Government Executive - Authors - C. Wayne Peal

The Case for Project Management

C. Wayne Peal — Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

letters@govexec.com

s all of those who have worked in the trenches well know, successful project management is the tie that binds services to results." So said Government Executive in introducing a series of articles on successful federal projects in the July issue. But is the statement true? Do all in the trenches really know about project management? Do their leaders support and understand sound project management approaches? Are those approaches part of the culture of federal organizations? Is project management used appropriately-especially in guiding information technology projects?

I believe that the answer to all of these questions is no. Project management principles are used extensively in some federal organizations, notably NASA and the Defense Department. But project management is far less common in other federal agencies. Furthermore, shortcomings exist across the board when it comes to using modern project management approaches in information technology. What's more, the enormity of many federal projects would challenge even the most experienced project managers.

A survey conducted by Gopal Kapur, president of the Center for Project Management, at the December 1998 Government Technology Leadership Institute suggests that project management in the federal sector still has a long way to go-at least in the information technology world. Institute participants were polled on key aspects of project management in their organizations-including project selection criteria, schedule estimation, project manager skill levels, progress monitoring, portfolio management, and shutdown criteria. For each of the key questions, two-thirds to three-quarters of the federal IT managers attending said there were shortcomings.

Just last April, Government Executive featured a special report, "Taming the Technology Beast," which drew some important lessons about project management from five large federal IT projects-successes and failures. It found, for example, that skilled proj- ect managers were in short supply in the federal government and that the massive scale of many federal projects was itself a major factor in failure.

The seven project management stories featured in the July issue of Government Executive were selected from 70 presented in Alexander Laufer and Edward J. Hoffman's excellent new book, Project Management Success Stories: Lessons of Project Leaders (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). Based on the stories, Laufer and Hoffman identify a number of behaviors that they believe lead to success. They conclude that successful proj- ects are vitally dependent on good leadership balanced with effective management.

No single approach will guarantee complete project success. But Laufer and Hoffman have got it right-the appropriate balance of leadership and management processes can minimize the risk of schedule delays, cost increases, and failure of the final product to meet mission needs. Heroic leadership in a bad process may save a proj- ect, but it can take a heavy human toll. A rigid management process with no leadership will lead to stagnation. But it's becoming clearer every day that no project management at all is a recipe for disaster.

Take note of what the private sector is saying about project management. Five years ago, Fortune magazine quoted senior business sources who said that "project management is going to be huge in the next decade," and that it is "the wave of the future." Their prediction was correct. Proj- ects, large and small, are the key method in modern organizations for transforming ideas into products and services. Project teams are a vital component of today's more agile and responsive organizations, where change is the rule and cross-functional activities have become the norm. According to "The Y2K Dividend," a February article in Computerworld magazine, project management was a key element in successfully surmounting the challenge of Year 2000 technology transformation.

A project is a one-shot activity that has specified objectives and deliverables as well as time, cost, and quality targets. It is distinct from the other day-to-day activities that a federal agency or department must perform.

A sound project management approach can help you sort good ideas from bad, understand the complexity and risk of the undertaking, craft an overall approach, and provide initial estimates of cost and schedule. Project management methods will help you seek and understand the views of all those likely to be affected and identify likely obstacles. The project management approach also will provide an up-front outline of the conditions under which a project should be terminated. Knowing when to pull the plug at the outset can prevent the kind of runaway projects that have plagued both the public and private sectors.

Project management provides a broad framework, specific approaches, and tools to effectively plan and manage your approved projects. It can play a pivotal role in identifying human resource needs, getting the right person assigned to the right spot on the team and building effective communications. It provides a framework for gathering information, monitoring key indicators, and taking action to keep the work on track. And it documents key information for later use by the team and by teams that follow.

If project management is not being applied in your organization, you must become its champion. You must work toward its introduction, dealing with the resistance you may encounter along the way. I recom- mend that you start by holding a project management meeting with your own leadership team. Bring in someone who can speak from experience about the value of a sound project management approach.

Where can you learn more? Practitioners in other government agencies and departments and in the business world are more than willing to share their project management experiences. An armada of private consulting organizations awaits your call to action. A wealth of information is also available through professional organizations, such as the Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org).

