While in the process of finishing up a note about ensuring organizations have competent project managers, I ran across an article that contended that project managers were so focused on the metrics of “on-time and on-budget” that they had become incapable of actually remembering that the goal of their project was to deliver strategic business value. What was interesting about the article was that it wasn’t a rant against project management — it was a proposition for “strategic architecture” which to the author was the role of the person chartered with ensuring the project actual solved the problem/delivered the value it was supposed to when it was chartered.
I found this disturbing on so many levels I barely know where to start. Mostly I guess I just find it terribly sad. I believe in projects as a way to deliver strategic results. I also believed (when I was actually managing projects myself) that at least 50% of my job as a project manager was helping the team make the decisions that needed to be made to ensure that we did deliver the results. That meant a continuous process of keeping the big picture view of where we were going so we could nip here, tuck there, and add something somewhere else. The purpose of the schedule and budget was to make sure we stayed in the parameters of the value proposition. It was the fine art of making sure that all the pieces not only fit together intellectually but that they came together in reality that always intrigued me. The thought that people are now contending that PMs are simply incapable of doing the integration and value assurance piece of the project leaves me disheartened.
Of course maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. If I were starting my career all over again maybe I’d be a strategic architect and I’d be writing about the importance of having someone on the project that can do the value assurance work. I’m not sure I’m willing to admit defeat on the project front yet, but since I’m a big advocate of always being willing to entertain the notion that reality is changing before my very eyes, I’ll just add this to my list of things to keep watching, just like any other risk symptom
7 responses so far ↓
1 Glen B. Alleman // Nov 9, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Donna,
Does this organization actually say “the project can be over budget and behind schedule, and oh yea it doesn’t really have to work, when it shows up late.”
Are they out of their every loving minds?
Ok, the business problem has to be solved, but a solved business problem that is late and over budget doesn’t seem as interesting to the business as one that solves the problem, shows up on time, and within or near the last budget estimate.
Glen B. Alleman
VP, Program Planning and Controls
2 Donna Fitzgerald // Nov 10, 2009 at 9:32 am
No actually what they say is that without a strategic architect; the project will show up on-time and on-budget but it won’t be either useful or useable because the project manager is only capable of functioning as a “task droid” (my word not theirs).
Bottom line is that a vast majority of people are both literal and unfortunately lazy. Sometimes the laziness is a source of brilliance (”Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things” RH) but sometimes it’s just assembly line thinking.
Effectively the article was building a case for an emerging activity called “strategic architecture” built on the bones of the project management whale.
3 Samad Aidane // Nov 10, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Donna,
This sounds interesting. I would love to read this article. Can you let me know the link?
4 Bill Duncan // Nov 16, 2009 at 5:51 pm
If you’re reading about an IT organization, I’m really not surprised. Most of the IT organizations I deal with (not all, but most) still haven’t figured out the difference between software development and project management much less the difference between project management and project controls.
So your “task droids” are most likely project controls clerks with the title of project manager but not the skills or the responsibilities. Maybe if you encourage the development of the strategic architecture role you’ll find some organizations will real PMs operating in that role?
Nah, won’t happen.
5 Reflections on PM Reading Lists // Nov 27, 2009 at 1:33 pm
[...] around me then I wasn’t offer my one UNIGUE contribution to the project. In my post The Decreasing Value Case for Project Management I discussed the fact that many enterprise architects are now saying that this is their job on a [...]
6 Harvey A. Levine // Dec 9, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Hi Donna. I just discovered your delightful blog.
Your story, in The Decreasing Value Case for Project Management, hit on a very important aspect of PPM. Of course, it is essential that projects be managed to achieve a set of strategic and business objectives that were proposed in the business case (and became the rationale for authorizing the project in the first place). Yet, we have trained our project managers (and project control specialists) to monitor the metrics associated with the traditional project triple constraint (cost, schedule, scope). This is in their job description and this is what we equip them to do and upon which we base their performance rewards.
Yet, in a successful PPM environment, project selection and project success requires a different triple constraint. I define this as (1) strategic alignment, (2) benefits & value, and (3) effective utilization of critical resources. To assure that project performance is evaluated against objectives in these three areas we need to explore changes in the traditional project governance. My model for this calls for a position of Portfolio Administrative Specialist, placed within the PMO, with a strong connection to the Governance Board. The PAS would look at performance parameters beyond cost, schedule and scope and evaluate the likelihood of the project delivering the promosed benefits and supporting other defined objectives.
Within this modified management structure, we must also modify the project culture. It is okay to terminate (or delay) an active project. Also, we must ignore sunk costs in such evaluations. Sunk costs don’t matter. What matters is what we gain from investments going forward.
I’m not surprised that our traditional project management community doesn’t get this, and that such changes are either resisted or nor understood.
Harvey A. Levine
7 Proworkflow // Jan 1, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Basecamp does not compare with MS Project. It’s absolutely different from it. In fact this is what people love about it. Basecamp was the first web-based project management software that I’ve tried. I fell in love with it at first, but then I found many drawbacks. Some of them, such as lack of Gantt charts or innability to move people and data made me look for something else. I’ve tried Central Desktop and ActiveCollab, and a couple of other tools. I chose Wrike after all. It suits my project needs better.
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