Our b5media Theme Day focuses on Graduation - New Beginnings in a Challenging Economy led by Darlene at www.interviewchatter.com. Since my three daughters are in their “new beginnings” periods, I’m a sought after advisor. They are: 27 years old- just married and building fitness business, 25- radio show host of S&H Culture Club and fashion blogger, and 21- college senior who is a singing star. They are all fast moving, innovative and creative people. MORE IMPORTANTLY—they all realize that changes are coming…and preparing for them.

Fortunately I’ve suggested that they focus on research, organizing, coordination/compilation, and decision making skills in college (vs worrying too much about a specific major). The ability to quickly gather information, assess a situation, and make good decisions is essential in a world that changes EVERY DAY. You will recognize the emphasis on innovation AND being prepared in this blog related to organizations, PMOs, governance structures, and strategy execution. Sometimes I think that the best training we could give in colleges and universities is how to set up Theory of Constraints based project management, PMO and governance systems. Organizations, teams, and individuals would benefit.

A lot of young adults approach the world of change and innovation as a roller coaster to be ridden through exciting times; in other words, there will always be something exciting happening. If YOU want to be the creator of the excitement, rather than a casual “experiencer”, your ability to do your “homework” and be prepared to make decisions is essential. It’s a lot of work but work that has EXTREME rewards and extreme satisfaction.

Finally, the best advice I’ve received that somehow says it all assuming you have a spiritual and moral compass: have fun and make money!

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I have some great, reliable, commentors. One of them is Alan Wilensky. Commenting on my June 7th post ““Fewer, More Successful Projects”: The New HP” he gave one of his great personal examples of an IT organization run amuck. Here is his comment (edited by me) and my response:

Alan W: A while ago, I was a bidder on fair sized contract with a specialized mfr. They had a BIG IT plan, SAP, SCN, you name it. They were hostage to their IT man, he had them seduced and bought in to the tune of 30 projects (none fully implemented) and 400K in licenses (way more than a company this size needs in a Webbiz20 services era).

I did not get the [deal], because I spoke the truth - but somehow, I think that my honesty will get me back in. Here is what I said while trying to get this seven figure (career high for me) 18 month re-engineering project:

“Dear Colleagues, you have over 30 individual related and unrelated integration and installation projects….I ask you to total the months and items of completion…”

Silence. Then the excuses from the people running the project… well, Wilensky, what would you do about it?

“I am glad you asked. Cut at least 75% of the unfinished projects, make what you have work in 90 days or less, and move to hosted CRM and billing”.

Then, after I delivered the print out of my analysis, I met the CIO in private….“Your company can’t finish one project and the consultants and internal IT steering [you] towards these complex packages are making the excuses seem plausible”.

PM411: This is very typical in my experience. Hopefully, you opened some eyes above the CIO also. This points directly to the need to get a PMO operating OUTSIDE of the purview of the IT folks. There are just too many factors that support such a multi-project result when IT is guarding the henhouse.

Alan’s candor is exactly what many companies need right now. Many are attempting to do projects that have nothing to do with strategies. The organizational structure and culture for project selection and management doesn’t exist at a broad enough level.

Do you have some stories of excess projects that aren’t getting done? Share them!

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I’m realizing that I’m a focal point for all things “project” having to do with executing strategies and innovation. In other words, I usually read what I’m interested in on this topic and then pick and choose the best for YOU and put my slant on it. This is my small way of changing things- how about you?

If you like what you see, and many of you have told me so, then that probably means we have the same interests. Hopefully that doesn’t mean that we think alike because that would only lead to boring conclusions.

Blogs are for dialogue and changing minds. Help me do it! Change my mind. Get involved. Blog!

Here are some of the topics I’ve been dealing with this month- check them out and tell me what you think- these issues will change how business is done in the years ahead:

The Google Way to Innovation

Keep Governments Out of Business

I Told You! Your Carbon Footprint Will Be Taxed

A Fad That Will Pass? Social Networks

Does Multi-Company Innovation Work? Yes!