Counter the Critics

Some disbelievers argue that project management entails too many rules and processes and that it can slow things down and stifle innovation. Their criticism is misdirected. The project management process need not be burdensome. By focusing attention on potential problems early and providing a well-understood process, it can actually ease pressures and facilitate innovation.

You may encounter "hard drivers" who prefer to proceed directly from an idea to the building of the product or service-skipping the initial scrub of the project idea and planning. Skipping those steps is a sure-fire formula for delays, cost growth and failure. Take, for example, the step of identifying project risks. Once risks are identified, you can work toward preventing or mitigating them. You won't identify everything that will go wrong, but you will ultimately save time and reserve your energies for the few risks you didn't anticipate.

Some critics argue that project management is inappropriate for IT projects. Heed their warnings. Although much of the traditional methodology applies to IT projects, significant differences exist between building systems and software and constructing bridges and buildings. If your concern is IT, make sure you find the right approach.

Finally, you will encounter those who argue that project management simply does not apply to the huge, complicated projects so often found in the federal government. The reverse is actually true. A large-scale, complex activity demands a systematic approach. The secret of project management is to divide the project into manageable pieces and knit them together using a larger blueprint or architecture.

When you've succeeded in developing a project management culture in your organization, is your work complete? Definitely not. Continuing support from the top is vital to project success. All project sponsors must understand their roles and actively commit time to their projects. Sponsors manage the project scope, ensuring that it remains focused on key mission needs. Vague direction and little involvement by a sponsor are a sure-fire formula for project failure.

How do these pieces come together for successful projects? Shaquille O'Neal may have the answer. In a recent television interview, the Los Angeles Lakers star offered a quote he attributed to Aristotle: "Excellence is not a single act, but a habit you do repeatedly."

C. Wayne Peal is a senior consultant and instructor at the Center for Project Management, San Ramon, Calif. He worked for many years at the CIA and has been active in federal reform initiatives.

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The Management Game

James R. Thompson, Katy Saldarini, and C. Wayne Peal — Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 -0400

his month, a landmark conference in Washington will bring together the two movements that have defined efforts to improve federal management in the 1990s: Total Quality Management and reinventing government.

Government Executive is proud to present the new conference, Excellence in Government '99: Leading at all Levels, in conjunction with Vice President Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government and the Office of Personnel Management. Featured speakers at the conference will include not only Gore and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., but top officials from several agencies and experts in theories of organizational improvement and change management. (For complete information about Excellence in Government '99, see www.excelgov.com.)

In keeping with the goals of the conference, this special report focuses on key elements of the TQM and reinvention movements.

First, C. Wayne Peal, a 35-year veteran of service at the Central Intelligence Agency, writes about how TQM engendered a federal effort-the President's Quality Award Program-that provides managers with a road map through the tangle of management reforms in the 1990s. In an accompanying article, we detail the accomplishments of the nine high-performing organizations honored by the PQA program this year. These organizations will be recognized at a special ceremony at the conference on July 14.

Next, James R. Thompson, a scholar of the reinvention movement at the University of Illinois-Chicago, takes on the subject of "laboratories of reinvention," a creation of the Vice President's reinvention effort. Several of the labs have made stunning improvements, he notes, but their record in engendering widespread change in agencies is mixed.

The stories in this special report share a common theme: In the end it is the change agents within government-the leaders at all levels-who will determine the future of efforts to improve the federal government and the service it provides to the taxpayers.

Strategies for Success
Follow the President's Quality Award program criteria to make your way through the tangle of 1990s management reforms.

Tops in Quality
The President's Quality Award Program honors nine high-performing organizations.

Experiments in Excellence
The ambitious Clinton administration effort to create "laboratories of reinvention" across government has met with mixed success.

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Strategies for Success

C. Wayne Peal — Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 -0400

ederal managers and executives may feel a bit like Dorothy and her friends in "The Wizard of Oz," fearing that "lions and tigers and bears" are all around them: Total Quality Management, reinvention, reengineering, the Government Performance and Results Act, the Information Technology Management Reform Act, the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, the Federal Acquisition Reform Act . . . oh my!

In just the past few years, several pieces of important management-related legislation have been passed, executive orders on management have been issued, and the bookshelves are filled with new titles offering "flavor of the month" management theories. What will best help your agency fulfill its mission? What will help deliver the best value for taxpayers? Which practices have enduring value-and which are likely to fade away?

