For a less experience PM the implementation weekends are a trial of fire. If it works then great you will be the project hero. If it does not go live then you are a dud. In previous times in order to 'unblock' projects I have had a go at installing Windows Server using the manual (how hard can it be - impossible) and after many unsuccessful attempts went down to the pub and had lunch and had to wait three days for a Wintel person to do it properly. I was assisted in my kamikaze attempt by a Unix developer as I regard one operating system much the same as another. He thought it was a humorous approach but as he had seen me do weirder things and take bigger risks and see them work he just went along to pick up another anecdote to tell him Unix chums.
As a senior PM most of the projects I get will be remediation ones where the client and the supplier started to do it in a way that was either cheap (its straight out of the box, their bread and butter work) or expensive in the wrong way (the complicated but plausible method) and they have come unstuck. When they come unstuck they usually double down and call that re-planning. Then, when all motivation, budget and any chance of it being regarded as a success they will bring in a simplifier rather than a complicator, which what I think I am.
Even with experienced Wintel resource the first project was still causing problems. So I went to the local church in the centre of London and prayed to God and then the implementation worked. Do I think there is a link between the two? Of course I do. On a metaphysical level I escalated the issue to the celestial PM and his only response was that I should have come to him first rather than waste time with Wintel contractors. As the ultimate escalation point he is busy and he appreciated trying to sort my own problems first before sharing mine with him. As he said to me 'I can't be everywhere at once' - so much for omnipresence.
There is a lot planning, reviewing and rehearsing in these weekends. There is no shortcut around it - plan, review and rehearse. Then you need good people who turn up. It sounds simple but when an implementation weekend is months late and has been rescheduled three of four times it's hard to get people's attention and keep them fresh. Sometimes the team can be a completely different one from the ones who developed the original plan. That's why reviews and a walk-through are useful. Even then you might get people who don't turn up because their contract is not going to be reviewed or their is a management issue where they want to stick two fingers up to the company. You will never know until the implementation day itself. Advice: Cross-train people and get them to work in twos. It allows you to distribute the work more evenly and means yo have a broader set of questions.
Monday, 24 October 2016
Tuesday, 11 October 2016
The expensive and slow race to the starting line
The image below is the typical gestation of a project. The RFP can take weeks or months and the client already has a start date and an end date in mind even before they completed the RFP. The modern approach to just-in-time working means that there is a scramble on both sides to get the project in place before deadlines start. Bonuses, promotions and sales targets are all in play which is why we see so many projects announced in December so that they can be included in bonus calculations.
The number of suppliers will be reduced to a shortlist but this will be very near the end of the process which means that many will have worked for nothing. Even the ones who have not succeeded will have improved the final answer as their clarifications will identify weaknesses in the client's project proposal or opportunities they had not identified.
At the end of the process at lot of time has been used up. At least 3 months and it can be more than a year even for a medium size project. By the time the project starts the personnel who have worked on the response will have moved to paid work and may not be available at the start. Sometimes it takes so long that the people are no longer employed by the supplier which is embarrassing on both sides.
Mobilisation is under pressure and the project is put under pressure to make up time that is perceived as lost. Sometimes the project has not achieved a great deal of clarity as the whole process is competitive between the suppliers and even with the client. The client may have contractors and personnel who believe that the project should be done 'in-house' and have a vested interest in making all the suppliers look bad.
There has to a fairer, quicker way of doing this to get a better outcome and reduce wasted effort.
Monday, 10 October 2016
The Power of Experts To Waste Time and Money
In projects there is usually an expert. It may be a consultant who has seen it all and done it all; an technical person who is a whizz on the latest technology, a technology manager who has read everything about the latest trends and keeps talking about 'the internet of things' or a 'service based economy' and occasionally you will meet a user/customer experience person who has a box of tricks that they want to use regardless of whether they are appropriate or relevant. All are charming and all can be deadly when it comes to getting things done as they will not want to compromise the purity of their vision.
It's not that I'm against experts - use them properly and the project will sing and make quick progress. Get too many too soon and they will be writing reports and consultations and a large chunk of time and money will be used up with no evidence of a tangible project (see the HS2 project or the third runway at Heathrow).
You, the client may be persuaded but you must decide. You cannot outsource the decision making or the vision of the project as you will not be able to take it back easily.
The other thing about experts is that they cannot predict the future more accurately than anybody else. There are many studies in finance and politics where the results of experts have not beaten random luck or coin tossing by a significant amount. As Nils Bohr said "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future."
