[Text from a number of talks given publicly and within IBM at project management conferences and forums. In addition, here is a link to a webinar given on September 17, 2017 and here is a downloadable version of the presentation file. The webinar concludes with remarks about critical competencies shared by expert PMs and a comment on the application of the Seven keys to agile scrum situations.]
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If you could invent an arcade game called Project Management, what would it be like?
Here’s my version. Imagine this:
You, the Project Manager, are at the wheel of a race car traveling at high speed over open ground. Off in the distance is a wall stretching as far as you can see from left to right, but in the middle of the wall is a hole about twice the width of your car. The challenge is simple. Steer through the hole and you win the prize, and the faster you get there, the bigger the prize. Miss, and you smash into the wall – no prize, no more fast car, no more driver.
So what’s the catch? Well, obviously crosswinds, bumps, loose suspension, and other factors tend to take you off course. All that’s fair game. What makes this challenge difficult are the following two limitations you must learn to deal with.
First, your steering wheel only turns five degrees left or right – you better be making a lot of small corrections early or you will get yourself to a point where you no longer have room and time to correct.
Second, you can’t turn that wheel by yourself – you have a partner in the car with you, your Executive Sponsor, and you only get to make steering corrections if he or she agrees to help. So you better be good at communicating with that Sponsor about when steering corrections are required and why. Hmmm, a bit reminiscent of “crucial conversations” perhaps…
Does this metaphor for managing projects sound too simple? Of course it is. But I think it’s instructive, and I want to explore with you today three notions that arise from this metaphor. First, you must partner with your Executive Sponsor in order to take corrective actions. Second, all projects, including successful ones, require lots of corrective actions. And third, this isn’t as simple as steering one car toward one hole in the wall. You have to manage (or steer) seven different kinds of vehicles simultaneously if you want to grab that prize and avoid crashes. That is, I believe there are seven dimensions of project health you need to be continuously monitoring.
So let me start with the first of these notions by quoting one of our clients. We often conducted interviews after completing large projects, and this is what one project executive sponsor told us about how to get his attention. “Hit me over the head!”
There is a good lesson here: when we’re working with business executives, they want us to grab their attention, be crisp, and get to the point. And the point is: If you want to alter the course of your project’s history, you must communicate at the executive level. When you succeed in this, your executive sponsors will gain insights, make decisions, and take actions. And your project needs these actions to be successful.
Let me compare some experiences with you, because I suspect we have traveled similar roads, you and I. And I hope you have fared better then me, because I have a lot of lumps and bruises from my journey. I have been on dozens of projects over the last 25 years, in roles ranging from junior analyst on small teams to programme director leading a team of more than 100 people. I have also been a Quality Assurance Partner for a period of 6 or 7 years, reviewing and consulting with projects of all sizes, shapes, and states of health. In terms of project management performance, I have seen brilliance and I have seen gross incompetence. I have witnessed resounding success and I have seen some who have fallen on their swords.
And from these experiences, I have come to believe this: project success is not dependent upon possession of super powers. And thankfully so, at least in my case. Conversely, even Superman or Superwoman may not be successful in every project.
If not super powers, then what can we bring to help create success on our projects? Increasingly so in this On Demand world, project success is much more directly tied to effective involvement of business executives. The number one reason for project failures - according to Gartner Group, The Project Management Institute, and many other observers of project management performance – is due to issues surrounding executive commitment and sponsorship. We must recognize that projects – and project management – are now the stuff of boardroom agendas, and we must be good at working those agendas.
How then can we communicate better at the board room level? How can we use that communication to get decisions and actions that will guide our projects toward a successful outcome? I’m going to give you a language, a technique, for this history-altering communication that has proven to be highly effective on our projects. It was developed as a result of the merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers & Lybrand project management experiences, and has been adopted by IBM, not just in its Business Consulting Services unit, but by the company-wide PM Center of Excellence. When PW and C&L merged, we compared notes from both sides and found that this framework embodied the lessons learned by both organizations, across a very wide range of project size, type, and geographic territory. Now it is IBM’s way of managing project health, and we call it “The Seven Keys To Success”.
Now, if it weren’t for project managers and executives, this communication stuff would be easy. Let me illustrate. A client asked me a few years ago to visit a troubled project of theirs and help them figure out how to turn it around. In the course of my review, I spent several hours with the project manager. He took me through all his status reports and presentation documents in which he raised issues about various risks and circumstances – issues that now had grown into project-threatening problems. I then spoke with the executive sponsor for the project, and I asked him about his reaction to the project manager’s material. He said, and I quote, “I thought he was whining.”
The project, as it turned out, was beyond redemption, and crashed into the wall. No more race car, no more project manager/driver, no more passenger/Sponsor.