To navigate successfully through today's complex and changing waters, leaders at all levels need to have a clear and powerful vision for their organizations and what they are seeking to achieve. They also must have a set of modern leadership skills that can translate that vision into action. Fortunately, they have at their disposal a proven blueprint for putting all of the pieces together-the criteria of the President's Quality Award Program.

Vision and Action

In his recent book, The Leadership Moment (Times Books, 1998), Michael Useem, director of the Wharton School's Center for Leadership and Change at the University of Pennsylvania, says "leadership is at its best when the vision is strategic, the voice persuasive, the results tangible." Useem tells the stories of nine people and their "leadership moments," distilling their experiences into management lessons.

One of the stories is about Arlene Blum, who in 1978 led the first successful ascent by an all-woman team of the 11th highest peak in the world, Annapurna. Assembling what was in effect a small start-up business, she led a team of 10 women and 235 porters and Sherpas up the mountain.

Blum had to deal with red tape, personnel problems, and logistics difficulties. Her first team made it to the summit, but a second attempt resulted in the deaths of two climbers. "I learned that a group of ordinary people, when they share a vision, can take on an incredible challenge and do things they never dreamed possible," Blum said. "If you can get a clear picture of your goal-really see it, feel it, taste it-then I'm convinced you can make it happen."

In distilling the lessons from all nine of his stories, Useem concludes that "the single most important lesson from these moments is the overwhelming significance of vision and action. Without a clear sense of destination, we are apt to flounder about, and without knowing how to get to that destination, we will never reach it even when we see it."

In their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (HarperCollins, 1994), Jim Collins and Jerry Porras also note the pivotal importance of balancing vision and action. Collins and Porras found that companies that have prospered for many years share certain common qualities: They have preserved their essential, core purpose through changing times, and have remained focused on the values in which they believe. At the same time, they have been willing to change all else: their culture, their operating practices, their specific goals and their strategies in order to stimulate progress.

A Blueprint for Excellence

Let's say you've clarified your purpose, you've identified the values that are important to your organization, and you know that you must now move to action. How can you put all the pieces together? The President's Quality Award (PQA) program offers a guide to achieving performance excellence.

The PQA program, administered by the Office of Personnel Management, is based on the highly successful Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Baldrige award, coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is presented annually to high-performing business organizations. Bearing testimony to the success of the program, Baldrige award winners have outperformed companies in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index for the last five years by nearly 3-to-1.

Neither the PQA nor the Baldrige award operate on theoretical models. Instead, each is based on constant learning about what makes an organization successful. The award criteria are revised annually to incorporate new learning. While the central features of the criteria are common to government and business, there are some differences in the details.

An understanding of the seven basic PQA program criteria and how they work together as a system can go a long way in helping to understand where TQM, reinvention, reengineering, and all the other buzzwords and acronyms apply in your organization. Leadership, strategic planning, and customer focus combine to set the basic direction and action plans. Human resources and business processes are aligned with the organization's vision, values, strategy and action plans in order to get the results customers demand. Information is collected, analyzed and used throughout the organization to track performance and adjust plans, processes and human resources, as needed.

Sound familiar? This systematic approach is at the heart of the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), the "managing for results" effort of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR), and a number of other management improvement schemes. Let's dig a little deeper, then, to see how you might apply the program award criteria, as they have been revised for the year 2000, in your own organization.

For the purpose of this examination, imagine that you are conducting an organizational self-assessment, using the PQA criteria.

Leadership

Let's look first at the Leadership criteria. In this category, you will evaluate how your senior leaders guide your organization and review its performance. You will assess how leaders set and communicate organizational direction, values, performance expectations and a focus on creating value for customers and other stakeholders. You will examine how they establish and reinforce an environment for empowerment and innovation, and encourage and support organizational and employee learning.

You will also rate how your senior leaders review organizational performance and progress relative to performance goals and changing organizational needs. In addition, you will examine how the findings of those reviews are translated into priorities for improvement and innovation.