What experts do have is an unjustified confidence about their predictions that a more cautious participant would not attach to their estimate. The architects and engineers of the last few financial disasters are people who have been recruited for their doctorate in physics or even a Nobel Prize in economics. Their uncrushable belief in their world models has resulted in some interesting studies in human behaviour (see Long Term Capital Management).
Use experts to get you to your goal but do not confuse their breezy confidence with their subject matter with their ability to deliver your vision. There are many projects that are stuck in quicksand because it has become obsessed with some principles that are not tailored for the client and the context. When you are trying to get things done within constraints then you need a combination of persistence, creativity and frugality to keep things moving.
It's not that I'm against experts - use them properly and the project will sing and make quick progress. Get too many too soon and they will be writing reports and consultations and a large chunk of time and money will be used up with no evidence of a tangible project (see the HS2 project or the third runway at Heathrow).
You, the client may be persuaded but you must decide. You cannot outsource the decision making or the vision of the project as you will not be able to take it back easily.
The other thing about experts is that they cannot predict the future more accurately than anybody else. There are many studies in finance and politics where the results of experts have not beaten random luck or coin tossing by a significant amount. As Nils Bohr said "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future."
What experts do have is an unjustified confidence about their predictions that a more cautious participant would not attach to their estimate. The architects and engineers of the last few financial disasters are people who have been recruited for their doctorate in physics or even a Nobel Prize in economics. Their uncrushable belief in their world models has resulted in some interesting studies in human behaviour (see Long Term Capital Management).
Use experts to get you to your goal but do not confuse their breezy confidence with their subject matter with their ability to deliver your vision. There are many projects that are stuck in quicksand because it has become obsessed with some principles that are not tailored for the client and the context. When you are trying to get things done within constraints then you need a combination of persistence, creativity and frugality to keep things moving.
Friday, 7 October 2016
How do we describe the problem in a way that gets the best ideas put forward?
Procurement lead projects have resulted in poorer projects. The price is often haggled down and the expense of quality and the supplier and the customer do a dance where they pretend it is not the case. Another challenge is that the responses that are put forward are quite similar so you are making a selection from a set of similar options and discussing small differences when assessing the viability of the response. A lot of this results from the process to get the responses in. Let us examine a typical process.
The client creates a document that outlines the problem. There will be requests for the types of things they need to see in the response. Architecture diagrams, outline project plans, project team structure, references, financial details of the company, project and COSTS (remember this is procurement led and they will get a bonus on the amount by which they reduce the proposal). This will take a few people a few weeks to create, review and validate this document which can have more than 400 questions. Rarely less than 100. Therefore at the outset the client implicitly sizes the solution and will add other constraints e.g. must align with operational store, must meet future security requirements, must use current financial models. On one hand these might be good signposts to the suppliers but it also excludes suppliers who don't have certain technology skills. The irony is that the smaller companies are more likely to be using the leading edge technologies and the larger ones will be using standard technologies.
The size of the RFP means that a client will need a team to respond. Large suppliers will have some people who are available to do this. Often referred to as 'the bench' and these people will engage with the skilled people in the organisation who are busy with clients. Smaller suppliers rarely have a bench and may look at the RFP and decide that the expense of doing non-billable work is not worth the reward because RFPs are usually awarded to the usual suspects who become a self-selecting bunch.
In the end the client gets a similar set of responses from large suppliers and makes his choice the same way he does between a selection of wines at approximately the same price - sense of smell.
My recommendation, which I will explain in more detail, is that an initial RFP is smaller and that the client offers to pay a fee for the top 3 responses. It wouldn't make a dent in the costs of a large consultancy but might get some fresh ideas presented from the smaller suppliers.
The client creates a document that outlines the problem. There will be requests for the types of things they need to see in the response. Architecture diagrams, outline project plans, project team structure, references, financial details of the company, project and COSTS (remember this is procurement led and they will get a bonus on the amount by which they reduce the proposal). This will take a few people a few weeks to create, review and validate this document which can have more than 400 questions. Rarely less than 100. Therefore at the outset the client implicitly sizes the solution and will add other constraints e.g. must align with operational store, must meet future security requirements, must use current financial models. On one hand these might be good signposts to the suppliers but it also excludes suppliers who don't have certain technology skills. The irony is that the smaller companies are more likely to be using the leading edge technologies and the larger ones will be using standard technologies.