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My post on the PMO relieving pain prompted a response by ActiveEngine about pain being crucial to gain people’s attention. Pain and uncovering it can be a multi-layered process seemingly without end- i.e., dealing with one problem inevitably leads to having to deal with others which can get discouraging. This is probably because the “swamp is being drained”. Read my response below:

Pain is an interesting phenomenon. One of the analogies used for improvement is “draining the swamp”. When you drain the swamp you start seeing a bunch of ugly rocks. In project management this means getting rid of the projects you don’t need by doing a project inventory and then getting rid of some more by eliminating those that don’t align with strategies. What this does is focuses resources on the remaining projects and the problems they have which now beg to be solved. Same thing when you do a lean manufacturing program and eliminate wasteful processes- the real problems (pain) start to emerge; you are now on the road to solving real problems and root causes, not just symptoms. Back to software development- do you find that excessive documentation can hide problems in the process? I’ve heard that documentation is the “excess inventory” of software development.

Do you have situations where dealing with one problem led to several others? Did you give up on a project because of this? Do you think it was because you were involved in the “draining the swamp” process and simply uncovering more, but better, rocks (problems)? I KNOW you’ve been there! Tell us about it. What you say could make the difference in someone completing or stopping their project.

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Following up on Margaret Rouse’s post on my Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series, today we deal with the mythical queue:

Margaret: You really got me thinking. I think what REALLY blew me away was when you said that 74% of all projects fail — and that the number could be even higher for IT projects. I’m interested in any concrete strategies you can offer for avoiding getting small projects lost in what we used to call the mythical queue.

Bob: The PMO or, for smaller firms, some type of project control function, succeeds with excellent business processes for project visibility, strategy alignment, and prioritization. My guess is that the “mythical” queue is bloated because a project inventory isn’t done regularly and many projects are not aligned with strategies. These two things would decrease the amount of, and increase focus on, projects. Lack of prioritization criteria, and working the priorities as strategies change, contributes to “bad” muti-tasking (stop, restart, relearn). You end up with a mess that allows people to move from project to project without accountability and very bad estimating.

The PMO should be doing the type of support to standardize visibility, strategy alignment, and prioritization processes plus does everything it can to help projects accelerate. All of this is largely “outside” whatever software development process is used, as it should be.

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Do you suffer from the mythical queue? Tell me about it!

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Margaret Rouse blogs at IT Knowledge Exchange on an amazing variety of topics. Read it and be informed! I find some of the most interesting blog commentors are IT people who engage with me about innovative project management processes- clearly they are making an effort to bring IT and the user together. Her post about my Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series led to a very nice conversation, edited for brevity, and repeated here today and tomorrow:

Margaret: The line that stuck in my head from [your] post was: Usually something painful drives the creation, or reevaluation, of a Project Management Office (PMO). Amen.

Bob: That same pain that drives creation of a PMO can be it’s undoing: PMOs are often eliminated after the pain goes away. The pain also tends to create a PMO that is monitoring/cost based instead of value based- i.e., focusing on the value that can be created by projects vs. merely working to a budget. The value based PMOs tend to spur innovation and have projects aligned with strategies.

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What pain created your PMO? Is the pain gone? How about the PMO? Contribute your thoughts to the conversation!

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A great article in Strategy+Business, “A Blueprint for Strategic Leadership”, concentrates on how to lead innovation. In it the authors emphasize that the best leaders pay a great deal of attention to the design of the elements around them. Seemingly basic, but powerful, things to do are:

1. Articulate purpose,
2. Create effective teams,
3. Prioritize and sequence initiatives, and
4. Redesign the organization to make execution easier.

Apart from revealing the importance of doing the right projects, the article is full of fascinating examples of the deployment of these principles by the best executives; two from the experiences of A.G. Lafley, chief executive of Procter and Gamble, stood out:

1. Moved the divisional presidents’ offices nearer their staffs, converting the old executive space into an employee learning center. This is not only practical but sends a message that they are serious about creating an environment for innovation.

2. Plans careers of top 500 people by reviewing assignments, capabilities, and how he can help them grow. This goes beyond periodic performance reviews to showing a genuine interest in how the organization can help develop the careers of people.

You don’t have to be a CEO to pay attention to the design of the elements around you. How can you incorporate the four “things to do” into your management style?

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A Booz Allen Hamilton survey and report in Strategy+Business (register for free) found NO correlation existed between R&D spend and innovation. It turns out that higher innovation performers spent less but made sure that innovation projects aligned with corporate strategy and paid careful attention to customers. This idea that a company can spend less and innovate more makes sense. Throwing money at innovation processes that are not well organized and/or measured and not serving the customer doesn’t work.

