tuning the engine is great, but only of value iftuning the engine is great, by simon harris; page 2...

©2014 Simon Harris, PMP

®, CGEIT, IPMA Level D

® PRINCE2®, MoR

®. Published at www.asapm.org, February, 2014

Tuning The Engine Is Great, But Only of Value If …

…you attach the wheels to the road. ©2014, by Simon Harris

The Business Journey to Success

Business success or ‘traction’ or “Attaching the wheels to the road” has many dependencies and many defini-

tions.

One definition is ‘creation of value’ however measured. One dependency is on well-functioning teams. A

functioning team is one with a shared understanding of, and commitment to, and skills to define and then cre-

ate/ acquire results that lead to benefits.

Where We Need To Be

The froth that accompanies discussion of topics such as Agile and the angst that accompanies debate on the

value of exams such as the PMP® masks the deeper issues whose resolution is needed to improve business per-

formance.

If Agile and PMP were respectively wholly new and unreservedly useful then they would still only tune the

corporate engine. Before any of that potentially enhanced power can be used we also need:

The wheels to have traction on the road, and

The road we are on to be the right one, and

To be facing the right way when we start-off, and

To be able to steer the organisation through the chicanes and twists and turns of the market place.

Well-functioning organisations (cross hierarchy, cross functional teams) need shared procedures so that team

members can coordinate combining their domain specific expertise and authority to deliver the best possible

project outputs and use them for the best possible outcomes.

Where we Are

Better development methods are only useful when the business can say what it wants and often it can’t (or we

perceive so). Agreeing on a direction requires well-functioning teams that include those who can set direction

and those who deliver operation’s value streams. It also requires engagement of those who coordinate progress

and those who design and build the change’s component parts. Value is from the outcomes created by day-to-

day use of project outputs not by better development methods in isolation of other factors.

Little of widespread ‘traditional’ wisdom considers the team either as a peer level debating medium or as a

whole board-room-2-boiler-room structure that must Direct and Delegate, Manage and Escalate and in the

long term deliver value in excess of development cost. One of agile’s insights is to promote the debating

community. But it leaves it centered in the development team, to the extent of bringing a user representative

into the team instead of taking the culture of debate out into the business.

Also little or nothing in wide-spread agile or traditional project management provides guidance mindful of the

whole end-to-end journey from initial idea to long term harvesting of benefits. We need to seek-out and ex-

tract the essence of good sources of inspiration such as any oil company’s project governance framework, the

US DOD 5000 document series or UK MoD’s CADMID and many other industry sources.

Tuning The Engine Is Great, by Simon Harris; page 2



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We should not be wasting energy arguing about nor be reliant on exam centric project management memes or

software centric development methods.

Perhaps most worryingly and obviously wrong is the fact that when we teach people the contents of widely

published project guidance we do it as an activity for individuals studying for a certificate aimed at individual

job mobility and restricted to just a portion of the whole value chain.

Changes to the Business Landscape

By preference of some, all capital would be employed in Running The Business (RTB) in order to create the

most value from the capital available. However changes to reality around us often require periodic diversion

of effort into ‘CTB’ – Change the Business.

Figure 1 Direction-Setting Links, by Simon Harris

RTB can be conducted by just managing but CTB demands a mix of leading and managing. A core capability

of leaders at all levels, whether engaged in operational RTB or projects to CTB is to forge well-functioning

teams. The primary duty of these leaders (and managers) is to create a context that fosters debate and apprecia-

tion of diverse opinion. A team has a shared commitment to an understood target, shared values and mutual

interdependence.

Healthy team contexts develop a culture that prizes debate between competing options for achievement of tar-

gets and takes the mental journey through decision on selected option to committed execution of development

steps and eventually delivery of target results via RTB activity (‘Business As Usual’ BAU).




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Simple Solution

The increased power from a well-tuned engine (capability development live-cycles and methods) can be well

used when folk see with clarity… That project management is a social, collaborative endeavour whose contents must support debate and de-

cision making

The decision making path runs from Boardroom-2-boiler-room™ and back again (good escalation is more

important than delegation) and

The whole journey is from capital-injection-through benefits harvesting and eventually-capital-extractions

and subsequent reallocation.

