The Work Has Been Done. Let’s Roll It Out.

I have worked on projects with long timelines, and they’ve concluded with the rollout of the main deliverable, which is usually a system or a process.  My expertise is in Supply Chain Management, but most of my projects have an emphasis on IT.  I was interested when I found the article The Rollout Phase of the IT Project (http://www.itpmpro.com/2007/07/rollout-phase-of-it-project.html) by Iman Budi Setiawan.

The author focused on 4 main steps of successfully rolling out an IT project:

1. Identify the Inputs (includes installation and user instructions)

2. Conduct Key Activities (includes the actual IT conversion to the new system)

3. Create the Outputs

4. Meet the Milestone

These steps align with my experience, and there are two main points worth discussing.  First, the rollout of the system occurs at the end of the process, but the planning for the rollout should be running concurrently with the rest of the project.  Secondly, I think Create the Outputs is the most critical step in ensuring a successful project.

If a project team thinks they can get to the end of the project and accomplish these four steps in a short amount of time, they are setting themselves up for failure.  It is important to train end-users near the rollout date to make sure end-users experience a near-complete version of the system, but work must be done several weeks in advance to prepare training documents, arrange travel plans, and orchestrate the training.  More importantly, Identify the Inputs requires the identification of hardware needed for the conversion, which, in many cases, is identified during the initial selection of the project to understand investments needed to implement the solution.

Most projects have a time constraint, and the final step in these projects is a variation of a go-live or rollout step.  An important point, in my opinion, is that the rollout of the system itself or the flip of the switch to turn the system on should not be in and of itself considered a successful completion of the project even if all training has been conducted and you have full end-user buy-in.  While working on a project, the project team does its best to identify any potential needs and mitigate risks, but it is inevitable that some improvements and adjustments will need to be made after the rollout once many more people are working with the new system.  This is addressed by the Create the Outputs step.  Because these changes are difficult to identify, it is also difficult to understand the amount of time and resources that may be required to address them.  If the project team or IT resources are reallocated too quickly after the conversion, the key change requests that come out of the issues will not be addressed in timely manner, which could lead to the system being ineffective and a failure.

Does anyone disagree with opinion on these steps after reading the article?  Can anyone relate how this is like or unlike implementations not involving IT?

NATO Summit: Planned Well?

We recently saw large-scale project management in action, during the NATO Summit in Chicago on May 20-21.  Staging that event certainly required a great deal of project management, risk assessment and contingency planning.  Many Chicagoans felt the event was not worth the hassle (although Deloitte’ economic study projected a $128.2 million impact).  While the event was a huge pain, I can’t say the project was implemented poorly.  The police invested over $1 million in riot-control equipment and spent months training.  The CPD performance was generally well-received.  I do think the police could have done a better done containing the protestors, during the event the media coverage made you feel like the protestors were everywhere.  As a safety precaution, the city installed new trashcans.  There were many street and highway closures.  That information was communicated through media outlets, a website set up by the city and the “Notify Chicago” system.  The street closures very inconvenient, but I don’t know a better alternative was available.  Business appeared to be well prepared as well.  I found it interesting that Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce President Jerry Roper was mocked for suggesting in January that businesses may need to board up windows and have employees work for home.  By May, many businesses were installing bullet-proof glass, closing offices or urging employees to dress down to avoid being targeted by protests.  Generally, the organization of the Summit itself was well-received.  As the Sun-Times said “By not failing, Emanuel and Chicago succeeded.”

Now that you’ve had time to digest the NATO Summit, what do you think?  Do you think Chicago would have been better without the event?  Was the event a success operationally?  Do you have any thoughts about specific aspects that could have been planned better?

A great deal of the proposed benefit was elevating Chicago on the world scene.  My general sense is Chicago is not viewed as world-city.  Organizers of the 2016 Olympic bid were disappointed Chicago did not resonate more with IOC members – they simply didn’t view Chicago as one of the world’s great cities.  And while many foreign journalists praised Chicago, I don’t think the awareness created by NATO will translate into tangible benefits. 

