Enduring lessons in project delivery

In 1997 when The Project Workout was first published, it included ten lessons from working with and learning from large organizations which claimed to be undertaking projects well. Obviously, for those lessons to result from research done in 1995 and appear in a book in 1997, they needed to have been practiced long before that. I have since incorporated these lessons in my work in many organizations and they are mostly unaltered in the later editions of the Workout books.
This paper goes through my ten lessons and then compares them to the 12 principles which were derived from a study, published in the Project Management Journal, undertaken in 2022/23 to see if the lessons are still relevant today. The outcome of the analysis is that there is remarkable alignment between my original 10 lessons (dating from the mid-1990s) and the 12 principles from the recent study (2023) which does indeed point to the lessons being enduring. Some things don’t date, but we might change the way do things!

You can read my paper here

Reference: Buttrick, R. (2023). Enduring lessons in project management? PM World Journal, Vol. XII, Issue XI, November.

Principles of project management

The objective of this article which I wrote with a group of colleagues, is to determine whether a set of project management principles can be identified to serve as a common framework for developers and publishers of project management standards and guides. We looked at twenty-two project management standards and other consensus documents to gain a common understanding across the globe of the requirements for effective project management. We then took our findings and clustered into four categories from which we came up with 12 principles we believe could serve as a common basis for future standards and guides.

You can read our accepted manuscript here.

And you can see a video about it here.

Reference: Blampied, N., Buttrick, R., Jucan, G., Piney, C. (“Kik”), Stevens, C., Violette, D. & Max Wideman, R. In Search of Project Management Principles. Project Management Journal, 0(0). Copyright © 2023 Project Management Institute, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1177/87569728231158261

Confused or annoyed by ‘agile’?

An alternative strategy could be to aim to be turgid.

So many people use the term ‘agile’ for so many things that it can be source of confusion and, looking at posts on social media, the term can really annoy the hell out of some people. Everyone looks at it from their own viewpoint, which could be from the depths of a software development team to an aspiring senior manager wanting to make their mark and appear up to date or ‘ahead of the curve’. (well, it is too late for them!). That is life, we can’t and should not control everyday speech but if you are writing standards, methods or working with teams and use the term, it is essential you have a clear and shared interpretation. I published a paper which looked at a dozen authoritative sources (including from APM, PMI, ISO, IPMA and the European Commission) to look at what view they take. They don’t all agree on everything but . . . my paper should give you a way to pas through the agile jungle and gain some clarity . . . and if you can be clear, then hopefully you can help those you work with.

By the way, you can tell if something is agile when it is written in pretend hand-writing by a person in ripped jeans (just joking).

You can download my paper here

Reference: Buttrick, R. (2022). Addressing ‘agility’ in current project management standards and other authoritative publications, PM World Journal, Vol. XI, Issue XII, December.

Rethinking project management for a dynamic and digital world

Rethinking project management for a dynamic and digital world

Congratulations to Professor Darren Dalcher on the publication of his latest book for which I am delighted to say I have contributed an article, in Chapter 5, on life cycles. It his own article in the same chapter, Darren says the following:
“Robert offers a practical and pragmatic perspective for regaining control of life cycles. His framework enables practitioners and organisations to rise beyond the predictability and perfection traps to consider new and applicable improvements that have been shown to work and contribute to project success. His framework also offers a way of making sense of the confusing claims and counterclaims by various communities related to projects and the best methods for delivering value.”
Thank you Darren!

Editor’s Choice Award 2020

I am delighted to have received the Editor’s Choice Award for my article, published in PM World Journal, on governance. The word ‘governance’ is one that can really get the ‘C’ level animated but few people really seem to understand what it means. They talk about ‘governance structure’ and ‘governance process’ as if the board structure and a decision making process is all that matters. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For the full article see: https://docs.projectworkout.com/pmwj99-Nov2020-Buttrick.pdf

ISO 21502:2020 launched – update to The Project Workout

The latest international standard on project management, ISO 21502:2020, was launched at the end of December, four months ahead of schedule. Who would expect anything less for a project management standard! I was pleased to be a member of TC 258, Working Group 9, which created this new standard. ISO 21502 is a significant progression from ISO 21500:20102 which it supersedes. The new standard covers, not just the ‘project manager’ role but all those other roles needed to ensure a project succeeds, including the sponsoring organization, project sponsor, work package leader and others. It written in a narrative style enabling you to design your own compliant processes and includes new practices including the management of business and societal change and issues management as well as making a distinction between ‘reporting’ and ‘communications’. If you’ve read The Project Workout, you’ll know what I mean!

However, the launching of this new standard means that Appendix C1 of The Project Workout needs an update, which is inevitable when referring to ‘live’ external documents. I have therefore released this update as an article, ‘An overview of the current standards‘.  Even if you haven’t got The Project Workout, you should find this article of interest as it compares the new ISO 21502 with its predecessor, ISO 21500:2012, BS6079:2019 and the UK government’s project delivery standard, GovS002 . . . . all of which I was involved in!

The Workout Companion Site

Nowadays, processes and methods are becoming a way of life in many organizations, particularly those moving up the maturity level and adopting models such as SEI’s CMMI for Development. This companion site is based on the Workout books and uses BusinessOptix as its platform. If you have copies of the Workout books this interactive site points you at the chapters and workouts relevant to the part of the method you are looking at. If you don’t have the books yet, this site still provides you with a simplified example portfolio, programme and project management method website, with lots of usable information.

BusinessOptix is designed for ‘corporates’, and needs to know who you are in order to display the right content. Click on the cartoon to get to the BusinessOptix screen; then at bottom choose ‘Register’, enter your email address and you should receive your username and password in separate emails. You’ll be asked to change your password. Notifications are turned off by default. There is a video, below, to give you a preview of what to expect.

To access Companion site’s login and registration page:

• go to ‘Companion site’ on the menu at projectworkout.com and click on the image, or
• go directly to BusinessOptix

On the right track yet?

I wrote an article in 2015 in which I talked about the eternal causes of project failure (do I hear your groan!) and related them to how we could improve project delivery for infrastructure. I read it again this week and thought that some things in the world of project management don’t seem to change and the integration of ‘project management’ and each of the engineering disciplines is a case in point. Or have I got that wrong? I have updated the article very slightly as some words are in vogue, like ‘digital’ instead of ‘IT’, but essentially it is the same as 5 years ago.

Have a read of the article and share your experience is: On the right track

Getting the team to work as one can be a challenge . . .

The Programme and Portfolio Workout is launched

The Programme and Portfolio Workout has been launched. Together with its companion, The Project Workout, this book aims to help you run your organization in a structured, yet agile way so you can meet your strategic goals and make sure all parts of your organization are aligned.

I have made three short videos introducing the books:

1. The first video shows how these books have grown out of the original ‘Project Workout’, first published in 1997 and how they now give you the knowledge and thinking to make your organization succeed.
2. The second video describes The Project Workout and how you can direct and manage one project at a time.
3. The third video describes The Programme and Portfolio Workout, and how you can direct the tens, hundreds or even thousands of piece of work in your organization.

You can see these videos on Robert’s web site

Top down failure and other things . . .

I was recently interviewed by journalist, Yu Yanjuan, Project Management Review: PMR (China) and International Correspondent, PM World Journal.

In this interview, titled “Project failure is top down”, Robert describes how he started working in project management,  where his books originated from and what influenced them. He then goes on to discuss failure (and success!), the importance of excellent sponsorship, the balance between people and process and about his work with the UK government on their project delivery functional standard.  It also includes a few new cartoons!

 

Read the full interview