Category Archives: earned value

Shining a light on Major Projects

Geraldine BarkerInterview by Jason Hesse, Project Magazine [Summer 2016 edition] with National Audit Office’s Geraldine Barker, whose role is to shine a light on how major projects are delivered by government. Geraldine will be speaking at Bringing Projects to Life conference #eVa21 on 16 June

Delivering large-scale infrastructure and transformation projects is a struggle for any organisation, whether public or private. A report from the National Audit Office (NAO), published earlier in 2016, took a deep dive into the government’s delivery of major projects.

Delivering Major Projects in Government was published by NAO director Geraldine Barker and her team, following a comprehensive review of the government’s Major Projects Portfolio. The report was a wake-up call for government, highlighting that project delivery must improve.

There are currently 149 projects in the Major Projects Portfolio, and these have a combined whole-life cost of £511bn, of which £25bn is expected to be spent in 2015–2016. Getting these projects wrong would be disastrous for the public purse. The role of Barker’s team is to identify what the systemic issues affecting the projects may be, and to ensure that public money allocated to major projects is well spent.

“Parliament votes large sums of money for projects. Our role is to make sure the money is spent in the way that parliament intends, and it delivers value.”

ACCOUNTABILITY

The public sector has improved at delivering projects successfully, but further enhancements are needed. While the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) – formerly the Major Projects Authority – and government departments have taken steps to develop capability and provide assurance on improving project delivery, it is vital to improve the consistency and reliability of data surrounding project success.

One third of projects that are due to be delivered in the next five years are rated as ‘in doubt’ or ‘unachievable’ if action is not taken to improve delivery.

The success of these projects is paramount if government is to become more efficient at delivering services. Indeed, nearly 80 per cent of the major projects due to be delivered by 2019–2020 have a transformation or change agenda for how services are delivered or accessed.

Barker, who has spent the past 16 years at the NAO, knows that the key to improving these projects is better data, which, in turn, can help identify weak areas that need to be addressed.

“With the start of the new parliament, we thought that it would be useful to get some context on projects, given how integral project delivery is to the activities of government, as well as highlighting the issues and weaknesses,” she explains.

While positive steps have been taken around accountability, the changes have not gone far enough.

“The IPA has done a lot to try to address issues around accountability – establishing the owners for projects – and there has been a lot more assurance than there was at the start of the last parliament,” Barker  says. “But the data provided by departments isn’t transparent enough.”

One example is costs. “Quite rightly, the IPA wants major risky projects to go into the portfolio at an early stage, but the costings are uncertain,” she explains. “They might know how much money is required to prepare and plan the project, but the detailed whole-life cost will not have been entirely worked out, as the data is incomplete.”

The assessment of costs is an important mandate for the NAO, so understanding how much projects will cost – and how the money will be spent – is important.

“Parliament votes large sums of money for projects. Our role is to make sure that those delivering the projects are spending the money in the way that parliament intends it to be spent, and that it is delivering value to the taxpayer,” says Barker.

She has identified planning as a key lesson for this, and says that project managers ought to spend more time planning: “Do not start making early announcements about projects before having had the chance to plan them through properly. We need to see more emphasis on what it is that the project is trying to solve, instead of just jumping to a solution.

“Have a good, long think about why the project is necessary, and the different ways that you could meet those objectives.”

Having a good challenge function in place can help with this. Taking a little more time at the early stages of the project to challenge your thinking can pay dividends.

“We saw this with Crossrail,” Barker explains. “[Project managers] spent a long time on planning, and they got a lot of challenges back from the Major Projects Review Group. Despite it being a painful process for them at the time, the project ended up benefiting from this.”

DATA CHALLENGE

Accurate, reliable data is at the heart of successful project delivery, and the complications of collating this data in the Major Projects Portfolio is one of the root causes for the NAO’s challenging assessment in the recent report.

“There are still many gaps in the information that the IPA holds,” Barker explains. “It is doing a lot to try to improve how benefits are articulated, but we feel that there is still a lot that needs to happen around the data more generally.”

