P UBLISHED

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K EPNER -T REGOE 2001 N UMBER O NE

S OFTWARE D OESN T M ANAGE P ROJECTS P EOPLE D O !

by Andrew Marshall, Consultant, Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. Rick Holmes, PMP, Director of Strategic Project Management, Kepner-Tregoe, Inc.

Remember going to a concert in the 1970s? A slow song would play, lighters would come out, and everyone would sway to the music by the light of flickering flames. Today when the slow song starts playing, Palm Pilots come out and everyone sways to the music by the light of flickering screens! Technology is pervasive. We are technology junkies. But the problem with being technology junkies is that we dont know when to quit. Companies want to do things via e-business and we want everything out on the Web. The project management arena is no different. One only needs to walk the exhibit aisles of any project management conference to discover a large variety of software offerings. But with each upgrade, functionality becomes more complex and less people use it. Ask a group of folks at a project management

workshop how many of them have used project management software and most of them will raise their hands. However, ask them if they like it and watch the hands come down. They can build beautiful Gantt charts, but they manage their projects with notes hastily scribbled into paper planners. Why? Why, too, are Word, Excel, and Visio three of the top ten project management software tools in use today?1 In our experience, software is not the solution. Although it plays an important role in project management, its role is to provide specific project information, not manage the project. Where companies have failed is in structuring their project management architecture, processes, and support around software products, not the other way around. Which is exactly what successful project management organizations do. In many (if not all)

Where companies have failed is in structuring their project management architecture, processes, and support around software products, not the other way around.
cases, they achieve their success independent of the software they choose. While they may use it extensively, the software did not come first. These organizations would continue to succeed at project management if they were to remove their software packages tomorrow. What sets these organizations apart is an overall framework for strategic project management.

This framework encompasses four concepts that support and encourage world-class performance. They are Master Project Planning, Project Portfolio Management, Project Management Competence, and Human Performance Environment.

Master Project Planning

The Master Project Plan flows directly from an organizations strategy. It includes all the initiatives that an organization must undertake to achieve its vision. When senior executives begin to communicate strategy to the rest of the organization, inevitably the first question asked is, How are we going to make this happen? Strategy by its nature is visionary. The challenge with strategy is not in its formulation but, rather, in its implementation. As noted in the article, Why CEOs Fail, which appeared in Fortune magazine, Any way you look at it, mastering execution turns out to be the odds-on best way for a CEO to keep his job.2

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Whats needed is a cohesive, actionable plan that identifies and ultimately coordinates all the projects necessary to implement the vision within the strategic time frame. Master Project Planning also works at the programmatic level.

While, ultimately, project management software is necessary to capture all the essential information regarding projects, it does not facilitate the coordination of projects.

A client of ours in the chemical industry wanted to drastically reduce the cycle time in which it brings products to market. They identified a number of initiatives including automation of applications; development of recipe tools designed to calculate polymer properties more efficiently; and creation of a central database to coordinate and house the knowledge gained from the other projects. What the client needed was a means by which to pull all these projects together and sequence them so that this enormous amount of work could be accomplished. The Master Project Plan provided that means. Our preferred Master Project Planning tools? Easels, markers, Post-Its, and tape. While, ultimately, project management software is necessary to capture all the essential information regarding projects, it does not facilitate the coordination of projects. Once projects are identified, it will assist an individual with managing his/her project,

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but the coordination rests with the people, not the software itself.

Project Portfolio Management

A new product development manager had 50 projects in his portfolio with only 15 people to help him deliver them. When we asked which ones he was going to set aside, he replied, None. I have to get them all done. After helping him do the math, he finally realized that it would take seven years to complete them all! Project proliferation is way of life, regardless of size, scope, or industry. Whether its a major pharmaceutical firm, a dot.com, or a school board, every organization we talk to has too many projects in the works. The only way to manage this issue effectively is by determining which projects should be done, which projects can be done, and which projects should be delayed or stopped. This is Project Portfolio Management. These decisions must be made at the portfolio

The challenge most organizations face is to create as much value as possible given capacity constraints.
level, not the individual project level. The portfolio question comes down to value versus capacity. An organizations strategy focuses on the value it will deliver to its customers in exchange for dollars. If that organization had unlimited capacity, then theoretically it could deliver unlimited value. The challenge most organizations face is to create as much value as possible given capacity constraints. Effective Project Portfolio Management means knowing the relative value and risk associated

