VDM

Its time to stop this madness! (4)

Its time to stop assuming that the business knows what to do in relation to projects. They don’t, and relying on them to perform from a basis of ignorance is madness!

To many business managers ‘projects’ are a dangerous escapade. They’re difficult to control, difficult to bring in on time and budget and even more difficult to deliver the expected results. Projects are seen as a ‘necessary evil’ rather than an effective means of realizing strategy.

So the business tries to instil some controls and discipline — without knowing what it is doing.

One favourite approach is the externally imposed deadline. “I want this done in three months!” The madness of this type of externally imposed deadline seems to escape most business managers. As the saying goes, ‘You can’t get a baby in one month by making nine women pregnant!’
Read the rest of this entry »

Its time to stop this madness! (3)

Its time to stop assuming that the big consultancies actually do it better. They don’t. Relying on a big consultancy to realize the value, as company after company can attest, is madness.

In an attempt to reduce their risk, many organizations are relying on major consultancies, systems implementers or software companies to manage their projects to success. This is a high-risk approach.

Here are two examples that show that major ‘implementation’ firms have no better success rate than any average organization to project delivery. (They just make more money out of it!)

Example 1

A major bank, fed up with its repeated failure to deliver projects successfully decided to outsource much of project delivery to one of the major consultancies.

However, a review of how this relationship was operating found that a conservative estimate of the resultant wasted money from the new arrangements was about $42m pa.

What went wrong? Read the rest of this entry »

Its time to stop this madness! (2)

Its time to stop hoping that paying high dollars for project directors will solve the problem. It won’t. Continued reliance on ‘heroes’ is madness.

The reliance on project director/manager ‘heroes’ to bring projects in ignores the complexity of modern projects. One person cannot do this alone, they need the full support not only of the project team but also of the organization. Everyone needs to be capable of delivering the results, as the following example illustrates.

A major manufacturer commenced a major overhaul of all of its systems. This was a ‘make or break’ strategy to break out of the systems environment that was holding the company back and put in modern systems.
The project (read IT) budget was massive. It could not be allowed to fail. Read the rest of this entry »

Its time to stop this madness!

Its time to stop putting our heads in the sand and telling ourselves that “There really isn’t that big a problem out there.” Yes there is. Most projects still miss, lose or destroy more value that they deliver. And to continue using the current approaches that cause this is madness!

Week in and week out projects of all shapes and sizes are commenced, run and delivered in alignment with the conventional project delivery approaches. Yet the results are poor and, often, very expensive. Yet, we continue to use these same approaches knowing that they fail when new approaches succeed. Read the rest of this entry »

The essential THIRD dimension

Initially the focus was on successfully completing projects. “Successful” often meant ‘finish’ hopefully within sight of the original budget and timeframe. This was called “Doing projects right”.

Then the focus came onto selecting the right projects. “Right” often meant ‘financially positive’ with some cognisance of the risks involved. This was called “Doing the right projects”.

This is where most organizations are today — trying to do the right projects right.

But there is a third dimension — delivering the right value. Read the rest of this entry »