Team Based Consulting

Seven simple rules leading to successful Steering Committees

2011-10-26T20:51:00.000+02:00

In my previous blog-spot I presented my views on how to put together the optimal Steering Committee (SteerCo). The main message was that very many SteerCos are put together for the wrong reasons and with the wrong participants. The only valid reason for having a SteerCo is if there is an ongoing stream of "steering" (usually a combination of decision-making on complex, company-broad issues and quality control from a company-broad perspective) throughout the project (and not only at the end). The participants should be chosen with these goals in mind, and should be the lowest-ranking people that can make the decisions that are needed.

Assuming that you have put together the optimal SteerCo, the next question is how you can make best use of it during the project itself (how to deal with the SteerCo at the end of project will be the subject of a separate blog-spot). The following rules will help you make the most of your SteerCo meetings:

1. Inform the participants at the start of the project about what you want from them. This may have been done as part of the process leading to the choice of SteerCo members, but is still worthwhile doing again. In an individual face-to-face meeting (before the first official SteerCo meeting) explain to each member of the SteerCo about the project, the role of the SteerCo, and why the individual has been requested / chosen to sit in the SteerCo

2. Plan and schedule regular SteerCo meetings (and meeting rooms). Most people have very busy diaries and it can be very difficult to schedule a meeting involving several key managers. The best solution is therefore to schedule all expected SteerCo meetings already at the start of the project. Where possible, these meetings should be linked to key milestones and expected issues where input from the SteerCo will be needed. Sometimes it makes more sense to plan regular meetings (monthly/bi-weekly/weekly depending on the heartbeat of the project and the number of expected issues that the SteerCo will need to deal with). When scheduling these meetings, promise that you will cancel them if the meeting is not required.

3. Plan each meeting well in advance. Find out if you have issues/decisions that need SteerCo attention. If this is not the case, then cancel the meeting. This will save you and the project considerable time, and will give you goodwill from your SteerCo members. The agenda and key issues to be discussed should be communicated to the SteerCo as early as possible so that they can prepare. In some companies where I have worked, there has been a requirement to send out the presentation to be used in the meeting. This has never been my preference, as it tends to lead to disjointed and unstructured discussions in the meeting itself. However, if this is the culture, then you do not have a choice.

4. Make sure that the meeting room is available and that all the technical stuff (PC, beamer, etc) works. This is a bit of a "no-brainer", but, believe me; I have experienced all of this happening.

5. Start the meeting by presenting the agenda and agreeing the planning and time allocation (especially important if one or more people need to leave early).

6. Present your material in a structured and clear manner, and clearly specify what the issue/problem is, what the alternatives are, and what decision you are requesting. Make sure that a decision is given. If the SteerCo is not able to give a decision, agree what concrete steps need to be taken in order for a decision to be made

7. Send out minutes of the meeting as quickly as possible (the next day at the latest). The minutes should be as short as possible, and if you can agree and use a standard structure, so much the better. The content should be limited to key decisions and a log of agreed action points. The minutes are extremely important as they provide a written record of decisions made, thereby ensuring that everybody has the same recollection of these decisions. The action log gives a written overview of the agreed "to-do's". This helps you and project team remember what needs to be done, and can also help in pushing SteerCo members to carry out activities given to them

If you have put together an optimal SteerCo and follow these fairly simple rules, then your SteerCo should play a valuable role in your project. Unfortunately, there are still a number of things that can go wrong. These will be discussed in a later update.

Avoid usual mistakes in setting up your Steering Committee

2011-09-20T11:50:00.001+02:00

Last week I had an interesting discussion at a project I am working with for a leading European energy company. The project involves the development of strategic tool for the company's smart grid roll-out, and is key part of the future development of the company. The project manager felt that the Steering Committee that had been set up for the project was not providing him with any value and was taking away valuable time from him and other key project members. This was an interesting statement, as I had been told that many members of the SteerCo were also unhappy. Their complaints were centered round the reasons for their participation, the information they were provided, and the structure of the meetings themselves.

This got me thinking about steering committees and how these should be set up and used optimally. In this blog-spot I will focus on how an optimal steering committee should be set up. In later blog-spots I will talk about how to best use a SteerCo during the project itself and how a project can ensure that its goals are met through the SteerCo.

------------------------------------------------------------------

My assumption is that you are the sponsor or the project manager of a complex project and are in the process of setting it up. This means that you have carried out all the other steps required for a successful start-up of a complex project ( you have a well-structured understanding of the reasons why the project is required, you have defined clear goals and deliverables, you have set up a structured approach that includes key activities, dependencies, and milestones, and you have formed the best (available) team for carrying out the project.

You are now in a situation where you believe that you need to set up the Steering Committee. Either because somebody has told you to do so, or because you believe that "all" projects have such an entity. However, you also have some doubts as you do not really have a good idea what the role of the Steering Committee will be or who you should put in it.

I have seen very many situations where a project either has a SteerCo that is too big or consists of too senior people (misuse of resources). Projects run by external consultants often have this, as for them having a Steering Committee consisting of many senior executives is an excellent marketing tool. I have also seen many projects that either did not really need a SteerCo or had a SteerCo with the wrong participants. Thinking carefully about your SteerCo is therefore well worth your time.

The first step in this process is to get a clear understanding of why you want a SteerCo. Essentially there are four reasons for a complex project to have a SteerCo (sometimes overlapping):

1.    Decision-making - The SteerCo accepts the final results of the project, makes go/no go decisions for the implementation of project recommendations, and makes decisions during the project that are relevant for the overall direction that the project takes
2.    Ensuring support - The SteerCo is used to organize staff for the project, to provide ad-hoc access to staff in the organization and to get buy-in for the final results of the project
3.    Provide knowledge - The SteerCo is intended to primarily provide knowledge and experience to the project-team
4.    Control quality and progress - The SteerCo is a group of people ensuring that everything's OK with the project at a higher level than the Project Manager

You should also keep in mind that a SteerCo is often not the only solution that will help you deal with your needs. In my experience, the need to have a Steering Committee to make decisions is very often over-rated. If the only decision that needs to be made is at the end, then seeing the management team once at the end of the project can be sufficient. Only if there is an ongoing stream of relative complex decisions to be made, do you need a traditional Steering Committee that meets regularly during the whole project. Any smaller / less complex decisions can be made by the sponsor of the project.

The idea that having a Steering Committee will ensure support for the project is based on an assumption that being the SteerCo will result in key people having more knowledge of the project, and that they will be "invested" in the process and conclusions developed by the project. Hopefully this then translates into help getting access to staff and buy-in for the results of the project. A key point to keep in mind is that finding staff is an activity that only takes place at the start of the project, and can therefore not be a reason for keeping an ongoing SteerCo. Buy-in for the need for a project and its conclusions and recommendations can also be created (often better and with less use of resources) through a series of one-to-one meetings with key managers.

I have often seen a SteerCo be used to provide knowledge to the project team. If this is the only reason for having a SteerCo I would recommend alternatives such as an expert group or Blue Teams. This enables the project team to make direct use of the real experts instead of management, and also reduces the likelihood that they persons involved will believe that they need to make decisions (which is usually not the case).

The final reason for having a SteerCo is often quality control. This is based on an assumption that the project manager and sponsor cannot do this themselves, and that it requires more senior executives with a broader view of what is key for the overall company. This can be a valid reason if the project is very complex and "steering" is required based on a broad overview of the company. In my experience, the type of discussions that take place in this type of SteerCos is very similar to the SteerCos making decisions

Based on this overview you can conclude that a Steering Committee is only required when a project required senior-level "steering" as an ongoing process during the project. The "steering" provided in these situations can be seen as a mixture of "quality-control" and ongoing decision-making. All other reasons for having a SteerCo can usually be provided by other means that place lower time-demands on both executives as well as project-team members.

The final question is then who you should put in your SteerCo. The first rule is to keep the group as small as possible (less use of resources, easier logistics for planning meetings, easier discussions, etc). The second rule is to find the lowest-ranking people that can make the decisions that are needed. A rule of thumb that has served me well is to discuss participation high in the organization, and clearly present the type of decisions that are likely to be made. The senior executive can then chose the person that he/she feels comfortable allowing to take the relevant decisions.

How to ensure successful start-up of a project

2011-08-29T12:16:00.000+02:00

For most of us the summer is over, and we are back to work. For many of you this will mean starting up new projects. In a previous blog-spot I talked about which projects you should do in-house (i.e. not hire in external consultants). I will assume that you have a number of this type of projects under consideration and that your role is either being the sponsor or the project manager.

In my experience, the start-up is the most crucial phase of a complex project. This is due to it very much determining the success of the project, and the difficulties in to correcting many of the mistakes that are often made in this phase. Many times when I am called in to help projects that are ongoing but are facing difficulties, I have to re-start the project in order to get them on the right track again.

The main goal of the start-up phase of a project is to ensure that the project is defined optimally and clearly. If this is difficult, as it often is for complex projects, then a solution can be to do a scoping project that has the goal of developing a clear understanding of the problem at hand. Examples of such scoping exercises that I have carried out include a project that had as the goal to understand why delivery times were so long for a telecom company. The projects gave a number of clear issues leading to long lead times, and solving these issues then became a number of structured and focused follow-up projects.

Ensuring that a project gets a flying start entails carrying out a structured process that requires careful thinking at each step. The order suggested in the process is crucial, as each previous step provides key information and starting points for the next step. The steps that you as the project sponsor / project leader need to take to ensure that the project gets an optimal start are:

·         Clearly define the background for the project
·         Develop a clear goal for the project and translate this into structured deliverables
·         Clearly state the scope of the project
·         Decide the approach that the project needs to take
·         Find the staff required for carrying out the project

--------------------------------------------------

I am constantly amazed at the projects I see where the team members cannot clearly articulate why the project is being carried out. In my experience this often means that the team members also do not truly understand the work that they are carrying out, and are therefore very likely to spend time on wrong activities, or develop inappropriate conclusions from the work that they have carried out. The first step you need to take is therefore to clearly articulate the "why" of the project. This should position the issue in the broader context of the organization (strategy, etc), and ideally give a "burning platform" that will motivate team members, sponsors, etc.

A clearly stated "why" for a project makes it relatively easy to develop the goal of the project. The goal of the project should be a clear and concise statement of purpose. It establishes what the project will do. Examples of goals in recent projects that I have carried out include:

·         Make the company profitable
·         Develop a clear telecom strategy
·         Develop a strategy for positioning the company in the New Energy market

The goal is a fairly broad statement that says what the project will do, and is used to set expectations and establish a stake in the ground regarding what the project will do and the scope of the project. A common mistake is to state a goal that can only be reached far in the future with input from this project and other projects. This is not helpful, and effort needs to be made to ensure that the goal is relevant for the project at hand.

The deliverables of the project are the concrete things that the project will provide. This should always be a noun, and be something that did not already exist. It can cover a broad range of "things" ranging from insight, a plan, an implemented plan, etc. The deliverables can be seen as how the goals of the project will be met. The agreed deliverables of a recent turn-around project I carried out included a) clear understanding of why the company was losing money, b) concrete actions to turn the company around, c) a new organization structure, and d) a focused and structured plan for the implementation phase.

I have seen very many projects that have gone wrong because the scope was not clearly defined. Typical problems have included projects that have gone off on tangents that were not really relevant and projects that have been drowned in "extra" activities from sponsors and other stakeholders. While goals and deliverables clearly state what a project will do, a clear scoping statement states what the project will not do. This helps the project set and exceed expectations. In the cost-reduction project mentioned in the previous paragraph a clear scoping statement was that the team would not define detailed work-plans for the initiatives that it defined. This enables the team to push back on requests to do this work, and deliver the results within the agreed time-frame.

Based on the deliverables and the scope the next step is to define the approach. I have seen many projects lose valuable time discussing the overall approach when this could and should have been done before the kick-off. Essentially the approach is defining how the deliverables will be produced and includes an overview of key activities to be carried out, key milestones, inter-dependencies between activities, etc. The best way to develop an approach is to start with the deliverables on the left-hand side of a page and work your way backwards.

The final step in preparing a project is to decide on the required resources and staffing. The starting point for this exercise is the overall approach defined in the previous step. The key things that need to be decided is the total amount of resources required (how many for how long), and the specific types of skills and capabilities needed to make the project a success. Skills and capabilities can be divided into three main types:

·         Problem-solving skills
·         Technical / functional skills
·         Interpersonal skills

The challenge is to find the people who have the right skills and who are available. Availability is always a problem, and a tip is not to be too critical, as skills can often be developed during the project.

Once you have gone through all of these steps, the time has come to start the project with a kick-off for the whole team. Based on the work that has been carried out in this phase developing a successful kick-off meeting is easy. The kick-off meeting will then provide the starting point for a successful project that will result in the agreed deliverables within the agreed time-frame.

When should you worry about your internal projects?

2011-06-30T17:31:00.000+02:00

Many of you are in a situation where the number of complex issues that need to be dealt with outside of the standard organizational structures is growing. For different reasons, some economic and some related to a wish to build up internal capabilities, less projects are being outsourced to external consultants. Due to this, the number of internal teams dealing with complex projects is growing dramatically.

If you have a portfolio of complex projects then there are almost certainly one or more projects within the portfolio where you have a “gut feeling” that the project is not going well. Since you do not have any conclusive evidence it is difficult to do anything but to hope the best and see what the teams come up with.

