Introduction

This book is about driving change in your organization by directing and managing the right projects in the right way. The approach is to keep to some basic principles supported by only a few “rules”. In this way, the likelihood of success is increased dramatically, giving the executive or director the freedom to direct projects and the project manager the freedom to manage projects to suit the circumstances and their own style.

In the mid-1990s, Sir Ian Gibson, then president of Nissan Europe, said:

He recognized the need for a new way of working within our businesses; one that is flexible and not tied to specific departments and job titles; one where people can be used to the best effect; where what they do (their role) counts more than the department or function they come from (their job). In such organizations, reporting structures are flat, job titles are secondary and most personnel moves are sideways. This applies from top to bottom and no one should ever say, “I won’t do that, it’s not my job!” Change is built into the way they work.

Today, the term “corporate agility” is often advocated, not least by McKinsey & Company. In this context, McKinsey argues that being “agile” is all about “adhocracy” rather than bureaucracy. In an adhocracy, action and decisions are focused on objectives and purpose across functional boundaries. Some organizations have attained this vision but many have not. The Project Workout looks at one aspect of this, the part which relates to managing a change to your business and those of your clients. A “new way” of doing this has been with us for a long time, buried within the bowels of our technical and engineering departments and is now being recognized by business and governments alike as a discipline which is useful in any management context where change is needed. It is project management.

In fact, since the first edition of this book was published in 1997, there is evidence of many more organizations taking deliberate steps to use project methods. Yet, in some organizations, the support and training given to those sponsoring or managing a project is pitifully small and all too frequently the projects are more targeted at delivering “things” in separate departments than ensuring the achievement of specific business objectives. Managers are often given a project to sponsor or manage because it is “good for their development”. True, but not if they have to invent how to “do it” for themselves with no grounding whatsoever. I have never heard of an accountant who was expected to do his job “from first principles”. Newcomers to project management are often termed “accidental”, be they project managers or project sponsors. Billions of pounds, euros and dollars rest on their shoulders and yet it is still a cause for concern that many major organizations do not provide these essential people with the training, methods, or tool kit to undertake their role.

The discipline of project management is often made to look too complicated, is frequently misunderstood and poorly practised. Consequently, some people seek to avoid it and its inferred bureaucracy, as their real-life experience has shown them that it does not always realize the promised rewards. They haven’t grasped that uninformed and unskilled people cannot perform well. Whether you are a senior executive, manager, project manager, or “one of the infantry”, I aim to make the “art of project management” clearer to you in this book by:

• explaining the challenges faced by many companies;
• outlining some lessons and advice from leading companies;
• proposing a staged framework for managing individual projects;
• explaining the key roles which need to be fulfilled;
• providing best practice techniques for managing projects.

Reading this book will benefit you as:

• having read it, you can really start doing it!
• the “mystique” of projects is exposed, making it simple to understand and accessible to finance, sales, marketing, customer services, administrators, engineers, scientists, and technologists alike;
• the content is not tied to any formally published “methods” but is positioned as “common sense” which overrides them all and will help you perform in your project role.

Part I covers the challenges and lessons. Part II looks at a typical project life cycle. Part III proposes a control framework for your projects. Part IV contains some thoughts on how to make sure project management works for you, personally.

Many of the key points will be restated in different sections throughout the book. This is intentional, both as reinforcement and to enable you to dip into separate sections without the need to follow up multiple cross-references simply to understand the basic message. It also emphasizes that in the “real world”, life is not divided into a series of discrete topics with labels tagged on to them, but rather comprises an everchanging mix of topics, each affecting the other. Successful project management is a complete system and to describe elements of it in isolation would be deficient.

If much of the book seems to be “mere common sense”, then I have succeeded in relaying an important message – it is common sense. However, while it is obvious common sense to state it, the common sense of doing it is rarer.

If much of the book seems simple, I have succeeded in relaying it to you in a form that can be understood by anyone in your organization. Every manager involved in a project, from the top executive to the line supervisor, needs to understand the basics of project working. If they don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised if things go wrong.

Project management is an “art”. To be effective, it requires both structured management skills (hard skills) and powerful interpersonal skills (soft skills). I have concentrated on the former as this is where the myth of project management most needs exploding. I do, however, refer throughout to the essential soft skills needed if a project is to be successful.

