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David Hillson explains how the seven steps to good risk management can be scaled to the actual situation.

I'm often annoyed by managements having so little focus on the amount of risk in planned and running projects. This small overview would tell everything.

Map or landscape?

Have you ever thought about why we say: "we are behind schedule" or "we are not at the plan"?

The reality may no longer be as we planned it, but it's not reality that does not fit into the plans. It's always plans that do not fit with reality. We do not change the landscape to fit the map - it's the other way around. Therefore, we should get used to saying something like "schedule is ahead of reality" or "the paln is not where we are"!

How strange it may sound, it makes us all more humbled to reality. We have to respect that reality does not change just because we make plans. Henry Mintzberg has said it very well: "Reality has a tendency to constantly get in the way of the plan!"

 
Have a nice weekend

Here is why you can not close your project

You can not close your project, and you could especially not dream of closing your project - because you are so busy with your professionalism - the exciting study, the needed re-organization, the attidue project etc. it's simply the dream project, where you can give and show the best you can offer - purely professional. You pull on your professionalism and long experience. Life is good!

But who is up in the helicopter and keeping an eye on whether the project is worthwhile? Stands effort targets with the effect that (perhaps) can be achieved? Should you fight on if the chances of success are slim? Is it a Sisyphean project, which is no longer relevant or perhaps should never have been started?

But if you still choose to propose to close your project, then you should know that the professional may be a problem, but that project professionally, it is a success - a sensible decision!

 As expert a failure - as project manager a triumph!

Status and consistency are two things

You're a little behind schedule and therefore signals YELLOW in your progress report. However, you are very close to the deadline, so probably you do not have time to catch up. Should you rather signal RED?

No, because then you mix the status and impact together. Status is a measurement of the distance between plan and reality. The impact is, however, what this status means to the project. The consequence is the next step argument for the proposed action to address the situation:

Plan -> Execution -> Status -> Impact -> Proposal for handling -> Decision-> Action -> New Plan

It is the year of the Project Sponsor!

Finally got a chance to see some of the annual Chaos Report (Chaos because the report monitors the amount of chaos in projects) from the world's most recognized organization in the field: The Standish Group. The report from June this year called: CHAOS Manifesto 2012: the Year of the Executive Sponsor ($ 1,500 at The Standish Group here). The reason for the words Executive Sponsor is to be found in the reason for the growth in the number of successful projects, the report actually documents:

 

 - and declare that the reason for success is mainly attributable sponsor! The reasons are here:

Notice that Project  Management is 7th! We have long ago passed the point where projects and their success was an inside-and-out process. Today it is an outside-in process. Many more actors, interests and forces in play. In that arena, there are entirely different playing rules.

Are you and your sponsor ready?

The culprit is found!

I think I have finally found the cause of all our problems in projects! Hold on! This is gonna be big! The reason is where nobody has looked. Right at the feet of you. The reason is simply the word Project! That's it!

When I say project - ziiiip zaaaaap, then you have immediately a picture of a project in your brains, but do we have the same? and is in fact one the right image or a real definition?

There are lots of definitions - some are even standards (eg. Here at PMI), but common to them all is that they all come from or fit a certain age - the so-called Modern Social Period - the period governed by reason and knowledge.
I think many today feel that reason and knowledge is no longer the most important thing in projects now a day. We are in the Postmodern Social Period - the period ruled by discourse and rhetoric. An appropriate definition of project nowadays might be:

A discourse of legitimation and an arena for social games and power tests. The project is an instrument of powerful stakeholders.
Yes, it was a little fluffy. Back on earth one could just have fun with defining success in projects? is it:
• process terms: managed within time, quality and resources?
• product-wise: it can be used and they are happy about it?
• business: was it worth it?

- We are allready three completely different views of projects. So do not come here and say that the word project makes sense!

So what I'm trying to say is that the word project is a too poor word - and therefore it is dangerous - and therefore we must find another or a different way of talking about 'projects' further on.

There are great prizes for the winner!

Yes to option or no to risk?

Since project work was invented, we have used risk assessments to enhance the security of the projects that we have chosen to implement. We have removed the most obvious obstacles to success.

All together well enough, so long as the decisions at the start of the projects have been good. They have had the opportunity, because the pace of change and the scope has been more modest in the past.

This is no longer. Now we have to bring forward the risk assessments for the choice of projects. It is no longer about refining successes, because no one can longer guarantee any success. On the other hand, there is by now no limit to how bad things can get. It goes instantly today.

I therefore believe that the challenge today is:

• not about saying YES to the opportunity for profit, but
• to say NO to the risk of loss.

Which is something entirely different.

Challenging structure fascism 2

Obliquity is a philosophy and not at least the experience many of us probably have, namely, that you often end up somewhere else than where you was expected to end - or, conversely, a goal best isachieved indirectly. (book on the idea here).

If we believe in this principle in our projects, so would:

• plans more serve as a starting point, rather than as a way to the goal!
• it be more important to relate to developments in the near and distant environments; than trying to stick to the plan!
• planning of how we capture, interpret and react to change and events be more important than the project's schedule!
• process be more important than results! - Perhaps even more important than the purpose of the project?
• many classic project managers be on thin ice in regard to management and control.

It could all be true.

 

Challenging structure fascism!

Just to show (not least to myself) that I understand all those who can live without all the structure that I normally advocate, I will write some posts on a number of questions that I'm curious to get some responds on. Here comes No. 1

Top management has long recognized that strategic planning - especially over longer periods - no longer fits our great volatility. Flexibility and the ability to detect and respond to impulses in the world is probably just as important. You could say that rather than planning, it is important to be prepared when opportunities arise.

Here comes the question: When top management has realized that planning does not help so much, why is it that we in the project management just making a big deal out of that plan? We are equally affected by volatility! If we continue down on the personal level is the same: why do we continue to dream that the daily scheduling helps us very much?

Now> 1 Million PRINCE2 certificates

PRINCE2 is the most widely used certification scheme for project managers. Number two is PMI with over ½ million and the third is IPMA with estimated 1000.000 +. The majority of the certificates have been issued in the three schemes' homecountries i.e. UK, North America and Europe. More interesting graphics on PRINCE2 here.

PRINCE2 is also running at full steam in Denmark - 13,500 certificates at the end of 2012, the forecast right now - of which the vast share of approx. 5,800 only expected to be published in 2012. Details of this development can be read here.

MS Project 2013 Preview

Went to Microsoft today and heard about the major improvements. Together with the good guys from Projectum I heard about:

1. As always new and more easy reporting tools. One can wonder why they pay more attention to the output than the input?
2. Tast path is a really nice thing - point to a task and see all direct predecessors and successors.
3. SkyDrive - of course
4. Presence information - yes now you got all contack info at each resource - Project is going Social!
5. And fianlly a store where you can get or buy nice customermade reports, setups, forms etc. - ex. you can find an Agile form!

How is it possible?

It is a good exercise to grab a cup of coffee / tea and then think about why projects comes trough in your organisation? Is it because of the project model? or the project manager? or the project schedule? No, probably not.

It is more likely the culture you have. There is often much more trial-and-error than you would think. Problems and challenges arise in the project, but becomes usually very quickly a disturbing sliver in the organization. More and more attention is paid to the sliver - more and more resources and competencies are used until the sliver is gone. It is precisely this fluctuating attention and help that project rarely see or underestimate the extent of. It is the many free longhours, it is the neglection of more important matters, it is the enthusiasm, the optimism, it is stubbornness and much much more.

The more mature with project you are in an organization, the more predictable are these efforts, and the more you can plan with them and manage them. In less mature organizations one must as with the bumble bee ask: ""How is it possible?".