Who Manages Benefits?

I attended the Benefits Realisation Summit in Sydney earlier this week which was focused on two significant ‘launches’ – the Australian launch of Managing Benefits, the official reference guide for the APMG qualification of the same name and the launch of the Maximiser benefits management software:
- See more on Managing Benefits
- See more on Maximiser

Managing Benefits will require a couple of posts over the next couple of months to cover the depth of information available to organisations to achieve the best return on their investments in projects and programs, and my contribution to the Benefits Realisation Summit was focused on understanding the links between stakeholders, the overall value chain, and the organisation’s project delivery capability (download the presentation).

The area of discussion I found most interesting at the summit was around the roles and responsibilities of the different managers involved in realising benefits and creating value. As a starting point there was a very good definition of the stages involved in creating value, based on the concept of developing a new retail shop:

• The output from the project to build the shop is a fitted out facility.
• The outcome from the staffing and stocking of the shop is a shop selling goods to customers.
• The benefit realised from the shop is the monthly profits from sales.
• The value created by the new business is its potential ‘sale price’ which is usually calculated as a multiple of the annual earnings (typically somewhere between 5 and 12 times the annual profit).

The realisation of the value outlined above requires a ‘chain’ of decisions and management actions:

• The chain starts with decisions around the type of shop, its location, size, etc. The overall value chain is discussed in The failure of strategic planning and the front end processes in Linking Innovation to Value.
• Once the optimum project has been selected, the organisation then needs to be capable of efficiently delivering the project and creating the required output. Project Delivery Capability (PDC) is discussed in White Paper WP1079.
• Once the project’s outputs are created, the requirement to make efficient use of them within the organisation requires effective organisational change management; this facet of the value chain is discussed in WP1078.
• Then, assuming the original concepts used in the business case were accurate, the intended benefits are realised and value is created.

Within all of these stages, the key to creating the intended value is effective benefits management; this is the focus of the Managing Benefits book and the objective of the Benefits Realisation Summit.

Maximising the benefits realised from a project or program is not a solo effort, it requires the effective cooperation of a number of managers with defined roles and responsibilities operating effectively as a team:

Each of the managers above has a distinct role to play:

• The Senior Management Grouphave ultimate responsibility for generating value from the organisation’s investment in a project:
  • The role of senior management and portfolio management in the pre-project phase is ensuring the right projects are selected for the right strategic reasons
  • Once the project has transitioned its output into operations, the senior management group responsible for the operation of the organisation’s business-as-usual processes need to make effective use of the deliverable to realise benefits and as a consequence, generate the intended value.
• The Sponsor is the senior manager responsible for taking ownership of the business case, approving the Project Charter once the organisation has agreed to fund and resource the project and ensuring the project’s outputs are effectively transitioned into operations and used effectively. The role of the sponsor is discussed in WP1031. From a benefits realisation perspective, the Sponsor (or Senior Responsible Owner – SRO) is the manager with primary responsibility for ensuring the intended benefits are realised. The sponsor may fulfil the role of benefits owner personally, or liaise with the designated benefits owners to ensure the benefits are realised (the benefits owner is the person responsible for the realisation of a specific benefit).
• The Sponsor is supported by two specialist managers:
  • The Project Manager responsible for the efficient delivery of the project and
  • The Change Manager responsible for managing the organisational change needed to make use of the new product, process or service.
• The role of the Benefits Manager is partially advisory, and partly an assurance role. The Benefits Manager should be responsible for developing an effective set of metrics supported by a system for identifying and measuring benefits (planned and realised) and should also be responsible for validating the realised benefits (see more below).

The relationship between the project and change managers
Change management and project management are different skills requiring different training and different personality types. Both roles are critical and should support the sponsor in achieving the best possible transition of the project’s outputs into operations.

During the life of the project the project manager is assisted by the change manger to ensure the project delivers the most useful output, the change manger also works on preparing the organisation for the change. The focus is creating the ‘right’ outputs as efficiently as possible and this is primarily a project management function.

During the critical transition phase the focus changes, the project manager’s role should shift to focus on helping the change manger to ensure the projects deliverables ‘work’ in the organisational setting. The project manager will also be working on project closure during this period but this should be secondary to ensuring the planned benefits are capable of being realised.

Throughout the whole process, the change manger is primarily responsible for facilitating the organisational change aspects of the initiative including of all of the processes involved in embedding the new product, process or service within the organisation and supporting its adoption through to the point where it is functioning as a normal part of the organisation’s ‘business-as-usual’ capabilities. This may require some level of support for two or three years after the project has finished.

The effect of programs and program management
Programs are created to manage the work of several projects in a coordinated way, may include some operational work for a period and many are set up specifically created as organisational change agents. The different types of program are outlined in WP1022.

If a project is a component of a program, the program manager is responsible for creating the project and is usually acts as the project’s sponsor. The program is responsible for the change management processes as part of its core integration and coordination functions and the program sponsor has overall responsibility for the return on investment in the program.

The roles and responsibilities of the Benefits Manager
The concept of a Benefits Manager is relatively new. The Benefits Manager provides a benefits realisation support service to sponsors, program managers, change managers and benefits owners. Some of the functions include:

• Develop, maintain and progressively enhance the benefits measurement system used by the organisation.
• Provide scrutiny of each business case to assure the organisation the benefits claimed are realistic and achievable within the proposed timeframes.
• Lead the benefits identification and mapping processes for project and programs.
• Assisting with the development of the benefits realisation strategy and plans for projects and programs.
• Help with the identification and optimisation of additional benefits, dis-benefits and assess the impact of changes from the benefits realisation perspective.
• Tracking and reporting on the actual realisation of benefits by the organisation.

