The Best Management Practice products from the UK Cabinet Office are now widely accepted across Federal and State government agencies – including P3M3®, MSP® and PRINCE2®. What is less widely known is what is being done to fundamentally change the way major government projects are run. 

Will we see these approaches adopted in Australia?

A new approach to leadership

Earlier this year the UK Government unveiled plans for a new Major Projects Leadership Academy which will be created and delivered in partnership with Oxford's Saïd Business School. The new academy will build the skills of senior project leaders across government to deliver complex projects – reducing the over-reliance on expensive external consultancy further and building expertise within the Civil Service.

In future no one will be able to lead a major government project without completing the Academy.

Quotes from the website make it clear that the focus is on building world class project leadership skills within government agencies and thus reducing the reliance on “expensive external consultants”.

Improving project performance for the taxpayer

The Academy will be managed by the Cabinet Office Major Projects Authority (MPA) which was launched in 2010 to oversee major projects and ensure they deliver for taxpayers.

The MPA represents a sea change in the oversight of central government’s Major Projects at both an individual and a portfolio level and aims to address the findings from the NAO report Assurance of High Risk Projects and from a Major Projects Review.

It is a collaboration between the Cabinet Office, HM Treasury (HMT) and Departments with the fundamental aim of significantly improving the delivery success rate of Major Projects across central government.

The MPA is supported by a clear and enforceable mandate and has the authority to:

• develop the Government Major Projects Portfolio, in collaboration with departments, with regular reporting to Ministers;
• require Integrated Assurance and Approval Plans for each Major Project or Programme including timetables for Treasury approvals and validation by the MPA and HMT;
• make a Starting Gate Review (or equivalent) mandatory for all new Projects/Programmes;
• escalate issues of concern to Ministers and Accounting Officers;
• provide additional assurance and direct involvement where Projects are causing concern including the provision of commercial and operational support;
• require publication of project information consistent with the Coalition’s Transparency agenda;
• work with departments to build capability in Projects and Programme management; and
• publish an annual report on Government Major Projects.

The Australian approach

Australia has had a number of agencies at both federal and state levels focussed on improving project performance – including the PM&C Cabinet Implementation Unit the AGIMO-led Agency Capability Initiative and DoFD reviews and assessments.

The question is, will we see these current initiatives develop into an Australian Government Major Projects Authority, with an associated Major Projects Leadership Academy? 

And if we do, will that be a good thing? 

What are your thoughts?

Your organisation wants to get better at project management. So you send all your project managers on training courses to get project management qualifications. Unfortunately this will not deliver the results you are seeking. This blog explains why, and what you can do about it.

Training individuals does not achieve organisational implementation

Projects are about the delivery of change across organisational boundaries. Effective governance of projects requires decision making structures – Steering Committees, Projects Boards etc – that cut across those boundaries. Everyone who plays a role in these structures must be on the same page, not only about what the project is doing, but how the project is being managed. Indeed, if they do not understand how the project is being managed this is likely to limit their ability to effectively contribute in terms of what the project is doing.

It follows that the most effective way to train is to do so on a project-by-project basis, not a person by person basis, so that everyone in a project management role learns in the same context as their colleagues.

Each project that learns together must then be provided with appropriate support to ensure what they have learned can be translated from the learning environment – classroom or online – into the workplace.

Senior executives must be directly and personally involved in the learning

I have talked previously about the basics of executive involvement (blog 7 ways to get your executives on-side).  In the training context the message is simple – that senior executives who are involved in the governance of projects must be directly and personally involved in the learning.

That is not to say however that you should attempt to put your executives through the same training regime as the project managers. It is highly likely that they will have neither the time nor the inclination to spend several days on a course or hours wading through screen after screen of e-learning.

What most executives want to understand is how does the project management approach relate to the context in which they operate, what is their role in a project, and what do they need to do to ensure effective project management among the people who work for them.

Tailoring is essential

Project management qualifications demonstrate (in most cases) that an individual has attained a certain level of understanding of a particular approach.  What they do not do is equip that individual with an understanding of how the approach should be applied to their particular project.

Project management training is most effective when participants receive not only theoretical knowledge, but specific guidance on how things work in their organisation and the opportunity to apply the theory to their own projects.  This means tailoring must be tailored to suit both the organisation and the types of projects it is running.

