Welcome to the sixth edition of BUSINESSBOOST — the latest in a series of business briefings from Blue Stone Business Solutions, a specialist and independent information technology consultancy business.

The topic covered in this issue is project management.

In the last issue we looked at contract negotiation and at what steps were necessary to secure the best deal in whatever it was you were seeking to procure. Once the deal is signed, you need to ‘project manage’ its implementation; and project management is, above all, about planning.

Antony Jay [the creator of Yes, Prime Minister] once wrote: “It is a general law applicable to any project that the earlier a mistake is made the more profoundly it affects the whole project and the harder it is to recover from.” Someone else put it more succinctly as ‘to fail to plan is to plan to fail.’ Once you have a plan, you need to implement it, and then review its implementation to confirm that all that you set out to achieve has been achieved.

So let’s look at how to ensure that you get project management right.

In previous issues we have shown how phases in the life of information systems are related to each other, usually in the sequential fashion shown below. So say you’ve signed up for a new information system. Your immediate objective is therefore to plan its implementation leaving no stone unturned. What follows is our blueprint for making sure you achieve this.

Conventional wisdom for communicating almost anything, be it a speech or a report, says that you should “tell people what you intend to say, say it, and then say what you have said.” Put another way, every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end. The same is true for projects in that you determine what needs to be done, you do it, and then you review that everything that should have been done has been done. If each of those three stages is tackled professionally and thoroughly, then your project has every chance of succeeding.

The Beginning – defining what needs to be done, and when

We find that when projects fail, it is as often as not because the project either wasn’t defined properly, wasn’t planned properly, or more likely both. (Such failings are one of the main sources of our project rescue service. But that topic is for another issue: here we are concerned with getting it right!)

Project definition

Good project definition really is one of the great secrets of effective project management. It means setting out clearly the what, when, how, who, how-much and what-if of the project in advance and then making sure that everyone who has a stake in the project understands and ‘buys into it’. So, whenever we run a project we always start with a definition that includes:

• the purpose and objectives; i.e. why are we doing it?
• the scope; what is included and what isn’t
• deliverables; what tangible outputs will come from the project?
• the planned timescales; when it will happen?
• the planned benefits; quantitative and qualitative
• the estimated costs
• the organisation; i.e. who is to be involved, including the project sponsor, project manager and the team
• any assumptions made in planning the project
• a risk analysis
• quality management; i.e. how will we ensure that the project actually delivers what is required?

If everybody with a stake in the project (including users, suppliers, customers, team members and senior management) understands, is able to challenge and ultimately buys into the definition, then the scope for surprises and unexpected problems greatly diminishes. That doesn’t mean you won’t have problems (you almost certainly will), but the major project-threatening problems should have been anticipated and contingencies put in place.

Project planning

We find that the three mistakes most frequently made in planning projects are insufficient planning, unrealistic planning or, ironically, too much planning. In our experience, insufficient planning is actually the least likely of the three. Most project managers understand that a plan is needed and modern software tools make the creation of some sort of plan relatively straightforward.

Unrealistic planning is far more common. Project managers, either under pressure from senior management or through over-eagerness, naivety or lack of practical experience, set unrealistic timescales which nobody really believes in but which nobody is prepared to challenge. When the project inevitably falls behind, the pressure is then to get it back on track rather than setting realistic targets.

We see a common pattern where the back-end tasks (often the most important like testing and training) get hopelessly squeezed until, eventually, there’s a reality check, and the timescales get re-planned. But by now the damage has often been done: important tasks have been skimped, spirits are down, and reputations have suffered. It is far better to have a realistic plan in the first place and really ensure that everybody signs up to it. This is not to advocate soft planning with undemanding, and therefore easy-to-achieve, timescales. Plans should be challenging. However, there is a big difference between challenging and hopelessly optimistic. Here an independent project manager can bring practical experience and realism to the planning process.

The third mistake is over-planning, or ‘planning the un-plannable’. This is usually characterised by 650-line Gantt charts which specify precisely what is going to be done at 09:30 on 23 August next year. For most projects, this is nonsense and the problem is that the effort required to maintain such unnecessarily complicated plans can take up a large proportion of the project manager’s time. What’s more, most of the project team won’t understand the plans and when they are proudly handed out at planning meetings you will see eyes beginning to glaze over. Sadly the team may believe that due to the impressive scale of the plan it must be right.

We find that a far more effective approach is to identify the key sections and milestones of the project, set overall targets for them at the start and then only plan them in detail as they draw near. This approach is far more flexible, allows the project manager to concentrate on managing (not administering or micro-managing) the project, and in our experience is simply more effective.

