Projects and Programs: The Future Must be Smaller, Faster and Easier

Presenter: Donna Fitzgerald

"Current PPM best practices are optimized for a world gone by."

• What business trends will force us to radically transform our project, program and portfolio management practices in the future?
  
• What technology trends will enable the business to move faster?
  
• What should PPM leaders do to prepare for the upcoming change?
  

Moving mail and packages as an example of process change. Sporadic and expensive to start with (1000 BC); government involved, governance increases reliability (400 BC); infrastructure built makes things more efficient (200 AD); competition and classes of mail (1400 AD); tracking of progress via the web (1998 AD); real-time tracking via RFID, mash-ups, wireless.

Time-based competition: focuses on the customer; embraces quality improvements; strategically manages costs—speed as the most versatile competitive weapon.

Projects are no longer change activities between one stable point and another. Instead there is constant change with no points of stability. "Toyota doesn't have corporate convulsions, and it never has. It restructures a little bit every work shift." No Satisfaction at Toyota, fastcompany.com January 2006.

Stakeholders judge a project's success by: product meeting client requirements; gets used by clients; effectiveness for the client organization. NOT: on time, on budget, compliance with process.

WebKinz – research…

Business process goals were: consistency. Now, quick and agile.

Business information/intelligence evolution. From: local, limited. To: end-to-end.

Need to get slides for this presentation: slide showing quadrant diagram with business process goals mapped to business intelligence goals. Relates lower risk, local impact to lower control, more agility.

Looking at "change operations" rather than "project management." Governance focuses on developing the rules for making decisions and monitoring results; management by exception; push decision making down; unit of interest is the process. Contrast with PPM today…

"I get more questions about governance that I do about how work's going to get done. How are you going to govern that project? Who's going to be involved? What's the governance model? Who cares?" Jeff Smith, CIO SunCorp, October 2007. Focus instead on what the real measures of project success should be.

Use a "just enough" approach to project process. Stop watching something, meeting about something; start providing intervention policies, managing only what matters. Mix business and IT staff; hire/use experimenters. Narrow the focus on what needs the executive touch. Adjust project processes to optimize business trade-off and flexibility, not just process consistency.