The Eighth Deadly Sin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.