project management

Drive Maturity as a Change Management Program – you need to understand your workforce, the culture etc

Experienced Practitioners – SMEs don’t always make good PMs and a 5 day course won’t make them practitioners. Not only were our practitioners very experienced but what we have realised in hind sight is that they were extremely diverse – our Program Directors had backgrounds in technology Project management, in policy, we had a statistician, some come up through public service ranks, testers wanting a change, change managers whose soft skills were invaluable as a project manager. We had leaders who authentically supported the PMO, we had a PMO which provided robust assurance and reporting whilst also building capability. We had a Program and Project resourcing team who provided invaluable council in terms of have the right resource in the right place, we had a finance team who drove value and efficiencies while supporting strategic forward planning. We had amazing authentic leaders. There was a great level of respect, healthy debate, constructive conflict and a desire to support and share for the betterment of the portfolio not just the delivery of individual initiatives.

This I believe was the secret ingredient – the people, the culture. We had the perfect storm. We didn’t do this consciously- it was organic. How do you recreate this – all you can do is really be committed to cultivating such a culture. Build it from the ground up – as it is easier to grow it than to change a pre-existing one.

10, 20, 70 principle – Lombardo and Eichinger described this as we learnt (for example project management)

10% from formal learning - courses and reading (so the course and text isn’t going to cut it)

20% from social learning - people (usually the boss or a mentor) (having the education and a great mentor – still not enough)

70% from experiential learning - on the job experience (you have to cut your teeth on a project)

So 10% education, 20% Exposure and 70% Experience is another way to think of it.

What we did was provide experiential development opportunities for those who either were keen to try their hand at project management or those who we had recognised had potential by providing them with training, providing them an experienced practitioner as a supervisor/mentor – and we then gave them a minor work to cut their teeth on ($100k or less).

Resource Constraints–I have asked the question of many of my colleagues whether they thought an organisation could achieve a high level of maturity in a resource constrained environment. At the time we were not resource constrained, we probably thought we were but in hind sight we weren’t. We had the right resources, the right people in the right roles, the time to upskill and mentor less experienced staff etc. Some responses I got to this to this question were ‘No’ ‘No, although I think it would be easier to get a 5 than a 4 (idea of fully optimised/tailored etc)’ ‘I would hope so’ ‘We can strive for it’ ‘Yes of course but it depends on your timeframes.’ ‘Yes absolutely – its scalable – less resources, less money less risk.’

The best response came from the current CIO Darrin Bond, he said ‘Don’t blame a lack of resources on not getting to a reasonable level of maturity. [it may be] more difficult, [it] is achievable and sometimes that can be better.’

And there are startups that have successfully implemented great projects in a resource constrained environments however it would be interesting if audited whether they could meet all the requirements. This again goes to what it is you are trying to achieve, focus on maturity not the ranking.

If you are resource constrained you need to be realistic. But you also have to be innovative – we went from a PMO consisting of 9 people to 2. Rather than the known process of PMO performing health checks, we started peer-reviewed health checks. The unexpected benefit was building capability in less mature PMs, and increased shared learnings. This is something I would keep even if resources increased.

Also the organisation needs to consider the cost benefit balance when investing in P3 maturity. The cost in striving for a level 5 may not be returned as value on the bottom line.

Right mix of ‘project by numbers’ and practice flexibility

In most organisations they want a level of documentation for a number of reasons – audit trails, knowledge management etc. And that isn’t accounting for upskilling inexperienced PMs. There needs to be a balance–there needs to be flexibility – the purpose in project management is to deliver something that will realise a benefit. The tools and processes are to support delivery and provide confidence to the investors or the business that they will get what they have asked for.

Audit Preparation

For those organisations who want an independent assessment of their maturity levels it is important that you understand the audit process and allow significant time to prepare for it.

Participants need comprehensive understanding of full process – use the audit information as a check sheet to gather examples of best practice.

Normally in a mature environment certain people won’t have a full understanding of the end to end process – If there is trust with the control processes the board may not know the specifics or the P3 language of the process especially SMEs, however if they are being interviewed it is likely that they will be questioned on it. So if independent assessment is important making sure that those being interviewed are made aware of not only what the end to end processes are but how they relate to the different levels.

Do you remember walking out of a job interview and thinking – I can’t believe I didn’t say that, I should have given them that example, that would have been perfect. Manage this – prepare your people. It is about ensuring the auditors have the full picture.

Use it as an awareness campaign - What is great about this is that it exposes the great work that is actually getting done and provides stakeholders with a good appreciation of effort and value add of Portfolio, Program and Project Management.

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Key Points (DoC)

Understand what you want to achieve, why you want to achieve it, & if you have an authentic sponsor.

Develop a practical and pragmatic implementation plan. Know what is realistic with the resources and timeframes you have.

Your people are your greatest asset. Implement as a change management initiative. Use them to co-design the journey and co-maintain the maturity.