When asked why there are such weaknesses in the data, Barker is unable to give a full answer. “I’m not really sure that we’ve got to the bottom of it,” she says. “Whenever we do deep dives into projects – HS2 or Crossrail, for example – getting good data is consistently an issue. Sometimes there are time lags, which are entirely understandable, but we need to take a much closer look at how data is collected and reported.”

“Whenever we do deep dives into projects, getting good data is consistently an issue. We need to take a much closer look at how data is collected.”

The standardisation of data is an issue. Project managers are always able to answer specific questions posed by portfolio managers and government departments, but the questions – and the data that is requested – are often posted in different ways, which makes it hard to compare data sets.

TRANSPARENT COSTS

This all leads to the most important issue: cost. The challenge of improving portfolio management at departmental and governmental level has often led to difficulties in assessing, in the planning stages, what will be the project’s full cost.

The general point, says Barker, is how this affects transparency.

“How can we ensure that decision – makers know what the cost will be of what they are agreeing to? How can parliament better understand what it is voting for when allocating money to projects?”

This does not mean having to come up with one final figure for any given project, she adds. There is currently a lot of pressure on the public sector to come up with figures, and taxpayers rightfully want to know how much a project is costing them, but coming up with one specific figure is unrealistic in major projects.

Instead, says Barker, why not encourage departments to educate and explain the uncertainty that surrounds major projects, and come up with a range of costs? “That would be a much healthier discussion, as it would help everyone understand the variables and risk involved,” she says.

The NAO’s role in assessing projects – by uncovering how money is being spent and looking at how waste can be avoided – is not easy. The lack of data and the difficulty in accurately determining a project’s likelihood of being delivered successfully, on time and on budget, is a challenge. Yet, clearly, improvements are required for success rates to rise.

But, for Barker, the job of shining a light is done. “Given the scale and length of major projects, it is important to review them periodically, instead of just waiting to the end, when it is too late to fix them.”

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Martyn Loukes, B.E.M

Martyn Loukes, B.E.M

Diversity is good for business

Martyn Loukes
Martyn Loukes

Martyn Loukes BEM is an award winning and HRH honoured global diversity leader in industry, most recently employed by Transport for London (TfL) as a Business Development Manager in their Customers, Communications and Technology division. Martyn’s background is in communications, finance (qualified Chartered Management Accountant) and project management (Prince2 Practitioner).

He most recently ran TfL’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Network (LGBT) for over four years stepping down in September 2016. His work in diversity continued to December 2016 where he ran the UK’s largest HIV testing event, and launched the London Gay Men’s Chorus’ 25th anniversary concerts at both Angel and Tottenham Court Road Tube stations.

Martyn was the first person in the world to devise an LGBT themed transport programme – #RidewithPride. This saw London’s first rainbow zebra crossing, a rainbow bus, taxi and Dockland’s Light Railway (DLR) train celebrating diversity, which has since been copied in many other cities. He also introduced the LGBT traffic lights in Trafalgar square which he launched with the Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2016.

Martyn’s specialism is communications, combined with diversity has seen OUTbound become one of the highest profile networks in the UK. His network includes the organisers of Pride in London, Editors of Gay Star News and Pink News, Terence Higgins Trust and a host of other network chairs and leaders. He is very well known in the LGBT community and there are many articles on his work available on the internet.
In January 2017 Martyn left TfL to concentrate on his diversity work.

Awards and Accolades

• British Empire Medal – Queen’s Birthday Honours June 2015
• Freedom of the City of London November 2015
• Top 50 Global Diversity Leader in Industry 2015 and 2016
• Winner Inclusive Network’s ‘Best Community Engagement 2015’ for #RidewithPride
• Finalist as for Network Leader of the Year 2015 for Inclusive Network
• Pink News finalist for Best Public Sector Network in 2015 and 2016

Email: martyn@loukes.net
Twitter: @Martyn Loukes @Agile_Diversity
Blog: www.loukes.net

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Jurgen De Jonghe

Jurgen De JongheJurgen started off his career in automation of business processes and administrative workflow. The tools developed by him and his team are currently still in use by over 10,000 users.