Black and Decker revealed the two key factors related to their innovation success:

1. Strategy alignment- align innovation strategies to corporate strategy.
2. Customer focus- processes are in place to pay close attention to customers from idea generation to product development to marketing.

Although this article tended to focus on product innovation and R&D spending, Black and Decker’s customer focus reveals that business process innovation is often required to coincide with product changes. One example is a strategy project I worked on for a metals distributor where we segmented the customer base a variety of ways to discover which segments were willing to pay for inventory management services. The change in what was being sold and provided affected sales processes, how inventory was managed, frequency of delivery, and ultimately how raw material and components were purchased. This clearly reveals how market based projects can affect internal business processes.

Excellent project management was a key success factor for these high innovators. The authors revealed the “one R&D tactic” used by all high-growth innovators:

“insistence on managing the innovation process from start to finish as tightly as possible…a disciplined stage-by-stage approval process combined with regular measurement of every critical factor, from time and money spent in product development to the success of new products in the market…combined with a strong portfolio management program…”

Sounds like strong project management and project portfolio management are basic preprequisites for successful innovation. What do you think? Does all this apply to a small company?

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Sometimes you get unexpected insights. My post “What’s Harder? Project Management or Management” elicited a wonderfully simple “boxes” analogy from Ren Garcia at Accounting Solver. In it he said:

“In a standard hierarchical corporate organization, you have specializations through boxes (i.e., departments, divisions, sections, etc) identifying finance, marketing, production, human resources, etc. Frequently, the specializations become rigid over time and the boxes neglect to communicate with each other (The managers or heads of boxes are supposed to be doing this, but often neglect).

Consequently, integration of all the functions / tasks / responsibilities within the corporation becomes a difficult process. The entire organization needs to be on the same page and move towards the same goal. What you don’t want to happen is one box (function / task / responsibility) undoing what another box is trying to put together. A classic example is the finance department trying to bring down accounts receivable and the marketing department keeps giving credit…

Projects & Project Management bring together managers and technical / professional staff and is a potent form of integrating an organization that has become too specialized. Without any extra effort at all, boxes (departments / divisions / sections) talk to each other more frequently and productively and get to understand what the other boxes are all about. In a project team, the talk is not all about the project and there can be a lively exchange about non-project issues, including relevant corporate-wide issues.”

Ren’s insights elicited my (mildly edited) response:

“Ren- nice analysis. The boxes analogy helps. I’ve been referring to the divisions as “silos” but “boxes” better aligns with some current thinking about “getting outside the box” related to innovation. Also, I appreciate your view that project management facilitates breaking down the barriers between departments.

One of the first things that one strategy consulting firm does is to simply have all executives present to each other about what all the other departments are doing. This enables executives to do a better job of determining strategies and creates the cooperation necessary to later execute them.”

As I recall Ren had some hesitancy to comment on my blog because he felt a little intimidated by the subject matter. I, of course, knew better and encouraged him to offer his views. Now I need to comment on his because he obviously has a lot to say.

What’s holding you back? I’m sure you have something to offer.

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Fascinating conversation with an executive of an agile software development firm about transformation projects as they compare to lean manufacturing initiatives. Lean transformations have settled into starting with training heavily laced with practical activities. The reason that this is so important is that the approach is NOT intuitive.

Lean requires a person to experience how the concepts can change and increase the value of a process, whether it be software development or manufacturing products. One of the most valuable exercises is the traditional lean manufacturing simulation consisting of 4-5 iterations of improvement to clearly reveal how each lean concept influences results. Many times an executive level version of this simulation kicks off a lean project because of it’s powerful way of revealing the value of lean principles. For more on lean look at the excellent web site www.leanexecutive.com.

The paradigm shift is the most difficult barrier to overcome in both lean and agile. The agile company used to have a client strategy of doing an agile project first followed by a transformation project. The current approach flips the order to start with transformation efforts with “practical” training. It’s remarkable how similar the lean and agile approaches have evolved AND there is much to learn from being a student of both. For example, my post on agile estimating serves the lean community well. As techniques and approaches are proven out in each area, innovative application to the other area should be considered. This is a great example of looking outside the four walls for business process innovation.  

Let me know what you think about how lean and agile compare to each other.

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