TOP Ideas

Our consulting company, Capability Management International, is 15 years old this year. So we start the year with 15 of our most critical insights.

“We need a new ‘Project Delivery Science™’”

I recently sat in on a project team management meeting. They agreed that the project (which was under 3 months old) was off the rails and they did not have the capability to deliver the expected benefits. I was thinking, “You could, but not with the conventional project and change management approaches you are using.”

Conventional project and change management approaches have been proven to be deficient. Although everyone works hard, is committed and tries to do their best, the results are poor. The current project methodologies focus project effort on the wrong outcomes, measure them with the wrong KPIs and wonder why they’re not a success.

The time has come for a change, to create and use a new approach. We need a new Project Delivery Science.

A “Science” is based on (1) research, (2) study and (3) practice. This is the source of ‘Value Delivery Management™’.  We have …

1. Conducted research over two decades into exactly how and why projects fail. Everyone seems to have a theory on why projects fail; we have studied many, many projects to identify the systemic faults and events that drive projects ‘off the rails’ into either disaster or sub-standard results.
2. Studied the current theories — although we have not learned anything there.
3. Practiced our aproaches in the real world — proving again and again that our new approach delivers exponentially greater results.

To illustrate — two different organizations — one using conventional approaches and the other Value Delivery Management — but delivering the same type project (eg a mortgage processing system) what was the difference? Three examples (with three different sets of two companies):

Organization 1
Project cost = 82m    VDM organization Project cost = 19m*

Organization 2
Project cost = 78m    VDM organization Project cost = 7.9m*

Organization 3
Project cost = 84m    VDM organization Project cost = 35m

These differences are not marginal but exponential.  (* = Same scope, smaller volumes)

It’s time for a new Project Delivery Science; its time to deliver real value!

Our new book “The new Project Delivery Science” will available chapter by chapter in the next few weeks — look out for more details soon.