Top-Down Support

However, if a lack of people nous is a major missing link in today's project management practices and the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (PMBOK, developed by the Project Management Institute) as explored in part one of this series (see "Just Human, Would Do" CIO November), then lack of business engagement and failure to tie projects inextricably to business value, are surely others. Charette agrees lack of upper management support is a problem serious enough to damn an IT undertaking. This runs the gamut from failing to allocate enough money and manpower to not clearly establishing the IT project's relationship to the organization's business, he says.

In response, a growing number of organizations, recognizing flaws in their existing approach, are adapting their management structure to a more project-based approach to enhance their project management capabilities. Other organizations have set up project management offices to provide centralized support for all project managers and have adopted a methodology for such support. This allows the routine work of project administration like weekly reporting, which requires a high level of influence, to be done by less highly skilled people with good administration skills. Still others have appointed a chief process officer (CPO) to handle the change management aspects of projects in the name of achieving business value.

"As far as who is going to push any change, I think a really valuable thing for organizations is to consider the appointment of a CPO who can bring about this change," project management consultant Lizz Robb says. "And yes, it's very much a case of organizations sitting back, reviewing what they are doing, and how they can do it better."

Yet recognizing the need for business engagement and for the business to decide questions of value is one thing; achieving it is quite another. Valense managing partner Michel Thiry notes project management has been typically viewed and sold as a tactical, execution and product delivery process. This funnelled view is what prevents project management from being the integrative link between strategic objectives and results, and hence a creator of true business value, he says.

It is not surprising, then, that despite increasing calls for strong senior management support, executives remain unconvinced of the benefits of project management for the organization beyond the delivery of well-defined results. One reason is that very system/engineering-based approach, so at odds with current business and strategic management reality. Another is the inability of projects and project-based structures to consistently deliver results that produce business benefits.

But Thiry also believes projects are suffering because of the lack of an integrated vision of the project approach. At least partly to answer the value question, he notes, numbers of project-based organizations have shifted from a "contained" project management model to a more strategic perspective over recent years, as project managers explore strategy-based knowledge and practices. Hence many organizations have rushed to embrace program/portfolio management and establish project management offices (PMOs) and more project-based organizational structures, he says.

Yet many of these PMOs have been introduced in such haste under pressure to perform that their implementers have largely ignored recent developments in management practice. Too often, PMOs and portfolio management structures are based on traditional organizational structures. That sees PMOs duplicating the work of the quality department by defining and implementing processes and procedures, while the portfolio people duplicate the role of the finance department by allocating resources across the organization. The restricted view from both ends limits project management's ability to deliver business value.

"In this perspective, project-based structures simply mimic traditional organizational structures, replacing management rhetoric with project rhetoric. The danger of this situation is that project-based organizations will, in a matter of time, become another past fad and that the benefits, which could have been gained from moving to project-based, will quickly be lost," Thiry says.

And while the complexity of environments continues to grow, most organizational and project decisions are still based on a rational, linear process aimed at reducing uncertainty and feature uncertainty-reduction processes, with organizations still adopting an "agency" approach where managers are under tight control instead of being empowered. The approach assumes the shareholders' interest is paramount, that agency costs must be minimized and that the agency's interests must be aligned with those of the principal shareholders. Wrong, says Thiry.