SimpleP3M

Simple project, programme and portfolio management (P3M) for businesses

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This video discusses the virtues of Ranieri's leadership style which could be applied, to reap great rewards, within other organisations, over footage I recorded of the victory celebrations in Leicester on May 16th 2016.

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If the successful delivery of your organisation’s projects depends on your suppliers, this short video provides a strategy that will enable you to greatly improve their performance and therefore your overall project delivery.

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This short video offers a simple way to be agile during the development phase of a project, rather than applying complex Agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban.

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If your organisation is not good at delivering projects on-time, within budget and to quality expectations, this short video explains how you can (gu)estimate the costs, which can be surprisingly high.

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This short video advises of 3 important risk managment points that organisations overlook, which, when corrected, make all the difference to their success in controlling risks and therefore enhancing their chances of project/programme success

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There is currently a push within the project management community to extend the use of agile methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban, to other industries beyond software development. This short video advises on how realistic and sensible it is to do this.

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This short video outlines my SimpleP3M System that will enable you to improve your organisation's project, programme and portfolio management (P3M) capabilities.

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If you have invested in a project management software tool, but are struggling to make good use of it, this short video will provide you with the guidance you need to rectify this situation.

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Do you have a Splat the Rat approach to resolving operational issues?

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It is surprising how many organisations rely on delivering numerous projects to bring new products to market or to bring about organisational changes, on an ongoing basis, yet do not have a mechanism to measure project performance or have great difficulties in doing so, when it can, in fact, be simple to achieve.

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This video explains the importance of managing projects, that may well be complex, by keeping things simple.

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Do you know how good your organisation is at delivering projects?

You might have seen an image similar to this before; it illustrates the triple constraints of project management, which therefore comprise the obvious measures of project performance. But does your organisation have a mechanism to measure these (or any other parameters) in order to maintain an understanding of how well projects are being delivered?

In order to do so efficiently requires some level of standardised project reporting, driven by a standardised project management process that includes formally capturing at least one snapshot (or baseline) of the project. The prime baseline should be a realistic view of how the project is expected to perform, which is agreed early in the project lifecycle and prior to the delivery phase. In fact, some organisations attempt to estimate the optimistic and pessimistic views of expected performance as well as the realistic view.

It is important that the realistic view of project performance is indeed realistic. Within your organisation (if you measure project performance), do you find that the most common stated reason for projects under-achieving (i.e. exceeding timing and/or cost estimates or producing poor quality deliverables) is that the initial estimates were unrealistic?

The key to achieving more stable estimating is risk assessment. Risks should always be considered in relation to a project plan. Any plan will have some level of assumed risk within the estimates of duration and cost. Project managers should, however, include risk based contingencies within schedules and cost estimates. These should then be included within ‘forecast to complete’ data on an ongoing basis.

Generally, of course, the contingencies should reduce as the project progresses, but this will not be the case if significant new risks are added after the project is initiated. It is therefore important to be rigorous about assessing risks when initiating a project.

The organisation should include such a mechanism for including contingencies within ‘forecast to complete’ data within its framework of processes, tools and templates. This can include maintaining a set of standard risks, based on corporate past experience, to help ensure rigorous risk assessments are carried out. The framework should then drive efficient automated reporting that compares the current view of the plan and its risks with that of the prime baseline, in terms of schedule and cost.

It is surprising how many organisations rely on delivering numerous projects to bring new products to market or to bring about organisational changes, on an ongoing basis, yet do not have a mechanism to measure project performance or have great difficulties in doing so, when it can, in fact, be simple to achieve.

If you would like to read more about how to design and implement a simple project management framework, based on recognised methodologies and disciplines, that includes the capability to measure project performance, visit in.SimpleP3M.co.uk

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Is Project Management Complicated?

Surveys of businesses across all industries continue to indicate that many organisations remain poor at consistently and effectively delivering successful projects.  This continues to be the case, despite the obvious benefits of being otherwise, especially to the ‘bottom line’.

So why is this?

In my experience of consulting with organisations across many industries, businesses usually fall into one of two categories in relation to their project management environment. Either:

1)      They have very little in place in terms of a corporate project management framework, or

2)      They have something in place that was either implemented or has grown out of control to become too complicated, if not impossible, to follow.

Organisations that fall into the first category may employ experienced project managers that are capable of applying good project management principles, but are unable to do so due to a lack of infrastructure; or otherwise project management within these businesses amounts to little more than ‘fire-fighting’ (issue management), with similarly little success.

Organisations that fall into the second category generally put their project managers in the difficult position of having to cope with too much ‘admin’ (or red tape), and to jump through too many governance hoops, whilst attempting to manage the project successfully. The admin often includes the regular production of mandated, elaborate reporting requirements. The project manager’s finite capacity only allows him or her to cope with the most valuable project management tasks alongside the onerous admin tasks by taking short-cuts. This introduces additional risks which lead to issues that cause a lack of project success, for which the project manager feels exposed and uncomfortable, so may cause him or her to become disenchanted and leave the company.

It is rare to find a business that has defined and implemented a project management framework that achieves a good balance of control for invested effort.

So, is project management complicated?

I strongly believe that whilst projects can be complex, especially if they are technically challenging, have numerous outside influences or are abnormal to the organisation’s usual business, the corporate project management environment should never be complicated. In fact, the more complex the projects are, the more beneficial it is to control them within a simple framework that facilitates a smooth, efficient ride.

Let’s get down to basics. Fundamentally, project management is simple. You define what you intend to achieve, decide how to do it, think (and do something) about what might cause you problems and fix things that are causing problems. Generally, though, if you attend project management events and seminars, you can be left feeling that project management is so complicated that it should be avoided at all costs!

A project management framework should consist of the processes, tools and templates that assist project managers to deliver projects successfully, based on the above fundamentals, whilst providing transparency to those that govern them. Any ‘admin’ that is not adding good value to the control of projects should be removed.

If you would like to find out more about how to design and implement a simple project management framework, based on recognised methodologies and disciplines, visit in.SimpleP3M.co.uk