Pink batt fiascos uc-ise public lecture - aug 2010 - slideshare version
1. Avoiding Project Fiasco’s Overcoming well intentioned but undercooked initiatives … and actually make a difference!
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3. Inside the head of boards and top managers Projects Strategy On-time On-budget Inside the head of project managers Young and Jordan 2008 Kwak and Anabari 2009 Young and Jordan 2002 Telescope Governance Microscope Projects OK Some No Fail ROI 30% 2/3 of projects deliver no benefits whatsoever
4. Inside the head of boards and top managers Projects Strategy On-time On-budget Inside the head of project managers Young and Jordan 2008 Kwak and Anabari 2009 VIC 100b Young and Jordan 2002 Telescope Governance Microscope OK Some No Fail ROI 30% 2/3 of projects deliver no benefits whatsoever
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9. Key Concepts (II) Efficiency Effectiveness Any benefits Benefits aligned to strategy Realisation of strategic goals Project Management On-time On-budget Avoid duplication Products/ Outputs Q1. Strategy: Benefits / alignment? 67%->40% Q2. Strategy/capability: how much change is required? Q3. Responsibility: Project Sponsor? 5-23% 40% Q4. Performance & Behaviour measures and motivation? 33-67% Q5. Conformance & Behaviour culture for issues to be raised? Q6. Monitor: benefits or terminate? 0-13% Programme management Governance of Programmes Programme management Portfolio management Programme Portfolio Management Victorian investment frameworks
DS: Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you to the first of our quarterly public lectures. UC is is very well known for the quality of it’s professional education and our graduates have the highest employment rate of any of the Australian Universities. However, good as you are, in the field of IT, it is hard to stay up to date and our public lectures are a way to showcase our research strengths and share with you breakthroughs that we believe will affect society and your working life. In November our topic will be the productivity breakthrough that could power the next 100 years. Tonight however, we wanted to take advantage of the election and discuss breakthroughs in governance that should catch all the initiatives that will be launched whichever party wins. Our objective will be to explore how to shape projects so that they go beyond election promises and actually deliver value. Tonight’s speakers will be Assistant Professor Raymond Young and Martin Baird of Chartered Secretaries Australia. Raymond was a CIO within Fujitsu Australia before he made his breakthroughs in project governance and Martin is the Managing Director of CAP Coatings, a director of Worldskills Australia and tonight represents Chartered Secretaries Australia as the chair of their professional development committee.
Martin, I got into this field almost 10 years ago after a few bad experiences at Fujitsu. Most of my working life was as a management consultant and I had been managing projects for years, mostly on gut feel. It was a big relief one day when I delegated a major project to the so-called ‘best’ project manager within Fujitsu, I thought to myself finally someone who knows what he is doing! It got into trouble twice as fast as anything that I had ever seen before and I worked out that my project managers weren’t actually lying to me, it was just that they didn’t have the complete answer … I ended up dedicating the next 5 years of my life studying this thing and found out that ultimately top managers were the ones that lead projects to succeed of fail because they were the only ones with enough influence to lead an organisation to change business behaviours and processes enough to take advantage of whatever a project was delivering.
Martin, Perhaps you’d care to comment on my model to explain what is going on …. Boards and top managers are interested in areas related to governance and strategy YES… Yet, strategy is mainly implemented through projects Yes But top managers, and board members seldom consider projects a matter of direct concern (Crawford 2008?), and they delegate it to project manager who speak a completely different language and there tends not to have any meaningful dialogue between top managers and project maangers. Yes … My research has shown that if top managers don’t actively govern projects they tend to fail. Standish for example show that projects have been failing more often since 2002 But what they and almost everyone else misses, is that it’s not about on-time on-budget but whether the benefits got delivered or not! That’s right c.f. BER for example was a bit wasteful but on balance helped keep us out of recession [OR] both parties for example want to have more doctors and nurses but if they don’t get the system right, waiting times still won’t reduce [OR] … If projects are failing, it stands to reason that the strategies of organisations are being compromised. You’d think so … Most recently I did a study for the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office because they were tired of seeing projects fail for the same reason over and over again. I found out that the State of Victoria had spent around $100b on projects over the last decade but I couldn’t find any evidence that their strategic outcomes had improved. Numeracy had decreased, literacy had either stayed the same or decreased and waiting times hadn’t improved. How do you think that relates to the rest of the country or the private sector? The State of Victoria is recognised internationally to be a leader in New Public Management and I’d say most people would consider it to be one of the best managed states in Australia. If they are among the best, it seem likely that everyone else is struggling with the same problem… I know that CSA recognises the problem. What is UC doing about it?
Martin, Perhaps you’d care to comment on my model to explain what is going on …. Boards and top managers are interested in areas related to governance and strategy YES… Yet, strategy is mainly implemented through projects Yes But top managers, and board members seldom consider projects a matter of direct concern (Crawford 2008?), and they delegate it to project manager who speak a completely different language and there tends not to have any meaningful dialogue between top managers and project maangers. Yes … My research has shown that if top managers don’t actively govern projects they tend to fail. Standish for example show that projects have been failing more often since 2002 But what they and almost everyone else misses, is that it’s not about on-time on-budget but whether the benefits got delivered or not! That’s right c.f. BER for example was a bit wasteful but on balance helped keep us out of recession [OR] both parties for example want to have more doctors and nurses but if they don’t get the system right, waiting times still won’t reduce [OR] … If projects are failing, it stands to reason that the strategies of organisations are being compromised. You’d think so … Most recently I did a study for the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office because they were tired of seeing projects fail for the same reason over and over again. I found out that the State of Victoria had spent around $100b on projects over the last decade but I couldn’t find any evidence that their strategic outcomes had improved. Numeracy had decreased, literacy had either stayed the same or decreased and waiting times hadn’t improved. How do you think that relates to the rest of the country or the private sector? The State of Victoria is recognised internationally to be a leader in New Public Management and I’d say most people would consider it to be one of the best managed states in Australia. If they are among the best, it seem likely that everyone else is struggling with the same problem… I know that CSA recognises the problem. What is UC doing about it?