TOP Ideas

When project delivery is not performing the natural tendency is to look at project management.

“How can we improve project management?”

“How can we improve the relationship between IT, the project and the business?”

“How do we up-skill our project teams?”

All good questions, but usually looking the wrong way.

Projects operate within a business context and environment. The wrong, inadequate or inappropriate business environment will actively prevent the project from being truly successful.

‘True success’ for a project is measured in business terms – did the business get the outcomes benefits and value it sought and expected? So, if the business is under performing its roles, it is unlikely to get the results it wants and the project cannot be successful.

Yet, this simple truth is ignored by most who are trying to improve project performance.

They, understandably, look at the project, the project team, the project methodology or whatever, but don’t look at the business, the business governance team or the (lack of) business methodology.

It is like trying to improve road safety by just improving the safety of cars. Good, necessary and does deliver some results – but road safety is also driven by the state of the roads, road laws, breath-tests, driver education, etc. Just improving the cars is not enough.

It is the same with project performance. Projects begin and end in the business. While there can be some project failures driven by poor project management, more projects failures are driven by poor business involvement, leadership and governance. In all of the analyses of large-scale project failure I’ve seen, ‘inadequate senior management support’ always sits in to the top three reasons for failure (poor project management usually comes in around number 6).

To improve project performance we need to stop looking exclusively at the project team and instead look at the business, its understanding and capability to perform its roles. You’ll often find the need for governance training, effective change approaches, simple but effective benefits processes – areas missing or underdone in most organizations.

Improving business performance is the area that VDM has been focusing on for the past 16 years – because until you improve the business’s performance, your projects’ performance cannot be successful. In fact, no one ends up as successful. And that’s failure, right?

Do we want to continue to be associated with failure?

© Jed Simms, Australia, 2010