The Middle – actually doing it

Once the project has been defined and planned, actually ‘doing it’ is a question of execution. Not that this is simple of course, but a solid definition and plan should have helped you to identify and avoid or mitigate many of the major risks in advance. We find that the keys to success here are:

• regularly tracking progress against the targets set in the definition (timescales, budgets, quality etc) and making adjustments quickly when things move off track
• giving clear feedback to the stakeholders in the project (senior management, customers, suppliers, users etc)
• ensuring that the project manager makes time to manage the project team on a personal basis

This points up the key role of the project manager. They need not just the technical skills to understand the project, but also the often underestimated people skills. This means talking regularly within the team (and thus often being alerted to impending problems), as well as taking a ‘helicopter view’ of the project in order to see problems before they arise. Think of them as captain of a warship: this is not someone deep in the bowels of the vessel, but the person on the bridge, charting the ship’s course, looking out for hazards ahead, changing course where necessary, but above all giving clear instructions and motivation to their crew. It’s all about leadership.

The End – reviewing what has been done

We find that the most often ignored component of project management is the post-implementation review. There are two important reasons for such reviews:

• firstly, it is a formal check that all the deliverables have, in fact, been delivered, to the satisfaction of the customer. Again and again, we see situations where, for example, a new computer program is delivered, everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief, completely forgetting the need for full documentation, or to set up a maintenance contract
• secondly, it is a review of the Company’s overall performance on the project. This should be more post-mortem than witch-hunt. It should be a sensible and open review of what went well and what could be done better next time. Otherwise, you are likely to end up making the same mistakes on similar projects in the future

The post-implementation review should take the original project definition as a starting point and review the level of achievement, identifying any deliverables that remain outstanding, setting out a plan to complete those items, identifying the learning points for the future and finally, and very importantly, recognising the achievements of all those involved in the project, which will have been successful because you followed all the necessary steps.

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Our many project management projects conducted over recent years have been characterised by well-defined and highly practicable planning which reduces both risk and cost.

Because we are confident of our ability to come up with practical, cost-effective project planning solutions, we are willing to undertake an initial exercise for you at 50% of our normal rates†. However, in case you’re wondering if this is just some hit-and-run marketing strategy, then you should know that we tend to work with all of our clients over the long term, often working alongside them over many years. Businesses tend not to do this unless they see consistent added-value and this is precisely what we aim to deliver. But don’t take our word for it, talk to one of our many satisfied clients, a number of whom will be able to tell you about their well-executed projects where Blue Stone has been at the helm.

†This offer is limited to the first 10 days of services provided and is only available for the initial project with a new client.

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many hurdles overcome

Our client is a national body involved in the promotion and development of sporting activities. They wished to implement a new financial management, procurement, HR and Payroll system, and we originally got involved when they called for our help to specify and select this. Having selected the new system from the plethora of potential offerings, the crucial task was then to migrate from old to new, inevitably within tight timescale and budgetary constraints.

The system supplier had, somewhat naturally, proposed their own project management services, but our client wisely recognised that they needed a more customer-centred (and less supplier-centred) approach, and initally decided to manage the project themselves. As is often the case however, they subsequently decided that they lacked the in-house experience and expertise to manage such a project and (since we had been involved in the system acquisition) they therefore commissioned Blue Stone to manage the implementation through to completion.

The project was to be structured into two phases, where phase 1 involved establishing the initial deliverables and measurable objectives, then securing the commitment all of the interested parties. This having been done the detailed task of managing the rollout began.

In the event, phase 1 of the project was completed on-time and on-budget, but by judicious planning we were able to incorporate many of the phase 2 deliverables into phase 1, while simultaneously eliminating costs budgeted to occur in phase 2. Furthermore, the legacy systems were able to be switched off earlier than expected, thus realising further savings in running costs.

For this project our brief included knowledge transfer so that as part of the project we helped to develop a key member of the client’s project team.

This project epitomised one of our many strengths, in that we are often called upon to provide a seamless transition from specifying and selecting an information system, through negotiating the commercial and legal aspects of its acquisition, all the way through to its successful implementation.

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Next month’s newsletter deals with IS operations review. Then we will be discussing how to optimise the performance of your existing information systems in terms of both cost and service levels. We will be addressing pressing questions such as What should I be spending on IT? Is my IT department appropriate to my needs? Does my supplier provide the right service to me? and Should I outsource any or all of it?

If you feel you could benefit from an initial discussion with Blue Stone now, then please let me know, either by phone, e-mail or by clicking here. I look forward to hearing from you.

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