Also now that the images from protests are not fresh, I think the event was organized fairly well.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/12688645-452/sigh-of-relief-city-survives-nato-summit.html

http://www.chicagonato.org/traffic-alerts-pages-266.php

http://www.chicagonato.org/chicago-tribune—foreign-journalists-favorably-impressed–news-46.php

http://www.worldbusinesschicago.com/files/downloads/NATO-Impact-Study.pdf

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8652598

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/12574453-418/business-leader-proved-right-about-nato-preparations.html

Will London Olympics be a Success? Planning Process Already Is

In the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Report titled “Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games – Risk assessment and management” a risk assessment and work breakout was reviewed.  It was the thirty ninth report of session 2006-2007.  The following items were reviewed during the London Olympics meeting:

 

  •  The need for strong governance and delivery structures
  • Delivering the Games against an immovable deadline
  • The requirement for the budget to be clearly determined and effectively managed
  • Applying effective procurement practices
  • Planning for a lasting legacy
  • Effective progress monitoring and risk management arrangements

 

Some of the items I found interesting is how far out the London team was formulating risk management strategies.  The games are to be played in just a few days, yet the London project team had risk assessment at the forefront of most of their meetings since day 1 of the planning process.  In fact, they divided the risk into 4 strategic objectives, then into 42 sub sections, that were then assigned to 17 project managers.    In addition to this, they had project managers that are solely in charge of venues and some for the lasting legacy plans for using the venues after the Olympic Games.  Even so, how does one even start to plan for such a large scale project such as this?  How does one even start to recognize all the risks involved with large projects as this let alone try to mitigate these risks as well with contingency plans?

 

Another area I found interesting was the budgetary planning involved.  Since day 1 the London project team had been estimating costs.  However, even at that time in 2006 some budgetary items remained uncertain such as taxes, contingency provisions, security, and private sector funding issues.  This project is so daunting that it will be interesting to see how successful the games are when the preliminary revenue and TV ratings are released in the next couple of months.  It seems that there will be no way to stick to preliminary budget estimates with such large scale projects such as these.  So how does one accurately estimate the costs that these games require sometimes 10 years in advance of construction and the games.

 

Has anyone out there been involved with large scale projects?  What was done on your project teams to make the planning, risk management, and budget management processes a success?

 

Below is a link to the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Report titled “Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games – Risk assessment and management”

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpubacc/377/377.pdf

MBWA: Funny Acronym or Effective Personnel Management?

Management by Wandering Around (MBWA) refers to a style of management whereby the manager, or specifically the project manager as discussed in Chapter 10 of “Project Management: The Managerial Process”, initiates contact and builds relationships with key players whose participation is critical for the success of the project. Through these relationships and consistent face-to-face interaction, the project manager is able to foster cooperation between stakeholders and improve probability of project success.

This style was contrasted with an old management adage standby: “the open-door policy”. The open-door policy encourages employees to come to the manager at any point when a problem arises. It relies on the aggressiveness of the employee, the strength of the manager/employee relationship and the employee’s own initiative to bring an issue to the boss. On the other hand, if the employee is not aggressive, lacks initiative or doesn’t have a positive working relationship with their boss whom they can easily bring issues to, this policy can jeopardize success of the project.

That’s the author’s opinion, anyway.

Reading this passage got me thinking: what kind of manager am l? Which one of these policies works better for me? Is one of these policies really better than the other? The answer, like a lot of what I’ve encountered in B-school, depends. I think it depends on the members on your team, and what their preferences are. If you have people whom you know are hard workers but perhaps not extroverted enough to seek you out when necessary, then MBWA works very well. It lets them know you are involved, present, ready to engage when necessary and the consistent interaction will help foster a positive relationship. If, on the other hand, you have team members who have no problem escalating when necessary, and in fact would not appreciate you showing up at their desk unannounced a few times a week, open-door works better for them. Nothing is worse than having a micro-manager for a boss, and MBWA could start to feel like that to a more experienced/confident employee.

