I just finished my first reading of a great study titled: The Multi-Project PMO: A Global Analysis of the Current State of Practice. I recommend that you take the time to look this over. There are a lot of interesting findings. It will take a while to fully understand them all (at least for me). However, I did see two points that I think are vital. I am glad to see a study that reinforces them to some extent.
It’s about people. I know I harp on this – I think it is vital to a PMO. The study talks about 50% of PMOs being “questioned.” One key finding relates to the performance of a PMO and the expertise of the PMO staff (practitioners) – not the project managers, the PMO people. While not exactly an epiphany, the finding is “Expertise is critical to PMO performance.” If performance is being questioned, it follows that the greater the expertise – the greater the performance and then the less questioning.
It is about YOUR PMO. One thing that the study repeats throughout is the variability of the findings. There is not a lot of correlation between the variables (company size, number of projects, PMO organization…). There is some, and that’s important to look at. The lack of correlation tells us that what you do with your PMO in your company is really what matters the most. Don’t try to implement a cookie cutter PMO. Know your stakeholders – all of them. Understand what their pain points are. Know where they need help and attack that. If you fully customize your solution you can succeed.
Maybe we will get to the point where PMOs are implemented by the book. Where there is a checklist that everyone fills out and that determines how a PMO is built and run. I guess it is our job to move us there. (Personally, when we get there, I’ll be somewhere else.) Until that time, we can think of ourselves as craftsmen (craftspersons). We have tools and materials, but the work that we do for this one PMO, this one time, is what matters.
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
Week 27 - Change
This week I inherited the responsibility of rolling up all of the IT status reports into IT release level reports – which then in turn go into the Program level report (along with the Business status). Now, I have been doing the program level reports, and not sure how I got the IT ones – probably no one else wanted these – I think that I got them because (as any consultant will know) consultants are the “catch all” when a real employee doesn’t want to do something.
Anyway, the reports were a mess. I am getting 23 separate weekly reports in about 10 different formats. Some in word, some in excel. My job then is to cut and paste these babies into 4 different release level reports. Sound like fun???
Being the lazy, avoid-work-at-all-costs type of person that I am, I tried to find a better/easier way (after shamelessly trying to beg out). Well obviously, this would be a lot easier if everyone used the same format right? Well, why weren’t we doing that in the first place? Here is where it gets interesting – the answer I got when I posed that question to my predecessor was that they had tried to get everyone to use the same format, but they wouldn’t. AH HA – change resistance.
I have to admit a bit of disappointment that the only method attempted was to give the team leaders a template and ask them to use it. The follow up was to ask them several more times. When I asked what else, I was told that my predecessor did not have the authority to get them to change. Hence nothing was done. Another AH HA – responsibility without authority !
Given that I was in the same boat, needing people to change, but not having any authority to change them I had an idea. What was it that people didn’t want to change? Not the process, they were handing in weekly reports on schedule. So it was actually the format of the report – that seems like a small item, so why resist. Then it hit me – because it meant a good bit of upfront work, and these guys have “better things to do.”
So these busy people did not want to change because they were busy, and frankly the format of a report is not that big a deal – unless you are dealing with 23 of them a week. So – in essence, the problem and pain was mine, not theirs. Since I could not force them to make the change, I took a different route. I eliminated the work.
I simply took each of the 23 status reports and copied all the information into 23 new status reports under the new and consistent format. I then mailed these out asking that they start with these as the base. So far, everyone has been either accepting or thankful. I’ve gotten no resistance or complaints.
My lesson learned here is that by doing the initial change and creating a situation that is no more difficult for the person, we can speed change. Most of the time the hard part of changing is just that the change itself, after that we develop new routines that are usually less work than the original ones – that’s one reason for change – less work.
I learned a long time ago (the hard way) that there is only one thing any of us has the power to change – ourselves. By reframing my view (changing from the view of my predecessor) I changed and made it easier for others to do so. I think that whenever we find ourselves involved in helping someone else change, the first question should be “what can I do differently to make it easier for them to change?”
Often the answer will be that we have to do a little work that “is not our job” or falls outside of the box, but if PMOs are to be centers of change, shouldn’t we lead the way by changing ourselves rather than expecting it of others?
Anyway, the reports were a mess. I am getting 23 separate weekly reports in about 10 different formats. Some in word, some in excel. My job then is to cut and paste these babies into 4 different release level reports. Sound like fun???
Being the lazy, avoid-work-at-all-costs type of person that I am, I tried to find a better/easier way (after shamelessly trying to beg out). Well obviously, this would be a lot easier if everyone used the same format right? Well, why weren’t we doing that in the first place? Here is where it gets interesting – the answer I got when I posed that question to my predecessor was that they had tried to get everyone to use the same format, but they wouldn’t. AH HA – change resistance.