This is an important role both from the facilitation perspective and the assurance perspective. People with a vested interest in the value of benefits proposed or realised should not be the people measuring their value; this is an untenable conflict of interest. The Benefits Manager provides independent assurance that the benefits proposed in the benefits realisation plan have been achieved to the extent defined in the plan, at the time defined in the plan and any variances are identified and explained or understood. For more on assurance see WP1080.

Conclusion
Benefits cannot be managed directly; they are a consequence of other management actions and decisions. An organisation will maximise the benefits actually realised by maintaining a focus on benefits from the early stages of project initiation right through to the point where they are fully realised by the operations of the changed organisation.

Linking Innovation to Value

In a recent post looking at the The failure of strategic planning  and the overall value delivery chain centred on projects and programs, the link between innovation and the strategic plan was raised briefly. The purpose of this post it to take a closer look at this critical ‘front end’ of the value chain because it does not matter how well you do the wrong projects! The ability to generate sustainable value for an organisation’s stakeholders requires the right projects to be done for the right reasons; and yes, they also need to be done right!

The section of the ‘value chain’ leading into a portfolio management decision to select a project or program as a viable investment is far more complex than the section after. Once a project or program has been selected, it needs to be accomplished efficiently, the outputs transferred to the organisation and the organisation adapt to make efficient use of the ‘deliverables’ to realise the intended benefits and generate value. This flow of work is primarily the responsibility of the project/program sponsor initially supported by project and program management, and then by organisational ‘line management’ until the final transition to ‘business as usual’ operations.

Developing a business case to the point where it can be accepted for investment is more complex, involves a wide spectrum of managers and potentially involves a number loops.

The three elements in this section of the overall ‘value chain’ are a viable strategic plan, a realistic business case that supports an element of the strategy and an effective portfolio management system to optimise the overall portfolio of projects and programs the organisation is capable of investing in.

The key is an effective and viable strategic planning process that is capable of developing a realistic strategy that encompasses both support and enhancements for business as usual, and innovation. Strategic planning is a complex and skilled process outside of the scope of this post – for now we will assume the organisation is capable of effective strategic planning.

The sign of an ineffective, unresponsive strategic planning process is seeing business cases fired off by business units without any reference to the strategic plan or worse projects being started without strategic alignment. The option to bypass the strategic planning may be valid in an emergency but not as a routine option. In a well disciplined value creation process, the portfolio management team simply reject business cases that cannot demonstrate alignment with the organisations strategic intentions. The red arrow in the diagram above simply should not be allowed to occur in anything other then an emergency situation.

The Portfolio/Strategic link (blue arrow)
There is a close link between the portfolio management processes  and strategic planning – what’s actually happening in the organisation’s existing projects and programs is one of the baselines needed to maintain an effective strategic plan (others include the current operational baseline and changes in the external environment). In the other direction, the current/updated strategy informs the portfolio decision making processes. The strategic plan is the embodiment of the organisation’s intentions for the future and the role of portfolio management is to achieve the most valuable return against this plan within the organisation’s capacity and capability constraints.

Routine inputs to the Strategic Plan (light green arrows)
The routine inputs to the strategic planning process come from the ‘organisation’ and include requirements, opportunities, enhancements and process innovations (eg, new software releases). These basic inputs are the core information required for strategic planning and form the majority of the new information in each update of the strategy.

The Innovation / Strategic Plan loop (light blue arrows)
This is the first of the more complex spaces – innovative ideas can come from anywhere in the business and are actively encouraged by leading organisations such as Google and 3M. Conversely, an organisational objective may require innovation to allow it to come to fruition. One of the most challenging objectives in recent times was Kennedy’s commitment to “before this decade is out, [land] a man on the moon and return him safely to earth.” The amount of scientific innovation required to achieve this objective was incredible.

The organisation’s governance processes and strategic development processes need to both encourage innovation whilst recognising that not every innovative idea will be appropriate for the overall development of the organisation. This requires the implementation of systems to encourage innovation, collect and sort innovative ideas and move the ‘right’ ideas into the strategic plan, where necessary revising and changing the plan to grab the innovative advantage.

The Feasibility loop (orange and yellow arrows)
Having innovative ideas and creative business cases is one thing, validating the feasibility of an idea is altogether different! The ability to test, validate and work-up innovative ideas into practical project specifications is a critical organisational capability. On mega projects the pre-feasibility and feasibility studies may in fact be significant projects in their own right involving considerable expenditure, feeding back to a gateway or portfolio management process to allow the next stage of the project to commence.

Several of the ‘gateways’ defined in most standard ‘gateway processes’ precede the commissioning of the main project and the organisation needs the capability to make informed decisions based on good quality information. This aspect of the value creation chain is industry specific and may be a central function or distributed across different business centres. What matters is the capability exists with the necessary skills to validate ideas and design projects ready for the more traditional project management processes to take over once the project is formally authorised.

Conclusion
The long term viability of any organisation depends on its ability to innovate. Traditional project and program management focus on doing the selected projects/programs ‘right’. But it is the ‘front end’ processes discussed in this post leading up to the investment decision that determine if the ‘right’ project is being selected for the ‘right’ reasons!