The size of the RFP means that a client will need a team to respond. Large suppliers will have some people who are available to do this. Often referred to as 'the bench' and these people will engage with the skilled people in the organisation who are busy with clients. Smaller suppliers rarely have a bench and may look at the RFP and decide that the expense of doing non-billable work is not worth the reward because RFPs are usually awarded to the usual suspects who become a self-selecting bunch.
In the end the client gets a similar set of responses from large suppliers and makes his choice the same way he does between a selection of wines at approximately the same price - sense of smell.
My recommendation, which I will explain in more detail, is that an initial RFP is smaller and that the client offers to pay a fee for the top 3 responses. It wouldn't make a dent in the costs of a large consultancy but might get some fresh ideas presented from the smaller suppliers.
Thursday, 6 October 2016
Is Best Practice Really Best Practice or Lazy Thinking?
We will identify that we have a change that needs to be made to fulfill a need. That deserves a project with all the costs and bureaucracy that go with it.
We hear a lot about best practice? A way of solving the problem is frequently sold as best practice, wrapped up in a methodology with some project benefits sprinkled liberally through a Powerpoint presentation.
Best practice means most popular practice and is that what is required. Best practice means what other, admired companies have done the way they have done it. Can you confirm that the other company would attack the problem in the same way? Do they always tackle their problems in the same way e.g. get a 3rd party to develop and execute a plan and then blame them for the failure and disruption that is caused when unintended consequences ripple through the organisation.
Best practice is a conservative cop-out. It means that the excuses have already been cooked into the project so that when it all goes wrong everybody can say that it was best practice rather than a customised response to a problem that the company needs to address.
It is not possible to repeat a project plan of more than 1 month and have an identical outcome. Things vary - the level of enthusiasm of a team will reduce to going through the motions and errors will creep in, the technology changes and the business environment. Best practice is taking a snapshot of what most organisations did in similar circumstances with a different team in a different environment and more than one or two years ago. Best practice should be a small ingredient in your recipe but you really need to create something that is appropriate for the occasion.
Do film-makers make the same film over and over gain. No, they improve and they find better ways to do things that may be cheaper and more effective to get their story across. Over time even television series adopt different looks and tell stories a different way. Each project needs to tell its own story to be effective and not to be the poor copy of a failed project that happened a few years ago.
When an organisation is confident and knows what it is doing they will almost have a 'house style' where projects can be done quickly and effectively. Not all projects need to be blockbusters and a series of 'B' movies can effect more change that a large programme that does not get people thinking and behaving differently. Project Managers should read about Roger Corman the famous film maker who still has the enthusiastic energy to make low-cost energetic movies - an idea, some scenes and a few actors rounded up and he would be up and running. He believes that film school ruins film directors and it may be that too much methodology and best practice makes for poor projects that do not deserve to succeed.
We hear a lot about best practice? A way of solving the problem is frequently sold as best practice, wrapped up in a methodology with some project benefits sprinkled liberally through a Powerpoint presentation.
Best practice means most popular practice and is that what is required. Best practice means what other, admired companies have done the way they have done it. Can you confirm that the other company would attack the problem in the same way? Do they always tackle their problems in the same way e.g. get a 3rd party to develop and execute a plan and then blame them for the failure and disruption that is caused when unintended consequences ripple through the organisation.
Best practice is a conservative cop-out. It means that the excuses have already been cooked into the project so that when it all goes wrong everybody can say that it was best practice rather than a customised response to a problem that the company needs to address.
It is not possible to repeat a project plan of more than 1 month and have an identical outcome. Things vary - the level of enthusiasm of a team will reduce to going through the motions and errors will creep in, the technology changes and the business environment. Best practice is taking a snapshot of what most organisations did in similar circumstances with a different team in a different environment and more than one or two years ago. Best practice should be a small ingredient in your recipe but you really need to create something that is appropriate for the occasion.
Do film-makers make the same film over and over gain. No, they improve and they find better ways to do things that may be cheaper and more effective to get their story across. Over time even television series adopt different looks and tell stories a different way. Each project needs to tell its own story to be effective and not to be the poor copy of a failed project that happened a few years ago.
When an organisation is confident and knows what it is doing they will almost have a 'house style' where projects can be done quickly and effectively. Not all projects need to be blockbusters and a series of 'B' movies can effect more change that a large programme that does not get people thinking and behaving differently. Project Managers should read about Roger Corman the famous film maker who still has the enthusiastic energy to make low-cost energetic movies - an idea, some scenes and a few actors rounded up and he would be up and running. He believes that film school ruins film directors and it may be that too much methodology and best practice makes for poor projects that do not deserve to succeed.