Since 2000, he has been in charge of providing project management consultancy and tools for internal use at CERN. These tools have been used in a variety of projects ranging from the ATLAS detector (the largest particle physics collaboration ever), the LHC accelerator, the European grid project and for planning all strategic activities at CERN.

Jurgen has over 15 years of experience leading a software development team for medium to large software development projects.  He also managed a group in charge of the Supply Chain and Facility Management at CERN.

He is currently part of the management of the group providing overarching project coordination for the accelerator complex (including layout management, integration, scheduling and work & safety coordination), providing support and expertise in matter of project, risk and quality management as well as organizational process as well as developing and supporting the Organization’s PLM, maintenance management tools and mechanical CAD systems.

 

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Funmi Olukoya and Chris Benton

Agile PM &Business Psychology

Agile project management involves the unique interplay of interactions between diverse individuals who must work together, and have a want, need, remit and/or desire to meet a specified goal or set of objectives.

This is fertile soil for Business Psychology. the study and practice of improving working life. It combines an understanding of the science of human behaviour with experience of the world of work to attain effective and sustainable performance for both individuals and organisations.

Business Psychology is key to successful project management because it helps with the understanding of the behavioural similarities and particularly the psychological characteristics that vary between people e.g. personality, motivation, intelligence and EQ. In so doing it offers insights into factors which affect an individual’s behaviour, including their sense of self and social relationships and the effect these will have on the project team as well as its ability to deliver outcomes effectively and efficiently.

Funmi Koya, Excincolfunmikoya@gmail.com

Funmi Koya
Funmi Koya

Funmi was the CEO of KoyaP3M Ltd a small consultancy company that started life in the Agile Development environment and transitioned into consulting in the Agile and strategic change management arena. He is an Associate of the Business Psychology Centre at the University of Westminster, where he is also a Visiting Lecturer.

As a Director at Excincol Consulting Funmi uses his expertise in Lean-Agile and 6-Sigma in coaching/training roles and is currently engaged on the NHS England’s General Practice Improvement Programme, delivering training, coaching and mentoring at GP practices. His knowledge of Assistive and Adaptive technologies, and competency frameworks have afforded him the opportunity to work with people with disabilities to assist with getting them into the ‘mainstream’ workforce – this included 2 years at Remploy Ltd.

Funmi is a P3M specialist (Portfolio, Programme, Project Management) with experience in IT/IS Consultancy, Defence, Government, media, oil and gas, not-for-profit and the Banking sector. His interests lie in the effective delivery of strategic programmes through the individuals who make up project teams using Agile, Lean and Business Psychology tools.

His hobbies include travel, photography and snowboarding (Swiss Alps, Alaska and Canada) and he has a love for animals in the wild (safari parks in Kenya and South Africa).

Chris Benton, Excincol cpwbenton@gmail.com

Chris Benton
Chris Benton

Chris was the Head of Product Development at Lumina Learning, a leading developer of psychometric instruments. Lumina Learning is a global organisation with instruments used in over 30 countries. Chris led the creation of Lumina’s core product range including instruments on personality, leadership, sales and emotional intelligence. Chris also developed and ran facilitation and coaching courses including the qualification and onboarding of new practitioners.

While working as an independent consultant Chris focused on one-to-one and group coaching sessions targeting business strategy, change management and improving interpersonal communication.

As a Senior Partner at Excincol Consulting Chris harnesses a blend of business psychology expertise and management experience to deliver bespoke sessions. He is an Associate of the Business Psychology Centre at the University of Westminster. Chris provides practitioner expertise to postgraduate alumni and students on the translation of theoretical material into practical applications.

Chris is interested in new technologies and entrepreneurial applications of machine learning and ‘smart’ big data systems.

Excincol
Excincol

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Agility Engagement and Success in Managing and Delivering Change

Project & Portfolio Management is all about managing and delivering change

Chris PondChris Pond, Senior Solutions Specialist for PPM at Microsoft, who will be speaking at Bringing Projects to Life on 17 June reflects on his experience of Project and Portfolio Management.

In the 18 years that I have been in the industry, from supporting customers with change initiatives through to delivering supporting tools, the market has changed considerably.

