Skills In Delivering Change

Skills In Delivering Change

Project Management New Generation Thinking is a huge opportunity for every organisation.

Improvement in any enterprise’s ability to deliver change translates straight to staff morale, customer satisfaction, the bottom line and all those metrics that are considered important.

Historically project management thinking has focused on Schedules and Work Breakdown Structures. Project staff repeat a mantra of up-front clarity, left to right ‘logic’ and constancy of goal which are at odds with business reality and which makes it easy for them as suppliers to discharge an obligation and collect a fee. #pmngt integrates existing good practices, resolves contradictions and provides an holistic approach that supports the full breadth of the investment time-frame and the depth of the governance hierarchy.

50 Years of Supplier self-interest in ”old-school’ PM thinking

Much of the last 50 years of project based writing and practice has been created and used by suppliers. What exists is at its core mostly reliable but at its edges, where it comes into contact with ‘the-real-world’ the interface is far from seamless. The discontinuities and tensions between investor needs and supplier needs are a wellhead of disappointments and broken promises.

Resolution is easy! Resolution requires some tweaks to attitudes and the addition of thinking aids (tools and techniques to frame scope, handle mistakes, describe options and intentions) on both the supplier and investor sides of the change equation.

#pmngt frames a vision of investments across four time-frames

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pmngt’s breadth is from stable business as usual to stable business as usual. The technical change is just a small (and often the easiest) part of the total journey.

  • idea – pre change – as i’ll formed as reality requires,
  • project(s) – enabling of change, cost with only potential value,
  • transition – change from current-business-as-usual to future-state-business-as-usual – beyond ‘first generation’ pm thinking and writings,
  • harvesting – return on investment

Success Also Needs the Right Decision Making Hierarchy

#pmngt doesn’t just say “you need communications” it is explicit about what is communicated and how it is communicated within management tiers where peers explore options and across the interfaces between three management layers as objectives are delegated and discovered details needing clarification are escalated {

  • Strategic Level – where thinking is right to left and focused on tomorrow’s use of equity. Thinking that leads to delegation of goals against an ongoing expectation of continuity of current revenue streams
  • Middle Management Control – where contradictions between current efficiency targets and future goals collide. Where tomorrow’s operational capability is designed, work-instructions are delegated and the needs of reality responded to
  • Execution – where today’s revenue is earned and tomorrow’s capabilities will be absorbed into the symphony of day-to-day cooperation. Also where tomorrow’s capability is enabled by those who use the solid techniques of left to right schedule and cost estimating and status reporting described in first generation pm writings

#pmngt explicitly addresses horizontal dialogue in each layer and the escalation upwards as additions to the better understood traditions of delegation.

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