The effective governance of an organisation should require its management to invest sufficient skills and resources in these ‘front end’ processes to ensure a steady flow of innovative ideas, feeding into an effective and flexible strategic planning system, linked to a disciplined portfolio management process; to ensure the optimum mix of ‘right’ projects and programs are commissioned and supported.

Advising Upwards for Effect

The only purpose of undertaking a project or program is to have the deliverables it creates used by the organisation (or customer) to create value! Certainly value can be measured in many different ways, improved quality or safety, reduced effort or errors, increased profits or achieving regulatory compliance; the measure is not important, what matters is the work of the project is intended to create value. But this value will only be realised if the new process or artefact ‘delivered’ by the project is actually used by the organisation to achieve the intended improvements.

The organisation’s executive has a central role in this process. There is a direct link between the organisation’s decision to make an investment in a selected project and the need for the organisation to change so it can make effective use of the deliverables to generate the intended benefits and create a valuable return on its investment. The work of the project is a key link in the middle of this value creation chain, but the strength of the whole chain is measured by its weakest link – a failure at any stage will result in lost value.

In a perfect world, the degree of understanding, knowledge and commitment to the change would increase the higher up the organisational ladder you go. In reality, much of the in-depth knowledge and commitment is embedded in the project team; and the challenge is moving this knowledge out into the other areas of the business so that the whole ‘value chain’ can work effectively (see more on linking innovation to value).

To achieve this, the project team need to be able to effectively ‘advise upwards’ so their executive managers understand the potential value that can be generated from the initiative and work to ensure the organisation makes effective use of the project’s deliverables. The art of advising upwards effectively is the focus of my book ‘Advising Upwards’.

An effective Sponsor is a major asset in achieving these objectives, providing a direct link between the executive and the project or program. Working from the top down, an effective sponsor can ensure the project team fully understand the business objectives their project has been created to help achieve and will work with the team to ensure the project fulfils its Charter to maximise the opportunity for the organisation to create value.

Working from the bottom up, new insights, learning and experience from the ‘coal face’ need to be communicated back to the executive so that the overall organisational objectives can be managed based on the actual situation encountered within the work of the project.

The critical importance of the role of the sponsor has been reinforced by numerous studies, including the PMI 2012 Pulse of the Profession report. According to this report, 75% of high performance organizations have active sponsors on 80% of more of their projects (for more on the value of sponsorship see: Project Sponsorship).

If you project has an effective sponsor, make full use of the support. The challenge facing the rest of us is persuading less effective sponsors to improve their level of support; you cannot fire your manager! The solution is to work with other project managers and teams within your organisation to create a conversation about value. This is a very different proposition to being simply ‘on-time, on-scope and on-budget’; it’s about the ultimate value to the organisation created by using the outputs from its projects and programs. The key phrase is “How we can help make our organisation better!”

To influence executives within this conversation, the right sort of evidence is important; benchmarking your organisation against its competitors is a good start, as is understanding what ‘high performance’ organisations do. PMI’s ‘Pulse of the Profession’ is freely available and a great start as an authoritative reference.

The other key aspect of advising upwards is linking the information you bring into the conversation with the needs of the organisation and showing your organisation’s executive how this can provide direct benefits to them as well as the organisation.

In this respect the current tight economic conditions in most of the world are an advantage, organisations need to do more with less to stay competitive (or effective in the public service). Developing the skills of project sponsors so that they actively assist their projects to be more successful is one proven way to achieve a significant improvement with minimal cost – in fact, if projects are supported more effectively there may well be cost savings and increased value at the same time! And what’s in it for us as project managers? The answer is we have a much improved working environment – everyone wins!!

Averaging the Power of Portfolios

The interaction between dependent or connected risk and independent risk is interesting and will significantly change the overall probability of success or failure of an endeavour or organisation.

As discussed in my last post on ‘The Flaw of Averages’  using a single average value for an uncertainty is a recipe for disaster. But there is a difference between averaging, connecting and combining uncertainties (or risk).

Adding risk

Where risk events are connected, the ability to model and appreciate the effect of the risk events interacting with each other is difficult. In ‘The Flaw of Averages’ Sam Shaw uses the simile of wobbling a step ladder to determine the uncertainty of how safe the ladder is to climb. You can test the stability of one ladder by giving it a good ‘wobble’. However, if you are trying to determine the stability of a plank between two stepladders doubling the information from wobbling just one is not a lot of help. Far more sophisticated modelling is needed and even then you cannot be certain the full set of potential interactions is correctly combined in the model. The more complex the interactions between uncertainties, the less accurate the predictive model.

However, when the risks or uncertainties are independent, combining the risks through the creation of a portfolio of uncertainties reduces the overall uncertainty quite dramatically.

The effect of portfolios

Consider a totally unbiased dice, any one throw can end up anywhere and every value between 1 & 6 has an equal probability of being achieved. The more throws, the more even the results for each possibility and consequently there is no possibility of determining the outcome!

The distribution after 10, 100 and 1000 throws.

As the number of throws increase, the early distortions apparent after 10 throws smooth out and after 1000 throws the probabilities are almost equal.

However, combine two dice and total the score results in a very different outcome. Whilst it is possible to throw any value between 2 & 12, the probability of achieving a number nearer the middle of the range is much higher than the probability of achieving a 2 or a 12. The potential range of outcomes starts to approximate a ‘normal distribution curve’ (or a bell curve). The reason for this is there is only one combination of numbers that will produce a 2 or a 12; there are significantly more combinations that can make 7.

The more dice you add to the ‘throw’, the closer the curve becomes to a ‘normal distribution’ (or bell curve), which is normally what you expect/get, which is the origin of the name!

