GovernIT

Your Process Improvement initiative or even a simple process definition has failed. You have taken the necessary steps to see that you are not defining a stupid process and provided guidance on how to define processes. It still failed, sob. Once you have gotten over it, read on.

The 3 most common ways you can fail at Process improvement, that I have personally seen are:

1. Blind Adherence to Frameworks

Process frameworks such as CMMI or SPICE are intended as guiding principles to help

you develop processes that, in turn, help you achieve your business goals. Trying to incorporate each and every aspect of a framework without regards to its applicability in your organization can result in bloated processes that no one can or will follow.

Usually, process improvement begins with Gap Analysis of existing processes against the chosen Process Framework. This is where you can take a wrong turn.

Understand the intent behind the Framework when performing the Gap Analysis. One tried-and-trusted practice is to extract the objectives from the process (in CMMI, these are neatly defined in the Specific Goals) and then use them to see if the goals are met by your current processes.

2. Committees

Yes, Practitioner-led process improvement is the way to go. But that doesn’t mean that you try to get “representation from every section” of people into your process definition team! After a certain threshold, an increase in the number of people is only going to hold you back.

From my experience, the magic range is 3-5, but that may vary if you are in a business process improvement scenario. One symptom of a dysfunctional large team is endless bickering over every word and its intent when drafting the process – in one case, there was a 2-hour discussion on using “measurements” vs “Metrics”!

3. Endless Alternates

This can be a standalone issue or an offshoot of the first two. I have seen teams debate over different scenarios which they might face, when the probability of these scenarios occurring is really small! Usually, there are a few critical paths where the teams might need direction and then there is a catch-all section (which is usually an escalation path for more guidance).

This situation arises when

• People don’t trust themselves and others to do the right thing and/or
• Managers are not very forgiving when their teams take decisions using judgement and then mistakes happen. Only a learning environment is a growing environment and without it, you cannot help people become mature. Without mature people, you cannot have a high-maturity organization!

Yes, there are more ways in which you may fail, but I’ll follow my own advice and stop from listing out all other scenarios . That, however, does not prevent you from adding your own experiences in the comments. They may be a bigger cause of failure!

Do share in your experiences in process improvement and of course, subscribe to the blog.

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In Process – How to develop one that is not stupid, we looked at how we can develop a process that empowers people to do to their thing and not stand in their way. But how do we actually develop one that can assist us in achieving the above goal? Using the concept of Six Honest serving men, we can define a system for activities that involve more than one person. Some of the following content may overlap with other posts, but that’s because they are all related (or maybe I am too dense to write one that explains all).

Why: As I mentioned in a previous post, without stating clearly why we are doing something, it is pretty difficult to convince people to even read something, forget about following it. The Why is often stated in grand terms, and since people are not stupid, they understand it is just for the sake of having it! Have a simple description of the outcome and why following it will help them (in their daily life and not something like, “It will make the organization compliant with the GRAND THEORY OF NOTHING”. Who cares?)

What: What defines the activities that need to be completed to achieve a certain goal. The inputs for this can be based on existing team practices or from best practices in other teams or (God forbid!) from frameworks.

When: When here does not relate to time, but the sequence in which the above activities should be performed.

Who: Code does not get written just because we have defined “Write code”. Someone needs to write it and someone else needs to test it. Mr. Who helps us identify the people to perform the activities in the desired sequence.

Where: This is the easy one. You ask me to enter the bug – fine. Where? You get the idea (please don’t create forms for every small bit of information!  Funny one here – http://www.bureauofcommunication.com/compose/romanticintent)

How: This is the most difficult one. If you list out how to do an activity in great detail, your process will be cumbersome and if you don’t give any details, it will not be useful. Err on the less side, since you can always add detail. This is easy to say, but difficult to implement and unfortunately, the answer for how much is, “It depends, at least for me. By the way, do you have any good principles for this? Share with me.

One of the easiest ways to spell out a process is the System flow chart or activity diagram coupled with annotations for inputs/outputs of the process. This makes the process simple, visual and clear.

If you are wondering if this can be used in Agile methods (not using Agile process, in case you are offended. Ha.), the answer is yes. A process is just a structured method of representing what needs to be done and does not mean it needs to be “heavy”; it can be as light as you need. If you come from a process mature organization and want to find out if you can use Agile methods or not, read this interview and then buy the book (disclaimer: I am not affiliated in any way with the author and have not yet read the book completely).

Go on, become a process specialist. May the Force be with you.