Based on my experience, I believe that there are eight warning signals for projects that are not going well. The more warning signals that apply, the more urgent it is to intervene. The eight warning signals are:

1. The project-team appears to be dealing with a very broad range of issues

2. The project team does not seem to be spending much time together

3. The team is spending a lot of time carrying out “interviews”

4. The team does not appear to be doing any meaningful analytics

5. The team has very limited interaction with you(and other sponsors )

6. Key stake-holders, who's by-in will be required for the project to be a success, are not aware of the project

7. The project is not meeting agreed deadlines

8. It is difficult to pin the team down on any meaningful conclusions

Dealing with a broad range of issues is a danger signal as it very often means that the project is too broadly scoped to deliver concrete results and/or the team will need to carry out more work that is feasible within the agreed deadlines. The required action is to carefully consider what the project needs to deliver and ruthlessly reduce any activities that do not directly lead to this result. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

If the project team is not spending much time together it either means that they are not spending enough time on the project, or that they are working alone. In my experience achieving strong conclusions and recommendations requires bouncing ideas off each other, combining insights, and jointly developing an understanding of the most appropriate conclusions and recommendations. The best way to deal with this is to ask the team why they are not spending time together, and "gently" push them to do so. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

Interviews are often an integral part of the work required to carry out a complex project. However, I have often seen teams that spend too much time talking to other people (within the organization or externally) without having a clear goal for what they want to get out of the interviews, without writing up the results of the interviews in a structured manner, and without getting any data or support for key assumptions from the meetings. Often, carrying out interviews is a way of looking busy and not having to do any "hard" work related to developing conclusions. My recommendation is to suggest that the team develops an overview of all the interviews they have carried out and what has come out of them. If the team has a program of interviews planned, ask them to provide a structured overview of what is the expected outcome / value added of each interview. Based on this, interviews can be prioritized. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

In my experience it is impossible to develop strong conclusions and recommendations to a complex issue and convince key stakeholders without carrying out a fairly deep and complex analytical process (otherwise the issue is not really that complex……….). Therefore, if a project team is doing a lot of brain-storming and thinking, and is developing a lot of conceptual slides, but is not doing any analytics to really understand the issues and develop support for their hypothesis it is unlikely that the project will be successful. This type of team will need to be forced to do the analytics that are required, and must be given help if they are unable to do so. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

If the team has very limited interactions with you and other sponsors this can be a sign that the team is uncomfortable with the progress that they are making. If this is not the case then there is a high risk that they are not getting enough feedback on the direction they are taking and/or the key assumptions that they are making. In my experience, this often leads the team to take off on a tangent that is very different from the expectations of the sponsors. The easiest way of correcting this is to force the team to sit down with you and give an overview of their hypotheses and analytics. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

If key stakeholders are not aware of the project it means that the team is not communicating with them. I have seen very many projects where the internal teams thinks that they only need to present their results at a final presentation without any previous communication with key stakeholders. Usually these projects do not get the agreement and acceptance that is necessary for a good implementation of required activities as expectations have not been managed, ideas have not been tested, understanding of "hot-buttons" not developed, etc. The best way of correcting this is to make communication an integral part of the team's workload, and follow up (and help) in this process. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

The most important signal signifying that a project is not going well is if it is not meeting interim deadlines. Sometimes I have seen internal projects that have not even set internal deadlines. These are extremely likely to fail, as there is not even an opportunity to check if the project is on track. The best way to avoid this danger is a) to set clear intermediate milestones that involve developing and presenting clear results, and b) ruthlessly follow up on the agreed deadlines. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

I have often seen teams that are very good at communicating about the process they are going through (we have talked to ten people, we have developed a model, etc, etc) but are unwilling to say anything about the real results (conclusions) coming out of their work. Very often this is a sign that they are not going to present strong conclusions and recommendations at the end of the project. The reasons for this vary. Sometimes it is uncertainty that the leads to believe that they are not "ready" to present conclusions, other times it is mainly driven by the team being uncomfortable with the results and conclusions that are expected of them and/or coming out of the analysis (opportunity to reduce staffing by 20%, etc). The best way to deal with this is to force the team to present conclusions at interim meetings. See an earlier blog spot for more detail how to deal with this issue.

The more of these symptoms that a team shows, the more likely it is that drastic intervention will be required in order to give the team a chance at achieving its overall goals. The earlier such an intervention takes place, the more likely that it will be successful.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

When should you not use consultants?

2011-06-07T16:37:00.001+02:00

In my previous blog-post I described how you can decide whether a project is complex and therefore either should be outsourced to experts (i.e. external consultants) or be carried out by an internal team, but given special care and attention. Once you have decided that the project you are considering is complex, the next question is therefore how to carry it out.

I have led consulting teams carrying out a broad range of complex projects across Europe for LEK Consulting, PwC, and A.T. Kearney (where I ended up a Partner). The projects I carried out always added value to my clients, but I am convinced that the clients I worked for could have carried out a fair portion of these projects themselves.

What did these projects have in common? Essentially, the answer boils down to the companies in question not having a truly good reason for using the external consultant. In my view companies should only use external consultants when they provide something (knowledge, experience, tool/process, etc) which the company does not have itself. At LEK I carried out numerous projects that helped companies identify and value potential acquisition targets in other countries. This was clearly a task which required local knowledge and specific experience which the clients usually did not have. At A.T. Kearney a number of companies hired us to carry out a cost benchmarking using an extensive database that had been developed by A.T. Kearney. This was clearly an activity which a company could not do itself.

Sometimes there are political reasons for using an external consultant. Examples of this are companies that use a report from a well-known consultant to either get a "quality-stamp" on their plans or to have somebody to blame ("according to Consultancy-A we have to reduce staff by 2000 employees"). While "political" has a certain association with something unsavory, I do not see anything intrinsically wrong in this type of use of a consultant if it helps speed up decision making and the implementation of difficult change.

The projects I felt that could have been done by the clients themselves where the projects that did not fall in one of the two previous categories. In my opinion, in these cases, the only reasons for bringing in an external consultant (i.e. a team led by me) was doubts about the ability of an internal team to structure the issues, carry out the required analytics, develop conclusions and recommendations, and communicate these in such a way that buy-in and action is created. If this is the case, the focus should then be on understanding why your company does have these abilities and capabilities, and what can be done to improve this situation.

If the key issue is basic capabilities, then there are organizations specializing in improving the capabilities of companies to carry out complex projects. An example in Europe is ICS, based in Belgium but working internationally. If the problem is not so much the available skills and capabilities but rather the ability to define and carry out a successful project then my input is probably better suited. Please go to www.teambasedconsulting.com to get a better understanding of why internal projects tend to underperform, and what to do to improve this situation. Another possibility is to take a look around this blog, as I have written about a large number of specific issues and challenges and how these can best be dealt with.

Should you use my services

2011-05-05T16:34:00.003+02:00

In recent meetings people have said that they want to introduce me to colleagues but have not been quite sure how to present me. Thinking about this, I realized that I am serving a rather select group, as three conditions have to be fulfilled before you will want to make use of my services. These three conditions are illustrated in the following diagram.

It is clear that if you do not have a complex issue there is no need to think about a project to deal with this issue. And while you have many issues that need to solved, not all of them are very complex. My short-hand description of a "complex project" is often that it is a problem for which you would consider hiring a team of external consultants (pick your favorite brand…………) to deal with.

If you are happy hiring consultants than this will typically be your first choice. However, there are many reasons for not hiring a team of consultants. Often, price is a consideration (they tend to be expensive) or budget limitations. Sometimes the experience is that using consultants slows down implementation as there are hand-over issues. Other times, companies are just tired of being over-reliant on consultants for dealing with issues they feel that they should be able to handle themselves.

If you now a) have a complex project, and b) do not want to use external consultants, and c) are convinced that an internal team will deliver "consultancy-grade" results on time, then you are very comfortable and ready to go. However, if your experience with internal project teams dealing with complex issues is that they never deliver on time and never deliver clear and useful conclusions then you have a dilemma. At this moment your choice has traditionally been to either go back and bring in the team of consultants or to accept the weakness of the internal team.

This is the "sweet spot" in which my experience and methodologies are of value. In my experience an internal team can deliver "consultancy grade" results if the team works in the right way. Results which are provided at a fraction of the expense of using a team of consultants, and results which, by definition, have a high degree of buy-in in the organization, and therefore are quickly implemented.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

How to Identify Dangerous Projects

2011-04-28T21:44:00.000+02:00

I often get asked "when do I know which projects require special care or input from external consultants?" My advice is always to analyze and understand the overall complexity of the issue and project. Complex projects are more difficult and fail more often than simple projects, and therefore require more care in setting up and following up (or can better be outsourced to your favorite consultant who is specialized in carrying out complex projects).

The follow-on question is invariably "how do I understand which projects are complex, and how can I compare the overall complexity of projects in my portfolio?" his can be done quite easily by understanding the key drivers of project complexity. The overall complexity of any project is driven by a combination of internal and external factors. External complexity consists of factors related to the overall environment in which the project needs to work. Internal complexity is related to the types of activities that the project is required to carry out and the project's internal organization. A project that scores high on both dimensions of complexity (see diagram) should therefore either be given special care, or be outsourced to an external consultant.

External complexity should be analyzed by looking at four specific drivers. Each individual project will have a different combination of external pressure brought on it through the following drivers:
1. Level of pressure from management to achieve concrete and challenging results
2. Openness of goals to interpretation and level of political elements in goal definition
3. Level of expected uncomfortableness to project participants resulting from project results
4. Required level of communication to various stakeholders for getting the necessary buy-in for conclusions

Each individual project will also vary in its internal complexity. Internal complexity is driven by:
1. Distance of project to day-to-day business
2. Organizational distance of project team members
3. Level of fairly sophicated data collection and analysis required for the project
4. Level of "out of the box" thinking required for developing optimal solutions

In my interaction with my clients, I typically go through these drivers and factors individually, and score them on a scale of 1-5. In a recent discussion this went approximately as follows:
• The corporate sponsor requires that we deliver a very concrete plan to turn this company around and make it profitable. However, our own management have very different and individual views on how this should happen, their plans are always to the benefit of their own department, and we will need to communicate extensively with them in order to get buy-in for any plans that are developed (high scores of first two and last driver of external complexity)
• Potential team members feel very uncomfortable about carrying out this project, as they worry that it will require them to "fire" colleagues (high score on third driver of external complexity)
• The people earmarked to do the project are excellent mid-level managers, but they have never carried out any strategic analysis or developed cost reduction plans (high score on first driver of internal complexity), but the advantage is that they know each other quite well and have worked together on previous projects (low score on second driver of internal complexity)
• The project will require sophisticated data collected and analytics and the solutions the team delivers will need to be innovative and different from our current "business as usual" approach (high scores on the last two drivers of internal complexity

Based on this fairly straight-forward discussion and scoring, we were able to agree that the project was very complex and that special care would be required in setting it up and following it on an ongoing basis. Direct actions from my client included ensuring that the project team had a structured kick-off meeting, and that the team planned in ongoing meetings with him to report back on progress, obstacles, and risks. My input included ensuring that the team carried out appropriate analytics, understood the outcomes, developed appropriate conclusions, and communicated these to all stakeholders. Based on this structured process, the team delivered more than 20 initiatives that will improve profits both in the short and the long term.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Lessons Learnt

2011-04-28T16:06:00.001+02:00

In two previous blog entries I have told you about the turn-around project I carried out with an internal project team. Maybe you are getting sick and tired of hearing about it, but I feel that it was a perfect example of how internal teams can carry out projects that most people think will require a large external team of high-powered consultants. I promise that this will the last update dealing with this theme……….

The key lessons learnt from this process can be divided into general lessons related to the choice for an internal team, and lessons related to how an internal team dealing with such a complex issue can be helped to become successful.

The key lesson must be that internal project teams can successfully deliver "consultancy-grade" results. Sponsors of this project agree that there are only marginal differences between what this team delivered (including the key fact that it delivered on time) and what their favorite top-level consultant would have delivered. In addition, the work carried out by this team has resulted in automatic buy-in through-out the organization, and a fast and (so far) successful implementation.

Key lessons from this project related to ensuring that a team will be successful include:
• Ensure that the right people are made available for the project (skills, attitude, network, etc)
• Give the project a flying start by ensuring that that the goals and expected deliverables have been clearly defined
• Give the team a kick-off that enables the team to take ownership of the project (develop hypotheses and approach, etc)
• Follow-up on work done by individual team members to ensure that it follows a logical and focused structure and gives clear conclusions and recommendations that are supported by facts
• Ensure that the team communicates through-out the whole process (internally in the team, to key stake-holders, etc)

While every situation is specific, I am sure that any project team that follows these fairly generic lessons will be successful. However, the specifics of doing this can be challenging for an organization that is new to this way of working. As evidenced by the testimonials given to me at the end of the project I have played a key role in enabling the success of this team.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Use a project team to plan a turn-around (2/2)

2011-04-21T15:46:00.001+02:00

In my previous blog-post I described how a project team developed a structured overview of the reasons for an engineering company being structurally loss-making. In this post I will give a short overview of the initiatives that were developed to turn the company around and the implementation plan used to ensure that the initiatives will be carried out.

A total of 20 initiatives were developed by the team in four main areas:
•Improved marketing through more focused use of distribution channels, focus on certain segments, and a move away from selling small (loss-making) projects
• Professionalizing the end-to-end process for selling and carrying out projects (clearer scope definition, value- instead of cost-based pricing, improved hand-overs to the engineering teams, more intense follow-up of budgets, etc)
• Large reduction of supporting costs through a detailed added-value analysis of existing activities
• Structural reorganization of the company, leading to less management layers, clearer and more focused responsibilities, etc

Implementation of the 20 initiatives has been closely linked to the new organization structure, with relevant managers having clear responsibility for specific initiatives. Each initiative has been described in detail and including a high-level implementation plan. The first responsibility for the relevant managers is to develop a more detailed plan (in order to develop ownership) for the individual initiatives under his/her responsibility. Progress on the initiatives will be a key element of the weekly management team meetings and will also be including in the monthly meeting with the corporate sponsor.

My latest update from management and corporate sponsors is that implementation is going well, and that they are optimistic that the company will finally become profitable and better positioned in the market.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Use a project team to plan a turn-around

2011-04-14T15:39:00.000+02:00

Some months ago I helped an engineering company plan a turn-around. The engineering company is part of a larger company, and has been consistently loss-making for the last five years. New owners decided that "enough is enough" and asked the management to come up with a restructuring plan. The results of this process were an unchanged strategy, minor changes to the organization, and some ad-hoc cost-saving initiatives.

This resulted in a high level of frustration at the corporate level, and the general opinion was that external consultants would need to be called in. Fortunately, wiser minds prevailed and it was suggested to use my proven approach for enabling internal teams to carry out complex projects successfully.