Finally, you will assess how well the organization addresses the impact of its operations on society, and at how the organization practices good citizenship, supporting and strengthening the community in which it operates.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it mirrors the research findings of Michael Useem, Jim Collins, Jerry Porras and other experts on modern leadership. The criteria reflect the pivotal importance of vision and action, and they underscore the importance of new skills needed for leadership in today's world.

Customer Focus

Next, you turn your attention to your organization's customer focus. You will look at how well the organization determines the requirements, expectations and preferences of its customers and the markets that it serves, now and in the future. You examine how the organization builds and enhances relationships with its customers, how it determines customer satisfaction, and how it uses feedback from customers to improve performance.

The NPR has stressed from its earliest days the importance of focusing on customers-and it continues to do so today. Similarly, GPRA underscores the key importance of concentrating on outcomes for customers, not just on budgets and spending, the traditional focus of agencies-and Congress.

Strategic Planning

Next comes an examination of strategic planning. In rating your organization, you will assess its strategic planning process, including how it develops strategic objectives, action plans and related human resource plans, including diversity planning. You will look at how well it has developed an understanding of the customers and markets it serves, the environment in which it performs its mission, and the risks it is likely to face. You also probe the organization's understanding of human resource needs, operational capabilities and supplier and partner relationships. You will evaluate the key strategic objectives that have been identified and the timetable for their accomplishment.

You will then assess how plans have been deployed in your organization. You will look at the specific action plans your organization has created, checking to see how well they are aligned with its basic strategy.

Finally, you will look broadly at your organization's effectiveness in performance measurement. Plans are of little value unless you are able to measure how well you are meeting your objectives. You will rate your organization on how well it has identified key performance measures, how well those measures are tracked, and how performance is projected into the future. You will also examine how your organization benchmarks its performance against that of other organizations.

GPRA requires agencies to come up with strategic plans. In a manner consistent with the PQA criteria, GPRA requires all agencies to prepare five-year strategic plans, annual performance plans with performance measures and annual performance reports. Ultimately, it seeks to link budget decisions to performance and outcomes. Agencies already have submitted strategic and annual performance plans and must submit their first performance reports next March.

The success or failure of GPRA will hinge on how well each agency integrates its requirements into an overall management framework, such as that of the PQA program. The planning process must draw from leaders, employees, customers and other stakeholders. Human resources and organizational processes must be aligned with the strategy. Meaningful measures of progress must be identified, tracked and used to improve performance. The focus should be on outcomes. If GPRA yields only the required submissions-and nothing more-it is bound to fail.

Human Resources

Now you focus on a vital category of performance, human resources management. Many studies in recent years have shown that organizations are likely to fail if they do not address the human dimensions of their actions.

You examine how your organization enables its employees to develop and use their full potential and meet the organization's objectives. You also probe how well your organization builds and maintains a work environment and an employee support climate conducive to performance excellence, full participation and personal and organizational growth.

You examine how your organization's work and job design, compensation, career progression, recognition and related workforce practices enable and encourage all employees to achieve high performance. This includes the promotion of cooperation and collaboration, individual initiative, innovation and flexibility, and keeping current with business needs. It also includes an assessment of the employee performance management system, including feedback to employees.

You also assess how your organization's education and training approach supports the achievement of business objectives, builds employee skills and contributes to improved performance. And you examine how your organization contributes to the well-being, satisfaction and motivation of all employees.

In the early days of the NPR, Vice President Al Gore underscored the pivotal importance of human resources. In a lecture at Georgetown University titled "The New Job of the Federal Executive," Gore said: "Two relatively recent developments have dramatically shifted the premises on which traditional public and private sector management theory has been based: first, a new understanding of how best to employ human capacity; and second, the new role of information technology in transforming the manager's job."

The "new understanding of how best to employ human capacity" is radically changing the rules of the game for both leaders and workers. Rigid hierarchies are giving way to new and more flexible organizations. Concepts of leadership have changed, with more emphasis on enabling all employees to be heard.

There is also new focus on "learning organizations," where individual and organizational learning is valued. Finally, there is new focus on maintaining a better balance between personal life and work, and building individual resilience in a rapidly changing workplace.

Process Management

Process management, the next category for examination, has been the focus of many reform efforts of the past several years. While improving processes is important in and of itself, it is most effective when undertaken within the framework of an overall management approach, like that embodied in the PQA program criteria.