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The first part of this series provided an overview of the PMO, types of PMOs and typical functions.

The second part looked at the role of PMO in setting up and monitoring Change Management processes and activities.

The third part discussed the Quality Management responsibilities of a PMO and provided a table of contents to a Quality Management Plan

This post shares some information and experience on how the PMO can review projects and what to focus on in such reviews.

One of the most important functions of the PMO is to periodically review projects, to be able to answer the  following questions:

1. Where is the project wrt where it should be?
2. Will the project deliver on its objectives – timelines, quality etc?

We have all worked on projects, where the status is green for weeks and even months and suddenly moves to  “Red” one fine day.

The best early warning system is effective and in-depth reviews by the PMO for each project in its portfolio. The frequency of such reviews depends on:

Size of the project

If the project is large and complex, one review meeting with all stakeholders is not effective. There is usually too much discussion on some items, especially those that are over the tolerance levels, while routine ones are not given much time. Instead, multiple reviews with separate teams will provide the necessary focus and insight into that area.

Separate reviews also help you to validate information being provided by one team with others. with a single meeting, contradictory statements are not voiced due to fear or a desire to avoid conflict.

If the project is small or medium sized (<30 – 40 people and less number of cross-domain teams), a single review can be effective as all stakeholders can present information quickly.

A typical review should not be more than 3 hours, as information overload sets in and people become mentally tired.

Criticality to business

Review depth also depends on how important the project is to the business. For example, a public-facing market solution will need to be monitored much closely than a project for generating MIS reports.

Current status

• If the project is progressing smoothly, with interediate deliverables on time and within quality limits, you may want to schedule a monthly meeting with offline status reports weekly.
• If the project is just about surviving, weekly reviews are necessary to tightly control the ship.
• Iif the project is behind on timelines or there are escalations from customers (can be internal such as marketing, end-users etc), day-wise monitoring may be required.

This does not mean having long meetings everyday, but you may request for daily status reports to be circulated to the governance team, with meetings held twice in the week.

What should you review

At the minimum, the review should focus on

• Verify status of tasks with respect to the Plan
• Reviewing Key accomplishments during the reporting period
• Understanding key deliverables and activities during the next period and the progress on them till now to determine if they will still be met. A good way to do this would be to ask for Estimated time to complete in-progress activities and verify against the plan
• Check for Dependencies for the upcoming activities to see if there are any impacts due to external and internal dependencies (such as staff from another team, software or hardware availability etc)
• Status of top issues and any new issues added
• Status of top risks and any updates to the Risk profile
• Change requests created/modified during the period
• Quality indicators such as defect trends, incident escalations etc

How to review effectively

• Instead of having a template which can restrict information, ask the project to develop something incorporating the above. The main point of this is to ensure they don’t feel constrained to report in a manner they feel uncomfortable with
• The report can be simple to start with, but must be able to provide enough information for the PMO to decide on the true status of the project.
• Status is usually shown in Traffic-light symbols, but this generally is not accurate or atleast consistent. Insist on objective criteria to determine what is yellow and what is red.
• Watch for tasks that rapidly change in progress completion, especially ones that slide downwards.
• When people use vague qualifiers like “I think it should be done in a couple of days” or “I believe we are on track”, look at start and end dates of the activity to gain an idea of the effort consumed. Ask for time to complete to gain a true understanding of the remaining work
• A major factor in missed deadlines is underestimating the time it takes to solve operational issues. A solid issue management mechanism will help PMO understand the blocking issues that could impact the delivery
• How is product doing with respect to Quality? Are defects being captured accurately? Schedule and review external audits that verify this one process specifically, since defects may not always be reported under the belief that they are minor
• Take the time to review customer feedback, if any and see how it dovetails into the performance of the project
• Periodically reviewing risks is one of the most important tasks of the PMO. Risk profile must be kept updated when more information is received on a subject that is impacted by a risk

Important Note:

The critical part, I cannot overemphasize this, is that the project must feel that the PMO will do anything to help the project solve issues and move forward. This may mean releasing additional funds or add experts for short durations to solve problems. If the project team feels that the PMO is only reviewing/policing, it will find ways to hide information.

You can find an example of a status report template (and some other good ones) at Derek Huether’s blog Critical Path.

Conclusion

A project review is a good opportunity for the PMO to demonstrate leadership to the projects. Transparent communication, accountability, decision-making and support are necessary elements to conduct a good project review.

What’s your take? What have I missed completely? Do you have something more to add?

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