For Government agencies that are required to undertake P3M3® assessments and improve capability, it is important to know that P3M3® level 3 maturity requires that training is focused on your organisation (blog P3M3 Training Considerations).

Embedding project management disciplines requires a structured approach to manage the change

Putting these things together at an organisational level is not trivial.  It requires good cooperation between the corporate PMO and HR department responsible for training / people development.

It requires careful consideration of timings – what is the right time to provide training to each project from the perspective of that project, and how does that add up into an overall picture of how the whole portfolio of projects can be supported. If the organisation is running projects in a programme context this must also be taken into consideration.

Putting it together

If you are currently just arranging project management training for individuals, I suggest you:

• consider changing your training to a project-by-project basis,
• involving senior executives in the learning; and
• tailoring that training.

How to put all this together?  I think you already know the answer to this – run it as a project!

Last week, we attended an event co-hosted by the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) and the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) which brought together Public and Private sector to talk about how P3M3 assessments and Capability Improvement Plans are progressing.

Ann Steward, Australian Government Chief Information Officer spoke about the continuing importance and focus on P3M3 including goals of the Agency Capability Initiative, the strengths and areas requiring focus and Capability Improvement Plans and their importance in the ICT Two Pass Process.

Our own Chairman, John Howarth, provided views from an Accredited Consulting Organisation, with extensive experience in the P3M3 arena, on what the Capability Improvement Planning process is and how Agency’s are and can manage their CIPS to achieve their target levels.

John  discussed why Agencies need such capability levels, what Agencies can select to manage using the capability they have and how they can implement their improved capability. There was lots of nodding in the room when John advised that the capability improvement planning process must be an exercise in stakeholder engagement.

A video of John’s speech as well as an audio only file are posted below.

Following Ann and John, the audience heard from three Departments who provided case studies on how they are progressing with their original CIP and their second P3M3 assessment including lessons learnt in the past two years.

Case studies were provided by:

• Michael Carmody AO, CEO Australian Customs and Border Protection
• Paul Madden, CIO Department of Health & Ageing; and
• Mandy Newton, National Manager International Deployment Group Australian Federal Police.

Finally, the five speakers came together on a panel and fielded questions from the audience.

 Click the icon below to access an audio only file of John Howarth's address.

There are three disciplines measured by P3M3®, which people often talk about in a single breath - Portfolio Management, Programme Management and Project Management.  However they are very different. While there are linkages between them, when it comes to what you do to improve capability they can – and should – be tackled individually.

How mature is your organisation’s Portfolio, Programme and Project Management? One way to find out is to conduct a formal P3M3 maturity assessment.  But a more unorthodox way is to ask the cleaner. Here is a light-hearted look at what insights you might gain if you were in an office one evening as the cleaner came round and you asked: 

“So what is this place like then?” 

“It depends which floor you are on.” 

“The people on the first floor are nice enough but I have no idea what they do. They are always working back late, having meetings and long discussions. As far as I can see there always seems to be some sort of crisis or urgent activity and they are figuring it out as they go along. The folk on the third floor are the total opposite. Also really nice but I hardly ever see them unless I am on the early shift. They seem to know what they are on about, only have short sharp meetings and spend their time doing stuff rather than running around between each other’s offices. ”

 Maturity insight – Which floor is level 1? Which floor is level 3?

 “It’s nice when you know who you are talking to.”

 "Over time I’ve picked up the names of some people on the first floor because I see them so much, but I’m still not sure who the boss is or how they fit together. There are no names or signs on the doors or anything. The other thing is that people seem to come and go a fair bit, I don’t know if they get the wrong people in or something or people don’t like working there. 

On the other hand, the third floor is great for new cleaners. Everyone has their name on the door, what their job is and the project they work on. Each project seems to have all the people sitting near each other. I asked one lady what she did the other day and she explained it really clearly. I told her that I thought that was pretty impressive for a newcomer, but she just smiled and said that that was why they had recruited her, because of her skills and experience in that type of a role. Made sense.” 

Maturity insight – Are roles & responsibilities defined with competencies and used to secure appointments?

“I love looking at the walls.”

“I love looking at the walls on both floors. The first floor is great. They have Dilbert cartoons everywhere, funny posters, and signs with witty remarks on them. Hilarious, who thinks up this stuff? I could spend hours reading them all.

