"Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try to bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form. You’ve got to have mental models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models." -- Charlie Munger
"A System is any group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent parts that form a complex and unified whole that has a specific purpose."
Daniel Kim
Projects continue to fail because we insistently examine and identify root causes internal to projects, not external. We also continue to cling to thinking, organizations, behaviors, and actions that no longer work.
Capability teams represent a new organizational role that constantly monitors, filters, understands, and extracts meaningful System knowledge that increases the performance and value of project/business operation outcomes.
Understand and influence the Systems your project and capability are operating within to increase business performance and value.
How do you influence your System?
Engaged individuals and teams are more successful. It's been proven time and time again.
Relationships strengthen engagement.
If applied correctly, methods, certifications, technologies, and software all deliver positive capabilities. However, they don't matter if we can't work as a team, understand and respect each other, and cooperate to achieve compelling business outcomes.
Most business people understand why it's essential for them to engage early in a project's life cycle—during Decide, aka scoping.
Defining and approving business requirements can't be delegated to anyone other than your business teams.
However, many business people underestimate or don't fully appreciate the importance of engaging in all project processes, particularly during later project life cycle and post-implementation activities. These include Design, Develop, Deploy, and Operate.
Business teams must engage in:
Approvals include the following:
Business teams must engage in, influence, manage, and own solution requirements.
Every project will inevitably involve changes to or a new scope introduced for your consideration. As more detail is gathered during scoping, prior business assumptions may be negated, or business changes may occur due to acquisitions, new business strategies, etc.
Every project should define a plan for managing scope and outcomes. Manage these components using a formal project change request process. Why?
Inadequate scope and outcome management are among the top reasons many technology projects spin out of control. One small change may appear non-impactful. However, when there’s a series of small changes or a few significant changes, they will have a material and compounding impact on schedule, cost, and potentially quality.
Say no to non-vital requirements, at least for now. If a requirement is moderate in priority, interesting, or potentially relevant, defer it to a future release.
We must challenge, assess, and decide whether constituent needs are vital for the business case. When they aren't legitimate or essential, say "no!". Or, if they're relevant but not critical, defer to a subsequent release.
Your goal is to enable the business case with the minimum business requirements while managing scarce resources—people, time, CAPEX/OPEX—.
The best project managers know how to say "no!" with appropriate, supporting rationale. And they're not a bit shy about it either.
According to Gartner's research, effective IT–Business Engagement Can Increase IT Performance by 54 Percent.
If we view the System as rings of orbits, the nearest orbit is one that we can affect quickly. For most organizations, that orbit is the space between business and IT teams.
Unfortunately, that space is wrought with poor relationships and finger-pointing for many organizations, allowing scarce organization resources (people, time, CAPEX/OPEX) to leak endlessly.
An organization's priority is to strengthen its engagement between business and IT teams.
Business teams can improve their relationships with their IT counterparts by:
It takes two to tango.
Step back before you divorce your IT and understand why you're frustrated. Consider the following common challenges and barriers that can impair business and IT relationships:
Before you divorce your IT, consider reconciling. What can you do to improve the relationship?
Bridge relationship gaps by:
Nurture relationships continuously.
Set clear business expectations of IT and manage those continuously.
Encourage IT to learn about your business outside of project work.
A relationship is a two-way street. It requires commitment, patience, and understanding from each partner to succeed and be resilient over the long haul.
Nurture relationships, increase communication frequency and quality, and treat people how you want them to treat you.
Conduct Action Dialogues to incorporate System feedback into your TOBA -- thinking, organizing, behavior, and action.
Systems provide feedback.
Clear, candid, and concise dialogue is necessary for projects to deliver successful outcomes.
Commit to:
Action dialogues force us to take a timeout and understand a current issue or predicament and how we got there. In turn, we recycle this newfound learning into future actions to avoid making similar mistakes.
New project teams should conduct an action dialogue session at the start of each project.
After Action Dialogues (AAD) intend to capture a prior execution's essence to improve future performance.
Common lessons project teams learn repeatedly include:
Minimize transitions to the extent possible. They are invisible consumers of scarce organizational resources.
Plan, measure, and monitor knowledge transitions using the following framework:
Business requirements to design is a critical transition and probably the most treacherous.
That transition requires:
Application View
Why do you need to understand the “application view?”
Continue to think, analyze, and question using an input, process, and output framework.
The best-laid strategies and plans often stray off course.
Proper execution enables teams to adapt to newly surfaced and changing circumstances quickly.
Manage Risks, Issues, and Decisions (RID)
When planning your project, hope for the best and plan for the worst.
Clearly define how your project will manage risks, issues, and decisions. Weak or nonexistent RID processes will slowly kill your project over time.
Risks
Issues
Decisions
Management standards, processes, and reporting for your organization. It usually resides in a technology-related organization.
What are the responsibilities of a PMO?
The road to recovery for troubled projects includes four key actions:
Critical conversations include:
Project expectations are often flawed from the start.
Much of enabling project success comes down to effectively managing expectations with the team, sponsor(s), constituents, and senior leaders:
Business people are turned off by “geek” speak.
We've all done it, taking someone's word on something and getting burned.
Trust is a critical trait of high-performing teams. We should always have each other's backs. That includes verifying and validating others' representations, assertions, and recommendations.
Use Before and After Action Dialogues as techniques to verify and validate.
Verify and validate techniques relative to capabilities and projects include:
I shouldn't have to state the obvious, but I will.
Industry studies report that fixing an error during a late project cycle or activity or after a transition is up to 100 times more expensive than if the mistake had been discovered earlier, e.g., during the Decide cycle.
A culture of fear dooms many projects.
Many projects fail because team members are afraid to speak candidly and communicate bad news early.
Fear stifles communication and innovation. Managers who bark demands, intimidate, bully, threaten people with dismissal, etc., cultivate fear in the workplace. These managers use “mean-dog style” management to get their way. They have a loud, mean bark that creates fear and constrains any form of self-initiative, creativity, and open communication.
The concept of managing project health is similar to managing your individual health, such as:
Many teams do a poor job of managing and assessing project health.
Loss Aversion
Interestingly, there’s a concept called “loss aversion” (Kahneman and Tversky 1984).
Manage project health continuously.
Measuring project performance can be challenging. During status meetings and discussions with team members and constituents, you hear all the positive reports.
But how is your project really doing? Should you be feeling comfortable about its progress?
Typically, there are five approaches you can use to get your arms around actual performance:
Status reports align everyone with your project's progress, issues, and risks.
Status reports should:
Use the 80/20 principle when preparing and reviewing status reports.
Select a truly independent assessor and objective.
Many projects never have a truly independent and objective assessment.
Supporting business clients in achieving their goals is very important to consultants.
There are different types of assessments for various types of projects. All projects benefit from the second set of eyes regardless of size.
Consider project size and complexity when deciding on an assessment approach.
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