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Why Do Management Love Projects So Much When They Go So Wrong - 2
Management have to undertake projects for a number of reasons. Big organisations need them to stay relevant and small organisations need them to grow. Both sets of organisations will always have a level of refresh and replenish work to do to keep up with the pack. The better organisations will use their project resources to gain an edge.
Larger organisations will find that trying to maintain their current profitability or level of performance means that they will have to be aware of the competition. There will be two types of competitors - the ones who are a bit like themselves that they can imitate and the new ones that are created each year that are free of the history, bureaucracy, outdated systems and standardised processes of the established organisation. Competitors with a fresh perspective can finish off incumbents quickly or take enough business to tip long term businesses into a way of working that is no longer profitable. Polaroid disappeared quickly after it ignored digital photograph, Microsoft had to play catch up when they thought the internet was a niche technology and who remembers MySpace or Friends Reunited.
Success can also put pressure on a small company. If you become astonishingly successful as a start-up then all of a sudden you need extra hardware, extra people, someone to deal with all the money coming in. These are multiple little projects that can free up time and effort to keep the momentum of the business growing. Deal with it quickly and you will maintain growth; miss the opportunity to deal with additional capacity and you will be tackling the weeds forever while a more focussed competitor takes the business that you could not handle. Choosing the right projects to undertake can be the difference.
It's not all gloom as there are peoples, teams and companies out there who can get things done and make things change. You will have met them and they look the same as the others who can promise much but fall at some hurdle.
As an organisation the challenge will be how to grow your own capability and also how to spot it in other people.
There isn't a seven step plan or some cozy bullet points that can stand scrutiny. Quick fixes end up taking longer than doing it properly. A contact of mine turned down an offer to do some work for free that had been proposed by a large consultancy as he said he couldn't afford it and would rather pay the market rate. He had experienced this type of 'loss leader' work before and knew that he would not get the best people, the supplier would not be 100% committed and if another client needed assistance they would take priority as it was unpaid work with the prospect of further work.
Another saying is 'we can't afford to do it properly but we can afford to do it twice'. Sometimes it takes more than two times to repair the damage of the initial project and any cordial relationship between client and supplier has evaporated and often ends up in court or some financial settlement.
So assuming that the client and the supplier are both honorable people how can they create a relationship that is mutually beneficial and has tangible improvements at the end? It does happen.
Larger organisations will find that trying to maintain their current profitability or level of performance means that they will have to be aware of the competition. There will be two types of competitors - the ones who are a bit like themselves that they can imitate and the new ones that are created each year that are free of the history, bureaucracy, outdated systems and standardised processes of the established organisation. Competitors with a fresh perspective can finish off incumbents quickly or take enough business to tip long term businesses into a way of working that is no longer profitable. Polaroid disappeared quickly after it ignored digital photograph, Microsoft had to play catch up when they thought the internet was a niche technology and who remembers MySpace or Friends Reunited.
Success can also put pressure on a small company. If you become astonishingly successful as a start-up then all of a sudden you need extra hardware, extra people, someone to deal with all the money coming in. These are multiple little projects that can free up time and effort to keep the momentum of the business growing. Deal with it quickly and you will maintain growth; miss the opportunity to deal with additional capacity and you will be tackling the weeds forever while a more focussed competitor takes the business that you could not handle. Choosing the right projects to undertake can be the difference.
It's not all gloom as there are peoples, teams and companies out there who can get things done and make things change. You will have met them and they look the same as the others who can promise much but fall at some hurdle.
As an organisation the challenge will be how to grow your own capability and also how to spot it in other people.
There isn't a seven step plan or some cozy bullet points that can stand scrutiny. Quick fixes end up taking longer than doing it properly. A contact of mine turned down an offer to do some work for free that had been proposed by a large consultancy as he said he couldn't afford it and would rather pay the market rate. He had experienced this type of 'loss leader' work before and knew that he would not get the best people, the supplier would not be 100% committed and if another client needed assistance they would take priority as it was unpaid work with the prospect of further work.
Another saying is 'we can't afford to do it properly but we can afford to do it twice'. Sometimes it takes more than two times to repair the damage of the initial project and any cordial relationship between client and supplier has evaporated and often ends up in court or some financial settlement.
So assuming that the client and the supplier are both honorable people how can they create a relationship that is mutually beneficial and has tangible improvements at the end? It does happen.