On the third floor it’s very different. They have plans everywhere – big schedules and stuff, these huge colour things. They all seem to have them, they even look a bit the same if you stand back. I’ve noticed they all change them regularly. They must take ages to stick together. If ever I do see a few people working back late they are often standing talking about one of these plans on the wall trying to figure out what to do.”

Maturity insight – Are plans developed to a central standard, kept up-to-date and used for decision-making?

“I reckon you could grow plants in some of them.”

“The first floor has piles of paper everywhere. Not just on their desks, but on the tables, floors, everywhere. Some of them have been there ages like compost heaps – I reckon you could grow plants in some of them. I just clean around them. The third floor is the complete opposite. You’d reckon they don’t use any paper files, but I know they do. They have nice clean desks and the only things you see are these official looking blue files in everyone’s tray. Looks very professional and organised.”

Maturity insight – Are there organisation-wide standards on confidentiality, availability and integrity of information and documentation?

Which floor are you on?

OK, I admit, you might not be able to conduct a full P3M3 assessment just by interviewing the cleaner (though it might be fun to try!). However, what does your work environment say about the way you manage your programmes and projects?

For the last two years P3M3® (Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model) has been mandated by the Federal and Queensland State Governments for assessing the organisational capability of agencies to effectively manage ICT-enabled investments. The results have been mixed, not just in terms of how mature agencies are, but also in terms of how the assessments have been conducted.  Federal Government agencies will undergo another round of P3M3 assessments before the end of September with results to be reported to the Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board. There are a number of traps that agencies should be aware of when considering a self-assessment.

Trap 1 - Misunderstanding what 'self-assessment' really means

There was considerable confusion when the term ‘self-assessment’ was first introduced, not least because there were two distinct meanings being used. In the Federal Government context, self-assessment originally meant that assessments were to be run by agencies themselves and that it would not involve a central agency arranging each P3M3 assessment or ‘judging’ individual agency capability. The P3M3 model itself, however, offered self-assessment questionnaires as one of a number of ways for an organisation to begin to explore the P3M3 model.

Most agencies have now recognised that a P3M3 assessment is something they must own As such, the question of self-assessment then becomes “To what degree can we do this ourselves and to what degree do we need external assistance?”

Trap 2 - Not ensuring the right level of experience is involved

The P3M3 model is relatively simple to understand in structure; however a deeper level of understanding is required to grasp which elements of the model are the cornerstones of maturity measurement. There is a significant level of detail in the model and not all of it carries equal weight when undertaking an assessment.

In order to assess portfolio, programme and project management maturity, it is also important that the assessors understand what the disciplines of portfolio management, programme management and project management look like when they are well defined and applied in practice. Agencies must consider whether internal assessors have the skills and experience to make such a judgement. Many agencies have the requisite experience in relation to project management, but it is less common for portfolio management and programme management.

Trap 3 - Misinterpretation

The assessments undertaken to date show that consistent interpretation is a critical ingredient in a valid assessment. It is why assessments undertaken using online surveys are of questionable value – those responding to the survey must place their own interpretation on the meaning of the model without the benefit of an experienced assessor to guide them.

A simple example of this issue is interpretation of the word ‘programme’ – if people interpret it to mean ‘Government program’ rather than ’change programme’ when undertaking a survey then the  P3M3 assessment results will be invalid.

Trap 4 - Using unskilled interviewers

The accepted method for undertaking a P3M3 assessment relies primarily on interviews with people in key management roles – programme managers, project sponsors, investment committee members etc.  It is important that the correct people are selected for interview, and that the assessors are skilled interviewers. The APMG Group provides third-party accreditation of Registered Consultants who are qualified to undertake P3M3 assessments.

P3M3 is here to stay – What are the next steps?

Agencies are implementing their capability improvement plans. They will complete their next P3M3 assessment, to compare their actual capability to their target capability, and report the results to Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board, by 30 September 2012.

From September 2012, agencies are required to complete regular P3M3 assessments of their portfolio, program and project management capability and report to Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board on progress against their capability improvement plans.

Agencies must obtain independent validation of their current capability before undertaking major ICT projects. The Government considers agencies’ capability as part of the ICT Two Pass Review process to strengthen the link between policy formulation and implementation.

