Craig Mercer's thoughts on the nature of variation and "crossing the streams" of Project Management with Benefits Realization Management, Organizational Change Management and Process Improvement (Lean Design).
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?
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:
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:
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 Craig "hachiroku" Mercer • Benefits Realization •