I’ve been in both situations–managed people who clearly prefer (and need) the frequent touchpoints that MBWA can provide; I myself employ open-door policy with my boss. I don’t think one one policy is really better than the other, and both have their appropriate uses in the workplace. Fellow managers and supervisors: which style works better for you?

Even P&G faces unexpected risks

When working on a project to launch a new product a risk plan is put together as we’ve discussed. It’s known that Mother Nature, the economy and government regulations could be hard to forecast and thus could change your plans dramatically.

You do your best to put appropriate plans together to plan for these scenarios, but what do you do when the unthought of happens?

In April of 2011, P&G announced it was going to introduce an entirely new way to wash clothing — Tide Pods. A concentrated individually packaged detergent which removes stains and cleans better than traditional detergents according to their testing. They were planning to spend $150 million on marketing and launch in September of last year, hoping for first mover advantage. Then they announced a six month delay to launch the product earlier this year. Meanwhile Purex, All and Arm & Hammer have had time to perfect their products and launch at the same time. When P&G finally released the product to retailers, they faced supply issues and could only supply enough products for shelf displays, and not off shelf promotional spaces which increase awareness for new products.

Retailers are upset, and P&G is blaming the complicated new production process. Investors are already frustrated believing that P&G is lacking the innovation they once had (they’re moving their personal care HQ from Cincinnati to Singapore in an attempt to jump start that business).

Then once the product finally hit the shelves, parents are finding their children eating the product thinking it’s candy, causing severe side effects and sending children to the ER. P&G has said they’re now going to put a better locking mechanism on the fishbowl container which houses the bright colored pods.

Chicago was a key market for the launch of these products so you may have seen the advertising including CTA station dominations as shown below.

Have you tried the product? Does it live up to P&G’s hype? What could they have done differently to try to alleviate some of these issues (or foreseen them)? And if this can happen to a CPG leader like P&G, is there hope for the rest of us?

http://adage.com/article/news/p-g-reinvents-laundry-150-million-tide-pods-launch/227208/

http://adage.com/article/news/delays-put-laundry-titan-tide-defensive-300m-pod-war/232116/

http://news.yahoo.com/tide-change-pods-lid-amid-child-safety-concerns-165556333–sector.html

 

Dedicated PMO: Good or Bad?

As a relatively new official participant in the PMO process at work, I found Chapters 3 of the textbook very interesting. It helped me to think about how the PMO team is organized at my own company and inherent strengths and weaknesses. As I shared in class, I joined my first Project Proposal meeting a few weeks ago whereby business owners presented to senior staff the list of projects that we wanted to propose the PMO team take on for the next several months. Participating in this process made me think about how PMO should be organized versus how it currently is organized.

Because my project was approved, I am now an official project sponsor (although I have participated as an informal project sponsor in the past). We have a dedicated project team at my workplace, who work full-time on a long list of projects throughout the year. As a project is approved, the project manager from the PMO office assumes the role of facilitator to drive completion of the project. Personnel from different departments are tapped to participate in the project, although we do not officially separate from our normal jobs to complete it. This can be challenging, because the tasks by definition are complicated, involved (otherwise they wouldn’t be approved as a PMO project) and can quickly take over your day/week/month.

We seem to blend elements of the functional organization of PMO with a dedicated team approach. All of the strengths of functional organization, including easy post-project transition, in-depth expertise, flexibility and no change in the overall company structure are present. We also are able to tap into a few of the strengths of a dedicated team approach, including cross-functional integration and cohesiveness. However, this blended approach doesn’t allow for fast or simple completion of projects. It also can contribute to a lack of ownership and make integration a challenge. The PMO office then can turn into task masters, only concerned with keeping the project on schedule. A blended approach does reap benefits of both structures, but the PMO leadership must be very strong to assure those benefits are fully realized.