Following the criteria, you will look at how your organization addresses customer needs, how products and services are delivered, how processes are evaluated and improved and how learning is transferred among units in the organization. You will examine production and delivery processes, as well as support processes and those that involve suppliers and partners.

Words describing process management activities have become imbedded in the current lexicon. Process action teams, process improvement teams, continuous improvement and many other terms derive from quality management activities. Generally, the objective of all of these activities is to continuously improve organizational processes in order to achieve better product or service quality, improved timeliness and lower costs.

More recently, reengineering has entered the stage. While earlier activities focused primarily on continuous, incremental process improvement, reengineering strives for breakthrough change. Reengineering involves a "clean sheet of paper" approach, rethinking from scratch how a particular process might best work. It is vital in reengineering efforts to pay close attention to the human resource issues that accompany change.

Several laws and presidential directives have addressed process improvement issues. For example, the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act and the 1996 Federal Acquisition Reform Act seek to improve federal procurement, while other laws mandate reducing federal paperwork requirements. The 1998 Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act and OMB's Circular A-76 deal with privatization of federal functions. The 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act, also known as the Clinger-Cohen Act, seeks to modernize the management of information technology.

Process improvement efforts within an overall management framework are vital. A lot of time can be wasted improving an obsolete process or one that does not contribute significantly to producing the desired outcomes. And if the connection to human resource factors is lost, success can be threatened.

Business Results

It's now time to look at what your organization has actually achieved. Way back in your planning, you identified key business indicators and have been tracking them. You also identified key internal performance indicators, and are tracking them and drawing links to your business indicators. You will provide your first performance report to the President and Congress next March.

What business results are important? Following the criteria, you focus on customer satisfaction, product and service performance, financial performance, marketplace performance, mission accomplishment, human resources, supplier and partner relationships, operational performance, and how you stack up relative to your competition. This part of your evaluation is not about process; it's about what you actually have accomplished.

The 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act directs agencies to build a foundation for sound financial management and reporting. The act establishes one of the building blocks for the eventual linkage of financial information to what has been achieved-in other words, what the taxpayers get for their investment.

Much attention has been given recently to the work of Robert Kaplan and David Norton and their concept of a "balanced scorecard." Kaplan and Norton argue that an organization's future cannot be judged strictly on the basis of its financial health. They advocate the use of a four-part "scorecard" that includes not just financial measures, but assessments of customer satisfaction, internal organizational performance and the organization's capacity to learn and grow.

Information and Analysis

Finally, it's time for you to look at information and analysis, vital connectors between all of the criteria discussed so far. Information and analysis form the lifeblood of an organization, supporting decision-making, planning, human resources management, process improvement, focus on the customer and results orientation.

You will rate your organization's performance measurement systems and how they support understanding, alignment and improved performance at all levels. You will assess how it selects information to analyze, integrates it into useful measures and uses it to improve performance. You will also rate your organization on how well its analyses support senior executives, work groups and daily operations.

Putting It All Together

One of the most important tasks you can perform as a leader is to offer a clear and enduring vision for your organization, communicating and reinforcing it constantly. You should do the same for values and expectations. Taken together, a clear sense of purpose, an identification of the fundamental values of the organization, and a knowledge of what you expect will serve as a North Star for your employees, guiding them to take the right actions, even in changing times.

As Arlene Blum discovered in her ascent of Annapurna, your leadership should be strong, but not dictatorial. You should stimulate action and change, set high expectations, provide encouragement and support, demonstrate your own willingness to learn and create an environment for learning throughout your organization. Your role should be that of a steward and mentor.

You should think of your organization as a system, with many complex components and relationships. You can better understand your own system by capitalizing on the learning of others, as it is captured in the President's Quality Award Program.

As a minimum, you can use the PQA criteria as a simple but effective model for thinking about basic leadership and managerial processes in your organization. But you will derive much more value if you use its more detailed criteria to evaluate and improve your organization's performance.

Eventually, you may go through the formal process of applying for the award. One of the things that those who apply for the award find most valuable is the feedback that they receive from a PQA examination of their application. Even the award winners find significant room for improvement in light of the demanding award criteria.

C. Wayne Peal recently retired following 35 years of service with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked on intelligence community reform activities. He is now a private consultant.

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