Who’s at fault here, the project manager or the executive? Trick question – communication is a process involving at least two consenting people. Both the sender and the receiver have to make the effort, and sometimes it takes more effort than others. But early, proactive communication must happen, or there will be consequences. So if you think you’re not being heard, shout! Pound the table! Do what it takes to “hit them over the head”, because some times project life gives you only two choices – make a career decision early, or make it later, but you are going to make a career decision. As both of the characters in this story discovered too late. These truly are crucial conversations, and you have heard Joseph Greeley talk about some tactics for these.
But how do you know when a project is doomed, there is not enough time or room to maneuver, no matter what heroic actions are taken, or when a project is going off course, but the right set of actions can save the day? And what exactly would those best possible actions be? Better yet, how can you convince senior management about the need for action – even those executives like our friend who didn’t like to hear people “whine”? The answer to all of these questions, I propose, lies within The Seven Keys To Success.
Before I go on to explain the Seven Keys, I want you to do something for me. Think about the best project you were ever on or ever heard about. Hold that thought. Now think about the worst “death march” you were ever on or ever heard about. Now keep them both in mind as you contemplate the following dimensions of project health that make up The Seven Keys To Success.
First dimension of health - stakeholders are committed. [Slide 3] Here are some of my experiences. On one large systems implementation project I reviewed for a complex, multi-national company, I asked who was on their Steering Committee. The answer: “We don’t have one.” Eventually, one was formed, but it never had solid influence over the all the geographical heads of business units. The project eventually was cancelled. Let me tell you about two other projects early in my career, which happened to occur back-to-back. One included a CIO who actively worked to see the project fail. And he succeeded, and it failed. The other, and the best project I ever managed, was for a client who really made it happen – took responsibility, made tough decisions, took political heat, and truly owned the result. I completely “failed” in one, and was a resounding “success” in the other, all in the space of about a year. Did I change tactics or become a different person? No, in fact my “best” project happened immediately prior to my “worst” project. That was my first lesson that we as project managers aren’t the only ones responsible for project outcomes, good or bad.
Second dimension - business benefits are realized. Sometimes people get caught up in the events and melodrama of a project, and lose sight of the primary objective. I saw this in a large ERP project. This project was originally designed as a Year 2000 mitigation tactic – “We don’t have the time to correct our old, custom-built core financial applications, so we will replace them with ERP software.” Actually a sound strategy – if you do it in time! This organization got so caught up in the politics of agreeing specifications that they almost didn’t make the deadline. In this case, they were yanked back into reality by some concerted pounding of shoes on tables at the CEO level of the organization. Other projects have lost their way in terms of business benefits and never gotten back on track. I’ve seen too many projects that never had a sound business case in the first place, and should have been saved from a premature death by never having been born. Yes, you can even use this framework to judge the health of projects you’re only thinking about doing. [Alternative story – This dimension of health can be used to great advantage in other ways. With one quasi-government client, we experienced turnover at the business sponsor level – a highly political level – three times in the course of an engagement. Each time, the tendency for the newcomer was to distance themselves from anything their predecessor had touched. Each time, we were able to regain Stakeholder Commitment because we had so strongly and clearly built the Business Benefits case.]
Work and schedule are predicted. This is the traditional dimension of health. Otherwise known as “On time and on budget.” Now, anyone can tell you when this one is in serious trouble. And by then, of course, it’s often too late to recover. The trickier challenge is to know early in the project if it is likely to do well or not. Here, process and discipline are everything. Imagine you are a Quality Assurance person about to do a detailed review for each of two projects. The first has just reported a necessary schedule change, and it has only completed one third of its projected time line. The second has reported no slippages, and it is 80% along its projected time line. Which project “smells” to your twitchy Quality Assurance nose? In my experience, I would feel better about the first case than the second. Why? Because that project team seems to have the mechanisms for planning and tracking, and can see the need for a course correction early on. With this type of discipline, there will not be many surprises. (There may be unhappy news, but it won’t come as a big surprise to anyone.) The second one sounds too good to be true, and I would check it out very carefully if I had responsibility for QA.
Scope is realistic and managed. Get this one right, and “Work And Schedule Are Predicted” is a lot easier. Get it wrong, and both tend to suffer. I remember one project that got way out of control – from an initial budget of under $20 million to actuals of over $80 million. The company was a power utility in the days before deregulation, which prided itself on having a gentle and mannered culture. The project was a new customer information system, a very complex undertaking. Successful scope management would have required a project manager as mean as a junkyard dog. Instead, the company named one of its own “gentlemen” to the job, and the rest, as they say, is history. We’re not talking “scope creep” here – this one galloped out of control. My advice is to learn how to be a mean junkyard dog when necessary - and in the nicest professional way, of course.