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with every project that has been proposed or is under way. It means continually knowing how resources are deployed across projects and how many project resources are available for new projects. Most of all, it means making tough decisions about which projects will be done whenif at allbased on a shared understanding of each projects potential for adding value to an organization. The result is a portfolio of projects that are aligned with an organizations strategy. An organization can see the status of all significant projects and identify potential problems that may become roadblocks along the route to the final destination. Project Portfolio Management is separate from the management of a single project and more than a summary Gantt chart of many projects. A portfolio database is developed by gathering common project information from each individual project. Then, the individual projects are evaluated against portfolio objectives.

Project Portfolio Management must be set up and supported as an ongoing process. Organizations that manage project portfolios effectively recognize the need and have installed the architecture to ensure the programs perseverance. Examples include a project office with a full-time project portfolio manager and an executive steering committee that reviews the portfolio at least quarterly. Software required? A common desktop database (e.g., Microsoft Access) is preferred for its flexibility in viewing projects in priority order with resource loading across the organization. For smaller organizations or departments, a spreadsheet will suffice.

Project Management Competencies

Project management competencies fall into three primary categories. First, theres the required content expertise. Its hard to imagine a successful project manager in aircraft man

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In our experience, its the human side of project management that will most likely cause a project to be unsuccessful.
ufacturing who has never heard the word aileron.3 Second, a project manager must have project management technical skills. These include the ability to effectively define, plan, and implement projects. Finally, a good project manager must be competent in dealing with people. In our experience, its the human side of project management that will most likely cause a project to be unsuccessful. A thorough understanding of the human performance system is mandatory. World-class project management organizations ensure that their project

managers have a balance of all three types of competencies. There are several fundamental questions that a project manager needs to answer for any project before the work actually begins: What value and benefits will the project deliver and what requirements are necessary to deliver that value? How do we organize the work and how do we avoid future problems? As the project is being implemented, the team needs to know these answers: What is expected? How are we doing against those expectations? Management needs to know: How is the project progressing against objectives, schedule, and budget? During the whole process, the project manager must constantly ask: Hows it going? What problems need to be solved? What decisions need to be made? What potential problems could occur? What potential opportunities do we face? Project management competency involves knowing where you are

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at any step along the way. It also involves knowing what questions to ask and having the ability to gather, organize, analyze, and report information in a meaningful way that supports project and organizational proficiency. In reality, many organizations use software to capture work breakdown structures, schedules, resource assignments, etc., and train their project management teams in the use of those tools. In fact, its hard to imagine managing large projects without the aid of scheduling software. However, those tools are secondary to the fundamental competencies required to complete projects successfully.

Human Performance Environment

The performance environment, not just people and projects, plays a pivotal role in getting results. This includes making sure that people have the right expectations and resources. It includes an alignment between organizational benefits and indi-

Understanding how the human performance system operates will allow an organization to design a performance system to meet its project and, ultimately, its strategic objectives.
vidual rewards. And it also includes making sure people know how, specifically, their work is advancing or retarding the project. Finally, it includes

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making an accurate assessment of the cross-impact of actions, so that what supports one person or project does not derail another. The technical performance of machines, processes, and systems is carefully engineered along with the operating conditions, parameters, and expected outputs. But often, human performance expectations and the system in which employees are expected to perform are not clear. Understanding how the human performance system operates will allow an organization to design a performance system to meet its project and, ultimately, its strategic objectives. Software required to deliver the human performance environmentnone.

mance in project management. New IT solutions will continue to benefit project managers who have clearly identified their specific needs, but only after they have installed a sound architecture or project management foundation. For the rest who are visiting the trade shows with their checkbooks, rough waters lie ahead.

1. Terry L. Fox, Ph.D. Do the Features Support the Functions? PM Network, Vol. 14, No.3, March 2000. pp 69-73. 2. Ram Charan and Geoffrey Colvin. Fortune, Vol. 139, No. 12, June 21, 1999. pp 68-78. 3. An aileron is the movable part along the back edge of an airplanes wing, used to help turn the plane or keep it level.

Final Thoughts
The four-dimensional approach outlined here provides a road map for organizations that want to achieve world-class perfor-

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