February – Project Start Month

For many organisations, February will be lining up to be a busy month. Annual budgets that were approved in December or January are now starting to become available, so what should CIOs and Heads of Change be looking at to make sure that new projects are getting started as quickly as possible?

Resourcing is Critical

It sounds obvious, but having the right people working on your project is key, not only to the project starting well but to ensuring that it builds and maintains momentum required to complete on time.

In these days of Alan Sugar’s apprentice, I think the term project manager has become a more than a little underappreciated; with some organisation’s under the impression that almost anyone can be a project manager. Personally, having run large change programmes and change teams for more than 25 years, I can say that anyone can run a small budget non-critical project. In fact that is an excellent way to help people onto the change leadership ladder, but when the size of the budget, the complexity and pressure increases, you really need a change professional. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times and not only knows how to get out of the sand traps but sees the lay of the land before issues even arise.

Are Methodologies Key?

Back in the 1990s and early 2000's project methodologies seemed like a panacea. The truth is they have certainly helped, but for those who are still relying on them to answer all the challenges, I'm afraid you're likely to be disappointed. At their heart all methodologies are there to do is to help your PM learn from past mistakes and to do the right thing for your project. It is for that reason that I believe experience beats certificates every time. Consider this when you are looking at who is going to run your project or programme - ensure you are choosing a change leader, not just a certificate.

Good Governance is Important

Please don't underestimate the importance of stakeholder and sponsor management. It is a critical part of all modern projects and is vital to ensure good programme and project governance too. Stakeholder and sponsor management is in essence mainly about communication, but it is also about being able to provide the right degree of challenge to a sponsor. Particularly if a sponsor is "pushy" or perhaps at the other end of the spectrum and is probably indecisive.

Delivery Should be the Only Agenda

I've often been told that Fifth Step's project managers are far better able to provide that balance of constructive challenge and support than the organisation’s staff, because of our independence. After all, our only agenda is to ensure that the change is delivered on time, on scope and to budget. While internal politics shouldn't get in the way of a project, we all know that they do and using change leaders who are outside of the politics and hidden agendas can ensure a far more efficient change.

A False Economy

To adapt an adage, "Image the cost of having experienced people for your projects. Now imagine the cost of not".

Using staff who are underprepared for a project doesn't help them or the project. Often, people can be so bruised by the experience that they'll leave the company and, in the meantime, the project suffers and may even become a project in distress. Rescuing projects is a far costlier exercise than doing them right in the first place, anywhere from 1.5 times more expensive depending on the nature of the project. So make sure that you’re choosing a change leader who is right for the project.

Plan Adequately

There can be many reasons why plans are not adequate for the purpose, that is doubly so at this time of the year when projects have often been sitting in a budgeting queue for some time. Alternatively, plans based on assumptions that have subsequently been proven incorrect also need to be revisited, in some cases, those projects may no longer be viable.

Revisit Old Plans

If your project plans are more than a few months old and particularly if they have crossed an end of year boundary, it is vital that they are revisited and re-evaluated to ensure that planning assumptions and costs are still correct. Now is also the right time to assess the resources, be they the parts of the business who need to be involved either to provide information to the project or the resources which are required to become a fuller part of the project team.

Any good plan will include consideration for changes in vendor costs, but for projects that have been delayed beyond their original start dates, such changes may not have been factored in, better to understand those issues sooner rather than later. In some cases deals may be able to be negotiated, the best answer to avoiding such challenges in the future is to include a high-level assessment of delayed projects as part of your budget planning. Where vendors are advertising cost increases well ahead of time, there may be the possibility to secure a deal ahead of price changes.

Embracing DRIFT

DRIFT is an imperfect acronym that stands for (Do it Right the First Time) is an accounting theory that measures the increase in costs of having to go back and revisit something rather than being able to take the ideal and most efficient path.

In modern business, particularly for those in the more regulated sectors, many aspects will increase the costs of a project if they have to be revisited or retrofitted. One that should be top of mind for all CIOs and Head of Change given the enforcement of GDPR commencing last May is privacy by design. Some change teams are not aware or choose to ignore the potential consequences of including this as a project requirement, preferring to assume that it will be something that the BAU (Business as Usual) team will pick up instead. That approach is often far costlier, so if your project includes changes to business processes, data collection, data processing or data distribution, make sure that your project team have the right skills to assess and advise on privacy by design.

A related and often overlooked topic is cybersecurity; this is particularly important if your project is implementing or making changes to systems that stores sensitive or valuable (financial details, intellectual property, privileged information) information. Including a cybersecurity assessment of your project should be the default for your projects, allowing the process to be actively removed where it is not required.

Fifth Step has been helping businesses like yours implement their critical changes since 2011, our experience change leaders have learned their mistakes, read the books (and in some cases written them), allowing us to bring the benefits of our knowledge to your business to ensure that your change projects delivery on time, on budget and in scope.