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People, Process, and Technology - A Balancing Act
by Craig Bailey
In
previous articles, we've written about the importance of balancing
"people, process and technology" in Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) initiatives. The purpose of this series of articles is to share a
case study that highlights the importance of this balance for any
project that is introducing new or enhanced technology.
I've recently engaged with a client who is in the process of
implementing Microsoft Project Server. This essentially involves the
extension of the MS Project desktop application to the web, to allow
online collaboration and visibility to project management information. A
recent pilot received mixed reviews from all involved (Project Managers
and project team-members). Of the approximately 15 PM's involved in the
pilot, only a couple think the solution is the greatest thing since
sliced bread. On the flip side, MOST others had less than stellar
reviews.
The common concerns include:
-
Getting lost in the learning curve of MS Project
(desktop, let alone the server extension)
-
Unclear on benefit vs. the effort necessary to
maintain plans
-
Skepticism about the accuracy of the shared resource
pool
-
Not wanting to enter tasks at a low-level of
granularity [which would be required to allow people to enter their
time spent, and remaining, against discrete tasks]
-
Experiencing silos where managers are saying "I don't
want others to see the availability of my resources"
-
Constant thrashing of resources due to changing
priorities which makes it difficult to lock-in and manage to a plan
In the above list, which are technology issues and which are people and
process issues? Really, only the first item in the list relates to
technology, and training can easily solve that. The other issues are
related to aligning people and defining process.
Aligning the people involves helping everyone to understand how the
process and tool help them and the organization as a whole. To be clear,
the benefits are enormous. With proper implementation of an Enterprise
Project Management solution, you can (at a minimum):
-
Provide dashboards that share top-level / objective
status on all your key projects (are we on time / on budget?), in a
consistent format
-
Determine if your most precious resources (personnel)
are working on the most important projects, or other less-important
projects
-
Determine the availability of your personnel to engage
on a project
-
Minimize "administrative" meeting time by enabling
team-members to update project task status allowing project managers
to be alerted to exceptions requiring their attention
All of the above should NOT be misconstrued as making it unnecessary for
a project manager to have constant dialogue with their team-members;
rather, it reduces the non-value-added "chatter" and/or meeting time.
For example, one project manager in the above mentioned pilot indicated
that he previously invested 5-hours per week in meetings (with his
team-members) to obtain updates on project tasks. He is now able to do
this in less than 30 minutes per week. To fully appreciate the time
savings, you'll want to multiply that difference by the number of people
in the weekly meetings. Obviously, everyone's time is much better spent
working on the project rather than sitting in a meeting waiting for each
person to report on the status of a task. Of course, when an exception
occurs, the PM can initiate a conversation to respond to the matter.
Defining the process involves putting in place Project Management
building blocks that all Project Managers must adhere to (a.k.a. PM
101). In future editions of our newsletter, we will explore how to
effectively deploy an Enterprise Project Management solution, by
defining the project management process and ONLY THEN layering in the
technology.
If you are struggling with this right now, and can't wait for our future
editions, please feel free to
contact us. We'd be happy to discuss your situation, share pointers,
and determine if there are opportunities to more formally assist you. |
Contents
+ People, Process, and Technology - A Balancing
Act
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