My first suggestion was to move the responsibility for developing the turnaround plan away from the management team to a separate project team. A team was selected consisting of a fairly young group of female middle-managers who had critical minds, good analytical skills, and the ability to think "outside of the box", and were respected within the organization.

A kick-off meeting was spent agreeing the overall approach to the project. Key outcomes was an agreement on a phased approach (with a clear separation between a first phase focusing on fact-finding and understanding the key issues, and a second phase to develop new initiatives) and use of a hypotheses-driven approach (as used by all major consultants).

In the first step we developed a hypothesis that the engineering company needed to leave behind its current approach to its business (offering a coordinated suite of engineering related services to the same customers) and focus on understanding the intrinsic attractiveness of what should be seen as separate business-areas. The CEO attended this meeting, and defended the existing strategy, but accepted the overall logic suggested by the team.

During the next few weeks the team focused on developing proof for the hypotheses developed in the first meeting. This involved understanding the markets in which the company operated, analyzing the operating processes, and developing a financial overview of the individual business areas and projects. The team agreed that the hypotheses-driven manner of working was helpful as it gave the team clear objectives to work toward and enabled a very focused and effective way of working.

The results of the diagnostic phase supported most (but not all) of the original hypotheses developed by the team. A key finding supported the decision to look at the business areas independently. Different from what we originally believed, it turned out that all the business areas provided a positive contribution to the overall profitability of the business. However, the contribution from each business was small. This was caused by a wide range of marketing and operational issues. Marketing issues included too many small loss-making projects, incorrect pricing methods, and insufficient focus on existing, profitable customers. Operational issues included insufficient planning of projects, low follow-up of budgets, and a lax attitude towards scope creep and up/cross-sell.

The final step in the diagnostic phase was to communicate the findings to the management team and the corporate sponsor of the project. The key challenge with the management team was getting buy-in to the radically different picture of the company that the team presented. Based on the thoroughness of the analysis and the pyramid based presentation this went well. The corporate sponsor was very happy with finally receiving a structured analysis of why the company was loss-making and asked the team to continue with the developed of initiatives and an implementation plan.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Ensure Project Success by Demanding Proposal

2010-11-16T10:51:00.000+01:00

I am sure that most of you have been the sponsor of projects that have not reached their objectives in a satisfactory manner. In these situations, you have probably wondered if you as the sponsor could have done something to make the project a success.

In my experience, there is one action that you as a sponsor can take that will greatly increase the success rate of internal projects. This is to demand that the project manager (and team) develop a proposal similar to what you would expect from an external consultant. You will the need to evaluate the proposal in the same way that you would evaluate a proposal from your consultant. This includes concluding whether the proposal from the internal team:

• Shows that the team truly understands the core issues that you need to have dealt with
• Suggests goals and deliverables that will actually help you deal with your core issues
• Presents an approach that makes sense by suggesting a reasonable set of activities, use of time and resources that both meet your deadlines and are reasonable, and presents a set of milestones that show how the project will move forward and gives you the opportunity to easily understand whether the project is on-track

If you are not satisfied with the proposal you then have the option of sending the project team back to the drawing board or to consider other options (including external consultants).

While a well-structured and agreed proposal is a key success factor, it really shows its value when it is used as part of your top-level management of the project. A key component of this process is to insist that the project team sticks to the agreed deadlines and milestones (as is second nature to external consultants).

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Interesting article in Harvard Business Review

2010-10-07T15:58:00.001+02:00

In the September number of Harvard Business Review there is a very interesting article, "Mistakes Leaders Keep Making", by Robert H. Schaffer. This article highlights four behavioral traps that thwart organizational change. It is an excellent article, and while the focus is on organizational change and the relationship between executives and subordinates, the issues highlighted and the suggested solutions are directly transferable to teams carrying out complex projects. My translation of his behavioral traps to a team setting is:

• Behavioral trap 1 : Executives and sponsors typically fail to set proper expectations for the teams carrying out critical but complex projects

• Behavioral trap 2: Teams carrying out complex projects are not staffed with the appropriate people because they are "too busy" and/or are protected by their line managers

• Behavioral trap 3: It is safer psychologically to "sign a fat check to a consultant and hope for the best"

• Behavioral trap 4: Delays in reaching key milestones are tolerated if the project team is able to point to dependencies to other company activities (we need a new computer system before we can………………..)

I believe that these behavioral traps are very similar to the "seven deadly sins" I have written about in previous blog-entries. This means that these issues can be addressed by going through a step-by-step process to ensure that the internal project is set up correctly, and by carefully carrying out an ongoing quality and timeliness controls. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Getting a Project Team Quickly Up To Speed

2010-03-22T14:24:00.001+01:00

I am currently in the process of carrying out a project at a European energy company. In this project I have helped the project team recover from a disastrous first phase by helping set up a structured and fast start to the second phase of the project.

The project was originally staffed with a team of eleven technical people from across the company. The people chosen for this team represented a wide range of departments that dealt with the technology. The team worked for four weeks, and presented its results. The Steering Committee was disappointed with these results, as it felt that a) the team had not addressed the key issues, and b) had not developed a sufficiently detailed analysis of the "facts and figures" related to the technical elements being analyzed. A number of things went wrong in the first phase, and my key role has been to correct these issues in the second phase of the project.

The main problem the project team faced was that it had too little time to carry out any actual analytics. This was caused by an unrealistic deadline imposed by the steering committee, but also by the project using almost two weeks of the available four weeks in starting up the project and carrying out "team building" activities related to agreeing the goals and deliverables of the project. The excessive time spent on starting up the project was due to a number of inter-linked reasons. The key reasons are cultural, habit, politics, and insecurity in project leadership:
• The company in question is from Northern Europe, where egalitarianism is important. This general cultural trait is strengthened by the culture of the company itself which is also fairly flat in its structure, and believes in everybody having the right to state their opinions. This results in "open debate" being the default solution for setting up this type of projects.
• Habit was in this case mainly driven by the use of an internal process manager, who (rightly or wrongly) believed that this was the way that projects should be run. In this company, the type of team building through the bottom-up development of goals, deliverables, approach, etc is "the thing" that project managers do, and which probably work fairly well in this culture if the project has sufficient time.
• Politics played a key role in this project, as the best way forward for the technological asset being discussed was a highly political issue with extreme differences in opinions across the various departments of the company. This meant that all the team participants felt that they had to "push" their preferred solutions rather than focusing on the work to be done.
• The project leadership (both the formal project manager and the internal process manager) were open about not being used to running this type of complex project. This meant that they were not sure about how best to structure such a project, and were uncomfortable with "pushing" their views in a group of experts.

The second phase of the project was set up to minimize the problems encountered in the first phase and to maximize the probability of the project team being successful. The project started with the project leader. The project leader developed a very clear and structured overview of what the Steering Committee / key sponsors were looking for (goals and deliverables). This was put on paper, and tested with the sponsor / steering committee, and adjusted as required to ensure that the expectations on what will be delivered were 100% clear. Based on this, the project leader developed an overall approach for reaching the goals and deliverables. This plan included a small core team and a realistic estimate of the time required for reaching the agreed deliverables.

When agreement was reached with the steering committee and sponsor the project leader brought together the chosen team, and communicated the results of the first step. He asked the team for comments and feed-back, and adjusted the details of the plan for the good ideas and comments that were given. The structured and hierarchical start of the project meant that this process took less than one week instead of the two weeks in the first iteration of the project, and was also much more efficient as the total man-hours used were 25% of that used the first time around.

The structured and hierarchical start has also meant that politics have been minimized and effective use of the available resources maximized. The core project-related activities have been carried out through a mixture of sub-teams doing specific analytical tasks (within agreed milestones) and presenting and discussing the results with the rest of the project team. The role of the project manager in this phase has been to strictly follow-up on scope (is the team focusing on what they should be doing?), analytics (is the work being carried out correct?), quality of results (are the outputs from the team's work what it needs to be), and coordinating the work of the different work-streams.

At agreed moments the project manger and the core team have brought together the work of the individual teams and developed the overall conclusions and story-line. This has been presented to the whole project team and discussed (and revised) until the team agreed to the overall conclusions. The results were then presented to the steering committee in the form of interactive workshops.

The project is now in the final phase and the results are being discussed with the individual steering committee members before the final presentation. This will ensure a broad agreement to the conclusions that the project has developed and commitment to the follow-up actions suggested by the team.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

The Business case For Improving Complex Projects

2010-02-28T11:26:00.001+01:00

As you probably know, my core business is to help improve the performance of internal teams carrying out complex projects. In discussions with executives concerning input from my side I am often asked to define the business case for using my services. This question has become steadily more usual in the last year, as it has become progressively more difficult for companies to hire in external help.

The direct value of my input is difficult to quantify as my service is secondary. Therefore, my initial reply focuses on helping the executive understand the business case for the project he thinks is in trouble.. If this is non-existent, or very difficult to quantify, my advice is that the project should be stopped. For some projects, such quantification is fairly easy. If the project in question is a cost reduction project, the value of the project is driven by the size and timing of the savings to be implemented. If the project focuses on product development, the value of the project is driven by the revenues and profits expected to result from the new product.

For other types of projects, such quantification is more difficult, but can usually be carried out. For a strategy project, the value can be very high, but the quantification needs to take into account follow-up projects required for implementation, etc. For a reorganization project, the value should come from improved decisions, better use of resources, etc. This is all fairly indirect, but clearly has value.

If the overall project has value, it is then critical to understand that this value can be radically reduced by a number of issues related to how the project is carried out. Any of the "8 deadly sins of complex projects" will lead to such a loss of value, but I will focus on a few concrete examples.

If a project is delayed because it is not meeting its deadlines, then this has a direct effect on the value of the project. Let us assume that the project will increase annual profits by €1 million. This can be the result of a cost reduction program with a €1 million bottom line effect, or a new product launch with annual sales of €4 million, 25% margins, and negligible "fixed" costs. In this case, a one-month delay in the project means that your company will have a one-off (but permanent) loss of €0.1 million in profits.

Lower quality results from the projects will also have direct consequences on the value. Let us assume that the cost reduction project mentioned earlier does not identify all the cost saving opportunities that were available and/or expected. If the project only identifies €0.9 million bottom-line effects instead of the €1 million that is believed to be available, then the annual loss is €0.1 million. In the product development example used earlier, then a fairly minor mistake in the product definition and/or pricing that leads to 3% less revenues will lead the same ongoing annual loss of €0.1 million.

A project team that does not communicate optimally can lead to the same type of value-loss. If the work carried out is good, but the results are not accepted and therefore not implemented, then the loss of value is 100%. If the unsuccessful communication leads to lower buy-in resulting in either delays or only partial implementation then the consequences will be the same as in the previous example (i.e. ongoing annual losses).

My experience is that using the Team Based Consulting methodology to provide structured help to project teams (including the executive sponsor) in a) defining and setting up the project, b) carrying out the project, and c) developing and carrying out a communication process can easily help avoid the type of value-loss given in these examples. Given the fairly focused and limited input that is required from my side to help the internal teams, the business case for such an intervention can almost always be made.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Using Internal Consultants in Complex Projects

2009-12-04T10:33:00.005+01:00

It was recently pointed out to me that a new advisor has started up that assists companies in setting up internal consulting groups. This started me thinking about the possible role that internal consultants can play in improving the way that complex projects are carried out in most companies.

The new advisor is clearing playing in on the trend for large, international companies to set up their own internal consulting groups. These internal organizations are usually staffed with alumni of well-regarded, blue-chip consulting companies, and are then used (sometimes, but not always) instead of external consultants. The paradox that I see from my discussions with executives is that opinions are evenly divided among those having a positive view and those having a negative view on the success of projects carried out by the internal consulting groups.

Some of the executives I speak to tell me that they do not have the typical issues that I usually see with internal teams carrying out complex projects due to the input of the internal consultants. Other executives tell me that even with the presence of internal consultants, their complex projects tend to have many of the issues that I raise and that their projects are therefore often not successful. Based on this, there seems to me to be an issue related to how these internal consultants are being used.

The typical way that they are used by most companies is that the complex projects are outsourced to the internal consultants instead of to external consultants. In other words, a team from the internal consultants group is a replacement for the usual teams of external consultants. This certainly has a number of positive aspects. It will certainly save the company the typically high costs of engaging an external consultant. In addition, the internal consultants have a number of advantages compared to the company's average employees. The internal consultants usually have strong analytical skills, are used to carrying out projects, have fairly high interpersonal skills, and typically know the consulting "tricks of the trade".

While the internal consultants have many of the positive aspects of external consultants, they, unfortunately, also have many of the negative aspects as well. Often, a team coming from the internal consulting group will be viewed as outsiders by the organizational units they are providing assistance to. The team from the internal consultants will typically not have in-depth knowledge of the specific area that the project is dealing with. In addition, it is my experience that internal; consultants often have their own political agenda. The reason many people have switched from a consulting company to an internal consulting organization is that they view this as a stepping stone to a corporate job. These people are therefore often viewed as being on the look-out for situations where they can prove that the current management is doing a bad job so that they can position themselves to take over.

In addition, internal consultants are often viewed as working for top-management, and not having the best interests of the local organization in mind. Finally, using the internal consulting group often brings with it many of the same issues as outsourcing a project to external consultants. A project carried out by internal consultants will typically meet resistance based on the "not invented here" syndrome, and will therefore have low buy-in, typically resulting in a delayed and/or less successful implementation.

My overall conclusion is that there is a role for internal consultants in complex projects. However, they should be given total control of projects only in a limited number of situations. Giving complex projects to an internal consultants group can be a good solution if a) the project is for top management, b) there are specific issues related to speed or secrecy (acquisitions, etc), c) there is a very high need for complex analytics.

In other situations, the internal consultants group should be used as part of the overall resource pool for staffing complex projects across the organization. The staff from this group will typically be extremely well suited for providing the required analytical and communicative skills to the team. However, as shown by the earlier comments made by executives in organizations using internal consultants, even projects staffed by internal consultants should not be left alone, as there is still a good probability that one or more of the eight deadly sins will be committed by the team.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Choosing a Project Leader

2009-11-27T15:44:00.001+01:00

In a recent discussion with a potential client, he told me that he was in the process of setting up a team to lead a cost-reduction project in his 1000 employees company. He explained that this project was crucial to the company's short-term survival, but that he did not want to compromise the company's longer-term competitiveness due to short-term cost reduction initiatives. His question to me was how he could decide which person to ask to lead this crucial project.