The consequence of this phenomenon is to demonstrate that the creation of a portfolio of projects will have the effect of generating a normal distribution curve for the outcome of the overall portfolio, which makes the process of portfolio management a more certain undertaking than the management of the individual projects within the portfolio. The overall uncertainty is less than the individual uncertainties……

Each project carries its level of uncertainty and has a probability of succeeding off-set by a probability of failing (see Stakeholder Risk Tolerance) but as more projects are added the probability of the overall portfolio performing more or less as expected increases, provided each of the uncertainties are independent! This effect is known as the Central Limit Theorem.

One important effect of the Central Limit Theorem is the size if the contingency needed to achieve a desired level of safety for a portfolio of projects is much smaller than the sum of the contingencies needed to achieve the same level of ‘safety’ in each of the individual projects. Risk management is a project centric process; contingency management is better managed at the portfolio level. Not only is the overall uncertainty reduced, but the portfolio manager can offset losses in one project against gains in another.

Whist this theorem is statistically valuable, the nature of most organisations constrains the potential benefit. From a statistical perspective diversity is the key; this is why most conservative investment portfolios are diversified. However, project portfolios tend to be concentrated in the area of expertise of the organisation which removes some of the randomness needed for the Central Limit Theorem to have its full effect.

It is also important to remember that whilst creating a portfolio will reduce uncertainty, no portfolio can remove all uncertainty.

In addition to the residual risk of failure inherent in every project, there is always the possibility of a ‘black swan’ lurking in the future. Originally conceptualized by philosopher Karl Popper and refined by N. N. Taleb, a ‘black swan’ is a risk event that has never occurred before, if it did occur would have and extreme impact and is easy to explain after the event, but is culturally impossible to predict in advance (ie, the event could be foreseen if someone is asked to think about it but it is nearly impossible to think the thought for a compelling reason). For more on black swans see our blog post  and White Paper.

The Law of Averages

The Central Limit Theorem is closely aligned to The Law of Averages. The Law of Averages states that if you repeatedly take the average of the same type of uncertain number the average of the samples will converge to a single result, the true average of the uncertain number. However, as the ‘flaw of averages’ has demonstrated, this does not mean you can replace every uncertainty with an average value and some uncertain numbers never converge.

Summary

Both the Law of Averages and Central Limit Theorem are useful concepts; they are the statistical equivalent of the adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. When you create a portfolio of projects, the average probability of any one project succeeding or failing remains the same as if the project was excluded from the portfolio, but the risk of portfolio suffering an overall failure becomes less as the number of projects included in the portfolio increases.

However, unlike physical laws such as gravity, these laws are not immutable – drop an apple within the earths gravitational pull and it will fall; create a portfolio and there is always a low probability that the results will not conform to normal expectations!

Certainly the probability of a portfolio of projects ‘failing’ is lower then the average probability of each project failing but a reduced level of risk still leaves a residual level of risk.

The Capital Crime

A recently published, free e-book, ‘The Capital Crime’ focuses on the massive loss and waste of capital being perpetrated on an ongoing basis in most organizations across the world, through their executive management, failing to effectively ‘manage the management’ of projects and programs.

Cobb described his Paradox more than 15 years ago , but organisations still deliberately set up projects so they are almost guaranteed to fail and waste vast amounts of capital as a result. However, fixing Cobb’s Paradox and doing projects ‘right’ is only part of the answer, a wider capability is needed focused on using capital effectively in support the organisations strategy to generate real value for the organisation’s stakeholders!

We refer to this as ‘Project Delivery Capability’ or PDC; the e-book’s authors use a wider definition, ‘Value Delivery Capability’. Regardless of the name, we agree with Jed Simms, the only piece of the value delivery chain that is understood is the piece in the middle called ‘project management’. The surrounding envelope of organisational abilities to only start the ‘right projects’, set the selected projects up for success and then make effective use of the project deliverables to create value is poorly understood – the strength of a chain is defined by its weakest link, not its strongest!

The consequence of this lack of understanding of the ‘value chain’, at the very top of the organisation, is organisations setting their project up to fail, failing to support projects during their execution, and failing to make use of the project deliverables to generate value. The failure of any of these ‘weak links’ reduces the organisations ability to achieve its strategy and a return on investment. The associated waste of capital caused by sub-optimal project outcomes is the core of the ‘capital crime’ discussed in an easy to read ‘story’ format in the free e-book, ‘The Capital Crime’.

You are invited to download your copy of ‘The Capital Crime’ from: http://www.thecapitalcrime.com/

Management -v- Governance

Some areas of business seem to be confusing the concepts of organisational governance and effective management to the detriment of both processes. One of the important aspects of ‘good governance’ is to create the environment that allows ‘good management’ to be practiced and to require systems that ensure ‘good management’ is practiced at all levels of the organisation’s management, but governance and management are quite different processes undertaken by different groups of people.

As a basic starting point, Governance is the exclusive responsibility of the Board of Directors, or their equivalent, not management – the governing body (typically Directors) directs and governs; managers manage at various levels.

The three primary levels of involvement are:

• Governance. The governing Board sets the organisation’s objectives, agrees the strategy to achieve the objectives, define policies and rules for the organisation, requires effective management systems, and also requires processes to be in place to ensure these are implemented by management and to provide effective oversight to the governing body. This is the exclusive non-transferable responsibility of the Board.
   
