TOP Ideas

Managing projects for value is often seen as ‘extra’ work. “We have enough trouble just trying to get the project up, running and delivered” seems to be a common response. Poor estimating, poor planning, missing business cases, all are cited as evidence that there are “more fundamental issues” to be addressed.

But managing a project for value is not ‘extra’ work but an alternative approach to delivering projects that makes many of the common problems go away. It also directly addresses why we do projects — to realize the business outcomes and associated value.

How many of you have worked on a project that no one can really articulate what it is going to do for the organization?

How many of you have worked on a project where the number of unknowns is unknown?

How many of your have worked on a project where time has run out for adequate change management so the solution is rammed in?

And so on.

Value Delivery Management is an approach to delivering projects that requires

• carefully defined and widely agreed ‘desired business outcomes’ that make clear the business end states to be achieved, the real definition of success
• defined scope definitions that are (potentially) different for the problem and solution stages of the project and the business and the project teams
• fully defined process-based business requirements that can, often, eliminate 40+% of the process steps before you seek a solution, reducing time, complexity and costs to implement
• projects to be managed as a ‘change project’ from day-1 so that delivering change and realizing benefits is fundamental every dimension of the project and is achieved progressively
• the project’s profit and loss (value and costs) are managed for the long term impacts, not just the ‘on time/on budget’ impacts, and so on.

These are not extra steps but alternative steps to the ‘off and running, technology-driven’ approaches so commonly used. AND, as we have proven again and again, when VDM approaches are used the projects are delivered in less time and for less cost and deliver all of the benefits.

So, rather than trying to improve your current approach to project delivery choose a simpler, faster more effective approach — value delivery management.

What do you think?

© Jed Simms, valuedeliverymanagement.com

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For a quick overview of Value Delivery Management see “Understanding Value Delivery Management” available from valuedeliverymanagement.com