John Owens' observations on simplicity and complexity in the Project Management Hut resonate. In many organizations, there is a slavish adoption of one or another "proven" methodology. In fact, there are certainly requisite stages: analysis, planning, execution, i.e. build+implement, and review. But the real key is not bureaucratization of process, but developing capable participants.
Whether you use a highly structured methodology or a more fluid and iterative "agile" approach, the key to success is effective collaboration among capable people working to achieve agreed, meaningful outcomes.
Not long ago, I experienced (yet another) PRINCE2 project in which observers could not get their heads around the how and way of project difficulties when it was, after all, a Prince2 project!! Isn't the PRINCE rationale exactly the avoidance of such problems through a structured approach?
Any project needs the right people demonstrating key attributes. They must be willing, able, knowledgeable and sincerely interested in the success of the project. I can hear some of my former colleagues agreeing. Yet, it takes a bit more effort and insight to suss out the reality.
In this case, assigned project members were unhappy with the organization in general and assigned leader in particular. That is, they had a point to make and were handed a vehicle through which to make it. Internally, the group was widely known to be more interested in a failed project that could serve as a platform for other greivances than a success that might undermine their vested position.
The project focus was well beyond the team's experience. So, not only was the group unhappy and itching for a chance to demonstrate failed leadership, they were not fully capable delivering even in areas that they were agreeable.
Knowledgeable? Well, even in their professional domain, observers noted that long standing practices were observed to be not current, some even harmful.
How does such a team end up with a multi-million dollar project assignment? Easy!
When an organization is trained to believe that form, rank and process are sufficient to achieve results, very structured processes (such as, in this case, PRINCE2) are meant to ensure that all the pieces fit in a tidy set of (many) binders and the messy realities of human interaction can remain off the table.
Not entirely blind to risk, senior decision makers provided additional support--in the form of administrative "experts" whose IT experience was limited to several months' installation of desktop software. This loosely related skill set was augmented with a contract IT technician who was to report to the problematic group. Not surprisingly, the vendor team was mystified. Eventually, the vendor's project management felt so badly burned by the behaviour of the client's staff that time lines began to slip as the focus shifted more and more to a defensive documentation of client team failures instead of progress. The accountable project sponsor found that senior support for addressing internal HR problems shrank as the disruptions grew.
Sadly, the scenario is not so unusual. No methodology, per se, can substitute for conscious assessment and realistic determination of factors that will shape the progress of a project. In fact, formulaic methodologies may include processes in which a problem is identified, recorded and reported and the process ticked off without notice that the problem itself is not resolved, enabling giving the old "operation was a success, but the patient died" argument.
It is rare to find direct reference to the kind of machinations that surround projects within organizations.
Scary as it may be, "getting real" around issues of workplace culture, power dynamics, competencies among relevant stakeholders and attitude is a necessary project design stage. They say that as many as 70% of IT projects fail to deliver the forecasted benefits. When the enforcement of process obscures context and a focus on outcomes, is it any wonder?
On Organization and Re-organization
Somewhere around the year 60 A.D. Petronius Arbiter observed that,
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
"we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. It can be a wonderful way to create the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization".
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Aung San Suu Kyi on Power
It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those with it, and fear of the source of power corrupts those who are subject to it."
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