Tuesday, 4 October 2016
Why Do Management Love Projects So Much When They Go So Wrong - 1
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results is a definition of madness. Large organisations do this over and over again so they must be super mad. They employ the same consultancies who have previously failed to deliver projects for them before. In fact the consultancies may be on a 'preferred suppliers list'. It is like a person would create a 'preferred muggers list' where you know there will be a painful outcome but they are local and you are familiar with them and like the gang leader.
Let us set the scene and try to understand why completing projects or 'delivering solutions' is so difficult, expensive and has a high failure rate. The failure rate remains frustratingly high regardless of methodology, technology and industry. Each year produces further eye-catching numbers of cost and time overruns on government projects, large infrastructure projects and software projects. Large projects are often abandoned with a waste of shareholders and taxpayers money.
There is no shortage of books, training and certifications so it cannot be a lack of knowledge. Is it too much knowledge? Are we trying to make the project activities into fine dining or something scientific when what we need are simple instructions that can be adapted as need. We need cooks and not chefs.
The failure rate indicates that we don't learn our lessons. How ironic. Each time I hear a public figure on television saying lessons should be learned then I know they are either lazy, a liar or stupid. I think that apart from very basic behaviour e.g. don't hit your colleague, don't take drugs at the desk, football shirts are inappropriate for client meetings - that 'lessons learned' are a waste of time and energy. The people who want to change and improve will copy role models, read books, go to the gym or quit drinking to be the version of themselves that they want to be next. There is no final version but a work in progress and there may be further changes in the pipeline.
From observation I have a suspicion that 'Lessons Learned Reviews' have a negative effect on future performance. They are a therapy session except the discussion of the issues results in the behaviours being reinforced and baked in to the psyche of the team. The team unconsciously do the same thing as they think they have been forgiven for the current mistakes they have made and are free to go and sin again. Sometimes they copy the mistakes of other people in the team and make new mistakes that they never would have made until they heard about them. Projects, towards the end, need the service of a Priest as well as a Project Manager. He can hear the confession and forgive them.
Organisations are looking for a repeatable process. Every time you see expressions like 'Project In A Box' or 'Bank In a Box' the idea behind it is that there is a basic framework that can do things quickly with no frills. However, things change. Every year there will be new tools, frameworks and techniques that are promoted as simpler, easier, faster and almost compatible with standards. It's not possible to repeat a process or a project unless the architecture, technology, the client and the team are identical. This does happen but even on small projects of less than 10 people it is a challenge because people don't want to do the same things over and over again. You can't step in the same river twice no matter how slowly it is flowing.
Let us set the scene and try to understand why completing projects or 'delivering solutions' is so difficult, expensive and has a high failure rate. The failure rate remains frustratingly high regardless of methodology, technology and industry. Each year produces further eye-catching numbers of cost and time overruns on government projects, large infrastructure projects and software projects. Large projects are often abandoned with a waste of shareholders and taxpayers money.
There is no shortage of books, training and certifications so it cannot be a lack of knowledge. Is it too much knowledge? Are we trying to make the project activities into fine dining or something scientific when what we need are simple instructions that can be adapted as need. We need cooks and not chefs.
The failure rate indicates that we don't learn our lessons. How ironic. Each time I hear a public figure on television saying lessons should be learned then I know they are either lazy, a liar or stupid. I think that apart from very basic behaviour e.g. don't hit your colleague, don't take drugs at the desk, football shirts are inappropriate for client meetings - that 'lessons learned' are a waste of time and energy. The people who want to change and improve will copy role models, read books, go to the gym or quit drinking to be the version of themselves that they want to be next. There is no final version but a work in progress and there may be further changes in the pipeline.
From observation I have a suspicion that 'Lessons Learned Reviews' have a negative effect on future performance. They are a therapy session except the discussion of the issues results in the behaviours being reinforced and baked in to the psyche of the team. The team unconsciously do the same thing as they think they have been forgiven for the current mistakes they have made and are free to go and sin again. Sometimes they copy the mistakes of other people in the team and make new mistakes that they never would have made until they heard about them. Projects, towards the end, need the service of a Priest as well as a Project Manager. He can hear the confession and forgive them.
Organisations are looking for a repeatable process. Every time you see expressions like 'Project In A Box' or 'Bank In a Box' the idea behind it is that there is a basic framework that can do things quickly with no frills. However, things change. Every year there will be new tools, frameworks and techniques that are promoted as simpler, easier, faster and almost compatible with standards. It's not possible to repeat a process or a project unless the architecture, technology, the client and the team are identical. This does happen but even on small projects of less than 10 people it is a challenge because people don't want to do the same things over and over again. You can't step in the same river twice no matter how slowly it is flowing.
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