Improving project performance is (in part) really easy. The skills we need are described explicitly in

PMBoK® Guide (PG), PRINCE2

® (P2), Lean, Agile, DOD 5000 and many other sources. The problems are:

1) Making them explicit has led to internecine war between bodies of knowledge claiming to be ‘ultimate

truth’ when in fact we need a bit of all of them, we need them integrated as a whole and we need more

than they currently contain in total.

Since they are all mostly right so they are also all a bit wrong and all incomplete.

2) We teach a collaborative, social endeavour as an individual exam-cram topic which forces people to repeat

as if ultimate truth what is wrong and incomplete to pass exams and leads to

3) Explicit and Exam-Cram means instead of absorbing best-practice tacitly as useable team based life skills,

what is learned in a week is forgotten in a month and is not embraced as shared behaviours within a peer

group or across the wider team hierarchy of Direct, Manage, Deliver.

Project Investment success is a shared culture that spans all the pay-grades.

Linking More Power from the Boiler Room to the Wheels

Placing the wheels on the right road and establishing the right direction uses boardroom tools that aid direction

setters to define the future-state-of-business-as-usual (fsBAU).

Boardroom Debate and Cascade

The toolkit for envisaging a fsBAU includes tools such Dimension Four’s (D4) Recognition Events® (REs)

and Backcasting contract (payment) milestones and REs to Tipping Points. Perhaps used in the context of

Kotter’s “See Feel Change” and within Framing workshops, aided by Conklin’s Dialogue Mapping and

QFD’s† Voice of the Customer (or PRINCE2’s Senior User and Product Breakdown Structure‡ or Scrum/ Ag-

ile’s Product Backlog Items and Owner). What we need is already out there but as yet within un-integrated

warring ‘Branded IP’. [†The expansion of the initials doesn’t matter, but Google & Wikipedia will tell you if you’re curious and you

may think VoC is 6σ (Six Sigma) but it was QFD first (I think) ‡For years PMBoK Guide has done us all a grave miss-service by its confusion over breakdown structures and

scope’s boundary].

Boiler-room Linking

Agile product delivery regimes are boiler-room insights (supplier side improvements). The agile treatment of

an ‘always open product backlog’ is a useful receptor into which to plug expressions of direction once we can

reliably and repeatedly create them.

Setting direction and strategy is a boardroom (customer side) capability. In the boardroom the toolset links en-

visaging the future (using Recognition Events®) to benefit streams and to a visual and visceral flow down that




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cascades delegation by Backcasting of Tipping Points and then links with PRINCE2’s Product Breakdown

structure (or Scrum’s Backlog Items) and then links to ISO 21500’s view of Activity Definition (as opposed to

PMBoK Guide’s placement in Time Management; in the 5th

Edition it is named Define Activities, but is still in

Project Time Management). Now we have scope and scope management correct and integrated from Board-

room to boiler room and from PMBoK, PRNCE2, Agile and all other forms of ‘canned-wisdom’.

The linkage of the ‘board-room to boiler room’™ is most reliant for healthy function on escalation and ap-

proval structures. PRINCE2® (P2) provides excellent insight about how to structure these communications but

not how to create their contents. Reliable content requires estimating and scheduling tools such as those in the

PMBoK Guide (PG) that build baselines. Linkage starts with the techniques for business goal development,

description and socialisation that D4 provides and ends in product development insights. If we are to have re-

liable project investment success then P2, PMBoK, Agile etc. have to be seen as necessary but also as insuffi-

cient and their religious differences and errors sorted out.

Generate High Power and Attach it to the Wheels, Then Choose the Right Direction

Businesses do not do projects. They react to change. Instead of a project community caring for projects the

key to improvement is to interlock projects with how business’ look at investments. Each investment is specu-

lative diversion of current capacity to create a future state of business as usual (fsBAU) that differs from the

current state of business as usual (csBAU).

All investment is conducted against a framework of 9 contexts and we must support all 9. Between them P2 &

PG make a good, even great job of two and weak or awful attempts at a couple more.

The 9 contexts of business success have a layer cake architecture in three levels over three timeframes.

Figure 2, Graphic of Three x Three, 9 Contexts for Business Success. Simon Harris




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Architecture for Decisions

The cake-layers are an hierarchical architecture for decision-making; a Decision Making Architecture (DMA).