I explained that I agreed that putting together the right team would be crucial for enabling the success of this very complex project, and that choosing the project leader was the first, and maybe most crucial, step in this process. However, I also told him that the choice of the project leader could not be looked at independently of the choices required for the rest of the team. We discussed how the key goal of putting together a project team is to have the right mix of skills and experience. We agreed that this boiled down to the members of the team having the right mix of problem solving / analytical skills, interpersonal skills, and technical/functional skills. In addition, the team should span the parts of the organization covered by the project in order to ensure that nobody feels "left out".

The team required for a project depends on the phase of the project being carried out. In this case, the cost reduction project was just starting up (see Determining the Appropriate Deliverables for the First Phase of a Project) and the focus was on developing a detailed understanding of the situation and key issues faced by the company, to make an overview of key changes required (by how much do costs need to be reduced in order to be competitive and profitable?), and to suggest the overall direction of possible improvements. In this case, I explained that the overall team needed to be fairly small, and consist of people that:
·Know the company well enough to understand where the issues and fat lie
·Are not too constrained by "we already tried that…………:"
·Are analytically strong and able to dig up data to support their conclusions and recommendations
·Are able to think "out of the box" and develop strong ideas on how the main processes of the company could be changed (with reduced costs and (often) improved results)
·Are good communicators able to get input from across the company
·Are sufficiently respected within the company that people will listen to them

The potential client told me that he had some people in mind for the project-team, but was worried about their age and knowledge of the company. I told him that in my experience, a team to carry out this type of activities can be quite young, as it often will be easier for them to carry out the analytical tasks and do the "out of the box" thinking. However, this entails that the key role of the project leader will include managing and quality controlling the work of the rest of the team, and being the main interface between the team and the rest of the organizations. Based on this, I explained that the project leader would need to be somebody who has a fair bit of working experience in the company (ideally in different roles), is fairly strong analytically, but not necessarily an Excel-whizz, is able to mentor and manage a team of younger staff, and is able to communicate well with people across the company and at all levels of the organization (see How to Ensure That The Project Team Has Sufficient Interaction with Sponsors and How to Get Buy-In for Project Conclusions and Recommendations) .

In going through the potential candidates for the project leader role, I quickly focused on a candidate with an MBA, and who had gotten to the mid--management level of the company fairly quickly after having worked in two or three jobs across the company and gained experience in different functions related to marketing and production. My potential client explained that it would be extremely difficult to free this person from his current tasks for the duration of the cost reduction project. After a discussion where we talked about how crucial this project REALLY was, he finally agreed that he would need to use the best person for the project.

While this blog is based on a specific example, following the general rules and ideas suggested here will help anybody who is in the process of setting up a complex project.

Ensure that Projects Finish on Time by Avoiding Scope Creep

2009-11-20T12:18:00.002+01:00

In my discussions with executives, the most common complaint they have about internal project teams is that they hardly ever deliver the agreed end-results on time. While there are a number of reasons why this typically happens, one of the most common reasons is scope creep. Scope creep can be defined as the tendency for project team to carry out more work than originally agreed and/or is required for making the project a success. There are two different types of scope creep (external and internal). The reasons for the two types are different, as are the steps required to ensure that it does not happen, or that the consequences are limited. These two types will therefore be described separately.

External scope creep is caused by sponsors or other stakeholders asking the project team to carry out more work than was originally agreed. The natural tendency of most project managers and project teams is to blindly say "yes" without thinking about the consequences. In fact, sometimes extra work is welcomed by the team, as it gives the team an excuse for not finishing on time. The primary responsibility for guarding against external scope creep lies with the project manager.

The project manager needs to guard against scope creep by ensuring that all requests for additional work are known to him. When he is made aware of a request for additional work he should carefully assess whether the requested work fits within the scope of the project and whether it can be done within the agreed resource and time limitations. If this is not the case, then he and the team should discuss the issue with the sponsor and agree the solution. The solution can be a) not performing the extra activities, b) performing the extra activities but dropping another activity, or c) performing the extra activity and extending the available time or increasing available resources. The project manager should use the project charter as the basis for discussions on this topic. While this will not “magically” ensure that the project is completed on time, it will, at the very least, enable a structured discussion on priorities.

Internal scope creep is when the project team decides to do more work than agreed and/or is required for meeting the project goals. A clear example of such a situation is a project I am currently helping. In this project the team consists of people from different technical departments within a large network company. The team has been given the responsibility for developing a telecoms vision for the next ten years. The team has been given considerable freedom in defining its specific deliverables and project approach, but has also been given a very tight deadline. The naturally tendency of such a team is for everybody to raise the issues that are critical for their department, and make suggestions for activities that they personally find interesting. Because the team is democratic in its approach, it is very difficult to prioritize or censor, resulting in a very broad list of activities to be carried out.

My help so far to this team has focused on helping them to understand the exact need driving the request from their management team. Using this, we have been able to focus the goals of the project on helping to resolve the core issues that the management is facing. Using this as a starting point, we have then carefully developed a work plan focusing only on understanding the key drivers for the requirements to be placed on the company's telecom services in the next ten years. In parallel, we are defining a work stream that will help us understand how the telecom service provider environment will evolve. Combining these two activities will enable the team to give the management team the vision it required for making key asset-related decisions.

This step has only given a starting point for controlling scope creep, as the real danger will lie in the day-to-day activities being carried out by the team. We have therefore agreed that in the ongoing review of the activities being carried out by the team members and sub-teams we will use a "scope test". Essentially, this "scope test" consists of a diagram showing the inner-most circle of telecoms related assets, services, requirements, etc, and an outer ring which includes all the direct influencers of the internal ring. If there is doubt about an activity being carried out, it will be placed in the diagram. If it is not located in the two inner-most circles, it will be seen as being out-of-scope and discontinued.

In addition to this "yes/no" decision regarding activities, we have also agreed to have an ongoing dialog on the depth of the analysis being carried out. The team mainly consists of engineers, whose normal work requires 100% accuracy. Given the time frames of this project, this will be impossible. In addition, this level of detail and accuracy is not required for developing the high-level vision required by management. We have therefore agreed to have an ongoing dialog with the team members to prioritize their activities and agree when to stop a given activity. Given my experience in putting together presentations for executive boards, this will be one of my key activities going forward.

In conclusion: scope creep is a very common problem for teams carrying out complex projects. However, the effects can be controlled and minimized by using some fairly simple approaches and tools.

Running a Successful Product Development Project

2009-11-14T15:10:00.002+01:00

In my discussions with executives, innovation, or product development projects, are often given as examples of internal projects that are not successful. When questioned in more detail, usually the "failure" that is being mentioned can be divided into two separate types. The first type of failure is probably the most damaging and frustrating. These failures are usually products that fail in the market place or result in enormous costs and complexity in the production and supply chain process. The second type of failure is less damaging, but probably more frustrating, as it happens more often. This type of failure involves products which are not launched or launched too late.

In my experience, these two types of failures are caused by two different types of problems. The first type (market failure) is typically caused by the product development project having been structured in the wrong way (hand-overs between departments, wrong type of team, etc). The second type of failure (delay) is typically caused by the team being set up, managed, and run in the wrong way. Given this, how can the success rate for product development projects be improved?

The most crucial response is to ensure that the project is set up and staffed in the right way. Product development projects should avoid hand-overs between departments, and therefore need to include a representative of all key departments involved in the process. This will typically include marketing, production, logistics, account management, etc. The chosen project team then needs to be given the end-to-end responsibility for the successful product launch. This responsibility needs to be collective for the whole team, to ensure that they continue to work together across the whole process. In situations where this methodology leads to teams that are too large, careful thinking should be given to working with core and extended teams, and carefully expanding and changing the team composition across time. An excellent explanation of this is given by Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman is their book "x-teams: how to build teams that lead, innovate, and succeed".

Once the right team has been put in place to carry out the end-to-end innovation process, the next challenge is to make sure that the project is successful. A product development / innovation project will typically score highly on both internal and external complexity, and a very high number of the problems that this type of projects face are likely across all three phases of the typical project. However, these problems can be avoided or minimized by ensuring that key pitfalls are avoided.

In the initiation phase of the product development project, great care should be given to ensuring that the team has a clear understanding of the project goals and the deliverables expected from the project. As mentioned earlier, this should be to deliver everything that will be required for the successful launch of the new product. This will entail that the team must come up with the product itself, the production process, the supply chain process, the marketing process, pricing, etc, etc. Naturally, the team will need to get specialist input on a number of these issues, but the total responsibility must be clearly placed with the innovation team.

The team will typically consist of people who have never worked together and who probably do not know each other. This means that the team should be given help in forming themselves into a team. They need to understand what is required to become a successful team, how it is to work as a team, how they can best make use of each other's skills and capabilities, etc. Finally, the team should be helped / forced to develop a realistic plan for how they are going to achieve their goals and deliverables. They should be made to understand that they will be held accountable for this plan (especially the overall timing and milestones).

In the work phase key focus areas should include avoiding scope creep, sticking to the agreed milestones, carrying out the required analytics, and communicating with the sponsors and stakeholder. Scope creep is a common problem is this type of projects, as the team is asked to look into related issues, or dives into too much detail on specific issues. To avoid this, a clear process (involving the sponsor) should be put in place to control this. One of the main challenges the team will need to solve (on a continuous basis) is the optimal split between the activities carried out within the team and the use of external experts. When using external experts timing and milestones can become a major problem, as the external experts will not have the same dedication and focus on meeting deadlines. The team should therefore always have a "plan b" for use if the external expert does not deliver (on time).

In the finalization phase the team will need to develop its overall conclusions and the final deliverables. This will typically include the total plan for launching the new product covering all the issues mentioned earlier. In addition, the team will need to develop and carry out a communication process. In my experience, this is something that innovation teams often overlook. Their implicit assumption is that the rest of the organization will automatically accept their conclusions and recommendations. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Therefore the team must carefully consider who the stakeholders are, what their "hot buttons" are, and how they can be convinced to accept the team's conclusions.

It is in the nature of the process that not all innovation projects are successful. However, it is my experience that companies that make use of a structured process as described in this article, have a much higher success rate than other organizations.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Has Your Project-Team Considered All the Key Dimensions of the Problem?

2009-11-07T08:38:00.000+01:00

Many readers have mentioned to me that they feel that a lot of the projects they sponsor (even the successful ones) are often on "automatic pilot". This typically happens once the project teams feel that they understand the problem and have decided on what they believe to be the most appropriate direction for solving the key issues facing the project. The consequences from this can be severe. The most dangerous consequence is often that key aspects of the problem are overlooked. More common is that the team has not analyzed all the relevant dimensions to the problem, and therefore has not developed complete and optimal solutions.

An example of a similar situation from my own work was a project-team in the insurance sector that was developing a new structure for a company in response to key legislative changes. A key component of the project team's work was to look at the key business drivers for succeeding in the new environment. In a meeting the team presented their key hypotheses, which seemed to make sense. However, a clarifying question was asked about one of the success-drivers suggested by the team, and this lead to a broad discussion in which several new success drivers were identified which the team had not considered. Luckily, this did not happen in the final presentation to a SteerCo, but in a pre-meeting.

This type of situation can easily be avoided by borrowing a methodology used by consultants called a Blue Team (sometimes it has a different name). The methodology helps ensure that project teams are shaken out of the "automatic pilot mode" and have considered all relevant aspects before the end of the project. This methodology can easily be adapted to internal project teams as well, and is guaranteed to improve the overall quality of the work delivered.

A Blue Team is a structured meeting typically held once, maybe twice, during a project. In this meeting, the project team gives a short presentation on what it believes to be the key issues (if the meeting is early in the project) or key hypotheses (if the meeting is later in the project). The presentation is given to an invited group of people who are not directly involved in the project. The guest list for the Blue Team should include people with relevant knowledge and experience to the issues being dealt with by the project. Typically the people invited have market knowledge, technical expertise, and/or process experience.

The invited group needs to be able to quickly understand the issues being discussed, and is meant to be critical in the questions they ask, the comments they give, and the suggestions they make. However, the participants also need to understand that their comments and questions are meant to be helpful to the team. The Blue Team therefore needs to find a balance between criticism and support. One way of achieving this is to clearly state upfront that the process is meant to help the project team, and therefore only the project team can decide how to use the criticisms, ideas, and suggestions coming out of the meeting.

Even in the best of cases, the Blue Team is tough on the project team, as they (by definition) will get criticism on the work that they have carried out. Given the psychological barriers related to receiving criticism, even a project team with good previous experiences may have to be forced to carry out the Blue Team. My recommendation is therefore to make Blue Teams a standard part of all complex projects that you sponsor, thereby avoiding any choice or discussion on the process.

Using Project Management Offices in Complex Projects

2009-10-26T17:37:00.001+01:00

Occasionally I meet potential clients who do not believe that they need external input for making their complex projects more successful. I know that this is hard to believe, but it does happen……………Very often these executives say that they do not need any outside help because they have a Project Management Office (PMO) that fills this role (i.e. making sure that projects run well). This has always bothered me for two reasons. Firstly, I clearly believe that I can offer valuable input to (almost) any organization carrying out complex projects. Secondly, I often see these same organizations outsourcing projects to external consultants, so there are clearly projects that they believe cannot be handled by their internal teams.

Recently, my thinking on this was brought into focus by an executive from a media company who asked me a slightly different question. He explained that he had mixed results in using people from his PMO in complex projects, and was wondering how he could make best use of them in these situations. There are clearly three alternatives here: 1) Give your PMO total responsibility for this type of projects, 2) make no use of PMO-staff for complex projects, or 3) an intermediate solution.

