GENERATION Y The risks and opportunities The EPPM Board, Third Edition

The Oracle EPPM Board is a prestigious international steering group of senior industry executives, academics and commentators. It has produced a number of reports highlighting how the C-level can successfully prioritise and manage the project portfolio, ensuring it remains a strategic asset.

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New kids on the blockSuccessful Project Portfolio Management (PPM) relies on one thing above all else: the ability to share real-time information between delivery teams and the C-level. It gives one version of the truth across borders, time zones and internal/external personnel. It provides visibility into schedules, budgets, potential risks and their attendant opportunities – ensuring that leadership teams are able to act immediately if required.

The latest sitting of The EPPM Board identified one such opportunity/risk as being the introduction of Generation Y into the workforce. Connected, collaborative and technology-centric, this new group of workers is bringing a new set of expectations about how information should be treated, which is changing the face of PPM.

Alongside this, we explored how the increasing level of retirements among senior PPM professionals is opening up a knowledge gap that could imperil long-term strategic growth.

Over the following pages you will find a summary of the Board’s discussion and the role it felt real-time information could play in managing the demands of Generation Y and ensuring that valuable skills are retained.

Yours sincerely

Mike SiciliaSVP GM, Oracle Primavera

IntroductionIt is six years since the credit crunch and growth across the emerging markets of China, India and Brazil has slowed, though some of that is a structural response to changing demand. Across Western Europe and North America – with the exception of Canada – economies are flatlining, or reporting pitifully small improvements. As such, many project-intensive industries are facing another year of tight budgets, shifting schedules and the need to produce greater outputs with fewer – or frozen – resources.

This places the emphasis on human resource: the knowledge that drives corporate strategy. But it’s an area where there is also a significant question mark over longevity, due to companies foregoing long-term people development in preference for short-term skills poaching.

However, as companies now increasingly realise this approach comes with a number of hidden costs. Salaries continue to rise and the growing tempo of retirements is leading to a knowledge gap that threatens the successful delivery of investments.

Against this background, Generation Y threatens to upset the applecart. They are now reaching the initial rungs of management, and have an approach to information management and process that’s at odds with established protocol. They’re adept at electronic networking and using technology as a collaborative tool, and while that is a benefit in an increasingly connected workplace, it is also a risk. Their ease with technology – perhaps their reliance on it – leaves them less prone to seek face-to-face opinion when presented with an issue or problem to be resolved.

Where Generation Y seek flexibility in their working lives, those coming to the end of their careers have always been driven by more concrete rules. Some voices fear that two such disparate ways of working are a threat, as they actively encourage the non-proliferation of PPM skills.

So how can PPM survive the almost continual stress inflicted upon it by malfunctioning economies, while at the same time reacting to the requirements of a new generation of workers who consider networked intelligence and collaborative problem solving as a right?

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Generation Y – supporting tomorrow’s workforceThe EPPM Board was unanimous that Generation Y was only having a positive impact on the workplace. It was an opinion that crossed all industries and both public and private sectors. They produce and consume vast amounts of information and, as a result, have developed an easy ability to filter what is relevant to them. They’re not only happy to embrace data, but to find myriad ways in which it can be manipulated to greater business advantage.

This of course makes them ideally placed to exploit the manifest benefits of real-time PPM technology. However, this then places an emphasis on employers to deliver information in real-time.

But why should companies make the investment in transitioning around real-time PPM? With the increasing pressures on budgets and schedules, there is little wriggle room anymore. Markets are unforgiving of over runs and missed deadlines and the more visibility senior executives have, the greater their ability to match resources to demand. Real-time information improves their decision-making processes and, most importantly, allows them to ensure that individual investments remain in line with strategic direction.

Executives should not see the introduction of real-time PPM information as pandering to the demands of a group of twenty-somethings, but a fundamental business imperative. The brutal truth is organisations simply do not have the luxury to operate with anything other than real-time information. Industries, processes and customer demands are constantly changing, and it is that requirement for flexibility that directly plays into Generation Y’s hands.

Having grown up in a culture that celebrates immediacy, Generation Y is not afraid to make decisions based on whatever information is available to them. They are also willing to change that decision when new information becomes available. Technology has become a key enabler, providing the primary platform on which project portfolio budgets and schedules are judged.

By comparison, there was a view across some parts of the Board that older and more experienced project professionals make their decisions only when they are confident they possess all the information. Experience and judgement plays a large role, with technology viewed as a supportive tool – rather than a driver of PPM process.

So can companies support both working styles? According to the Board they can, with the challenge being to get real-time information across a whole organisation to two different types of user.

Driving real-time information into project-intensive organisations is not new. Senior executives already balance resources on up-to-the-second information. But what is changing is the ability to share that information across geographic sites. That’s why PPM technology is increasingly encompassing the same drivers that are found in social media, apps, gamification and smart devices. Collaboration is key, with senior leaders able to base decisions on information delivered directly to their own smart devices. This also offers a platform for Generation Y and those coming up for retirement to effectively collaborate – a direct way of dealing with the burgeoning knowledge gap.

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Dealing with the knowledge gapThere is an undeniable PPM knowledge gap opening up across a range of industries. In engineering, the talent pool – especially in specialist skills – is drying up.

