product truly is.

So when it comes to hiring a consultant or utilizing their services to ultimately save time and money, reviews serve the same purpose.

When reading the reviews of a consultancy, there are a couple things to look for.

1. Collaboration with The Consultancy

As we discussed in point #2, YOU need to be able to take control of the conversation. If there is not a sense of collaboration and understanding, your project will not be successful.

TSI worked with us to complete a strategic technology assessment, which included the difficult task of coordinating and articulating our vision and strategy for new technology.

– Sara Barr, The University of Chicago

2. Mention of Time or Money Saved

Let’s cut to the chase. You just want to know if you can save time and money with a consultant. The best way to find out is to see how the consultancy you’re exploring has saved other organizations time or money.

Dan and the team engaged, were sensitive to how they approached our teams, and were tough-minded with my leadership team and me around ways we could deliver more effective service at a lower cost.

– Mike Orscheln • Former CEO, Phonak Hearing Systems USA

Every time they were on/under-budgeted timeline and costs. They were professional, hardworking, completely objective, and helped us in ways that I did not originally anticipate. I would highly recommend them.

– J. Brodsky, High Growth Telecommunications Company

Discover More Ways a Consultant Can Collaborate With Your Team

There are other factors that go into hiring a consultant to work with your team, but these 3 points are a great way to assure that how you are doing it aligns with your organization, as well as saves you time and money.

As your organization brainstorms its next project, discover 7 additional things to consider in the process. These 7 considerations help you further understand the timeline and develop expectations.

The post How to Waste Less Time and Money With a Consultant appeared first on Transforming Solutions Inc..

• What does it do?
• Is there only one definition?
• What does it look like?
• How does it operate?
• Who should be part of the team?
• What capabilities make a PMO successful?

Lots of organizations use the three little letters P-M-O, but what those letters represent can be very different:

• A Project Management Center of Excellence (i.e., authors of the PM processes)
• A Governance Office (i.e., overseers of compliance)
• A project manager resource pool
• A portfolio management facilitator
• A resource management center, charged with balancing individual contributor or team supply and demand

Regardless of the type of PMO, you have these five steps will help you advance your team and add value to your organization.

1. Understand Your Current PMO

Have you had your PMO assessed? I’m not referring to a customer satisfaction survey from your stakeholders. I mean an assessment that addresses what you are doing, what you could be doing, and how to move forward, based on a standard set of criteria. Doing an assessment like this, however, can be a challenge to self-administer.

Do you have a set of objective criteria? Do you have a standardized approach to follow (is it tried and proven)? Are you an unbiased party to the assessment?

Assessing the maturity of your practices is not about a number.  Sometimes organizations get stuck there. The Capability Maturity Model Integration framework (CMMI) has a five-level rating system. Organizations that focus on simply attaining a “Level 3” grade are missing the point. It is more important to understand your why. As Simon Sinek has famously pointed out, “A why is like a compass direction. It tells you where you are going.” What value does your PMO provide? What motivates your team? These answers will be more important than a numerical grade on a five-point scale. It is valuable to understand where you are with respect to your value.

2. Follow a PMO Roadmap

Without a map that directs your growth journey, how can you assess if you are making progress? Your PMO roadmap should have both short-term and long-term goals, deliverables, and measures of value. A roadmap lays out the desired functional state of your PMO. It outlines the steps necessary to reach the future state. Similarly, the roadmap can address the span of control of the PMO. The PMO focus may be on IT only, one operating department, or the entire organization. Your roadmap will change based on where you provide coverage currently versus where you want to go.

3. Build with Experience

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel and borrow liberally from others (other leaders, other departments, other organizations). Tailor as necessary to make processes and methods fit your culture, your industry, your team size, and your capabilities. Don’t try to have your project managers architect your PMO. It is not that they are not able; it is about capability and experience. Do you want to risk creating a new team with someone who has never created a PMO before? PMs are great at delivery. However, that does not mean they are necessarily organizational architects.