The cases that I have seen where complex projects have been given to the PMO have generally been a disaster. While Project Management Offices have an important role to play in many organizations, it is important to understand their limitations. In most companies, PMO's have been set up to provide project management for what I call standard projects. These are projects that are closely linked to the core business of the company, and which therefore do not deal with external complexity (openness of goals to interpretation, uncomfortable goals, high degree of communication required) or internal complexity (distance of project from day-to-day business, organizational distance of project participants, sophisticated data collection, and a requirement for "out of the box" thinking). This means that when the PMO uses their "standard" tools on these projects, the results are terrible.

On the other hands, I believe that not using the skills available within the PMO is also a shame, as it is clear that they do have project experience that can be valuable in a wide range of projects. Therefore, the optimal solution is not to give the complex projects to the PMO, but to definitely use the PMO pool of people in staffing the project.

The next question asked by the executive then concerned the role of the PMO-staff in the complex project. Should he use somebody from the PMO as the project leader? In my opinion, this can work, but it is not very likely that this will an optimal choice. Somebody from the PMO will clearly have the required project management skills, but is not likely to score high on other crucial dimensions driving the choice for project leader. These include having sufficient knowledge about the key issues to be covered by the project. Examples of issues where PMO-staff would be unlikely to have sufficient knowledge include a project to look at a new, dramatically different production process, or a strategic pricing project. Somebody from the PMO is also unlikely to have sufficient respect among key stakeholders to be able to "sell" politically difficult conclusions and recommendations.

Using PMO-staff as a participant in a complex project is possible. However, it will not be sufficient if all the person brings to the project are his project management skills. The PMO-staffer will also need to bring some combination of the three skills required of all participants (technical and functional skills directly related to the issues to be solved, analytical skills, and interpersonal skills). If the PMO-staffer has the right combination of these skills for the project, then his additional project management skills can be an asset, and enable him to help the project leader deal with this type of issues.

In conclusion, I would not recommend giving the PMO the responsibility for complex projects. There will also not be many situations where somebody from the PMO is an ideal candidate for leading a complex project. However, using people from the PMO in certain complex projects can be useful, but only if they have additional skills that can be utilized.

How to Get Buy-In for Project Conclusions and Recommendations

2009-10-16T18:05:00.003+02:00

In a recent discussion with a client in the telecoms sector he told me that one of the biggest differences he sees when comparing his internal project teams to the top-notch consulting teams he sometimes uses, is the latter's ability to ensure buy-in for their conclusions and recommendations. His two questions were why the internal teams were not capable of achieving such buy-in, and what could be done about it.

Luckily, there are simple answers to both questions. In my experience, the main reason why internal project teams do not get buy-in for their conclusions and recommendations is that they do not know that a communication process is required. Usually, when I ask the team what went wrong, the answer they give is along the lines of "Nothing went wrong. We carried out the project, and presented the results to the steering committee. What else should we have done?"

This way of looking at the problem is based on a combination of factors. The first factor is related to the scope of the project, as the team has often not been explicitly told that getting buy-in for their conclusions is part of the project deliverable. Secondly, many teams (especially those with a strong technical representation) have a low understanding of the political issues related to their projects. As a consequence, they believe that "the facts will speak for themselves". Thirdly, team members who are not experienced in working on complex projects will typically develop final presentations that focus on the process that the team has followed, rather than the conclusions that they have made. This often means that the conclusions and recommendations are not clearly communicated. Finally, the project team does not usually have any experience in dealing with the group processes that typically take place within a steering committee, nor do they think about also presenting to other stakeholders who may not be represented in the steering committee.

There are three main activities that I tell my clients that need to be carried out to help the project team get the required buy-in and acceptance for project conclusions. The first of these actions needs to take place at the beginning of the project when the sponsor must clearly communicate that the project team bears responsibility for getting the required buy-in and acceptance. The second and third activities by the sponsor takes place at the beginning of the final phase of the project, when the sponsor should force and help the project team to develop a communication plan and must help the team to develop a structured final presentation (using a tool such as the Pyramid Principle). The final point will not be covered in this blog.

When I help teams develop a communication plan, we begin by making an overview of all relevant stakeholders that have an interest in the conclusions and recommendations being developed by the project team. Stakeholders who are expected to be negative towards the results are the most important to identify. For each stakeholder an overview is developed of their "hot buttons" and the dimensions of the solution to which they will need to agree. A detailed plan will then need to be developed outlining how these key issues will be communicated to the individual stakeholders.

The individual members of the steering committee should also be seen as stakeholders. This means that 1-on-1 meetings are planned with them before the final steering committee presentation. In this individual pre-meeting the SteerCo member have the opportunity to ask specific and detailed questions which then do not have to be raised in the overall meaning. In addition, any specific issues that the SteerCo member has raised in the 1-on-1 meeting can then be addressed in a structured manner in the overall presentation.

Carrying out these fairly simple and straight-forward activities aligns the internal project team with the overall methods used by top-tier consultants, and have resolved most of the issues related to the internal team's ability to get acceptance and buy-in for its conclusions and recommendations in the projects that I have carried out at my clients.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Determining the Appropriate Deliverables for the Finalization Phase of a Project

2009-10-11T22:27:00.001+02:00

In previous blog entries I have suggested what the generic goals and deliverables should be for the first two phases of a complex project. This blog-entry will suggest what the generic goals and deliverables should be for the finalization phase of a complex project.

When a team enters the finalization phase of a complex project, it typically has carried out most (or all) of the key analytical activities that are required for meeting the specific project goals. The overall success of the team's work in this phase is very much determined by the work that has been carried out in the previous phase. In addition, there is seldom an explicit borderline between the project phase and the finalization phase, as the process can be iterative in nature as insights are developed and final analytical activities are carried out.

In this final phase, the main goal of the project team will be to develop and communicate the overall deliverables that have been agreed for the project. However, even if the work in the previous phases has been carried out successfully, there are still two aspects that can go seriously wrong in the finalization phase of a complex project:

- The project team is unable to develop clear-cut conclusions and recommendations based on the work they have carried out
- The team does not communicate its findings appropriately (to the right people and in the right way)

In my experience, complex projects are helped by defining a number of generic deliverables specifically for this phase that are related to avoiding these pitfalls. These generic deliverables will help ensure that the overall goals of the project are met on time and within agreed budgets, and will help ensure that project recommendations are actually implemented.

Deliverable Nr. 1: Clear conclusions and recommendations. This may seem obvious, but one of the most typical problems with internal teams carrying out complex projects is that they do not provide conclusions and recommendations. The requirement that the team must provide clear recommendations needs to be clearly stated at the beginning of the project, but should be re-iterated at the beginning of the finalization phase. This will ensure that the team understands that they are expected to come up with actionable conclusions ("go left" or "go right" not "it is possible to go left or to go right"). The specific deliverable should be a (short) presentation to the sponsor on what the team believes that the conclusions / recommendation coming out of the project are.

Deliverable Nr. 2: A pyramid supporting the conclusions / recommendations. The Pyramid Principle is a tool used by consultants to force the project team to develop a logical supportive structure for their conclusions. The basic methodology is well-defined and easy to learn. Developing a pyramid will serve both as a logical test of the conclusion / recommendation (do the results of our analysis support what we want to say?), as well as providing an excellent starting point for developing presentation and reports for the communication process. The pyramid can be tested with the sponsor at the same meeting as the suggested conclusions and recommendations.

Deliverable Nr. 3: A communication plan. Most internal project teams only work toward a final presentation to the steering committee. This often leads to problems because presenting new material to a steering committee often leads to surprises and unwillingness from the steering committee in accepting the conclusions and recommendations. A process should be put in place that allows the individual members of the steering committee to see the final presentation individually before the final presentation so that they can give their opinions, and ask their specific questions. In addition to the steering committee there are usually also other stake-holders to need to be informed in order to ensure buy-in and implementation.

If you can honestly say at the beginning of the finalization phase of your project that all of these generic deliverables will be developed, then the project has greatly enhanced its chances of successfully reaching its overall goals in such a way that the conclusions and recommendations will be accepted and implemented.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Determining the Appropriate Deliverables for the Work Phase of a Project

2009-10-02T10:48:00.001+02:00

In a previous blog-entry I described the optimal deliverables for the initial phase of a project. This blog-entry will suggest what the goals and deliverables should be for the work phase of a complex project.

The work phase of a project typically covers the most time in the overall project plan and is, in my definition, the part of the project where the basic analytical and development-related activities are carried out. While the success of this phase is determined for a large part by key deliverables developed in the first phase of a complex project, there are a number of things that typically go wrong in this phase of a project as well. Typical examples of things that go wrong include:

- There is insufficient communication and feedback to the project sponsor
- The team work within the project is not optimal
- There is limited control of the project process (timing, scope creep, etc)
- There are insufficient and/or incorrect analytical activities being carried out
- There is not any process in place to control the hypotheses and conclusions being developed by the project team

This phase of the complex project is very likely to have a set of project-specific deliverables related to reaching the overall goals of the project. Examples of such project-specific deliverables could include carrying out a specified set of interviews, developing a spreadsheet model, collecting data, developing assumptions, setting out a new set of processes, etc. In addition to these project-specific deliverables, we believe that every complex project should also strive to develop a set of more general deliverables at the start of the work phase. These generic deliverables will help ensure that the overall goals of the project are met on time and within agreed budgets.

Deliverable Nr. 1: A well defined process for regular communication with the sponsor. This involves planning regular meetings between the sponsor and the project manager and team members, as well as creating the opportunity for ad-hoc meetings on an as-required basis.

Deliverable Nr. 2: An overall setting that enable the team to work together optimally. This deliverable includes a set of activities that ensure that the team members are able to use the time allocated for the project, and that as much of this time as possible is spent working together. One way of achieving this involves ensuring that the project has its own project room, and that the team members commit to being in the room at given times during the week.

Deliverable Nr. 3: A clearly defined process and appropriate tools for ensuring that milestones are met. This should include regular reports to the Steering Committee, and agreed processes to discuss and agree any expansion of scope.

Deliverable Nr. 4: Ongoing training activities for project team members to ensure that they carry out the right analytical activities in the right way. Typical team members in a complex project are not aware of all possible analytical activities that can move their project forward, nor do they have the experience to carry out these activities. A clear deliverable for ensuring project-success should therefore be the ability to provide ad-hoc analytical training and support to the team.

Deliverable Nr. 5: A Blue Team to provide feedback and constructive criticism on the project team's hypotheses and conclusions. A Blue Team is a structured meeting where the project team presents its hypotheses and potential solutions to a selected team external to the project. Such meetings have a proven track-record in improving the overall quality of projects

If you can honestly say at the beginning of the work phase of your project that all of these deliverables have been developed, then the project has greatly enhanced its chances of successfully carrying out the specific project-related analytical and developmental activities required for reaching the project goals in a timely manner.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Determining the Appropriate Deliverables for the Initial Phase of a Project

2009-09-25T11:00:00.001+02:00

All complex projects consist of three basic phases: the initial (or preparatory) phase; the project (or work) phase; and the finalization phase. Each of these phases has its own challenges and pitfalls. These can be avoided by having a clear picture of what should be achieved in each of these phases. This blog-post will suggest what the goals and deliverables should be for the first phase of a complex project.

In my experience, there are a number of things that typically go wrong in the first phase of a project that severely reduce the probability of the project finishing successfully. The most common pitfalls I see in the first phase are:

- The project is not set up to deal with the right issues
- The optimal links are not developed between the sponsor and the project team
- The right resources are not allocated to the team (primarily people and time, sometimes access to expertise and/or money)
- The individuals who are assigned to the project team are not developed into a team

My suggestion is therefore that the primary goals of the preparatory phase of a project should all be focused on ensuring that these pitfalls are avoided. Reaching these goals will entail a set of activities involving the sponsor of the project, the project leader, and the team members. These activities should result in a clear set of deliverables for the preparatory phase of the project.

Deliverable Nr. 1: The appropriate sponsor for the project. This should be somebody who has an interest for the key issues to be resolved through the project, and has the time and energy to spend considerable time on the project.

Deliverable Nr. 2: The optimal project manager. The project manager needs to be a person with an affinity and understanding to the key areas to be covered by the project, the right motivation for making the project a success, and the right skills for carrying out the project.

Deliverable Nr. 3: The appropriate goals, deliverables, targets, and scope for the project. This deliverables will initially be developed in an interaction between the sponsor and the project manager, and will later be changed to reflect initial discussions with the project team.

Deliverable Nr. 4: The optimal team for carrying out the project. The composition of suggested team needs to reflect the issues that the project is dealing with, and needs to include the right mixture of skills. These can typically be divided into technical and functional skills, analytical skills, and interpersonal skills.

Deliverable Nr. 5: A realistic plan for carrying out the project. This deliverable should focus on the overall timing of the projects and intermediate milestones. The important dimension of this deliverable is that the suggested timing is realistic and is accepted by all the project team members.

Deliverable Nr. 6: A cohesive team that has joint ownership for reaching the goals and deliverables of the project within the agreed timeframe. This is a "soft" deliverable that is difficult to definitely "tick off", but a set of activities should be defined that will increase the probability of the deliverable being reached. I do not believe in stand-alone team-building activities. Therefore, my recommendation is that the key activity for achieving this is a formal (and structured) kick-off session. This session should include a "get to know" session, a training session on how to become an effective and successful team, a training session in key analytical tools, an explanation of the project (background, goals, and deliverables), and a discussion on the approach and development of a detailed work plan.

If you can honestly say at the end of the first phase of your project that all of these deliverables have been developed, then the project has greatly enhanced its chances of ending successfully. The project can then move to the next phase which will involve carrying out the key activities required for developing the overall project-specific deliverables of the project.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

The Eighth Deadly Sin

2009-09-18T14:17:00.001+02:00

All of you who have read my previous material know that I often speak about the Seven Deadly Sins of complex projects. Through discussions with some of my clients over the summer, I have become aware of what can be seen as the Eighth Deadly Sin. I also must admit that it says something about my long tenure in large consulting companies that this issue was not included in my original list of project problems.