• Executive management. The executive’s role is creating the organisation capable of achieving these requirements and providing input and advice to assist the governing body’s decision making processes. Developing an effective culture of openness and accountability is a core executive responsibility.
   
• General management. Senior and operational management’s roles are to develop and maintain the systems and processes needed to make the organisation effective within the parameters set by the executive. This includes supporting middle and lower management so they can effectively manage the work needed to implement the strategy set by the Board.

For some reason, these different roles are being confused in some business domains, including IT and project management to the detriment of the organisation and the respective disciplines. When a group of managers start referring to ‘normal good management’ practices as ‘governance’, they simply create excuses for bad management practice.

A good example is a project steering committee failing to support a project manager by refusing to make a difficult decision. This lack of support can be defined in two different ways:

• By claiming the committee is a governance body responsible for ‘governing’ the project, usually interpreted as making sure the project does not do ‘wrong things’, the imperative for a timely decision is removed or hidden, the requirement is no wrong doing which translates into not making a wrong decision. If the project fails as a consequence of the lack of decision, it is called a ‘project failure’ not a governance failure.
   
• Change the description of the same steering committee to the management entity responsible for the overall creation of value within the organisation based on the work of the project they are overseeing, the situation changes. As the management group responsible for implementing and managing the overall Project Delivery Capability (PDC) needed by the organisation to achieve a positive ROI on its investment in the project, the same failure to make a decision can be seen to have a direct impact on the ROI the managers in the steering committee are personally responsible for achieving. This is a management failure and the managers in the steering committee are directly accountable for the delays caused to the project.

Similar issues to the project management obfuscation described above also attach to calling pragmatic and effective management of IT processes ‘governance’ – data security, backups and recovery capabilities, other IT functions and managing the projects needed to enhance IT are not IT governance issues, they are IT management responsibilities.

My personal view is that if the project and IT management practices described above are determined to be a ‘governance’ function, almost everything in management is ‘governance’, fortunately:

• No one claims the processes used to make sure the accounts department pay the right people the right amount of money at the right time is a ‘governance’ process – it is seen to be a prudent accounting requirement.
   
• Similarly no one claims the processes used by the stock department to fill orders with the right goods, and ship them to the right customers is ‘governance’; it is simply a customer service process.

IT and project management should be no different!

The art of good governance is for the Directors to ask the right questions of the executive and have sufficient skills to understand the answers. I do not know of a good resource to help in this respect for IT, however, a really useful (and free) guide to help Board’s ask the right questions of their executive about PDC has been published by the Association for Project Management in the UK, it can be downloaded from: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/PDF/APM%20GoPM%20booklet.pdf

Once the Board starts asking the ‘right questions’ and sets a strategic framework my feeling is any executive manager worthy of his/her role will start taking appropriate actions and adapting their organisation. If they don’t the Board probably needs to start asking other questions about the suitability of the executive. However, changing the organisation to achieve effective PDC is a major change program in itself and will need time to be effective……

One short term solution that can be used to kick-start the cultural and organisational changes needed to move to an effective PDC is already in the hands of the governing body and executive. If the organisation cannot find a committed senior manager prepared to take personal responsibility for delivering the value promised by a project do not start the work! We know the lack of effective sponsorship is closely aligned to project failure, so it will be far cheaper and preserve shareholder value if projects without effective sponsors are not started. Conversely, if senior managers are responsible for the delivery of value from the projects they are sponsoring, the key people needed to create effective change in an organisation are already involved and have a vested interest in succeeding.

The important thing to remember is the realisation of value from effective benefits management is very much the end of a process. The overall capability to realise value from an investment in a project starts with selecting the right project to do for the right strategic reasons, then doing the work of the project effectively and efficiently before the organisation can implement the changes and generate value. The project manager is only responsible for the bit in the middle – the ‘doing the project right’, a steering committee, sponsor or other management entity is responsible for the beginning and end parts of the overall process as well as supporting the project team. Therefore PDC has to be seen as a general management responsibility.

The management concepts and framework needed to develop an effective PDC within an organisation have been discussed in earlier posts:

• The concept of ‘project failure’ -v- ‘management failure’ is discussed in our post ‘Project or Management Failures?’.
   
• Similarly, PDC and the organisational aspects of change have been discussed in length in a series of earlier posts, see:
  • Organisational Change Management
  • and PDC Value Proposition.
• An overview of the management framework needed to achieve effective PDC is in our White Paper: PDC Taxonomy – this White Paper is a conceptual framework not a methodology and is evolving, but should still be helpful in separating ‘governance’ from ‘management’.

These ideas are not new, work by the Boston Group in the 1990s reported in our latest blog, the PDC Value Proposition shows the significant increase in ROI when an effective project delivery capability level is achieved by an organisation.

The governance requirement is to ensure management accepts this responsibility and excel in creating value for the organisation.

Project or Management Failures?

Google ‘reasons for project failure’ and you get nearly 5 million responses! The question this blog asks is how many project failures are caused by project management shortcomings and how many failed projects were set up to fail by the organisation’s management?

The Project Delivery Capability (PDC) framework described in our White Paper Project Delivery Capability (PDC) offers a useful lens to separate the failings generated by project performance from those imposed on the project, inadvertently, or otherwise by organisational management.

The list below separates the root cause of failure into four categories based on this model:

Initiation: failures associated with project identification, business case development, requirements definition and portfolio selection; including establishing initial realistic time and cost budgets based on pragmatic risk assessments.