It’s a problem that has been 30 years in the making and whose root cause is short-term opportunism triumphing over long-term strategy. Companies have preferred to poach staff rather than develop them. While this makes sense if the only concern is reporting healthy quarterly results, its long-term impact has been entirely negative. Organisations are forced to rely on a dwindling pool of talent and are paying a high financial price for it. Furthermore, the generation that is finally being recruited to replace them has an enormous hurdle to overcome,in the shape of making sense of working practices that were – quite literally – developed in a different age.

When natural resources dry up, the tendency is to look abroad for a fresh supply. Can it be repeated with the human resource? The Board remained unconvinced. While general PPM skills can of course be found elsewhere, specialist skill sets found in niche engineering industries for instance, can be hard to find.

The Board acknowledged that in some areas a ‘bottom-up counter culture’ of skills sharing has developed across a range of unofficial collaborative systems. But it was felt that organisations would better serve themselves by establishing real-time networks that benchmark, monitor and share knowledge, helping them gain control over the skills within their organisations.

When natural resources dry up, the tendency is to look abroad for a fresh supply.

However, it was noted:

• The skills investment must include older employees, regardless of whether they are near the end of their work cycle. In fact, it was felt that training both young and old together was an ideal way of ensuring one-to-one communication and knowledge transfer

• Real-time networks are an enabler in capturing lessons learned and sharing them across teams. The instantaneous nature of apps and social media can also help share and retain knowledge, especially with teams moving from one project to the next with great speed, and contractors having little motivation to share what they’ve learned once their contract ends

• It will be expensive. Organisations are now going to have to foot a bill they’ve so far avoided. In the long run, this will be far more cost-effective than poaching, as by the time Generation Y come to retire, their skills and knowledge would have fully percolated throughout a business

But in order to bridge the knowledge gap, organisations must first become an appealing destination for new staff. Despite the recent recessions and their impact on the job markets, the brightest candidates – especially those moving into their secondary roles – are highly sought after.

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They will of course be looking for attractive salaries and conditions, but they will also be defined by a set of expectations. These can range from being able to use their own technology at work and using real-time information in a collaborative environment, to embracing a more flexible pattern of work. The Board also suggested that, in many cases, they are driven by a cause, and felt that the successful portfolios of the future will be those that can harness this drive. To see this translated successfully, the Board pointed towards the London Olympic Games – with delivery teams across all levels buying into the cause. Leading project-intensive organisations already recognise this by placing as much emphasis on the needs of those tasked with delivering portfolios, as they do on the need to deliver stakeholder value. In these instances, PPM teams are included as early as possible in the scoping process, and are therefore delivering their own stake from the very beginning.

Shifting risk profilingReal-time PPM technology is making significant inroads into project-intensive organisations. Executives have greater levels of clarity at their fingertips and there is a greater expectation that unseen hazards will not blow delivery off track. Some are also adapting app and social media influenced platforms to better share information across all levels.

As such, many organisations are primed for Generation Y. But while an interconnected workforce that manages itself presents obvious benefits, it also produces significant risk. The primary risk concerns information leakage, with sensitive information only one smartphone away from being public.

The Board felt that risk profiles need to be recalibrated to remain relevant to Generation Y’s increased collaboration and information sharing.

It was noted that:

• Not all information is created equal, and controls can be put in place to govern who sees what and on which type of device

• While sharing information with competitors should be considered a risk, if the situation demands, it can also be seen as an opportunity, especially when searching for a common problem

But how do you control and rely on information – especially when there are fewer boundaries around it? The answer, according to The Board, was strong policies to surround how it is interrogated, and the need to establish proper working groups to deal with it. Not only would this reduce the risk of decisions being taken from within silos, but also encourage a sharing of skills and experience that would go some way to bridging the knowledge gap.

Real-time PPM technology is making significant inroads into project-intensive organisations. Executives have greater levels of clarity at their fingertips and there is a greater expectation that unseen hazards will not blow delivery off track.

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Discover moreThe Oracle EPPM Board produces regular reports and findings,all of which can be accessed at oracle.com/eppm/eppmboard

SummaryGeneration Y offers organisations a ready and committed workforce that’s fully in tune with the collaborative and real-time technologies that are driving the successful delivery of global project portfolios. But while their ability to share and quickly analyse information is a benefit, their sometimes suspect data management skills and propensity to shift their decisions based on conflicting information is also a risk.

They are joining the workplace at the same time as the older generation is retiring. This, combined with a historical precedent that placed the poaching of staff over their development, has led to a knowledge gap that now threatens to seriously imperil ongoing and future project portfolios. So senior executives face two challenges: they must ensure their organisations retain the skills and experience needed to deliver on strategic intent, while reconciling a culture shaped by agile technology with one based on a more conservative approach.

The EPPM Board felt the solution can be found in the real-time technologies, apps and smart devices that are currently reshaping the way project portfolios are delivered. Delivery teams and executives are now able to take advantage of a range of user interfaces that ensure information can instantly be shared between delivery and strategic teams. Apps can be downloaded from iTunes for instance, while specialist web interfaces can run on most tablets and browsers. Just as budgets, schedules and resources are better managed through the increased visibility provided by real-time information, so knowledge too can be quickly captured and shared across teams. It was also noted that such networks provide a valuable audit trail when detailing lessons learned or dealing with regulators.

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Produced by The EPPM Board for Oracle Primavera

Generation Y: the risks and opportunities

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