I have to admit a bit of disappointment that the only method attempted was to give the team leaders a template and ask them to use it. The follow up was to ask them several more times. When I asked what else, I was told that my predecessor did not have the authority to get them to change. Hence nothing was done. Another AH HA – responsibility without authority !
Given that I was in the same boat, needing people to change, but not having any authority to change them I had an idea. What was it that people didn’t want to change? Not the process, they were handing in weekly reports on schedule. So it was actually the format of the report – that seems like a small item, so why resist. Then it hit me – because it meant a good bit of upfront work, and these guys have “better things to do.”
So these busy people did not want to change because they were busy, and frankly the format of a report is not that big a deal – unless you are dealing with 23 of them a week. So – in essence, the problem and pain was mine, not theirs. Since I could not force them to make the change, I took a different route. I eliminated the work.
I simply took each of the 23 status reports and copied all the information into 23 new status reports under the new and consistent format. I then mailed these out asking that they start with these as the base. So far, everyone has been either accepting or thankful. I’ve gotten no resistance or complaints.
My lesson learned here is that by doing the initial change and creating a situation that is no more difficult for the person, we can speed change. Most of the time the hard part of changing is just that the change itself, after that we develop new routines that are usually less work than the original ones – that’s one reason for change – less work.
I learned a long time ago (the hard way) that there is only one thing any of us has the power to change – ourselves. By reframing my view (changing from the view of my predecessor) I changed and made it easier for others to do so. I think that whenever we find ourselves involved in helping someone else change, the first question should be “what can I do differently to make it easier for them to change?”
Often the answer will be that we have to do a little work that “is not our job” or falls outside of the box, but if PMOs are to be centers of change, shouldn’t we lead the way by changing ourselves rather than expecting it of others?
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Week 24 (Building a PMO) - Lessons Learned?
If I take the lessons learned from last week and look at them, I think we can logically divide them into 3 categories – People, Processes, and Tools. These are the building blocks of every organization or project. There is a lot of overlap in these lessons and some fall into all three categories, but the division works for my purposes here.
People: The people lessons were:
- The people we had were great; there just weren’t enough of them.
- Unclear roles and responsibilities led to confusion and loss of precious time.
- We were slowed by constant competition for resources.
- We did not have a clear understanding of the work when we estimated.
These issues paint a clear picture of our project and our main people-related challenges. We were consistently understaffed, competing for resources and often confused about who should do what. What is not mentioned here is that there were effectively 4 project managers for this one project and no one had full authority – so there’s the answer to the confusion problems.
As I look back, it is possible we did not get the people we needed due to political skill, combined with the lack of a single project manager. Let’s face it, obtaining needed resources within most organizations today has more to do with how good you are at asking than how much you need them. In our case, I think we might have allowed ourselves to be victims. When we did not have what we needed, we often rolled up our sleeves and gave it our best shot while half-heartedly asking for help. This tendency towards action meant that we tried first and then ended up pleading for people only after we had gone down the wrong road. Better to get the right people in the first place, or manage this as a risk with contingency and mitigation plans (longer timeframes, training classes).
The roles and responsibilities problems started from the beginning. The project initiated as if it was a typical, small installation project. These projects generally take 16 weeks; ours ended up at 17 months. This miss-categorization set unreasonable expectations and incorrect staffing. The roles assigned “project manager”, or “business analyst” have a completely different meaning for a 16 week boiler plate project than they do for a 17 month implementation. It took us a while to discover this, understand and adapt. Even as we end this, no one person speaks for the project, fortunately we all speak with one voice – more or less.
Lastly, competition for resources was a constant problem. Only one person was full time on the project up until about 3 months ago when the full-time staff doubled to two people! This excludes IT development staff who were often full time for short periods according to the development schedule. In most cases, we would get a statement of general support without specific date and effort commitments. Then, when needed the people were able to only dedicate a portion of their time, extending the deliverables. Fact is we did not account for that. Maybe that is more the problem than the unavailability. Seems we did not learn from this and plan accordingly. We didn’t do that. We didn’t because it was too hard to get everyone together and we were too busy “doing” the work to take time to plan it. OK – we knew that was wrong, but we accepted it as better than nothing. The error was that we did not add this as a risk and raise awareness to the “powers that be.” I’m starting to feel pretty stupid; I seem to have mistaken some progress for good progress. Isn’t any progress good? Isn’t there a quote that says something like: good is the enemy of great? I’m not feeling so great right now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