In the 90s we had the big players in Artemis, Primavera and ABT, with Microsoft Project starting to gain traction on the desktop. My first introduction was Project 4.0, while the first central project repository toolset from Microsoft was launched in 2000.

More recently we have the advent of “born in the cloud” task / work / project management tools.  One of the benefits of these tools, has been an increase in understanding that to enable repeatable success in an organisation, we need to improve how we plan and execute our projects.

Agility Engagement and Success in Managing and Delivering Change - Chris Pond

There are three recurrent themes we use when speaking to customers
1. Agility 2. Engagement 3. Success

    Agility

    Many of the customers I speak to want to discuss Agile. The first part of this conversation depends on the capability of the customers and what they really mean, as the term “agile” is regularly used interchangeably:

    1. agility (with a lower case “a”) as in the ability to move quickly and easily;
    2. and Agile (with an upper case “A”) which is a methodology and set of practices aligned to the Agile manifesto.

    The term “bi-modal IT” is also regularly being added to the conversation. This was first described by Gartner in 2014, and is outlined in their glossary.

    Bimodal IT is the practice of managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery, one focused on stability and the other on agility. Mode 1 is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy. Mode 2 is exploratory and non-linear, emphasizing agility and speed.Bi-Modal IT

    In the world of Project & Portfolio Management this might be considered by customers as:

    • Mode 1: Waterfall based planning (old and boring?)
    • Mode 2: Agile (new and exciting?)

    My experience is that life is not as binary as described above, and that this is not a new scenario, simply one that has been simplified and concentrated down to two bullet points.

    Not all aspects of a project support are delivered through an Agile approach. It’s important that we take the best and most practical parts of project management and use them to support repeatable success.

    Combining these two approaches reminds me of a customer that I worked with over ten years ago.  This customer wanted to use the tools at their disposal to support delivery of a project that included software development using Agile methods. In this scenario the customer was using Microsoft Project and Project Server.

    We deployed an approach where the Project Manager owned the overall delivery schedule, while the development team had a separate, but connected schedule, that allowed them to track the sprints and deliverables. This enabled easy visibility of progress of the project portfolio, and significantly reduced the burden of reporting via multiple Excel spreadsheets.

    MPUGIf you would like to read further, the Microsoft Project User Group [MPUG] has a great article about using Microsoft Project / Project Online to support delivery of Agile projects:

    In 2016 we have various tools specifically designed to support Agile methods of delivery, including Microsoft Visual Studio Online. Used in combination with Microsoft Project Online, this can provide a holistic view of status across your project portfolio, saving time and providing real insight to support fact based decision making.

    To find out more about Microsoft’s future vision for Project & Portfolio Management, watch this video

    Engaging the whole organisation

    Project & Portfolio Management, while impacting the whole organisation in terms of what it delivers, is typically utilised by c. 1%-15% of an organisation (depending on the industry).

    This leads us to a question – how is the remainder of the organisation managing their work?

    In a typical organisation, task/work management is handled in the following unstructured ways:

    • Email
    • SharePoint / Outlook tasks
    • Excel

    For these users, project management techniques and the use of Microsoft Project may be more than they require.

    This brings us back to the first area of discussion – “born in the cloud” task / work / project management tools. There are 100’s of these tools available on the internet. Microsoft has recently launched Office 365 Planner, which is available as part of the Office 365 Enterprise licenses E1/3/4/5 (including Educational, non-profit and Government Office 365 tenants).

    Office 365 Planner makes it easy for teams to create new plans, organise and assign tasks to individuals, share files, chat about what they’re working on, and get updates on progress. It can also be used to manage a marketing event, brainstorm new product ideas, track a school project, prepare for a customer visit, or just enable teams to organise more effectively.

    It’s often said “tidy desk / room etc., tidy mind” – what does that mean?

    Keeping your workplace tidy does more than just simplify finding important items and documents. When your desk and work environment are tidy and orderly, your mind is more likely to be focused, productive and free of mental clutter. [See full article Tidy House, Tidy Mind]

    That’s where Office 365 Planner comes in to play – by enabling teams to get started quickly, work together without chaos and always stay informed.