The new "Deadly Sin" was brought forward by a Board member responsible for a group of project managers carrying out transformational projects across a large number of European subsidiaries. He explained that there had been a number of situations where a project lead by one of his managers had worked well and delivered a new, improved process at one of the subsidiaries. There had been a presentation to the SteerCo and with the help of some input from the Board sponsor the SteerCo had agreed to the suggested changes and the high-level implementation plan. However, six months later it turned out that the issues that the new processes were meant to address (late deliveries, low customer satisfaction, etc) had not improved and that the root cause of this was that the new processes had not been implemented. We had a broad discussion of what the reasons for this were, and agreed that one of the core reasons was that there was seldom any structured follow-up of the agreements that had been made at the end of the design phase of the project.

This problem will certainly be included in an updated version of an overview of why projects go wrong (even though "Eight Deadly Sins" does not have the same recognition-factor as "Seven Deadly Sins"). I also have to admit that the main reason that I did not include this in my original list is that the type of blue-chip consultants where I have worked earlier are usually only involved in the early phases of the projects, and are less concerned with the actual implementation. This is, of course, one of the main reasons for using internal project teams with end-to-end responsibilities that includes implementation.

Why are the results of projects not implemented? There are a number of core reasons (some quite valid) for this:

• Very often teams are more optimistic than actually warranted about the real buy-in and acceptance that they have created for their conclusions and recommendations

• Environmental changes may make the agreed changes less attractive than originally believed. An example is if the success of an agreed change to a delivery process is dependent on a new product being launched, but the launch has been delayed

• Priorities within the organization may change. An example could be if the local company has to focus all its free resources on meeting the threat of a new product launch from its main competitor

• The natural inclination of people to give higher priority to the activities that are required for making "today" successful

Issues related to truly getting the required buy-in and acceptance need to be dealt with in earlier stages of the project (see blog entries on interacting with sponsors, dealing with key stakeholders, and getting buy-in for conclusions). The other factors can be successfully dealt with by firstly developing sufficiently detailed implementation plans as part of the overall project deliverables and then putting in place and using a pro-active and structured benefits tracking process. Such a benefits tracking process should follow-up on the overall implementation plan and key milestones, it should measure the fulfillment of agreed targets, and it should include the opportunity to report back on changes in environmental factors and priorities. If the benefit tracking process needs to follow-up on a number of projects (as part of an overall program), then the benefits tracking process should also be multi-layered and focused on exceptions where decisions need to be made rather than giving the same level of detail on all projects.

The advantages of such a benefits tracking system are many, and include:

• There is even more pressure on the project to deliver good work and ensure buy-in as they know the quality of their work will be followed up

• Even if buy-in for the conclusions and recommendations coming out of the project is not 100%, it becomes more difficult not to carry out agreed actions if they are being followed up

• Pro-active follow-up will enable a top-down understanding of environmental developments and changes in priorities, and will allow the development of an agreed "Plan-B"

• The fact that implementation is being followed up makes action much more likely as people will feel the pressure of upcoming milestones and deadlines

Based on the assumption that the project is only successful when the required changes have actually been implemented, ensuring overall buy-in for the results and following up on implementation should be seen as core parts of the overall project. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Complexity Reduction For Structurally Improving Profitability

2009-09-11T14:06:00.001+02:00

For most of you, the complexity of your business has increased over the last ten years. Key reasons for this include increased competition, the need for segmented offers for meeting specific customer requirements, new technologies, etc. While this may have lead to higher revenues, it has more often than not also lead to structural increases in capex and higher operational costs through-out the supply-chain. In addition, I have seen numerous companies where increased complexity has lead to difficult and slow innovation processes, seriously hampering the companies’ abilities to meet new competitive threats and/or market opportunities.

Today, I see that many companies believe that complexity reduction is a fairly easy way to reduce costs. A project is started to carry out a Pareto analysis of revenues across products, and typically sees that the 80/20 rule holds, and that the tail is not profitable. The project then suggests that the 10% of the product portfolio having the lowest sales are terminated. In spite of protests from marketing & sales this is then carried out. Results, however, are more often than not disappointing, or even non-existent.

In my experience, complexity-reduction is a critical activity for a majority of businesses. While complexity-reduction in the restaurant business appears to be fairly easy, in most companies I consult to it needs to be carried out in a structured and well thought out manner where:

• It is understood that not all complexity is bad, and that the crux is to get and keep the right level of complexity for your specific company situation

• It is realized that the process is complex, will take time, and will result in only limited “low-hanging fruit” opportunities

• It is possible to put a well-organized and broadly supported project team in place to carry out the project.

If you believe that your company is suffering from too high complexity, my experience is that you will need to put in place a project to carefully consider a number of inter-linked aspects related to complexity. The first step in the process will be to understand the complexity in your organization. This will involve understanding the true complexity drivers of your current business. Typical examples include number of customers, number of products (at the lowest level of detail), number of packaging variations, number of ingredients, number of technologies, etc.

You will also need to understand the value of your market-facing complexity (i.e. those aspects which your customers see). This will involve understanding the reasons for the variations in your market-offering, analyzing the value that your customers place on the variation offered, and deciding what the consequences would be of reducing the variety you offer to the market-place. The final analytical activity will involve understanding the costs of complexity by going through a detailed activity-based costing exercise to allocate costs to the different complexity drivers (products, customers, etc).

The next step will involve carrying out a direct pruning of the product portfolio based on the preceding analytics. This portfolio reduction will not focus on the tail of the product portfolio, but will rather seek out products where the strategic value is low and costs can truly be reduced either due to a negative margin or through specific opportunities to reduce overhead through the removal of one or more products from the portfolio.

In addition to reducing the complexity that is visible to your customers, the project team will also need to look at opportunities to reduce below-the-skin (i.e. not visible to your customers) complexity. At one of my large telco clients, this is one of the key issues they are facing. They currently provide many services that are similar from a client perspective, but which are delivered through different technologies. The company is now going through a process to move delivery of all services to one platform, and expects that this will result in major savings. However, it is finding this process challenging as it requires a broad coordination across the commercial and technical organizations.

While these activities related to reducing customer-facing and internal complexity will provide you with considerable benefits through the one-off reduction in complexity, my experience is that complexity will quickly creep back if structural changes are not made to key processes. The most important process to change is the innovation / new product development process. The key goal of the changes to this process is to ensure that only complexity that truly adds value is allowed in new products. A key change to enable this is to ensure that all complexity costs are included in the business case for the new product. In addition, the improved innovation process should ensure that the production of the new product minimizes internal complexity by pushing for the use of modular designs, re-use of components, etc.

Finally, the complexity-reduction team will need to put in place (or improve) a portfolio management process to ensure that an overall portfolio view is taken in decisions related to new products, and that regular reviews are carried out to discontinue low-value / end-of-lifecycle products.

While the described process is intense and requires a substantial investment in time and resources the returns are also substantial both in reduced costs and extra revenues through faster time-to-market for critical new products. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Helping a Project Team Develop Meaningful Conclusions

2009-09-04T14:02:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the last of these signs, a situation where it is difficult to pin the team down on any meaningful conclusions.

Why is this a problem? A key assumption is that the project is meant to develop conclusions and recommendations. There may be projects that have been given a responsibility for "collecting all information". However, in my opinion such a project would be very wasteful. There may be projects that have been asked to only collect data and analyze data about a given issues. In my opinion this is a wrong way to set up a project, as it is impossible to carry out any meaningful analysis without having a goal and a set of hypotheses leading to conclusions.

Assuming that the core reason for the project is to develop conclusions about a key issue, then it is naturally a problem if the project team does not seem interested in doing so. In addition, this is often a fairly scary problem, as it will typically come to light late in the process (sometimes not until the final presentation). This problem therefore can, make most, if not all, of the effort and resources that have been invested in the project a waste.

What is my advice to you, as the project sponsor, to avoid this problem? The most important input from your side is at the beginning of the project. You need to start the project off with clearly defined goals, and deliverables that are very explicit regarding the type of conclusions and recommendations that you expect. You will also need to follow up on the project regularly (default is weekly) to ensure that the project is sticking to its plan and going in the right direction (i.e. will it be able to deliver the required conclusions and recommendations).

When I am helping my clients make complex projects successful I ensure that regular meetings take place with the project team (and sponsor). These regular meetings serve a number of purposes, but should also be used to ensure that the project team is working with hypotheses. Doing so will enable me to test whether proving the hypotheses will bring the team closer to its final goals. In addition, and even more importantly, working with hypotheses enables the project team to work much more effectively and efficiently. Finally, I always strongly suggest that the team is forced to test its conclusions in a Blue Team. This is a meeting with experts who are not directly involved in the project where key ideas and potential conclusions are tested, and the participants are asked for input on key issues and complications.

The previous suggestions are only helpful if the project is starting up or is fairly early in the process. What can you do if you are at the end of the project, and the team does not seem to be close to developing any conclusions? I am often called in to help in this type of situation, and it requires some fairly intense input to correct. The first step is to sit down with the team and go through the overall process of the project. I usually start with a review of the key starting points for the project, and then discuss and agree the goals and deliverables that were given to the project. These should be presented as clearly leading to conclusions and recommendations.

I then go through the work that the team has carried out and find the key data points that have come out of their analytics. These data are discussed with the team with the goal of agreeing what they mean. This is then developed into (preliminary) conclusions. These conclusions then need to be stress-tested. Are they robust? Are they well-supported? If the answer is "yes", the team can start thinking about the communications phase. If the answer is "no", the team and the sponsor need to check how much time is available, and agree the very specific activities that will make the conclusions more robust. The work that the project team carries out in this phase must be followed up very intensely to ensure that every moment is spent on work to make the conclusions more robust.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Dealing With a Project That is Not Meeting Deadlines

2009-08-28T13:56:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the seventh of these signs, a project that is not meeting deadlines.

Why is this a problem? In my discussions with executives across the world, the first complaint that they usually give about internal project teams is that they do not deliver the end-results of the project on time. You can be pretty sure that a project that is not meeting interim deadlines is highly likely not to meet the final deadlines as well (independent of what your project manager tells you).

In addition to this, I find that delays to intermediate deadlines are very often a sign of other potential issues. Typically, the delays are caused by the team not being able to make sufficient time available for the project, the team spending too much on the wrong activities (such as data gathering or interviews), or the team being very uncomfortable with the basic premises of the project (background, goals, expected deliverables, etc).

What can you as a project sponsor do if one of the project teams that you are responsible for is missing intermediate deadlines? My key message is not to let it slide, as it is very unlikely that the problem will go away by itself. The first action you need to take is to sit with the team and demand a fairly detailed explanation of why deadlines that have been agreed in their project plan have been missed (this assumes that the team has had input to the plan and has accepted the key deadlines in this plan). In this discussion, you should be prepared to dig beyond the standard answers to uncover the true reasons for the delays. A standard answer you will hear is that the team has not had sufficient time to carry out the activities. This is almost always true, but should have been known to the team when they agreed to the project plan. You therefore need to push the responsibility for sticking to the plan firmly back to the team.

However, I do also see situations where the project team's opportunity to allocate time to the project has decreased due to changes in priorities within the organization. If you are facing this situation, you will need to be prepared to act. You will need to understand what these new issues are and why they require time from members of your project. You will need to discuss alternatives with the other executives claiming time from your team members. If it is not possible to solve the issues related to the available time, you will need to develop (together with the team) alternative plans. This can involve reducing the scope of the project, delaying key milestones, or adding resources. Each of these solutions has its own pros and cons and needs to be analyzed in the specific context of the project and the organization.

However, in my experience, the most usual reason for a team not meeting deadlines is that the delays are caused by the project team spending too much time on certain activities (i.e. data collection, analytics, etc). If this is the case, you as the sponsor must be prepared to dig deep for the real reasons for this. You will also need to hammer home the need to stick to deadlines. You should also communicate that 100% knowledge is impossible, and that you trust the team to come up with good conclusions and recommendations in the time that they have been given (and have agreed). In this case, you will also need to help the team prioritize its activities going forward in order to get back on plan. My final recommendation is to keep a close eye on the team going forward. This is based on my experience that once a team has shown an inclination not to meet deadlines, it is likely to do so again.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

How to Ensure That Key Stakeholders Are Sufficiently Aware of the Project

2009-08-21T13:47:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the sixth of these signs, a project where key stakeholders are not aware of the project.

Why is this a problem? This is a problem because input from stakeholders is required both for increasing the overall quality of the project results and for getting key recommendations implemented. Stakeholders can be defined as the people within the organization who are interested in the results of the project because they can be impacted by the conclusions and recommendations coming out of the project. Key stakeholders can include managers from specific organizational units (marketing, production, etc), but also unions (in the case of cost-reduction projects).

If the project team has not had any (or only very limited) contacts with key stakeholders it is very unlikely that all key issues that are important to these stakeholders have been included in the overall project analytics. In addition, it is even more unlikely that the stakeholders will have a positive opinion about the project and the project results as they will feel left out of the process and not listened to. As a result, it will be very difficult for the project team to carry out an optimal communication process in the end phase to create the buy-in necessary for implementation. This will mean that the end-phase is likely to be difficult and unpleasant, and that the resistance to the project conclusions will be high.

In many of my projects I find that this is one of the corrective actions that need to be carried out. The best way to do this is to plan a meeting with the project team (again). The key goal of this meeting is to discuss and agree who the key stakeholders are, and what their most important issues are. Based on this, the team develops a concrete plan to sit down with each (type of) stakeholder. In these stakeholder meetings the team should present the project (what are the key starting points, the issues that the project is dealing with, the overall goal, the key deliverables, and the approach) and what the team believes the potential interests of the stakeholder are.

Usually, I need to explain to the team that they must listen very carefully to what the stakeholder has to say. Key points that need to be understood by the team include what the stakeholders sees as the key issues, and how they believe that these issues should be dealt with. I highlight that it is important that the project team does not make any promises (explicit or implicit) regarding how the issues will be dealt with as this will seriously compromise the ability of the team to come up with the optimal answer. Rather, the key goal is that the team knows what the viewpoints of the stakeholder are, and that the stakeholder feels that he has been listened to.

Together with the sponsor, I typically plan a new meeting with the project team after they have seen the key stakeholders. In this meeting we discuss the viewpoints presented by the stakeholders, and agree what the team needs to do in order to ensure that these issues are dealt with in an optimal manner. In addition, an ongoing set of meetings is planned with key stakeholders. The emphasis of these meetings will gradually change from getting information to presenting and testing key hypotheses and possible conclusions and recommendations.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Ensuring That the Project Team Has Sufficient Interaction With Sponsors

2009-08-15T13:41:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the fifth of these signs, a project a team that has very limited interaction with sponsors.