When the first edition of this book was published in 1997, the term “project” was not always understood in the same way as it is now. Most people saw a project as a delivery vehicle for technical or engineering outputs. Few saw it as a means to achieve business outcomes. I was one of a few advocates of business-led project management. The practice of project management has moved on to incorporate the “business-led” project, perhaps not as fast as I would have liked, but many methods and standards now recognize this more powerful use of the discipline. Back in 1997, there was no consensus on the meaning of the words “programme” and “portfolio”. Often the words “project” and “programme” were interchangeable and for some people, they still are. Whilst many still argue this point, the various standards bodies, including ISO, professional bodies, such as Association for Project Management (APM), International Project Management Association (IPMA) and PMI^®, and method providers (like AXELOS for PRINCE2^®, MSP^®, MoP^®) are beginning to use a common language.

In the first four editions of the book, I covered running one project at a time and running many projects at once in a single volume. Now, however, I have made The Project Workout into two volumes as it was getting rather fat:

The Project Workout is all about directing and managing a single project; the essential techniques and winning behaviours.

The Programme and Portfolio Workout looks at how to deal with many projects at once, together with all the other work done in an organization in order be successful in your business. It includes what much of the project management literature now refers to as “programmes”, “portfolios” and “organizational project management”, even if mainstream organizations still use the words differently!

To make each book self-sufficient, there is some overlap and reinforcement of key principles and I have included cross-references to help relate the detailed content which builds to create a whole approach. Whilst a great programme manager or business manager needn’t be a great project manager, they do need to understand the principles to be effective in their roles. Similarly a great project sponsor or project manager should understand the needs of programme or business portfolio managers and why they are essential to overall success.

The workouts

The book contains a number of exercises, problem posers, and techniques to help put the “book work” into practice. They will be both a stimulus and a practical help.

HORACE, 65–8BC

Points of interest

Throughout the book, I have included a number of points of interest relating to the core theme of each chapter. They will provide you with some greater understanding of the subject but may be passed over on first reading so that you are not diverted from the main message. If this book were a presentation, these would be the questions which interrupt the presenter or the anecdotes the presenter may use to help bring the story to life.

Definitions of all those important words

The way we use words is important. In the field of project management, there is a converging consensus on what words mean but there are still instances where people have very different opinions; my work on international standards hit this problem time and again. Someone else’s definition of a word or phrase is not necessarily wrong, but may simply be “differently right”. What is important is any terminology you adopt must be used consistently in your project or confusion will reign. In this book, you will find a number of words which may be new to you or old words which have been used in a new way. I have therefore included a jargon-busting glossary in Appendix A. It also includes commonly used alternatives. So, if you come across a new word, look it up.

HERBERT SPENCER

Key points

• Key points are short checklists
• To keep you on track .

Cartoons

In many of the chapters I have used cartoons to emphasize a point. The cartoons are all set 2,000 years ago in the Roman Empire and show how, if the Romans had run their affairs as many modern organizations do, they would have failed miserably. This emphasizes the point that project management is essentially no more than applying the common sense that has been with us for a very long time.

The question “why” is very powerful
Copyright © 1997 Robert Buttrick

The web site and tools

Publisher’s eResources – www.routledge.com9781138721449

A number of the templates described in the book, including the health check, MS project views and project logs can be downloaded, ready for you to use, under the eResource tab here.

Author’s web site – projectworkout.com

The author’s web site, projectworkout.com, is where you can find:

• a “contact” form;
• my blog;
• articles;
• frequently asked questions;
• references and useful links;
• an outline of the services I provide.

Finally, when you come to Part IV of the book want to put project management in place in your organization, this web site might also give you an idea or two about the design of your own project management method, process and web site.

BusinessOptix evaluation system

Throughout this book, I have made use of flow charts to demonstrate the sequence of activities you need to go through to undertake some aspects of project management. Nowadays, processes are becoming a way of life in many organizations, particularly those moving up the maturity level and adopting models such as SEI’s Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) for Development. Unfortunately there are very few “easy to use” business modelling tools on the market but one I have come across and use very effectively in my day-to-day corporate life is BusinessOptix. All the flow charts in this book were created using it and you can see a real example on the projectwork-out.com web site.

Every owner of The Project Workout can obtain an evaluation copy of BusinessOptix Author. For more details see process.projectworkout.com