4. Define, Capture, and Showcase Value

To borrow from a famous scene in the 1996 film Jerry Maguire, for your PMO to be successful, you have to be able to show them the money.  The “money” has to be the value your stakeholders want from the PMO. Be careful: if you are the PMO leader, don’t specifically focus on building the PMO you want to run. Your stakeholders’ perceptions are your reality. Define a way to measure value and report back early and often on how well you are doing against your metrics.

5. Strive for Continuous Improvement

Follow your roadmap, but don’t let the journey end. Think about continuous improvement and get a little bit better every day. Project management offices can get stuck in a rut. They deliver on a set of functions and they eventually stop evolving. Chances are that your organization is continuously changing, so be sure you are adapting to it. Change does not always have to be a Big Hairy Audacious Goal; little changes make a difference too. Think about change as simple, incremental, and always delivering value.

Contact us!

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The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.

– Sun Tzu, Military Strategist

Creating Project Management Principles

The basic principles of project management are fully extensible from the smallest initiative to the largest program. The key is that project management practices should be understood as principles: accepted or professed rules of action or conduct. It is on this belief that I encourage my clients to establish project manager guiding principles, as well as construct project management frameworks (not detailed, step-by-step methodologies). By maintaining the governance rules at the highest level, the organization maintains the flexibility to scale the implementation of principles based on specific needs.

For example, one of the project manager guiding principles could be:

The project manager is responsible for creating and delivering a written update of accomplishments, challenges, issues, and plans at appropriate level of detail. This update is to be sent to the appropriate stakeholders on an agreed-to regular basis (e.g., weekly).

While this principle does not define the format or the appropriate level of detail, it clearly establishes that for every delivery initiative with an assigned PM (regardless of project size) there will be a status report. It is surprising to me that this type of foundation and guidance is not practiced in many companies. Project managers are often left to decide for themselves whether and how they will track issues, report risks, actively manage dependencies, or if they must meet regularly with their sponsors. Regardless of the size of the project, each PM will be held accountable. 

Scale the Project Principles to Size

As Sun Tzu reinforces, “Fighting with a large army under your command is nowise different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.” To paraphrase, once the principles are established, the implementation can be adjusted to the size of the need. An overall program plan for a global project will include a higher level of detail than a specific, detailed plan for implementing a single project within the initiative. This adjustment to scale is critical. If a program does not adjust its implementation approach, one can expect to see a plan at the program level that is tens of thousands of lines long. This level of detail is off-putting for many of the executive sponsors leading the initiative. A program plan can lose its value as a conglomeration of details with little to no meaningful summary, accommodation in visibility, nor tailored executive information. Without changing the signs and signals, as well as differentiating between the focus needed to implement vs. the focus required to lead, governing bodies may make missteps when initiating planned practices.

Standardization and the Value

Standardization and rigor are key to establishing guidance for your project managers. The ability to adapt while applying standards (based on scale) is crucial to successful implementation. While success statistics are not overwhelming, 70% of projects with standardized practices are successful, according to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession study. One of the reasons that the success numbers are so low – and decreasing over the past four years according to the study – is that many of the respondents said their organizations do not fully understand the value of project management.

Unfortunately, I have witnessed this lack of understanding firsthand. In one company, there was a recognized need for structure in delivery. The PMO was assigned to implement a more structured level of delivery for the company.  As a result, standard templates and control processes were defined, and an authoritarian rule was cast over projects. However, the organization did not clearly establish the value proposition of the PMO. In addition, there was not sufficient organizational change management around levels of rigor, articulation of the principles for success, or the appropriate scalability for implementing standards across the organization. Therefore, the PMO was the red tape that hindered delivery, instead of the grease that enabled success.

So Why Do You Care?

Creating standards is important. Scaling implementation is key for success – one size of operating model does not fit all. Articulating the value of the standards is imperative.  An PMO should create standards, allow for flexibility in their use, and communicate and engage organization in the value proposition.  Creating and implementing a scalable set of standards becomes an internal sales process to convince the company of the value to be attained.

To borrow from French writer and military veteran Francois de la Rochefoucauld, 

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things… 

As we look to improve the capabilities of our delivery teams, let us focus on the established principles, clearly articulating the value they deliver. From there, we implement based on the scale of the situation.

Interested in learning more about project management? Discover more about project managers and project management office today.

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