Why is this a problem? This is a leading indicator for problems because it means that the project team is not using a key resource for advancing the project. The project team should be using the sponsors to a) check that that the project is heading in the right direction and to get guidance on key issues, b) to get information about key environmental changes that can have an impact on the project, c) to use the sponsors to help deal with logistical issues (getting into the agenda of key information sources, getting additional resources and/or data, etc), and d) to pre-communicate and test key findings and possible conclusions / recommendations.

If the team is choosing not to use this resource, delays are very probable (as limited time is likely to be the reason that the project team is not seeing the sponsors), and, most importantly, quality of the project results will suffer. Lower quality will primarily be a consequence of not having given the sponsors the opportunity to provide corrective input if the team is going in a wrong direction (due either to wrong assumptions or changes in business environment). In addition, timing and deadlines are likely to suffer due to the project team not using the sponsors pro-actively for logistical issues. Finally, getting overall acceptance for key recommendations is likely to be more difficult if the project team has not pre-communicated initial ideas and preliminary conclusions to important sponsors.

What do I do when I see this problem? A key complexity in this situation is that it is very likely that the main sponsor is part of the problem. The first part of my solution therefore involves a discussion with the sponsor where I ask a series of questions. Does the team understand that you want to be involved? Have you made time available for the team when they have requested this, or have you cancelled the last three meetings?

If the sponsor agrees that he/she is part of the problem, then he/she will need to make a special effort to help get the team back on track. My advice to the sponsor is usually to call in the team for a meeting, and set a clear agenda for the meeting. The agenda should cover issues such as overall progress, key issues the team is facing, logistical road-blocks, initial ideas and theories, etc. The meeting should end with an agreement to meet again in the near future, and an agreed plan to meet the other project sponsors. Typically, I need to explain to the sponsor that he/she will to help the team set up these meetings. My experience with getting the sponsor more involved is that the team is very happy with this input, and that it often is possible to get the project back on track fairly quickly.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Helping a Team Carry Out Meaningful Analytics

2009-08-09T13:32:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the fourth of these signs, a project a team that does not appear to be doing any meaningful analytics.

Why is this a problem? There are two main reasons why this should worry you. The first is that it is extremely difficult to conceive of a complex and important project that does not require any analytical activities to arrive at the required conclusions (if the answer was easy, it would not require a project). Therefore, if the team is not carrying out these types of activities, you and the other stakeholders are very unlikely to get the conclusions and recommendations you require. In the best case, you are likely to get a "data-dump" and a set of options to choose between.

The other reason why this is a worrying symptom is what you tend to see such teams doing instead of analytics. What I have often seen is that such teams seem to be working hard, but are spending their time carrying out a large number of interviews, collecting as much data and information as they can lay their hands on, and, often, doing a lot of travel. The consequences of these activities are that project costs are too high, and that it is very unlikely that the key project milestones will be met.

Why do project teams typically not carry out the required analytical tasks? In many of the situations where I am asked to help this is caused by the team having an unclear picture of what is required from them, and therefore thinking that preparing a "data-dump" is the goal of the project. In other companies I see project-teams that are unable to carry out the required analytical tasks. While analytics is second nature to many people (consultants, etc), there are many capable and smart people who are not good at structuring and analyzing (new) problems. Finally, I also often see teams that are unwilling to go beyond data-collection as they are uncomfortable with the possible conclusions and are not willing to deliver unpopular recommendations.

What can you do to help the project team carry out the required analytics? My first step in helping teams with this problem is to recheck the project plan to understand how much analytics are required. The next step I carry out is to sit down with the project team to understand why they are still in the data-collection phase. The next steps will depend on the answers given by the team. In situations where they do not understand that they are required to do the analytics, I ensure that the team understands the true goals of the project and how the required deliverables depend on analytics. This set of actions will also help to push the team that is unwilling to go beyond data-collection to come up with uncomfortable and/or unpopular conclusions. In this situation I find that it helps to explain to the team why they (as individuals) have been asked to carry out this project.

In the cases where the missing analytics is due to inability, then the team composition is wrong, and together with the sponsor I consider what we can do about this. One solution is to add analytical capacity to the team, but the responsibilities of such a person has to be carefully defined in order to avoid team-development issues. The second solution will be to push the team to do their best, possibly combined with a workshop on specific analytical techniques (spreadsheets, statistics, etc). This is the best solution if keeping to deadlines is more important than optimal quality.

Using the process described above, I was able to help/force the team at the utility company to develop overall conclusions and meet the final agreed deadlines. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Dealing With a Project Team That is Carrying Out Too Many Interviews

2009-08-03T13:26:00.001+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the third of these signs, a project team is spending a lot of time carrying out "interviews".

Why is this a problem? This does not have to be a problem, as there are projects that require collecting information from a wide range of people (internal and external) in the form of interviews. However, I have often seen this becoming a problem, because it often is a symptom of a team that is avoiding getting to the conclusion phase of the project. An example of this is a project I carried out for a large utility, where a project team had missed numerous deadlines, and always with the reason that they needed to carry out more interviews. After talking to the team members, it was clear that they were very uncomfortable with the overall goals of the project and the recommendations that they need to deliver (i.e. improving the effectiveness of a process and being able to do things with less people and costs). In addition, the team had to choose where to situate certain activities. This put the team in a very difficult political situation, and it was unable to "bite the bullet" and make the required choice that would, by definition, make some people unhappy.
If this type of situation is left unchecked, it is almost guaranteed that the project team will not make its milestones and key deadlines. In fact, the most likely reason that you as a project sponsor are reading this blog-post is that the a team carrying out a crucial project has already missed deadlines. In addition, the chance that the project team will come up with meaningful conclusions and recommendations is also fairly small as fear related to this is what is driving the excessive interviews.
What can you do if you believe that one of your teams is using this tactic to avoid moving towards meaningful conclusions? The first action you need to take is to check the original project-plan to sanity-check whether the number of interviews being carried out makes sense. If you are still uncomfortable, you then need to talk to the team about why they are doing all the interviews. In this process you should force the team to show you the goal of each meeting/interview that has been carried out and those that are still in the planning phase.
If you at this stage still have doubts about the validity of the interviews, you will need to revisit the background and goals of the project and reinforce the requirement to the team to come up with strong, focused, and structured conclusions and recommendations. You will also need to explain to the team that meeting agreed deadlines is a key part of the commitment that they have made to the overall project. You will also probably need to give the team a "level of comfort" that they will never be able to collect 100% of the data and information that they theoretically would like to have, and that you (and the rest of the stakeholders) trust them to do well with the time and resources that they have.
Finally, it is likely that you will need to help the team to develop a structured plan for carrying out the interviews and other data-gathering activities that you have agreed are required within the available time. It will need to be a judgment call from your side whether it is possible and/or required to give the team more time to carry out these activities. The final recommendation to you as the sponsor is to closely follow-up on the team as they move forward, as it is unlikely that their wish to avoid unpleasant conclusions and recommendations has disappeared.

Using the process described above, I was able to help/force the team at the utility company to develop overall conclusions and meet the final agreed deadlines. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Dealing With a Project Team That is Not Spending Enough Time Together

2009-07-28T13:13:00.000+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. This post will highlight how best to deal with the second of these signs, a project team that does not seem to be not spending much time together.

Why is this a problem? A complex project will (almost by definition) require input from different parts of the organization. It will also almost always require a combination of different experience, knowledge, and abilities in order to successfully meet its goals. While there are certainly project-related activities that need to be done on an individual basis, there is a great deal of work that needs to be done jointly by the team.

In my experience, the first, and maybe most crucial, of these activities is getting real agreement on the goals and deliverables of the project, and the translation of this into activities (Other crucial success factors for starting up a complex project are described in another blog-post). This common and joint starting point can only be achieved by spending time together, and is crucial for ensuring that all team members are doing the right things. Another activity that must be carried out jointly is the interpretation of the outcomes of analytical activities (see blog-post on how to get a team to carry out meaningful analytics). While the initial analysis can be done by one member of the team, real quality is added by using the experience and knowledge of the rest of the team. Spending time together for this type of activities is also crucial for ensuring that the rest of the team understand and agree the outcome of specific activities in order to optimally carry out their own pieces of work.

A complex project typically also requires a high degree of coordination between activities. This can sometimes be done face-to-face between two team-members, but broader coordination is often required to ensure that all activities are optimally linked to each other. A typical example of such coordination comes from a recent project where I helped a team develop a business plan. In this project two crucial activities were developing a spreadsheet model and collecting data and developing assumptions for filling the model. One of the major challenges this team had was ensuring that these two activities were aligned regarding type of data and the format of the data to be collected. An additional complexity was that the requirements of the model were changing over time as additional insights were developed. This alignment was done partly in team meetings, and partly in face-to-face meetings between the modeler and the individual team members.

Finally, the development of the overall conclusions and recommendations from the project will require closely working together, as it will be based on analysis and interpretation coming from all the activities carried out by the team. This is crucial not only for the quality of the results, but also for developing the required consensus view on the conclusions (especially if the project is political in its nature and the team members represent different factions within the organization).

Why do project teams not spend sufficient time together? Sometimes I see that it is because they do not understand the need for working together. Often this is combined with a feeling that they do not have sufficient time to spend together, and need to focus on "doing the work". Other times, the team members do not feel comfortable working together. This is especially the case if the project is political in nature.

What can be done to help the team spend sufficient time together? The first step I typically carry out is to sit down with the team to understand why they do not get together more often. Typical answers I l get are that there is limited need and that they do not have the time to spend together. In this case, I make a strong case for why time together is required (using the arguments given earlier). If "time" truly is a key factor, then I have had to ensure that the team members are able to free up sufficient time from their day-to-day activities to give the required attention to all aspects of the project work. This has usually required the assistance of the project sponsor. Finally, I have forced the team to set appointments for getting together (including agreeing an agenda for what will be discussed). In these cases, it has also helped if the sponsor has taken time to sit in on one or two meetings to help the team to work effectively together.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Helping a Project That is Dealing With a Very Broad Range of Issues

2009-07-22T19:45:00.000+02:00

In a recent post I outlined eight signs that are leading indicators for a project that can be expected not to reach its goals and targets in a timely manner. Many of you have requested more details on the individual issues. In this post, the focus lies on how to deal with a project team that is dealing with a very broad range of issues.

Why is this a problem? In my experience, projects that are not dealing with a relatively narrow range of issues have great difficulties in keeping focused and have problems in knowing precisely which activities are required for reaching the agreed goals. In addition, they tend to spend a very large amount of time communicating with potential stake-holders. The main consequence of this is that it is almost guaranteed that these projects will not be able to keep to the agreed timelines and meet key deadlines. In addition, due to the broad range of issues, they will have great difficulties in developing crisp and concrete conclusions and recommendations, thereby not delivering value related to any of the issues the project set out to deal with.

My recommendation to clients is to start every project with a crisp and focused set of objectives. If you have different, but related, issues, you should strongly consider setting up specific projects to deal with each issue (either in parallel of sequentially). If the problem itself is difficult to structure, consider setting up a phased approach where the goal of the first phase is to develop a better understanding of the situation, to suggest the possible ways that the issues can be dealt with, and to give advice on how a project should optimally be set up.

What can you do if you believe that you have a project in your portfolio that is dealing with too broad a range of issues? My recommendation is to sit down with the project team and go back to the starting point for the project. Key questions that need to be answered include a) what has changed in the business environment that the project needs to develop a response to, b) what are the key issues that the project needs to deal with, and c) how well do we understand these issues?

Based on the answers to these questions, I have helped many teams to develop an overall goal and a set of concrete deliverables for the project. The goals that we have agreed have been measurable and the deliverables have represented something that clearly did not exist earlier (a marketing plan, a new process, etc). The concrete goal and agreed deliverables have then been used as a starting point for analyzing the activities being carried out by the project team. Any activities that are not absolutely required for meeting the concrete goal should be stopped immediately. If they are important for reaching other goals, they should be given to a separate team. Based on the new set of activities, a new and realistic plan has been agreed with the team, and the team has set to work again with a renewed focus and increased energy. Typically, the process of getting the team focused has taken two or three meetings in a course of a week.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Identifying the Projects That Are Most Likely to Fail

2009-07-15T22:50:00.000+02:00

If you are in the same situation as many of the people I consult to you are responsible for a portfolio of projects, and are having to spend too much time checking on how these projects are performing. When my clients are in this type of situation, I recommend that they get out of this trap by focusing their attention on the projects that are most likely to fail, and spending less time on the projects that are likely to go well.

How can you know which projects are most likely to get into trouble? While my previous blog-entry suggested Eight Signs, these are signals that are visible after a project has started. What is required is a method for to identify these projects before they start. Luckily; in my experience project failure is mainly driven by project-complexity. Therefore, if we can objectively measure the complexity of your projects you can rank your projects on the likelihood of each project getting into problems, and can prioritize your time accordingly. How do we know which projects are the most complex? Again, this can be done fairly easily by understanding the complexity drivers for projects, and scoring each project on these dimensions.

Based on my 20 years of experience, I find that project complexity can be measured on two main dimensions. These are a) internal complexity, and b) external complexity. Internal complexity is based on issues related to the way that the team members need to interact, and the type of work that they need to do. External complexity, on the other hand, is driven by the overall environment in which the project needs to work. For each of these two dimensions, I have defines four key complexity-drivers, and the higher the score on each driver (using a scale from 1-5) the more complex the project is.