    If you would like to know more – click on the image below to watch the video

     Organize teamwork with Office 365 Planner

    Success

    All the successful deployments of processes and tools I have witnessed have had one thing in common; the super successful deployments keep things simple, and provide a solid foundation to be built upon to enable additional change over time.

    In a recent article in Wired magazine regarding cyber security, Ciaran Martin, GCHQ’s DG of cybersecurity said the following:

    “It’s more important to focus on making procedures simple and accessible. It is better to design systems that may be less secure in the abstract, but more likely to be implemented to a decent standard.”

    The sentiment rings true for any process deployment (shortened by me) See full article “Keep yourself safe with these cybersecurity tips from GCHQ

    What you can see is that there are ways to engage the majority of an organisation in planning in more structured ways – without individuals feeling overburdened.

    This inclusive approach can lead to greater insight and improved decision-making through shared experiences, while cutting the time spent on collaborating via Excel, task lists and email.  And of course, repeatable success.

    PLAN.MANAGE.DELIVER

     

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    How do PMOs make Benefits Management Happen

    In the State of the PMO UK Survey by Wellingtone and APM PMO SIG [published January 2016], Benefits Management was reported to be the hardest part of a PMO structure to successfully embed in an organisation.

    How do PMOs Make Benefits Management Happen

    The way I see it, there are a number of options for PMOs of any scale and type to achieve success in the Benefits Management space.

    Control Everything: from project inception to closure and realisation

    Supporting the team in defining benefits and measures, tracking opportunities, and facilitating the realisation reporting. This is tantamount to PMO doing benefits management in its entirety, and does carry with it a significant overhead of time and resources to manage effectively. Maybe this approach would suit a large scale Enterprise PMO?

    Beginning and End View: focusing on the what and the when of Benefits realisation

    Helping to define up front means that initially benefits are properly identified and defined and aren’t double-counted – a real problem in benefits management. However, if the project changes, PMOs may have to ‘dip in and out’ of the project on an ad-hoc basis – rather more often than they would like!

    This ‘gap’ in the project life-cycle leads to a lack of ‘benefits visibility’ for the PMO – often mirrored in the Project Team. When things change, as inevitably they will, reviewing the benefits tends to fall through the cracks.

    Define Key Touch points: for the PMO to work with the Project Team to identify, execute and sustain throughout the life-cycle

    The formality of this approach helps the PMO to keep the Project Team focused on the end goal. However, it can also mean that as changes occur, the time to adjust can take longer due to a built-in lag in before the benefits logic is re-validated or plans re-profiled.

    One thing is certain – whichever PMO structure is selected the post-project facilitation of benefits is KEY to making things work!

    However, following the closure of a project, team members tend to go their respective ways, leaving the accountable owner[s] responsible for tracking benefits.

    Now, I don’t know about you but, the accountable owners that I know are usually senior in the organisation and therefore; busy, involved with multiple projects and wearing many hats. Do they really have time to track all the benefits and chase information relating to the benefits of their projects? I don’t think so!

    Is it any wonder, with the odds so heavily stacked against accountable owners tracking the benefits, that benefits don’t get tracked?

    Enter the PMO

    The PMO is well placed to collaborate with their peer teams [e.g. Finance and HR] to facilitate monitoring and reporting of post-project or programme benefits. This simple step adds enormous value to accountable owners and the organisation as a whole, as they come to see the PMO as a trusted business partner providing, amongst many other things, benefits realisation services.

    Arguably, a similar options-driven approach to other project disciplines [e.g. risk or project accounting] will help to successfully embed other parts of the PMO structure in organisations.

    Emma-Ruth Arnaz-PembertonEmma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton, Chair of APM PMO SIG will be sharing the stage with Reinhard Wagner, IPMA President as they present on ‘The Rise of the Enterprise PMO’ at Bringing Projects to Life on 17 June.

    Emma says “It’s going to be a great couple of days and I’m really looking forward to learning together with an international cast of practitioners and thought leaders.

    Why not come along and add your own thoughts to the mix – it’s all about the newest thinking; who says you don’t have the next big idea?”

    Delivering business value with DSDM

    Hugh Ivory,  Founding Partner at AgileSphere, is an Agile Coaching and Programme Management Consultant.

