Interview with Steve Wake
IPM [Integrated Project Management] is still I think a very emergent way of managing projects – I think it is. Many of us execute our projects very well but not in a completely integrated fashion.
Our maturity levels are still very low and a lot of work still needs to be carried out to fully understand how to make the changes that we embark upon within project management – to actually make changes happen – and make them stick!
People, processes and tool sets
Deltek has an approach to its customers of people, processes and toolsets and I like that … It is a recognition that there is more to project management than running a software tool. It’s not just knowing which button, or buttons, to push. It’s knowing why they’re being pushed and how they relate to other people.
How do you explain the information that the software generates? How you can use that to manage and to, ultimately get what we all want? Which are projects that are successful and are of benefit to our own organisations and as part of the wider picture to society and the broader community?
The approach that Deltek is now adopting with people, processes and toolset is far more likely, in my opinion, to have a successful outcome and is very much along the same direction that we at the APM recognise as being …
The right way to approach project management
The right way is to introduce and secure the foundations of project management in everyday life. So move away from just selling software in a box to it becoming more or less a way of behaving, a way of carrying out your life whether its working or outside of work. It’s a far better way to engage with the community at large so I think Deltek have got it right.
How to improve project maturity
Well the best way for an organisation to establish it’s project management or project control maturity is obviously to make an assessment of where it is. It has to understand where it sits in its ability to manage and direct projects.
Even if you find that the organisation or project under assessment is not quite as mature as you need it to be – it may still be OK … but with some adjustments and that I would characterise as a risk based management decision.
Again you are making that under control so it’s that thing of keeping calm and carrying on with good measured process and stuff that can be measured and benchmarked right across many, many organisations or within all the projects of your own organisation.
The value of earned value
The value of EV outside its heartland of the US Department of Defense is, I believe, immeasurable. So many companies and organisations outside that particular pool which is big, but a small pool in relation to the rest of the world’s economy, don’t do earned value particularly well – or at all!
What they miss then is the ability to, in a very standardised internationally recognised way, assess the status of their projects and provide the most timely and accurate status data that can be provided for a project. It’s the gold standard for project control.
I will go down to my grave saying “if you don’t use earned value then you are not really in charge of your project.” I would say that, in my opinion, 90% of the business community is in that situation at the moment.
Back full circle to IPM
So the opportunity to rectify things is enormous and so this is what brings us back again full circle, I suppose, in that Deltek has listened. It’s changed and became focused on people, processes and toolsets and again – that’s a good place to be.
If they weren’t prepared to do that then I think, firstly they’d be out of business and secondly they would find it very hard to have a conversation with the people they are trying to engage with.
Deltek are loyal sponsors and supporters of eVaintheUK and will be with us at Putting down the roots for Good Governance #eVa20 on 16-17 June.
