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Project Management to the Rescue.

BALAKIAN, WES

TD: Talent Development. Mar2017, Vol. 71 Issue 3, p42-46. 5p. 2 Color Photographs, 1 Diagram.

Article

*PROJECT management *CUSTOMER satisfaction *PROJECT managers *ISO 9000 Series Standards *CORPORATE culture *EMPLOYEE well-being UNITED States

541611 Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services 541614 Process, Physical Distribution, and Logistics Consulting Services 541619 Other management consulting services

The article discusses role of project management in building success for business enterprises. It mentions several factors connected with project management such as customer satisfaction, quality and risk in the business and important role of project manager in the execution of the business projects. It also mentions project management is concerned with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 900 continuous process improvement and a culture of caring for the employee.

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Project Management to the Rescue

A company’s success brought in numerous new projects, but it lacked a process to effectively complete and deliver them.

A large oil and gas manufacturing company in Houston has been doing a great job at beating the competition and growing at a pace that is unheard of in the current economy. Despite gas prices dropping, oil and gas rig counts falling, and layoffs occurring daily at its competitors, this company was growing at 15-20 percent a year and hiring, not laying off, people. The company’s success is attributed to delivering consistent high quality. Its customers come back time after time because they know the work will get done correctly and with the best quality in the business.

However, as the saying goes, “What got you here is not going to get you there.” The organization realized it fell short when it came to strategy, process, and project management. Although doing many things well, it was not

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prepared to grow, to innovate, or to leverage new technology.

The problem was that the company had no control of project management best practices; had little strategic planning in place or practiced; and, although it had good work processes on the manufacturing floor, the operational aspect was in need of some project management training and application. It was in need of a process to complete and deliver projects.

For example, the company needed to update one of the processes it used to prepare its tubes for an injection process. On the surface that sounds easy until you add in all of the complexities and other details that I won’t go into here. The problem involved a 1.5-year project to implement a new piece of equipment that would increase overall production capabilities by more than 40 percent. Indeed, this was a huge change and project.

The organization had a constant struggle with scope, time, and cost. Quality is the number one objective and core value of the organization, while the other sides of the project management triangle (see figure below) always were jeopardized, compromised, and underrecognized. This began causing conflict among the different departments and led to a lot of chaos and heroics to get work accomplished.

This is where I came in. I spent the first few weeks on-site analyzing the operating procedures that were in place, which was followed by completing an assessment in the form of individual interviews of management, middle management, operations, and manufacturing personnel. All of the questions were designed to draw out the “understanding or lack of” for a project management process within the company.

When an organization begins to focus too much in one area, there tends to be other aspects of the operation that suffer. Just like in project management, when one side of the project management triangle changes, the other two are affected. For example, when scope changes, then cost goes up or down and the schedule is reduced or increased.

The company realized that from past experience it was easy to accumulate a large number of projects that all seemingly need to be completed. To apply good project management techniques, one of the first steps is to organize and prioritize projects. After becoming almost paralyzed with too many projects and no time to complete them, the company completed a “project purge,” which culled the project list from more than 90 to 15 or so.

Next, the organization needed a way to prioritize and strategically align projects to the organization’s objectives. What it also realized is that just hiring a project manager would not help them understand how to prevent this from happening again, from always having a tremendous amount of scope creep and not aligning the projects to strategy.

The plan

Rather than the company hiring a project manager right away, my team and I recommended a different approach: work on some internal processes, implement coaching and mentoring of the entire team, figure out why there isn’t alignment, and fix some of the root causes. Then it could bring in a seasoned project manager who could take the new system and manage it.

Once again, this was easier said than done. Execution is something the company was good at, but the problem was that it would always jump from idea to execution without planning. This is where good project management training comes into play. When I dove into the organization, it was clear there were no formal

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guidelines, definitions, or processes to determine what constitutes a project. The named project manager used a software tool to produce a schedule.

That is fine if you only need dates, and the dates are flexible and used only as a guide; the team simply moved the schedule around to follow the work being done instead of the schedule driving the work. My team and I showed staff how to develop templates; we delivered project management training solutions for the various teams and locations; and recommended they install a small project management office.

The other important task we convinced management of is to implement a balanced scorecard approach to define what projects are to be focused on and align the projects to strategic objectives. Aligning projects to strategy is a proven way to help any organization determine whether a project should be considered. This also helps draw a picture of the company’s vision so that the project work supports organizational goals. Additionally, we added a few soft skills training classes, and rewards and recognition programs, and developed a tracking process for all projects.

Execution

It wasn’t long before the benefits and value of using best practice project management approaches started to pay off. Small project management training sessions with various groups began to take hold. One-on-one coaching also was used to mentor and coach existing project managers. I attended project meetings with the teams and observed their progress. Prior to the meeting, I asked them to give a short preview of what they intended to present, and coached them on changes if needed. After the meeting was over, we took another 10 minutes to review what went well and what didn’t, along with follow-up messaging for the team.

Just like any successful initiative introduced in an organization, senior management was 100 percent engaged, involved, and supportive of this initiative. They were the ones who realized that good project management techniques were needed to move the organization to the next level. You don’t have to own the company to bring this concept to realization.

As the project progressed, we developed measurements and defined success, so as we reached these milestones we knew what success looked like. To build this into your project plan, ask the team, client, or sponsor, “When you see success, what does that look like?” and then build your plan to achieve that success. It should be noted here that when I refer to a “plan” I’m defining it as the “how we are going to deliver the project and product of the project.” The schedule outlines when tasks occur.

While I joined this engagement a little late, the specifications already were developed and delivered to the prime manufacturer, and the two large pieces of equipment already had been manufactured—so we didn’t have much say in that process. But the real work was just beginning, such as moving thousands of tons of equipment around the manufacturing floor so that the new shop floor could flow better once the equipment was installed. Because this is a three-shift manufacturing operation, a production shutdown is the worst thing that could happen. So taking down, shutting off, moving, and re-installing all these enormous pieces of gear was a carefully orchestrated ballet that needed to be on time and completed correctly the first time.

Careful planning and a great deal of information needed to be exchanged for this project to be a success. A well-thoughtout project plan, schedule, work breakdown structure, communications plan, risk management plan with mitigation strategies addressed, and a solid change request platform were called into play. Without these critical project management tools and concepts, the project might have ended up like so many other “skunkworks” or carryover projects did prior to the arrival of a structured project process.

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Training and the implementation of project management best practices and techniques were certainly among the desired outcomes of this engagement from senior management’s perspective. How can you get the team trained and, when they are trained, will they use the training?

We answered this by delivering the results of the assessment, identifying gaps and training needs, and measuring current state. Our goal was to develop a program that would be accepted, embraced, and leveraged while on-site and long after. To do this, we needed to leave employees with clear instructions, templates, examples, and a full training plan for future use so that the program could be redelivered, revisited, and revised as the organization and its resources change over time. This is the execution phase of project management, where the actual work gets done. Without the proper amount of planning, the execution phase will result in rework, poor work, or no work of any value.

While having such components as ISO 900 continuous process improvement, a culture of caring for the employee, a well-defined manufacturing process in place, a great engineering team, a logistics team, and operational excellence, project management ultimately is the glue that holds all of it together. Project management integrates these important elements into a predictable, repeatable, scalable process that can be used repeatedly to deliver business results in any industry, country, or type of organization.

Wes Balakian is CEO of True Solutions, a Dallas-based global project management consulting and training organization; [email protected].

The Six Components of Project Management

• Analyze • Organize • Strategize • Measure • Develop • Execute

DIAGRAM: Project Management to the Rescue

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