The internal complexity of a project is driven by:
1) The distance of the work to be carried out by the project to the day-to-day activities of its members
2) The organizational distance between the units where the project participants come from
3) The level of sophistication required in the data collection and analysis to be carried out by the team
4) The level of the "out of the box" thinking required for developing optimal conclusions

External complexity is driven by:
1) The level of pressure from management for achieving concrete and challenging results
2) Openness of project goals to interpretation and level of political elements in goal definition
3) Level of expected uncomfortableness to project participants resulting from project results
4) Required level of communication to various stakeholders for getting the necessary buy-in for results

We can use the scores on each of these dimensions to determine the overall complexity of the project. A project that scores higher than fourteen on each dimension is a complex political project, and should be followed up very closely. If you focus your attention on the complex political projects in your portfolio, you are sure to increase the overall success rate of your projects, as the other, less complex projects are much less likely to experience problems. Carrying out this prioritization process has helped many of my clients prioritize their overall work, and has also helped make individual projects more successful by focusing project activities on crucial issues.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Eight Signs That Your Project is in Trouble

2009-07-08T09:19:00.000+02:00

Many of my clients are in a situation where the number of complex issues that need to be dealt with outside of the standard organizational structures is growing. The companies that earlier tended to outsource the most complex of these projects to outside consultants are now less able to do so due to economic constraints. Due to these two factors, I see that the number of internal teams dealing with complex projects is growing dramatically.

If you are also facing this situation then there are almost certainly one or more projects within the portfolio of projects you are responsible for where you have a “gut feeling” that the project is not going well. Since you do not have any conclusive evidence, it is difficult to do anything but to hope the best and see what the teams come up with.

In my career I have had the opportunity to improve a large number of projects that were not going well. Distilling my experience across these projects, I believe that there are eight warning signals for projects that are not going well. The more warning signals that apply, the more urgent it is to intervene. The eight warning signals are given below, and each title links to a separate blog-entry giving more details on the individual signal:
1. The project-team appears to be dealing with a very broad range of issues
2. The project team does not seem to be spending much time together
3. The team is spending a lot of time carrying out “interviews”
4. The team does not appear to be doing any meaningful analytics
5. The team has very limited interaction with you (and other sponsors )
6. Key stake-holders, who's by-in will be required for the project to be a success, are not aware of the project
7. The project is not meeting agreed deadlines
8. It is difficult to pin the team down on any meaningful conclusions

My generic answer for dealing with a project that is showing a number of these warning signals, and is therefore heading toward failure, is to regroup. An example of such a situation was described in an earlier blog-entry. Regrouping involves bringing together the core team members in a meeting. This meeting should have sufficient time reserved for it (suggested minimum is two hours), and be set up to minimize the possibility of external distractions (possible off-site, no mobile-phones, etc). This meeting should start off with a review of the issues the project is meant to deal with, the original goals set for the project, and the deliverables the team is expected to come up with. The next step should be to go through the work the team has carried out, and to discuss the key signals that served as a starting point for your worries about the project. Based on a reconfirmation of the goals and deliverables a realistic time-span should be agreed with clearly articulated milestones where you expect concrete updates on progress. The team should then be forced to allocate responsibilities and get a (realistic) commitment from each member on the time that they will invest and the activities they will carry out.

One of the problems that I have often encountered is that the team has conflicts with their daily work or other activities. In these situations, I have needed the help of the sponsor to help free up time and deal with conflicting priorities. This has also meant that the sponsor, has needed to get more actively involved in the day-to-day work of the team with intense follow-up and active assistance in the form of “running interference” for the team and guaranteeing that they are given sufficient time to carry out the required work. In my experience such a “re-grouping” of the team activities is usually sufficient to get the team back “on-track”.

Using these fairly simple steps to bring a project back "on track" has served me well in project management consultancy work that I have carried out at a range of companies. The suggested activities can also be used to kick-start a project management training. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Gordon Ramsay and Radical Profit Improvement

2009-07-03T11:59:00.000+02:00

If, like me, you enjoy good food, good wine, and real cooking, and occasionally have time to watch television you have probably seen one of the many programs that Gordon Ramsay has made where he flies in to turn around a restaurant that is in deep trouble. These shows typically revolve around scenes showing gross incompetence that scare you from ever going to restaurants again, and the very interesting and colorful use of the English language by the three Michelin-star cook.

In addition, there is another commonality across these programs that could be useful to those of you facing a situation requiring a dramatic turn-around. An activity that has been carried out in all the restaurant turn-arounds that I have watched is a ruthless pruning of the menu to enable the restaurant to focus on a few dishes that are a) popular, and b) within the capabilities of the restaurant staff.

I believe that this is an excellent analogy to what many other organizations also need to do in these difficult times. For most companies a "back to basics" strategy is a much better way to improve profitability than a flat 10% across-the-board reduction of costs. (see Setting up a successful cost-reduction project for more information). Watching a few restaurant turn-around shows also gives a good lesson in how this type of consolidation can be carried out. As in the restaurants being helped in the television programs, the focus of the new product portfolio in your organization should be "popular and simple".

Finding out which of your products or services is popular should be fairly simple as your financial data should tell you which products give the highest sales. This initial analysis, however, should be expanded by also looking at which products are sold to a broad customer base and cover a wide set of customer needs. The typical steps carried out for the restaurants in the show also include market research by walking round town to look at which other restaurants exist and which ones are crowded. Similar steps in the case of most companies would be to carry out some fairly straight-forward market-research by interviewing a few clients.

Finding out which of your products are simple to produce involve looking at financial data and analyzing your production process. Your financial data should give some indications on the profitability of your individual products (direct margins, etc), but this data should be used with care. The main issues with accounting data include a) tax issues often play a large role in deciding the accounting rules that are followed, b) unrealistic assumptions are often made related to costs being fixed or variable, and c) many indirect costs are not sufficiently linked to their real cost-drivers (i.e. the products actually causing the costs to be incurred).

An analysis should therefore be carried out of the production process itself. For a restaurant this is fairly simple as it is possible to directly see the dishes that create chaos in the kitchen. In a larger organization with processes that typically cover more time, space, organizational units, and people this can become quite a complex undertaking. Complexity in itself, however, is no reason not to start. There are several possible starting points for such an analysis including customer interviews (which of our products are you unhappy with and why), interviews with sales people and service representatives (which products give the most complaints), interviews with production people (which products are the most difficult to make and which result in the most rework), etc.

By combining the results of these two analytical streams it should always be possible to determine products that are a) not popular, and b) complex to make. The short list resulting from this combination will always be a good starting point for carrying out a "pruning of the menu" in your organization.

Follow the links if you are interested in more information on reducing complexity, project planning or project management training.

Setting Up a Successful Cost-Reduction Project

2009-07-01T15:20:00.000+02:00

Almost every organization in the world today is looking at ways to reduce costs. Some companies can do this fairly simply by closing factories or giving top-down targets to all relevant departments (costs to be reduced by 20%). Other companies that I talk to feel that they require a more fundamental approach that will restructure the way that they do their business. Sometimes this includes a strategic review of which products and services should be offered to the market, other times the markets served are seen as stable. In the second case there is usually a need to fundamentally re-assess how the products / services are brought to market in order to radically decrease the costs and/or to improve service levels.

Carrying out such a task will, almost by definition, require a project, and such a project will always be extremely complex (both due to political issues and the required out-of-the-box analytics). Based on experience in setting up and carrying out numerous strategic transformation projects for A.T. Kearney (definitely the consultant to go to if you need broad external help in carrying out a transformation (see http://www.atkearney.com)/) I believe that there are a number of very dangerous pitfalls for such projects, but that these pitfalls can easily be avoided by carefully thinking through how the project is set up. The key pitfalls and how these can be avoided will be covered individually.

A very common problem that I have seen in very many situations is that the transformation becomes an endless and uncontrollable process with different parts of the organization moving forward at different speeds. In my projects I have solved this problem by dividing the overall transformation into clear phases, and forcing all the individual parts of the transformation process to stick to the same overall milestones. Typically I have divided the transformation into three phases. The first phase of my cost-reduction projects have focused on understanding the key issues and setting realistic targets for improvements. The second phase has focused on the actual re-design of the new processes, while implementation has taken place in the third phase.

Many transformation projects I have seen have been plagued by unclear goals and targets. I agree that the start of a transformation process should include broad high-level goals that are, almost by definition, not tightly defined. However, in my projects I have always used the first phase of a transformation to develop a detailed understanding of the situation and key issues faced by the company, to make an overview of key changes required (by how much do costs need to be reduced in order to be competitive and profitable?), and to suggest the overall direction of possible improvements. Combining the results of these activities has typically given the project clear goals and targets for the individual parts of the transformation process.

Transformation projects are often plagued by difficulties in avoiding departmental politics and getting real end-to-end improvements in processes. To avoid this pitfall I have set up an appropriate small team at the beginning of the transformation and expanded this team over time. For the initial phase of a transformation I have strived to put in place a fairly small team that consists of a selection of people from across the company representing different organizational units and skills. The people chosen for this task have been analytically strong, open for change, and well respected through-out the organization. In the re-design phase the members of this team have typically become team-leaders for the sub-teams looking at individual processes or parts of the organization.

Transformation projects often have problems in enforcing decision-making and the implementation of agreed changes. To avoid this, my transformation projects have always included a steering committee that consists of key decision makers. If the transformation covered a total company this was the management team. The key challenge that I faced was to ensure that the steering committee understood and agreed with the overall process (phased approach, etc). In addition, they had to agree to a governance model that included clear decision points (certainly at the end of phase 1 and phase 2, but probably also at other key milestones). The steering committee also needed to agree to a generic set of rules that included free discussion up-front, but a commitment to the implementation of made decisions (agreed is agreed).

Carrying out these fairly simple structural changes to the transformation process has served me well in all the projects I have carried out, and I believe that they will also help you in setting up a successful transformational cost-reduction project. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Finalizing the "Never-Ending" Project

2009-06-26T16:34:00.000+02:00

If you are similar to many of my clients, you may be facing the situation where you are deeply worried whether a critical project that has been going on for some time will end successfully. An example of such a project involved a client who was the CIO of a major energy company. This company was moving a key part of its business to another country. This part of the business relied heavily on its IT systems, and ensuring that the transferred IT-systems were working and were compliant to the local regulatory environment was therefore crucial.

The team had been working for several months, original deadlines had long since passed, but the team kept on requesting more time for additional analytics. Due to these delays, the IT-department was rapidly losing credibility, and was seen as representing a major threat to the move being carried out on time. Due to the commercial and regulatory advantages of the new location, each month delay would represent major financial losses.

The CIO's request to me was to help/force the team to finish its work within two weeks. While the initial reaction from the team was that this would be impossible, the team was able to deliver more than acceptable results within the suggested deadlines. The methodology that I used to achieve this remarkable turn-around is fairly straight-forward and easily transferable to other situations.

The starting point for my work was to sit down with the team and go back to the beginning of the project to discuss and agree the basic issues that needed to be resolved, and to develop a common understanding of the goals and general framework (including time pressure) for the project. In this case, as in many other situations I have come across, it was surprising both to me and the team how much the team’s perception of the goals and deliverables had drifted over time.

The next step was to quickly but thoroughly to review the work that the team had carried out and link the outcomes of this work to the agreed goals of the project. In this process it became clear that much of the work that the team had carried out was in the “nice to have” category rather than critical to reaching the goals of the project. In addition, the team agreed that the same could be said about a large portion of the further work that the team had planned to carry out. Based on this, the team agreed that with a minimal number of additional interviews it would be possible to finalize the project based on the results at hand.

The next step consisted of structuring the results of the work that had been carried out and getting a common understanding of what these results meant and signified. A very helpful tool that I used was the “Pyramid Principle” (see http://www.barbaraminto.com/ for more details). The next step was to translate the team’s conclusions into a communication plan. This involved understanding who had to buy-in to the recommendations from the project, and develop a plan to “sell” the key messages to these individuals (with a special focus on those who would be surprised and/or unhappy with the team conclusions).

In this case the communication plan involved a number of structured presentations and a written document outlining the overall conclusions with supporting arguments (again using the Pyramid Principle). Although there was considerable discussion related to some items, the overall recommendations were accepted and implementation started within an acceptable timeframe.

I have used similar approaches to help a number of teams that have this (fairly common) problem. I therefore believe that following the broad steps I have outlined here will help any sponsor and/or project leader facing a team that is having problems finishing its work in an acceptable manner. Follow the links if you are interested in more information on project planning or project management training.

Team Building is a Waste of Money

2009-06-24T16:23:00.000+02:00

You would think that one of the consequences of the current recession is that the demand for "team building" would decline. However, a quick search via Google seems to indicate that this industry is flourishing. This is strange, as my experience is that, even in the best of times, what passes for "team building exercises" is a total waste of time and money.

This is certainly the case if your goal for the "team building" is to help ensure that a team tackling a complex project is happy and comfortable in dealing with each other. There is a lot of research that shows that increasing the internal satisfaction of the team has negligible effects on the success of the team in reaching its goals. In my experience, the only possible useful outcome of such an event is that the team members get to know each-other better. It might be the Norwegian in me, but it seems that this same goal can be achieved by including a nice dinner with some bottles of good wine at the team kick-off dinner.

The question then remains: what can be done to quickly create an excellent team? Luckily, this is fairly simple. What you (as a sponsor) need to do is:
1) Set clear goals and targets for the team (if they do not know exactly what they need to do, they cannot be successful)
2) Bring together people in the team with the right knowledge, skills, and experience (the team cannot be successful if it is not able to do the activities required for meeting the goals and targets)
3) Give the team tough deadlines early in the process, and force and enable them to work together (this creates the required "us versus them" feeling that excellent teams often have)
My friends in the "team building industry" will say that this is exactly what they do with their team-building exercises. They may be right, but why spend money doing this temporarily in an artificial setting, when you both should and have to do this in the real setting in any case?

My recommendation is to skip the external team-building exercise, and put the team together in a room (preferably latish in the afternoon) and 1) give them a clear explanation of the background to the problem that they are being asked to solve, 2) present the goals and targets that they need to reach, 3) present a first-cut plan for how you believe that these goals and targets should be met (including a stretch initial milestone), 4) explain why each team member has been included in the team, and finally 5) ask the team to develop their own detailed approach and plan. When this has been developed and discussed, the final activity should be dinner (spending a small part of the money saved by skipping the "team building exercise".

Finally, there is one part of a successful project where the "team building industry" can play a role. A key part of building a successful team is to celebrate success. This means that after a team has reached key milestones, it may want to celebrate by going wild-water rafting or some other team-building exercise.