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I have noted during
my career that there is a never-ending amount
of rules and restrictions forced upon project
managers under the guise of helping them "be successful"
in managing their projects. It appears to be a
one-way street; many regulations are added, but
few (if any) are removed.
We never seem to be able to take the time to clean
out our project management closets and remove
the rules and regulations we have outgrown, the
ones that have gone out of style, and the ones
we're not sure why we put in place to begin with.
I had the opportunity to assist in cleaning out
such a closet as part of a project management
leadership team I was part of. Prior to beginning
the process, each member of the leadership team
had reviewed the quantity and quality of our existing
technical standards (TSs) and standard operating
procedures (SOPs) with the capital management
practitioners in his or her area. The feedback
we received from these reviews was a resounding,
"We have too many, at times they contradict each
other, and we need a simpler system." Those were
just the positive points of our system.
Since we were in the process of "streamlining"
the capital management TSs and SOPs used to define
and execute our capital projects, we had an opportunity
to completely rethink each one. At first we felt
that we had done a pretty good job: We'd reduced
the number of TSs from 18 to 11, and SOPs from
32 to 24. But as we reviewed our new TSs and SOPs,
we noted our "closet" was still full. We had simply
rearranged all the clothes by reformatting or
renaming the standards versus actually taking
something off the plate. In some cases, we actually
changed the font size so it only appeared that
there were less!
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It is management's responsibility to understand,
review, and periodically edit the requirements
it places on its project managers as criteria
and times change. |
Like the closet that accumulates all the stuff
we buy and never get rid of (and just end up moving
around) we felt our list of TSs and SOPs needed
a major cleaning. We went back to the drawing
board, took an initial cut, and reduced the TSs
from 11 to 7 and SOPs from 24 to 7. People were
feeling fairly good about this reduction effort,
but many of us questioned why we couldn't reduce
more. As project managers described their role
in simplistic terms, we always came down to the
fact that they were accountable for managing cost,
schedule, and technical correctness. And it worked;
now we had just three main topics!!! We told the
team reviewing the standards to be merciless with
their reduction efforts, leaving only the core
requirements and keeping in mind these three areas.
The team came back with a proposal reducing the
number of TSs and SOPs to just four each:
- Cost Estimating
- Project Execution Planning
- Engineering, Procurement, and
Construction Planning
- Legal and Corporate Requirements
As our leadership team reviewed this proposed
change, they realized how much "stuff" had been
added to the TSs and SOPs over the years. These
additional TSs and SOPs didn't add any actual
value and went a long way toward explaining why
the project management community was feeling so
overburdened. In the beginning we expected our
original 11-standard proposal would leave the
practitioners feeling that we'd really helped
them and streamlined the process. However, all
we'd actually done was rearrange the existing
data in their closet, making things harder to
find. With our four TSs and SOPs, we felt we had
left just the right amount of clothes in the closet.
We decided to deploy the four TSs and SOPs, figuring
if our project managers experienced problems,
we could recreate what we had removed. In our
opinion, the risk of negatively impacting our
projects was small. We were excited to find out
the project management community was delighted
with these reductions and felt empowered by them.
It gave them more flexibility to manage their
projects and develop their own personal management
style.
Still basking in the glow of this successful reduction,
our leadership team decided to tackle our capability
assessment tools -- another closet to clean out!
We asked for two volunteers to review and propose
reductions. Each one of these tools had 16 sections
and anywhere from eight to 16 components in each
section. Within two months the individuals returned
with their proposal and beamed that they had combined
the tools (GREAT), reduced the total number of
sections from 32 to 16 (not great, but OK), and
each section now had 15-30 subcomponents (UGH).
Thus, the closet was still full but had been rearranged.
We forgot how to clean out the closet again. The
team rejected their proposal! I volunteered to
try and streamline these tools by reapplying the
process we'd used with the TSs and SOPs. In the
end we agreed on one tool, four sections, and
6-10 sub-points in each section. The closet was
cleaned out!
After six years, the four standards and SOPs and
the capability tool have stood the test of time,
and our project management success measures have
improved. The streamlining process enabled us
to:
- Reduce the effort, costs and time
required to maintain these standards and SOPs.
- Focus the project managers on
what is truly important, and allow them the
creativity to develop their own style.
It is management's responsibility to understand,
review, and periodically edit the requirements
it places on its project managers as criteria
and times change. This is especially true since
in the past we tended to add requirements that
may or may not have added value. Thus, we were
just building an extra closet to house our new
stuff, versus cleaning out the original one to
solve the problem.
Management needs to listen to its practitioners
to determine how they can help the system. Statements
like "do more with less" are interesting, but
management needs to be accountable to determine
what rules and regulations are truly necessary
for project managers to be successful and deliver
successful projects.
Lessons
- The natural tendency in organizations is
to add new standard project procedures and
guidelines throughout the years, without deleting
old ones.
- It is management's responsibility to periodically
review and edit standard project procedures
and guidelines, leaving only the minimum core
requirements.
Question
How can you encourage, in today's dynamic environment,
appropriate flexibility necessary for implementing
standard operating procedures?
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 W.
Scott Cameron is the global process owner
of project management for the Procter and Gamble
company in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has both managed
capital projects and programs, and developed other
capital management practitioners Within the company's
various businesses for more than twenty years. |
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