Team is high performing. This one is often overlooked, and yet can make a huge difference. It’s not just about talent and experience, although these are obviously important. Morale, trust, physical environment, reward and recognition – these are some of the factors that determine sickness or health. I have seen project teams given terrible working conditions – desks out in corridors, air conditioning shut down after hours and on weekends – as if that wouldn’t have an effect on the health of the project. I have also learned, first hand, how powerful it can be to have a truly diverse team – diverse in style, in nationality, in gender, in life experience. And I also have learned how hard it can be to bring such a team together, how easy it is to convince yourself to take shortcuts in these efforts, how tiresome it can be to continually display the leadership that binds them together. Don’t let that get to you. Fight for diversity and fight for the time and resources to build trust and communications among your team. I guarantee your project performance will benefit.
Technical risks are mitigated. The press has reported on a number of high profile implementations that have gone badly for the companies involved. Orders not processed, inventory not managed, market share lost. The ultimate costs to the business and the shareholders have been huge. Many of these cases involved the “big bang” style of implementation – the quickest way, but the riskiest way. Here’s the sanity test for these circumstances: “Don’t gamble unless you’re prepared to lose.” These companies gambled, and found out they weren’t prepared to lose.
Delivery organization benefits are realized. Finally, behind every project, there is a delivery organization that puts it on the line for project management performance. And I’m not just talking about financial issues. Delivery organizations, whether they are hired consultants or internal IT groups, are trying to enhance reputation, harvest lessons learned, and develop staff with each project. If these aims are kept in sight and continually furthered, the final dimension of project health will be served. If these aims cannot be met, then all parties cannot deem the project a complete success.
Okay, that’s The Seven Keys To Success. Not unreasonable, but what’s that got to do with executive level communications and altering the course of your project’s history? The real secret to their usefulness is that they are actionable, and remember that that’s what we’re after when we communicate with our project sponsors. Actions that will alter the course of history.
Here’s how it works. [Slide 10] Project health, for each key, is described as green, yellow, or red. Green means “stay the course – no corrective action required”. Yellow means “warning - corrective action required in the near term”. Red means “urgent - corrective action required immediately”. In other words, yellow and red status reports come with a built-in agenda for taking action. I’ve always been taught that when you’re preparing for an executive level meeting, ask yourself, “What do I want them to know? What do I want them to decide?” This is “hitting them over the head”. This is exactly what The Seven Keys To Success framework provides as your boardroom level communication technique.
Now, let’s revisit your own projects. Think first about your worst project – how many keys went red? How early? Did the underlying conditions get corrected? I’m guessing that multiple keys went red, did so early in the project, and never recovered. Next, your best project - were the Seven Keys always green? I bet they weren’t, but I also bet they didn’t stay red for too long.
Successful projects are never in perfect health at all times. But successful projects always address their health issues promptly and effectively. Use The Seven Keys To Success as a built-in agenda for your regular monthly Steering Committee meetings. Get those health issues on the table, and get the commitment to take the necessary actions.
OK, sounds straightforward. But it still requires project managers with experience and judgement and insight. It was the philosopher Kirkegaard who said, “You live your life forwards but understand it backwards.” The corollary, unfortunately, seems to be that great understanding only comes when very little of professional life remains. How can we accelerate the growth of wisdom and expertise in our Project Managers? Is this truly art, or is there some science here we can advance?
Well, science is a powerful word at IBM. Forty years ago, the company partnered with academia to initiate the development of computer science. Now with a Research & Development budget of some $5 billion annually, IBM is again pioneering with academia, this time to explore Services Science. This is a very broad-based undertaking, but one research project I am personally sponsoring concerns a new approach for moving Project Managers from the novice end of the performance spectrum toward the expert level faster than traditional training and experience permit. Based on our experience with the Seven Keys framework, we are beginning to understand how our experts think, perceive, and learn about their project’s health differently from novices. These differences are being incorporated into a simulation event for training purposes, designed to show people that novice thinking will cause them to fail in many complex circumstances, but thinking like an expert – learning like an expert - will yield positive results. This isn’t transfer of knowledge. This is transfer of mindset. This is part of what IBM is trying to do to explore the science of project management.
So to recap my three premises, at which all our expert Project Managers have become adept: First, you must partner with your Executive Sponsor in order to correct your course. Second, all projects, including successful ones, require lots of these corrective actions. And third, you have to manage (or steer) your project across seven different dimensions of health if you want to achieve complete success.
I have two final questions for you.
In your worst project as a project manager, was the outcome your fault? No, of course not, it was that idiot project sponsor.
In your best project as a project manager, is the credit entirely yours? Well, maybe that project sponsor had something to do with it – after all, she was smart enough to listen to all your good advice, right?
We are not alone in our management responsibilities – our project sponsors must share the load. And we must learn to do a great job of making that happen.
If you want to alter the course of your project’s history, you must communicate at the executive level. [Slide 11] Use The Seven Keys To Success, and get everyone talking your language.