Project plans for the rest of us

There are very few people I have encountered in my career that have seen project planning as a truly joyful exercise.  Some professional consultants live and breathe projects, and therefore the prospect of a well executed project plan may elicit anticipation of success, or a sense of accomplishment in a plan in a well designed plan.  And there are others that can simply crank plans out in their sleep; having done so many throughout the course of their careers that it becomes second nature.  And perhaps a select few project management professionals eagerly anticipate putting together that next glorious plan, the next chance to show off their skills.

But for the rest of us, project planning is often a necessary evil.  So evil in fact, that I have seen many projects within my own corporation fail or miss project targets because the project champion decided to do as little as humanly possible in planning.  These pseudo-plans contain the bare minimum tasks, responsibilities and due dates, without much else.  And this comes out of successful managers and contributors, even star employees.  Because project planning is only done as a perfunctory step, rather than actually managing the plan.

From what I’ve seen, this is most often due to managers not realizing that an in-between project plan is possible.  That it doesn’t have to be either a list of tasks or a monumental MS Project disaster.  That is the reason most often given when the managers I’ve worked with (and myself included) discuss why a better plan was not created.  “The plan will take longer than the project” or “I don’t know how to use MS Project” or “No one follows those things anyway” are all common excuses given.

So instead of pushing my colleagues towards a full blown project plan, I believe there are a few key additions that could take the basic task list to a true project plan:

1. Add links between tasks & precedents-

Many projects have been postponed or delayed only because the sequence of events was not well defined.

2. Include actual effort estimates in the task, not just calendar days to complete-

Many people don’t actually add up the hours needed to complete a task – they just pick a random calendar day

3. Make more detailed tasks-

Broad tasks that people don’t even remember what they mean two weeks later don’t help anyone

 

These simple additions can go a long way towards taking a task list and making it a reasonable plan.

Airbus’s Strategic Plan to Open U.S. Operations

Airbus has made a preliminary decision to open it’s first manufacturing facility on U.S. soil.  Though not yet approved by the company’s governing body, the board of the European Aeronautic Defense & Space, they plan to build a plant in Mobile, Alabama that focus’s on the production of single-aisle airplanes.  This is due to the United States being the world’s largest market for this type of plan and that the current U.S. fleet is aging significantly.  So signs point to an uptick in demand in the near future.  This would be Airbus’s first attempt to build on the home-soil of it’s main competitor Boeing, and there proves to be many pro’s and con’s to this strategic decision.  Outside of the market demand, the cost of production, labor unions, labor flexibility, and benefits in euro-dollar exchange rates all played a role in the feasibility analysis of this decision.  Likewise, Airbus believes having some of there planes “made in America” will help boost sales with the U.S. airlines.

My main point of interest, when this decision was being made, was how the variables/potential outcomes were ranked.  For interest, did they put labor market relations as the top area of concern of was it the potential to corner a significant portion of the single-aisle plane market.  Similarly, were they able to predict the relationship between multiple outcomes.  For instance the article points out that if another recession was to hit a company based in Europe would have an easier time laying off thousands of workers in the U.S. than in it’s home soil.  However, the publicity that Airbus would face with laying off that many workers in the U.S. would significantly hinder any further attempts to advance in the U.S. market.  With the dominance of labor unions in Europe, I would have considered the company’s image in the eyes of the labor unions as the most important factor in potentially expanding into the U.S.  With a large percentage of Airbus’s workforce being in Europe, I would think the drive to us cheaper non-union labor in America’s South would potentially reflect negatively on the company as a whole in regards to any future labor contract negotiations, relations, etc.

