Sep 14 2023

Deming’s 14 Points​ (Point #13): “Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.”

 
As I have said many times: “multi-million dollar projects shops don’t just run themselves”. You need a dedicated team of staff to support project managers and project analysts in order for them to really “knock it out of the park”. We achieve this at Coast Capital Savings in our Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) Centre of Excellence (CoE) who are dedicated to supporting the day to day delivery by the project teams. This include education, training, and coaching to ensure all audit requirements/benefits capabilities are met and unnecessary delays and cost overruns are avoided.

The question I have asked to our project teams is…Does the existence of a “vigorous program of education and self-improvement” make a difference in your skill/ability to deliver projects (knowing that ultimate success requires good change/adoption support and operational commitment to benefits realization)?

By • Quality (Systems Thinking) •

Feb 21 2019

Congrats Island Health Prosci Change Management Practitioners!

Congratulations to the newest cohort of Island Health Prosci Change Management Practitioners. Love working with you as we build the culture of change at Island Health.

– Kristina Valentino

Thanks Kristina! One of the best education/training sessions I have ever taken. Many project managers have asked me what type of education they can take to improve their performance and I always say Prosci. When PMs understand the people side of change they can bring an ADKAR attitude to all of the project work which I think ensures deliverables are aligned with the adopt-ability of the new future state.

Apologies to the class…I am that joker in the middle with the 2 thumbs up. LOL

By • Change Management •

Dec 17 2017

Going Live In Healthcare (the Four Function Command Centre)

The following is a very brief overview of how we support our project go-lives here at Island Health. This Command Centre model has grown up over the past 10 years into a fairly well oiled machine that improves every time we use it. Each of the four functions has a specific purpose in the model which compliment and reinforce each other.

Key Drivers in Supporting Project Implementations 

  • All staff impacted by the change must be supported at the front line (e.g.: Onsite Support) and have a way to report problems (hardware, system, education needs etc.) to the go-live support team.
  • To reduce delays in responding to problems, the go-live team must have a single way (e.g.: Central Support) to receive and report out on the volume/themes of incidents that staff are experiencing.
  • The go-live team must have a way to bring the appropriate resources to bear on urgent issues as they emerge (e.g.: Rapid Response) to ensure interruptions to front line staff are kept to a minimum.
  • To ensure the right decisions can be made by the right people in as short a time as possible, there must be clear escalation paths for operational leadership (e.g.: Situation Room) to address urgent incidents as they emerge.

Onsite Support

Made up of inter-disciplinary teams (typically a project/technical analyst and a nurse/medical informaticist) who round on the units, providing at the elbow support/education and addressing issues in the moment. They can also be dispatched by Central Support to address high priority items (e.g.: Physician is having trouble logging into the system) and finally, they act as the “eyes and ears” of the Command Centre on the ground.

Central Support

An inter-disciplinary team that staffs a 24×7 Call Centre which is in addition to our regular Service/Clinical Solution Desks. Central Support answers calls from both Onsite Support and front line staff, logs them in an incident tracking system and then triages/dispatches to the appropriate team (Onsite Support, Service Desk, IM/IT Operations, Biomedical Engineering, Facilities/Maintenance, Housekeeping etc.). The Central Support lead(s) produce twice daily (10AM and 2PM) reports (placemat dashboards) for the Situation Room showing all incidents, themes and escalation points.

Rapid Response

Inter-disciplinary teams brought together at the request of the Central Support leads to work particular problems and will co-locate to collaboratively work the issue through to completion. These teams follow the Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) Framework for systems incident/change/problem and release management to ensure the fix is not worse than the original problem.

Situation Room

Consists of an inter-disciplinary operational leadership team who provide overall direction, serve as the highest escalation point and can provide in the moment decision making when needed (e.g.: if a system downtime is required). They also review the twice daily reports (placemats) from Central Support and guide resolution for any emerging themes.

By • 03 - Delivering •

Dec 17 2017

Crossing the Streams (the secret to why projects could deliver better value but often can’t)

Complimentary Disciplines

Project Management, working completely on its own, can only take solutions to problems/opportunities so far. It’s simplistic to think that simply adopting project management rigour will magically be able to overcome challenges that already exist within an organization. No, we will need more than just project management if we truly wish to be successful. Aligning project management with other complimentary management disciplines such as benefits realization management, organizational change management and process improvement will help to close the gap on the:

  • adoption of solutions by end users.
  • improvement of solutions informed by metrics.
  • realization of benefits.

Where do we want to be and why? (Benefits Realization Management or as I call it “the one ring to rule them all”)

“[Benefits Realization Management] elements are found in many other management approaches, and it is much more than a mere fad. It…bring[s] meaning and purpose to activities such as change management, requirements analysis, project management…and programme management.…and as one manager rather succinctly put it, BRM is the glue that binds together all the other management techniques.” (Gerald Bradley)

Benefits Realization Management typically lives and is owned operationally at the strategic level of an organization and ensures that the right projects are being initiated at the right time in order to achieve the right outcomes for the organization. The purpose of benefits in its simplest form is to answer “WHY are we doing this project?”. Benefits should trigger new change initiatives that will in turn then trigger projects.

