how processes masquerading as projects are hurting your business v4

www.work-‐relay.com 1

PROCESSES MASQUERADING AS PROJECTS ARE HURTING YOUR BUSINESS (AND WHAT YOU NEED TO DO ABOUT IT TODAY)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A business project is a series of tasks done in a predefined sequence over time. In other words, a project is simply a unique process with a pre-‐planned schedule. The problem is that when you use a project management system to manage processes, you eliminate all the benefits that can be derived from an appropriate process management tool – and vice versa. The solution is a unified platform that provides both project and process functionality.


INTRODUCTION Project management is a term that gets thrown around a lot in the enterprise environment. It seems that any organized effort that includes tasks with due dates is deemed to be a project.

But what if it isn't? Misidentifying it could set your project or initiative back at the very outset.

Ask yourself: "What are the main tasks for my next project?" If you answer with responses such as, "do a site visit," "order hardware," or "get sign-‐off," ask yourself another question. "Is what I am describing actually a project?" Are you sure that it is not in fact a process that you are describing that just happens to have steps with due dates associated with them?

Just because a particular task requires accountability from a certain person, and has a due date, does not necessarily mean that it is a project task. It could just as easily be a step in a process.

PROCESS VERSUS PROJECT This is important because the tools used to manage processes and projects are quite different in their approach.

Processes show a general sense of time (left to right or top to bottom), but there is no visual indication of duration – all steps are the same size.

On the other hand, project management tools like Gantt charts are good at representing a project timeline, but poor at facilitating workflow.


TWO SCENARIOS Consider these two scenarios:

SCENARIO #1: EQUIPMENT INSTALLATION A fast food company wants to install a new point-‐of-‐sale system in each of its 6,000 stores. Each install requires many steps that need to be performed in sequence by many different participants. Each install has a schedule.


SCENARIO #2: CLINICAL RESEARCH TRIALS A clinical research organization needs well-‐defined, repeatable workflows for its drug testing trials across the globe. The workflows make up a project with a schedule.


THE DILEMMA You are responsible for these two endeavors. What tool do you use: project management or process management? Clearly, you need elements of both.

A significant portion of everyday activities in many industries require a mixture of process and project functionality. Think of this as process-‐driven project management, where the process is designed, and then managed like a project.

The solution today is to either ignore the process aspect, and focus simply on the project. Alternatively, use two different tools, one to design the process and the other to manage the project, and try to keep them in sync.

PROBLEMS #1. PROJECTS ARE DRIVEN BY PROCESS, BUT THE

PROCESS IS HIDDEN A project requires a set of related activities, performed in a predefined sequence, to achieve a certain goal. All project plans are based on an implied process, defined by predecessors and successors.

Project managers like Gantt Charts because they are a very good representation of a project's timeline and dependencies. The problem with project management tools is that the process remains obscured, because their approach is focused on a list of tasks to be done and the dates by which they need to be done.

Using a Gantt chart, it’s impossible to get a holistic view of how work flows through the project, where each individual task fits into the overall picture, and to see where bottlenecks are occurring. Projects fail because too little time is spent on understanding that a project is driven by a process under the hood.

#2. PROCESSES HAVE A TIMELINE, BUT THE TIMELINE CAN’T BE MANAGED

A process is like a project, in that it is a series of steps with a beginning and end, designed to reach a business objective. The same process may be repeated multiple times, but even repetitive processes have a beginning and end, a unique timeline, and unique deliverable. For example, an employee onboarding process is repetitive, but there may be nuances in the way it is processed each time, and the actual deliverable at the end (the individual employee who is on-‐boarded) is unique.


The first problem with business process management tools is that most are focused on transactional, automated processes. This means they are unable to effectively address the estimated 80% of business processes that are unstructured and collaborative.

The second problem is that there is no concept of time. While process diagrams do have a general sense of time (left to right or top to bottom), they don't represent durations at all. All activities are the same size. It is impossible to get a clear picture of when steps in a live process are likely to take place. There's no visual indication of the (predicted) time that it will take to complete a task, so information that is of primary importance from the perspective of the project manager is missing.

Clearly, many endeavors we think of as processes, like onboarding an employee or processing a customer bill from start to finish, can also be managed as projects.

#3. YOU NEED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN SOFTWARE CATEGORIES

When you go to the imaginary software tool supermarket, there is an aisle for project management software, and an aisle for process management software.

There is no aisle for process/project management software.


#4: THEY REQUIRE TWO DIFFERENT SKILL SETS A project manager does not have the same set of skills as a business process analyst, and vice versa. Having a project manager doing business analysis, or a business analyst doing project management – what could go wrong?

Process Management

A business analyst determines:

• the business need • the tasks that need to be done • the sequence of tasks • the skills needed for tasks • the responsibility for the tasks • the estimated duration of tasks • the data to be collected by tasks

Project Management

A project manager:

• Schedules tasks • Tracks dates against schedule • Reports task and project status • Assigns resources • Monitors time, cost, quality • Takes care of deviations • Resolves issues


THE SOLUTION: PROCESS-‐DRIVEN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The solution to the dilemma is process-‐driven project management.

With process-‐driven project management, a process is first designed using an appropriate process design tool, and then managed using a project management tool. The key is that the underlying data is the same – just the views are different.

Process-‐driven project management combines the core elements on process and project:


THE ADVANTAGES OF PROCESS-‐DRIVEN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

A single, comprehensive, unified platform for defining, visualizing, and driving the flow of production work through the organization.

• One tool implementation and support for both processes and projects. • Same interface for users involved in processes and projects. • Added dimension of time for processes. • Added dimension of process management for projects. • Responsibilities for process design and project management can be assumed by

resources with the appropriate skill set. • No importing and exporting between multiple tools, or duplication of data. • No duplication of effort designing in one tool and managing in another. • A singe repository for all the organizations processes and projects.


CONCLUSION

If your organization runs process-‐driven projects, and you are managing them as projects, you are severely limiting your organizations capabilities.

A tool that is capable of providing both project and process management will yield enormous dividends. That tool exists. Get started today!

ABOUT WORK-‐RELAY Work-‐Relay is a unified platform for process and project management built on the Salesforce platform. It is capable of handling process-‐driven or projects of any size or complexity.

how processes masquerading as projects are hurting your business v4

Software