Project: failures associated with the project team failing to apply effective project management processes as defined in resources such as the PMBOK® Guide, ISO 21500 and PRINCE2

Support: failures associated with the lack of effective senior management support to the project (Capability Support), including inadequate sponsorship, failing to provide appropriate resources, inadequate business inputs, lack of direction/decisions and allowing excessive change.

Benefits: the failure to realise the intended value from the project’s deliverables associated with poor organisational change management, end use adoption and cultural resistance (for more on the overall scope of change see our White Paper, Organisational Change Management).

The table below is based on an amalgamation of dozens of lists found through a Google search.

Reason for Failure	Cause
Inadequate business case A good business case will clearly demonstrate the business benefit of delivering a project and define the objectives, requirements and goals.	Initiation
Undefined objectives and goals This is always a problem, if the organisation does not know what it wants, it is impossible to scope a project to deliver the ‘unknown’.	Initiation
Inadequate or vague requirements This is only a problem if the organisation fails to allow adequate time and appropriate contingencies in the overall scope of the project to define and firm up requirements. Defined requirements are essential for the project to be able to deliver a successful outcome.	Initiation
Unrealistic timeframes and budgets; unachievable objectives Fact free planning is always a problem. Initial ‘rough order of magnitude’ estimates need appropriate contingencies in the initial business case. The project outputs need to be feasible.	Initiation
Lack of prioritisation and project portfolio management Causing competing priorities leading to inadequate support and resourcing for projects.	Initiation
Estimates for cost and schedule are erroneous Estimates should be based on solid foundations. Unrealistic targets are unlikely to be achieved.	Initiation / Project
Failure to set and manage expectations Unrealistic expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled. From the start of the initiation through the life of the project effective communication to set and maintain realistic expectations is vital.	Initiation / Project
Business politics Lack of discipline within executive/senior management. Only present is the organisation is poorly governed and lacks a rigorous portfolio management process. Selected projects should be supported by management.	Initiation / Benefits
Cultural and ethical misalignment Misalignment between the project team and the business or other organization it serves will inevitably cause problems.	Initiation / Benefits
Lack of a solid project plan The failure to develop an effective project plan guarantees the project will fail. The type of planning required depends on the project methodology. Some specifics are included below	Project
Poor estimating Failing to use historical information, formulae, and questions to make sure that the estimate is not a GUESStimate.	Project
Poor processes/documentation Appropriate processes and documentation are essential for project success.	Project
Poor risk management All projects are inherently risky. Effective risk management reduces the degree of uncertainty to an acceptable level.	Project
Overruns of realistic schedule and cost estimates This is a project failing. Either due to poor management/motivation of the project team or poor risk assessment (leading to inadequate contingencies) or poor estimating.	Project
Failure to track progress Tracking progress against the plan and adapting performance is central to effective project management.	Project
Poor Testing Failing to adequately test project deliverables; including: - Poor requirements which cannot be tested - Failing to design a testable system - Failing to develop a realistic and effective test plan - Failing to test effectively with skilled staff - Inadequate time and budget allowed for testing.	Project
Poorly defined roles and responsibilities The organisations management is responsible for defining roles and responsibilities in the overall management stakeholder community; the project manager is responsible for the organisation within the project team.	Project / Support
No change control process / Scope creep A lack of effective change management processes is primarily a project failing, however, organisational management should require effective change management to be in place and support the change management processes.	Project / Support
Team weaknesses – Inadequate / incorrectly skilled resources Having people who are ill-prepared to complete a task can be worse than not having anyone. The organisation is responsible for providing adequate internal resources for the project, the project is responsible for defined training and procuring appropriate contracted resources.	Support / Project
Lack of user input The organisation is responsible for organising the necessary input from end users. The project is responsible for requesting and defining its needs and making appropriate use of the information provided.	Support / Project
Lack of management commitment / Lack of organisational support The organisation is responsible for properly supporting the projects it has initiated.	Support
Ineffective or no sponsorship Ineffective project sponsorship is almost a guarantee of failure.	Support
Poorly managed – project manager not trained/skilled The organisation is responsible for appointing an appropriate project manager and providing him/her with appropriate support, training and coaching.	Support
Inflexible processes and procedures, templates and documentation Any imposed process needs to be as light  as practical to meet the governance needs of the organisation without inhibiting the work of the project.	Support
Insufficient or Inadequate resources / lack of committed resources (funding and personnel) The organisation is responsible for properly resourcing the projects it has initiated. If the resources don’t exist or are already fully committed elsewhere, this is an initiation failure; if they are simply not made available it is a support failure.	Support / Initiation
Poor communication / Stakeholder engagement People tend to fear what they don’t know, therefore effective communication with stakeholders is vital if the project is to capture their support, and keep it. The project is responsible for project based communications; the organisation change manager (sponsor) is responsible for communication in support of the overall change initiative.	Benefits / Project
Poor or ineffective organisational change management The organisation has to implement, accept and use the project’s deliverables to generate value. Failures at the organisational change level mean most of the planned benefits cannot be realised.	Benefits
Stakeholder conflict The organisation is responsible for properly supporting the projects it has initiated. This includes the ‘through life’ management of stakeholders starting prior to initiation and continuing through to the realisation of the benefits.	Benefits
Inability or unwillingness to stop a project after approval ‘Death march’ projects destroy value. A key element of effective portfolio management is to stop wasting money and resources on projects that can no longer contribute value to the organisation.	Benefits

Of the 29 causes of failure outlined above, only 7 are exclusively the province of project management. The other 76% involve or are exclusively the province of the organisation’s general and executive management as part of an overall ‘Project Delivery Capability’!