Will this decision prove to be a long-term windfall or gamble for the European Aerospace giant?  How would you rank the various factors mentioned in the article in order of priority/importance?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/business/global/airbuss-us-plan-is-a-long-term-gamble.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Project Success Through Gaining & Maintaining Authority

A primary challenge in project management is not only having the right resources in the right numbers working on the right actions at the right time, it is also having the authority to hold team members accountable for the responsibilities delegated in the project plan.  Normally the project manager’s role and authority are established at the beginning of a project and for dedicated teams, the management structure is well defined.  For matrix-structured organizations however, conflicts and politics can interfere very quickly with project success.  In the article ‘Gain and maintain authority to ensure project success’ found here, Jason Charvat discusses how the three key elements authority, accountability and responsibility are required for project success.  What I find interesting is how the last two, accountability and responsibility, are immediately applicable to the project manager for the project, but can only be delegated to the remainder of the team once authority is established.  In a worse case scenario, a project manager could attempt to launch a project, but the entire team would be directed by their functional managers to consider it their lowest priority.  What can a project manager do to avoid a situation like this from happening?

When beginning a new project, one of the key concerns a project manager should have is how much authority I will have.  In most cases, organizations know who will be on the project team, when they want the project complete, and sometimes what level of purchasing approval a project manager will have.  Rarely, however, does an organization give much thought about how much authority a project manager has to hold team members accountable.  For a project manager with extensive experience in the same organization, the project’s importance to the organization, team members and primary stakeholders are mostly known.  For project managers new to an organization though, additional effort will be necessary to assess what level of authority one has.

To determine what level of authority one has as the project manager when not defined, develop the project documentation including the project definition, schedule, and select core team members with input from the project sponsor and functional managers.  Once you have buy-in from the functional managers on the resources, continue to copy them on project scope and especially the roles and responsibilities of all team members.  This will give each manager insight as to the amount of work that is required and provide an estimate how much their department representative can dedicate their time to other tasks outside of the project.  Another advantage of involving managers from the beginning and providing continual updates is you have a direct communication path with someone that can influence a team member’s performance.  If a team member is not fulfilling their role and you don’t have the authority, “you can arrange a meeting with stakeholders who do have the authority to ‘make things happen.’ “

In my experience, I’ve also found that, as the article states, “The most successful project managers are those that are also willing to work with executives in order to get this authority.”

How poor execution has led to the downfall of RIM…

In 1999 RIM released the first Blackberry and overnight this new type of smart phone became a hit.  They quickly got the nickname “crackberry” as people were now responding to emails at all hours of the day and night.  However, over the last couple years RIM has struggled to execute and adapt to the changing smart phone market.  The iPhone just recently celebrated its five year anniversary.  It was also in 2007 that Google announced their Android operating system.  By the first quarter of this year Android has captured 59% of the world smart phone market.

 

Sales at RIM have been declining for a couple years now due to outdated capabilities.  In the last quarter RIM announced a $518 million loss which has created doubts amount analysts about RIMs future.  Sales of smart phones have decreased significantly from 11.2 million units in the first quarter last year to 7.8 million units in the first quarter this year.  The biggest change is in product mix with RIM selling more lower-priced phones than in the past and also paying incentives to carriers for selling their product.

 

RIM has pegged its turnaround efforts to its new Blackberry 10 platform.  Unfortunately they just announced that this new line of phones and software will be delayed into next year.  This surprised many analysts since RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, had spoken publically at many recent events that they development was on schedule and would be available for the important holiday shopping season.  This time of year is the most critical for handset manufacturers.  This is supported by the fact that Apple has also moved its annual iPhone release date to early in the fourth quarter.

 

Blackberry is currently having to compete against the likes of Android and the iPhone using an outdated operating system.  Blackberry 10 was supposed to be a platform upgrade that would make these phones relevant competitors again in the market place.  During a call with analysts Mr. Heins said the delay was a result of RIM being “overwhelmed by the sheer amount of software code that it was now handling”.  In large company-wide developments like this project management is extremely critical so that the entire organization has visibility to progress.    Delays in committed ship dates not only reflect poorly upon management, but can have large financial impacts.  Right after the announcement RIM’s stock price dropped 14.5%.  This delay will probably end up costing Blackberry billions of dollars in lost revenue.

 

Reference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/technology/blackberry-maker-rim-posts-518-million-loss.html?ref=technology