Chapter 21: Consideratioms For Organizational Adoption

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

Before creating a projects management method, it must be understood why an organisation wants to do this

By understanding the drivers and objectives, it’s more likely that a method will be created that meets the needs of the organisation

Question 2

How do we decide who to involve in a new method

Answer 2

People involved should have the right skills and experience; they may be in house experts, consultants or a mix. The method they create must be acceptable to stakeholders

A way of moving to a common method within an organisation is to collect together experienced and respected PMs to compare the way they do things and ask to agree an approach that appears to be acceptable to all.

Question 3

Maturity definition

Answer 3

A measure of the reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of a process, function, organisation etc. the most mature processes and functions are formally aligned with business objectives and strategy and are supported by a framework for continual improvement

Question 4

Maturity model

Answer 4

A method of assessing organisations capability in a given area of skill

Question 5

What are some benefits of using a maturity assessment

Answer 5

Helping organisations decide what maturity level they must achieve to meet business standards

Create a reliable capability baseline against which improvements in performance can be objectively measured

Providing and objective assessment of strengths and weaknesses

Justifying investment in project management infrastructure

Provide validation of an organisations maturity

Question 6

Look at characteristics of P3M3 project maturity level (Table 21.1)

Answer 6

Look

Question 7

Maturity levels: 1,2,3,4 explanation

Answer 7

Level 1: Awareness of process
- does the organisation recognise projects and run them differently from its ongoing business?

Level 2: repeatable process
- does the organisation ensure that each project is run with its own process and procedures to a minimum specified standard?

Level 3: defined process
- does the organisation have its own centrally controlled project processes and can have individual projects flex within these processes to suit the project?

Level 4: managed process
- does the organisation obtain and retain specific measurements on its project management performance and run a quality management organisation to better predict future performance?

Question 8

Consistent terminology - look other side

Answer 8

Consistent terminology is important as using words in a consistent way helps communication and understanding

The organisations methods should reflect the terminology used in the organisation. Problems will occur when different parts of the business use different terminology, neither of which may be wrong

Question 9

Tailoring the processes

Answer 9

Tailoring the processes, roles and product descriptions are closely linked. An activity in a prince2 process is undertaken by a role to create a management product. Change any one relationship and the relationship between the others may also change.

It’s advisable to start by tailoring the processes, changing them to reflect any new terminology and amend the process model and activity flows if necessary to reflect how the organisation should operate.

Question 10

Having a defined procedure

Answer 10

Each organisation has to decide how each prince2 theme is reflected in its project management method. On individual projects, this is usually described in the PID.

Having a defined procedure ensures these aspects are covered in a consistent way and saves each PM having to define their own as they can refer to the organisations approach

Question 11

Project lifecycles

Answer 11

Prince2 doesn’t prescribe use of a particular project lifecycle, but it does require that one is used.

Consider including one in the project management method, describing the purpose of each management stage and linking back to the prince2 processes and themes.

Standardised project lifecycles gives project managers a basis from which to tailor their own. It also enables the organisation to have an overview of the progress of its portfolio of projects

Question 12

Managing the method

Answer 12

Method needs to be managed and maintained after its been created.

The method should include guides, procedures or processes describing how it’s managed together with associated roles and product descriptions.

Roles should include one to manage overall architecture of the method, ensuring that the process model and its component parts work as a whole

Question 13

Creating tailoring rules and guidelines

Answer 13

Prince2 has a tailoring principle, so any method derived from it should also allow tailoring. This means that the method should include tailoring rules and guidelines. This may be covered in a few pages of text or may involve a lot of detail.

Question 14

An organisation may choose to limit the extent to which its project management method can be tailored by defining the following

Answer 14

What rules or guidelines are applicable to the organisation?

What degrees of freedom should each role holder have ?

Who approves tailoring?

Who can advise people on tailoring?

Question 15

Extra context to tailoring

Answer 15

As prince2 can be used regardless of complexity or scale of project, organisations may consider rating their projects by complexity and providing guidance on how each category should be tailored

The greater the complexity, the more info that is generated. A project manager should ensure that the means of storing and distributing information is efficient and secure. For simpler projects, a log book and wall display may be sufficient, but for more complex projects, especially with distributed teams, information systems will need to be developed and rolled out

Question 16

Changing the way people work

Answer 16

Introduction of an organisations project management method involves changing the way people work, leading to higher project success.

The Heart of most change models is gaining support of those requires to change their ways of working. This involves:
- understanding current situation
- understanding resilience of those who’ll be impacted by change and their levels of resistance
- identifying what changes are needed in the wider organisation
- engaging those affected by the change and winning their support

Question 17

Design of the future state

Answer 17

Design of the future state of a project management method should reflect the vision for how project management will work after the method is embedded. It should include roles, processes, tools and behaviours relating to using the method itself and to any supporting organisational units.

As project management is a form of governance it should link with overall governance of the organisation, embedding project management strengthens corporate governance.

Design of future state not only includes tailoring of prince2, but also the design of every other part of the organisation needed to support project management

Question 18

Design of future state - extra context

Answer 18

Organisations will often support their PMs by implementing tools and systems to aid communication and reduce the administrative overhead

Such tools may be for planning and tracking, controlling changes, tracking risks and actions and recording lessons. The prince2 product description outlines a number of such products.

Question 19

Ensure consistency across all impacted parts of the organisation

Answer 19

The deployment of project management throughout an organisation involves the roll out of the project management method and supporting tools, together with the change management activities to promote use of the method.

Large number of specialist products may need to be created in order to implement a project management method, the deployment strategy needs to be carefully thought through.
(Two alternatives are the ‘big bang’ approach and the incremental approach)

Question 20

Big Bang approach

Answer 20

In this method, the project management method and its supporting elements are activated for use in the same day; all plans focus on this go live date.

This approach may be good in a small or new organisation, but the actual go live date would be constrained by the longest lead element of the project and thus early benefits may be lost.

There could also be teething problems on launch, unless full trails have been done

Question 21

Incremental approach

Answer 21

By taking this approach, early benefits can be realised and the amount of change that users have to cope with at one time reduced. It enables roll out to be progressive, say geographically, so that deployment resources aren’t overstretched.

Question 22

Track progress of change

Answer 22

Whatever approach is taken, it’s helpful to track the progress of the change effort during deployment and in the early operational period.

Many change management techniques include change tracking approaches.

Maturity models can be used to assess progress of the roll out for the whole of the organisation or a sub part

Question 23

Building and sustaining maturity

Answer 23

Practitioners must continually use project management method after initial deployment if the business is going to benefit and help to continually improve business performance.

Using a method requires people to be skilled and competent at their jobs; a method simply brings consistency in approach.

Method should remain relevant to users and so direct engagement should be encouraged through feedback and stakeholder involvement.

Question 24

Tracking usage of the method

Answer 24

Tracking usage of method can be hard, however, as most methods tend to be published on an organisations intranet site, a simple click count combined with analytics can provide a pattern of usage.

Initially the use of the site should increase, but unless momentum is maintained, usage may drop off.

Tracking quantity of feedback and any resulting changes to project management method is indicative of user agreement

Question 25

Communities of practise

Answer 25

Many larger organisations create ‘communities’ which have the aim of improving performance by sharing knowledge and creating a sense of community. These often have their own websites, blogs, social media and events to motivate their members to contribute to the development of the profession