This overall capability of an organisation to realise value from an investment in a project starts with selecting the right project to do for the right reasons, then doing the work of the project effectively and efficiently, and then making effective use of the project’s outputs to create value. Mess up any of the early stages and there are no benefits to manage. If the organisation fails to implement the changes effectively, the potential benefits are not realised.

The project manager is only responsible for the bit in the middle – the ‘doing of the project’, a steering committee, sponsor or other management entity is responsible for the beginning and end parts of the overall process involved in PDC. Even the 24% of failures assigned to project management have a link back to the role of the Project Director within PDC. The organisation should provide oversight, training and support to ensure effective processes are used by their project managers and teams. Conversely, a skilled project manager may be able to overcome some of the organisational failings identified above; by managing upwards and operating effectively within the organisation’s political systems a skilled project manager can cover some failings, others are fundamental and will result in a failure regardless of the efforts of the project team.

Therefore based on this table, it is reasonable to determine PDC is an executive and general management responsibility. The ‘project governance’ requirement within PDC is for the Board to ensure executive and general management accept this responsibility and excel in creating value for the organisation.

Based on this assessment, my personal feeling is we as project practitioners need to stop referring to ‘project failures’  every time a project fails to deliver the expected value and start talking about ‘business failures’ when the organisation’s  management fails to effectively manage or support the work and as a consequence, fails to achieve the intended/expected value.

PDC Value Proposition

The only reason for undertaking a project or program is to create value through the realisation of benefits. Some projects generate significant intangible benefits such as reduced risk, enhanced prestige or in the case of regulatory requirements, the simple ability to keep trading; others are focused on generating a positive financial return, most generate a combination of financial and intangible returns.

A key element in Project Delivery Capability (PDC) is understanding the value proposition the project or program has been created to generate. Regardless of the way the ‘return’ is measured, no project should destroy value, unfortunately as discussed in Disappearing into the Zone far too many do!

The value proposition for developing an effective PDC (itself a business change program) is compelling. World-wide research undertaken by Jed Simms at the Boston Consulting Group in the 1990s defined five levels of PDC, and found that the return on investment (ROI) from projects increased substantially at each level*. These findings have been developed into a project delivery capability model by TOP – Totally Optimized Projects Pty Ltd. 

• Level 1 capability is represented by executive complacency, project teams doing their own thing, no benefits management, and on average projects typically show a small negative ROI but results are wildly variable with some successes (which are always highlighted).
   
• Level 2 capability sees the imposition of process focused on measuring activity rather than outcomes. The business imposes forms, requirements and check lists; ‘methodology police’ enforce a one-size-fits-all policy. The process of developing ‘approvable’ businesses cases and standardised project reporting creates more uniform outcomes but there’s little understanding of risk -v- reward and virtually no follow through to implementation and benefits realisation. As a consequence there is typically a neutral ROI – the value created eventually covers the costs despite the glowing promises in the business case.
   
• Level 3 capability sees the organisation gaining sufficient experience and confidence to allow measured flexibility into its processes for managing projects. The basic disciplines are retained, but the way they are implemented is adjusted to suit the needs of the project. The executive view moves from imposing ‘controls’ towards an outcome focus using elements of portfolio management. However, project success still tends to be measured in terms of time, cost and scope at the end of the project rather than the benefits gained by the organisation; an output focus rather than an outcome focus. Organisations at this level generate a reasonable ROI measured at the project level but largely miss the potential for substantially enhanced business outcomes.
   
• Level 4 capability introduces a paradigm shift in executive thinking. Rather than focusing on project outputs, the work of the project is seen as a key enabler of valuable business outcomes. This requires an integrated flow from the identification of a need or opportunity within the business through to implementing the changes required to deliver of the expected business outcomes to meet the need or exploit the opportunity. Ownership of this value chain is vested in the business, the role of projects and project management is to support this overall effort by delivering the outputs best suited to achieving the business objective. The model defined in PDC = Project Delivery Capability represents the PDC framework needed to support this level. Simms’ research suggests there is an increase in ROI to 2 to 3 times that achieved at Level 3 once the focus of organisation’s executives shift to achieving business related outcomes, measuring the benefits actually realised and the value achieved.
   
• Level 5 capability expands on Level 4 with the whole PDC system focused on efficiently supporting the strategic objectives of the business. Effective strategic alignment linked to pragmatic risk management and simple but effective processes generates another significant increase in ROI!

Based on observation rather then measurement, it seems the majority of organisations in both the public and private sectors are currently operating at Level 2, typically with the PMO fulfilling the role of ‘methodology policeman’, a few more mature organisations, mainly private sector, are achieving Level 3 maturity whilst others remain at Level 1.

Very few have taken the step to Level 4 where the executive hold their business managers accountable for achieving the outcomes defined in the business case and invest in the PDC capability required to properly support their business managers.

Doing projects ‘right’ is a Level 2 phenomena, doing the ‘right projects, right’ is Level 3; the optimum is Levels 4 and 5 where the right projects are done for the right strategic reasons. PDC was forecast by Simms as the next competitive battleground in 2005 – I would suggest it is the competitive battleground in 2012!

* Source, Project Delivery Capability – the next competitive battleground, Jed Simms, TOP – Totally Optimized Projects Pty Ltd.

Unrealistic Expectations

Unrealistic expectations are highly unlikely to be fulfilled. But, when a project fails to achieve the impossible it is branded a failure!