P3M3 is here to stay. While I hate to use the blog as a ‘sales tool’, it is important to note that Tanner James can help agencies undertake a self-assessment in the optimum way – using APS resources to build internal skills and reduce cost while benefiting from external expertise arising from having conducted many assessments.  Conducting an assessment this way can produce a valid assessment for less than half the cost of having a full external assessment undertaken.

If you have undertaken a self-assessment before, or started to explore the self-assessment questionnaires, then I would welcome your questions, observations or lessons learned.

Are we running a programme or a project?  That is a common question and one that attracts an increased level of debate when there is a P3M3® assessment underway.  So I will share my thoughts and invite other people to enter the discussion based on their experiences.

Spelling doesn’t matter

OK, let us get this one out of the way.  It doesn’t matter whether you using the spelling ‘programme’ or ‘program’. What does matter is the meaning attached to the word.  For this reason I have suggested to Government agencies – admittedly with very little success so far – that they use the spelling ‘program’ for traditional Government programs, and use the spelling ‘programme’ for delivery of major change initiatives.  Bottom-line: be clear what it means in your organization.

Definitions do matter

I want to put reference some definitions here, not just for the sake of it, but because I think it is central to answering the headline question.

The parliamentary website defines a program as:

“Activity that delivers benefits, services or transfer payment to individuals, industry and/or the community as a whole, with the aim of achieving the intended result specified in an outcome statement.” (An outcome is “the intended result, consequence or impact of government actions on the Australian community”.)

In its best management practice guidance the UK Cabinet Office defines programmes and projects as:

“Programme: a temporary, flexible organization structure created to coordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of related projects and activities in order to deliver outcomes and benefits related to an organization’s strategic objectives.”

“Project: a temporary organization that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business outputs according to a specified business case.”

The answer:  It is a matter of choice

Have another look at those definitions because therein lies the answer to the question.  The key words are “temporary” and “create”. From a best practice perspective - P3M3®, MSP®, PRINCE2® etc - a programme is a programme or a project is a project because you choose to create a temporary management structure. Nothing is inherently a programme or a project, it is simply an initiative with certain characteristics. Sure, if you look at the management tests they will provide ‘compare and contrast’ listings examining the characteristics of each. Ultimately, however, it is a choice that needs to be made: “should we run XYZ as a programme or a project?”.

Implications

In my opinion the implications are significant in that Government agencies in particular should be very clear about who is making these choices and on what basis.

• Should you run the establishment of a new program as a programme?
• Should you run a new program as a programme from cradle to the grave? 
• Should you run some of the program as a project? 

I said in my P3M3 – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly blog that an assessment does not automatically identify what you must do to get better at the delivery of change using P3 disciplines. Nor does it tell you how to get there.

So how do you do it?  That is a challenge many people face and it is one of those challenges that can appear harder and harder the more you think about it. Trying Google provides a plethora of highly complex results and sometimes it can feel like you’ll never accomplish anything.

So where to start?  To my way of thinking it’s another case of back to basics.  Here are five things you can easily do to get the capability improvement ball rolling.

1. Talk to people

Take a break from sending out emails, writing procedures and creating new templates and get out their and talk to people. Ask them what they think portfolio, programme or project management is all about. You might be surprised where the conversation leads.

2. Inform your executives

If the senior leaders of the organisation don’t know what portfolio, programme or project management can do for them it won’t get much attention. Which means you need to understand what their problems are and where P3 disciplines might help. But equally important is that you understand where they won’t help.

3. Focus on fundamentals not details

Frameworks like MSP^®, PRINCE2^® and P3O^® are very comprehensive. This is great for highly experienced practitioners but can be intimidating and unhelpful for both organisations and individuals who are new to such approaches. Don’t confuse a comprehensively defined framework with the manner in which it is applied – get the principles understood before you reach down into techniques.

4. Start by putting the theory into practice

People often do formal training in a framework then spend lots of time figuring out how it should work in their organization and/or on their project. They can be paralysed in trying to create a perfect process. My advice is to have a go. Try it. Use the bits that make the most sense to you and appear most valuable. It doesn’t matter whether it is perfect - what matters is that the frameworks have helped you think differently.

5. Find a buddy

It doesn’t have to be someone from your team, in fact it may be better if it isn't. Just find another person who you can talk your ideas through with and you’ll find it a whole lot easier.

If anyone else out there has ideas they’d like to share on how to get things moving I’m sure there are plenty of like-minded people working on capability improvement who would love to hear them so please leave them in the comments section below.