    He recently spoke about the DSDM approach to project management with Martin Jordan at Public Sector Focus magazine. [See transcript below]

    Hugh will be speaking at Bringing Projects to Life #eVa21 on 16 June.

    What is different about the DSDM approach to project management?

    The DSDM approach is based on the philosophy that everything we do should be focused on delivering business value.

    Agile Project Management provides a framework for delivering what the user needs. The following elements differentiate this from traditional approaches:

    • Do just Enough Design up Front; don’t waste time seeking false certainty – there are some things you just can’t know today
    • Develop iteratively and deliver incrementally. Welcome feedback and change, don’t try to limit it
    • Build a team that has everything that it needs to succeed
      • Business knowledge and empowerment
      • The right people
      • Budget
    • The Project Manager is a Servant Leader, creating the space for the team to deliver – not a command and controller
    • Fix Time and Cost [Timeboxes, Releases] vary Scope
    • Provide an adequate demonstration of Control [Time, Cost, Scope, Quality, Risk]

    Does the challenge of public sector project management differ from commercial organisations? If so how?

    • The challenges are the same – but perhaps they manifest themselves in different ways.
    • Smaller commercial organisations can be more adaptive simply by virtue of their scale – because decision makers are much closer to product and service delivery, and can react to feedback much more quickly. Larger commercial organisations are striving to be like this, through being flatter and empowering the people who really know the service with funding and responsibility.
    • The challenge for larger organisations, including government, is to create the conditions whereby product and service delivery teams can take feedback, make quick decisions and get on with delivery, without the distractions of heavy governance frameworks. This is difficult in government, where budgeting and decision making processes, and the need for public accountability can stifle innovation at pace. These are issues which need to be addressed if Agile in government is to succeed.

    In your opinion, should the customer be as important in a public sector project as they are in a commercial project?

    • As a citizen, I want public services to be just as easy to access and use as the services I get say from my bank or on-line bookstore.
    • The Government Digital Strategy, and the Digital by Default approach, is a significant initiative in putting the citizen at the heart of service delivery, and has placed the UK at the forefront of citizen service delivery across the world. This is not widely appreciated in the private sector, and organisations could benefit from having a better understanding of this.

    What are the implications for a project if the customer or service user is ignored and what implications would that have for the public sector? Can you give any examples of good or bad customer experience?

    • Put simply, ignoring the customer or user will result in the delivery of the wrong thing, that will not deliver the desired business outcome.
    • Some research that I’ve been involved in has shown a strong correlation between failure to meet user needs and high operational costs. For example, if we are not clear with citizens what documentation they need to provide to effect a transaction with government, they are likely to provide the wrong information, leading to unnecessary contact, excess documentation and multiple attempts before service outcomes are delivered.

    With the emphasis on increased public sector digital service delivery, can you foresee any issues that could come to the fore?

    • The level of spending on public sector projects, and the media and public accountability that surrounds it, means that it is important to provide assurance to the taxpayer that money is being well spent. However, our implementation of this has been through heavy governance frameworks, at significant cost in terms of money and time.
    • Digital by Default and agile delivery demands a balanced approach to governance – light but effective, making use of the information radiated by the delivery teams to ensure that we are doing the right things in the right way (i.e. are we investing in the right things, are we spending that investment in the most effective way). The Government Digital Service has developed some relevant principles and guidance.

    How can DSDM methodology assist public sector project delivery?

    • Agile approaches provide the opportunity for Senior Responsible Officers to have real transparency of, and greater influence over, how their investments are being spent. This brings with it a responsibility to appoint and empower the right people to deliver change, and to take more time to see for themselves what is being delivered by visiting the teams regularly and participating in Show and Tells.
    • The Agile Project Management framework defines the key roles and behaviours needed to underpin this, and sits very well with Digital by Default. With appropriate guidance, it can help public sector programmes which need to deliver digital services to implement effective agile governance:
      • Feasibility and Foundations deliverables put some meat on the bones of what teams should be delivering from Discovery and early Alpha’s
      • Roles and responsibilities are closely aligned to Digital by Default, and the team structures enable a simple but effective approach to scaling

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