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s recent report ‘Proactive Response – How financial services firms deal with troubled projects’  highlights unrealistic goals as the most common cause of project failure in financial service firms, other causes of failure include poor alignment between project and organisational goals, the failure of the organisation to provide adequate resources and the project sponsor failing to get involved in the project sufficiently early, if at all.

15% of firms surveyed had no processes for dealing with troubled projects and 47% wait until the project has officially missed time and budget targets before taking any action despite 61% of the executives surveyed believing early action on troubled projects enables organisations to better use limited resources.

This survey reinforces many others over many years that clearly highlight executive governance failures as the primary cause of project failures. And this seems particularly true of large IT projects where a recent survey of 1500 large IT projects by the University of Oxford found one in six projects went over budget by an average of 200% or time by almost 70%. The Oxford conclusion was that many managers in charge of the projects did not have enough understanding of how to implement the technology, presumably leading to unrealistic expectations……

These findings support two conclusions; firstly, the program and portfolio management maturity levels in organisations are seriously deficient. A series of Portfolio, Program and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) audits of Australian government agencies with IT budgets of more than $20 million, showed scores averaging around 2 out of 5 with many lower and a trend towards portfolio management being the least effective area. These findings are similar to outcomes from OPM3 assessment I have undertaken in other types of organisation.

The second conclusion is that knowledge, insights and valuable information derived from project expertise is not being effectively communicated ‘up the ladder’ in a way that executives can understand and appreciate.

Projects are successful when the organisation realises the benefits it expected from undertaking the project. For more on the value chain see ‘Value is in the eye of the stakeholder’. To close this loop effectively, skilled project personnel including PMO staff, need to be able to communicate effectively with their organisations executives. The art of ‘advising upwards’ effectively requires skill and understanding (this is the focus of my latest book ‘Advising Upwards’), but it is also important for the whole project industry, at the association, organisation and individual levels to recognise that knowing what represents ‘good’ PPP management is only the beginning, the end game is most organisations, most of the time doing good PPP management; and this won’t happen unless the senior executive and ‘middle management’ levels of organisations understand both the processes and the benefits.

The surveys canvassed at the start of this blog suggest we still have a long way to go!

Perceptions Matter

The Australian Institute of Management and the Safety Institute of Australia have recently published a survey on the effectiveness of organisation’s occupational health and safety (OH&S) processes. The findings may be of value to another specialist area – project management!

Some of the key findings were:

• 77% of CEOs and 56% of senior managers stated they put a ‘very high priority’ on workplace OH&S. Only 38% of OH&S personnel thought their organisation placed a ‘very high priority’.
• 50% of CEOs said they strongly agreed their organisation had a well entrenched OH&S culture, only 18% of OH&S personnel agreed.
• 88% of CEOs and 70% of senior managers said top level management ‘walked the talk’ when it came to OH&S but only 47% of OH&S staff agreed.

This intention of this post is not to focus on the OH&S practices and policies of organisations, rather to speculate on why there is such a significant difference between senior management perceptions and specialist management perceptions.

It would be too easy to pass off the difference simply based on senior management ‘saying the right thing’, unlike project management if there is a serious accident, senior managers are personally liable and can face substantial criminal and civil penalties. It I simply not in management’s interest to ignore or accept sub-standard OH&S practices, in many Australian States they can literally go to jail if there is a significant failure.

My feeling is the dramatic difference is driven by two key factors that overlap and support each other.

The first is differences in the degree of technical understanding. The OH&S expert’s know what is possible, needed and represents current best practice. General management would have been involved in direct supervision of workplaces probably 10 to 20 years ago; best practices and the law has changed dramatically in the intervening period. The senior managers may believe their organisations are doing well simply because they don’t know what best practice looks like from personal experience and involvement. The challenge is to educate senior management on best practice so they actually understand – how you fit this into a senior manager’s busy schedule is an interesting problem.

The second is appreciating the details. OH&S expert’s see all of the issues, problems and failings. They know what is not working! By the time information is summarised, sanitised and passed through several levels of middle management most of the nitty gritty nasties are filtered out and overall the organisation is shown to be doing OK. This filtering and summarisation process is a well recognised problem and was a primary cause of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster; but again, how do you get the right information to executives without burying them in detail??

Now let’s look at our profession. Project Management is relatively new and has significant technical specialisations. Most executives have never worked as project managers or in a projectized workspace. Most project fail through a combination of small issues, problems and changes. There is not one big issue and most of the details are filtered out as information moves up the hierarchy. Rather then recognising the hidden systemic causes of failure, it is simpler to assume the people involved have failed and blame the project managers!!

Lastly, as with OH&S, effective project management requires the expenditure of resources to develop and maintain effective systems that prevent problems. But you cannot value the problems that don’t occur because you have effective systems! Any expenditure to improve systems has to be based on a belief the outlays deliver value, possibly backed up by some generic trend data. But to believe, you need to appreciate and understand the value; how can this be imparted to senior management???

Given OH&S has legislated conformance requirements and project management does not, it is quite likely your organisations executives believe the organisation is doing as good a job of managing its projects as they evidently believe they are doing with OH&S (and their perceptions are their reality). The challenge facing project management professionals is advising upwards to change these perceptions in a positive way. The key question is how?

The techniques of advising upwards are the focus of my new book, publication due in September (see more on the book) ).

Defining the message to be advised upwards is more complex:

• Part of the answer is Cobbs Paradox (see the post )
• Another aspect is valuing our processes (see the post)
• The rest is likely to be a combination of persistence and performance.

What do you think?