Why should I/we go there? (Change Management)

Change management is the process, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve the required business outcome. Change management incorporates the organizational tools that can be utilized to help individuals make successful personal transitions resulting in the adoption and realization of change. Prosci http://www.change-management.com/

Change Management also lives in the operational part of an organization and prepares for/supports the adoption of changes to behaviors and processes supported by project solutions that will eventually lead to the realization of benefits. Change Management translates the benefits into the “WHAT’s in it for me/us?” proposition for individuals/groups about to go through change. It also gauges readiness for change which further refines whether this is the right time for the project.

How will we create and deliver the solutions? (Project Management)

Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time. A project is a temporary endeavor designed to produce a unique product, service or result with a defined beginning and end (usually time-constrained, and often constrained by funding or staffing) undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management

Once we know that Change has determined the readiness for change and given a green light to proceed, Project can then begin moving through its life cycle (scope definition, detailed planning, solution design, build, validation, implementation and close out) to deliver the solutions that will enable the change to go from the current state to the future state. Project Management is the tactical delivery discipline, aligned to the WHY and the WHAT, and then answers the question “HOW do we deliver?”. Project will deliver the enablers we need to get us to the future state but it won’t give us everything we need. We delivered the solutions…BUT is anyone using them?

How do we improve once we arrive? (Process Improvement/Lean Design)

Process Improvement is the proactive task of identifying, analyzing and improving upon existing business processes within an organization for optimization and to meet new quotas or standards of quality. It often involves a systematic approach which follows a specific methodology but there are different approaches to be considered. Some examples are benchmarking or lean manufacturing, each of which focuses on different areas of improvement and uses different methods to achieve the best results. Processes can either be modified or complemented with sub-processes or even eliminated for the ultimate goal of improvement. Source: https://www.appian.com/bpm/process-improvement-organizational-development/

Projects can suffer from poor adoption because there is no planned work to tweak the new future state workflows for real life. As such, the new workflows are sometimes worse then the ones they were replacing. This is where Process Improvement (aka Lean Design) should be brought in to improve the workflows until the true future state can be achieved that aligns all the way back to the change and the benefits we set out for in the beginning.

Are we there yet?

Unfortunately, in most organizations the complimentary disciplines are either not present, disproportionately represented, or working at cross purposes to each another. This is usually because each discipline springs from different parts/levels of the organization and each has enough to worry about on its own without worrying about how it could tie into the others.

Wouldn’t it be cool if all of the disciplines were harnessed to work together to become aligned and create synergies between one another and ensure all of the right things were firing at the right time in the right way? It’s like in the movie Ghostbusters where the team finds out early on that they mustn’t cross the streams of their proton packs while apprehending ghosts lest they blow up the universe. However, in the end the only way to defeat the evil is in fact to cross the streams. In order to be successful, I believe, we need to work together as organizations to cross the streams of:

  • Benefits Realization Management
  • Change Management
  • Project Management
  • Process Improvement

Where do we go from here?

I have some thoughts on how the above can be achieved via some kind of “unifying process office”, however I think a starting point of just introducing the concept, to see whether it resonates with folks working in benefits management, change management or process improvement, is warranted. Well what say you? Does this resonate with you or is it out in left field?

By • Benefits Realization •

Apr 10 2016

Supercharge your solution design with a little genchi genbutsu!

Have you ever seen a project implementation go sideways because the solution didn’t solve the problem it was intended to? Have you ever encountered a product that didn’t properly address the use for which it was designed? It was probably due to neglecting genchi genbutsu, a Japanese term which roughly translates into “go and see for yourself”. For more information see the wiki entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu

How can applying genchi genbutsu help project teams develop better solutions?

When we gather solution requirements through current state, future state and gap analysis we need to ensure that going and seeing for ourselves is incorporated as a key activity. How else will we be able to confirm that:

  1. the problems/drivers articulated are factually correct?
  2. the solutions designed to solve the problems will work?

Consider the following scenario:

A project team books a series of meetings with our subject matter experts to gather requirements by documenting the current state, followed by mapping out the future state and finally arrive at the solution design that will address the problem that the project is responsible to address.

One of the project solutions incorporates a new multi-function printer that has four extra large trays added to it with different types of media to support the new workflow. Furthermore, this new printer will replace three separate printers in the workspace that were dedicated to single use roles. This printer will be located where one of the existing printers is because the staff member most responsible for this new workflow is there.

There is a delay with the new printer shipping and the project team is unable to deploy it until the day of go-live. When they show up to install the printer they discover that the existing printer is situated on a counter three feet high. The new multi-function printer is four feet high. So the new printer is seven feet high and the staff member is unable to read the status LED on the top of the printer without a step ladder.

The team had never actually gone and seen what the space looked like. They assumed that the SMEs had given them all they needed to know during the requirements gathering sessions. The swimlane diagrams/process maps etc. all identified the printer but not the physical space it would go into.

Now the above scenario is s simplistic example but I hope that project teams can see how genchi genbutsu can really make a difference in the completeness and accuracy of the solution design. The earlier you catch something like this in the project, the less it is going to cost to course correct.

Some people may argue that it is too expensive to always practice genchi genbutsu but I would suggest that the cost of not doing it is even greater. After all, if you don’t have time to do it right the first time…you must have time for all the re-work!

By • 02 - Planning •

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