Delegation is fairly well known but peer-level flows and escalation flows are poorly understood. Since they

are the linkages for steering through the twists of market place chicanes they need focus to improve them. Key

to an appropriate ‘Architecture’ is establishing the pattern of communication flows required to react to evolv-

ing decision making needs. Unlike operations, being reactive in projects is a more realistic solution than at-

tempting to be pro-active about all uncertainties.

Each layer of the DMA is fed by “What we want is…” and empowerment from above. The root of the cascade

is Mission and Values. The foundations of the DMA are grounded in lean and agile and traditional practices

for product development (and operational excellence such as CPI). Product development life-cycle choices

must be combined with pragmatic (non-exam) attitude towards the tools and techniques of the PMBoK Guide

at the base of the DMA. PRINCE2 and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) are in the middle for project con-

trol. The whole is within the overall structure of corporate governance.

Figure 3, the DMA layers and flows; Simon Harris

After Boardroom techniques establish Vision† then messages about goal, access to resources, authority and

constraint must flow downwards. Often goal and constrain arise with grand simplicity and incompletely or are

invalidated but future events in the market place (the CAS influence again). The DMA’s key function is to

make escalation a timely, robust and responsive mechanism. †In my vocabulary ‘Vision’ is the constantly (slowly?) evolving result of interaction between mission plus

values plus market place context.




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Figure 4, Vision from context Graphic Overlaid with Delegation & Escalation; Simon Harris

Design Within The DMA Hierarchy

Teams develop solutions to delegated “What…” goals by designing (and executing) at organisation levels be-

low the problem or opportunity owner’s. Peer-level debate suggests options for “how we can do this is by…”

An option within authority and capability is chosen or issues between contradictory concurrent constraints –

the Devil in the Detail – become clear and the issues† are relocated. Often relocation is by escalation to middle

management steering and possibly back to senior leadership for a direction reset‡. [† In my vocabulary ‘Issue’ describes a decision that is outside either my authority or my ability so needs re-

locating. An off-plan situation within my authority and capability is ‘just a problem’. ‡ “Escalation to senior leadership” may be either ‘Up’ to financial authority or ‘Down’ to technical authority.]

Issues come in several forms and delegation of concurrently conflicting goals and constraints is only one form.

Success in steering an investment through the chicanes of market place changes demands swift relocation of

all forms of issue, timely decisions and timely actions.




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Figure 5, Issue Quadrants; Simon Harris

Cherry-Picking and Extending The Best of PRINCE2

The delegation and escalation structures of PRINCE2 give us a robust mechanism when taken out of an exam-

cram context but P2’s guidance still has to be extended in two ways. One to cover the full investment time

frame and 2nd

while P2 tells us ‘what to include’ that advice needs to be supplemented with advice on how to

create the content of Decision Support Reports. PMBoK Guide mostly tells us how to create the contents of

the decision support information flows. D4, 6σ, DSDM & Scrum (etc.) have useful insight too.

The three layers of governance are:

Layer-1 - Strategy also known as Direction whose duty is constancy of (& growth of) capital.

Care of capital means developing vision (strategy) as the organisation’s context evolves. Here the tools

and techniques of Dimension Four® and Dialogue Mapping are useful.

Layer-2 - Management whose duty is to maintain constancy of purpose (tactical actions to deliver re-

ceived strategy) which means adapting processes as context changes. Here project control (PRINCE2’s

central concepts) and maybe (if it legitimately exists) program management are useful.

Layer 3 - Development and operational capability whose duty is constancy of process when benefits are

flowing and replacement of process when directed by delegated instruction from above. IE either harvest-

ing value from existing capability or developing future capability. Here we need detailed and integrated

consideration of whole-of-product-life-span topics which for the project timeframe is PMBoK Guide tools

and techniques.




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Three timeframes

Within the three timeframes is the operation of the current state of business as usual (csBAU) and the devel-

opment of a future state of business as usual (fsBAU). Boundaries between the timeframes are only clearly de-

fined in supplier’s dreams and text books. The investor’s reality is often hazier. First Timeframe in fsBAU: Scanning the commercial horizon - Analysing organisational strength and

weakness and changes in context. Analysis identifies future threat and opportunity and thus frames vision

as a selected response from the options available to us. Selection is between all options in competition with

each other for the limited resources available to both RTB and CTB.

Second Timeframe in fsBAU: Creating the fsBAU capability – Projects. Projects create outputs that are

transitioned into BAU to create outcomes from which benefits flow.

Creation of capability and bringing capability into use is a transition from RTB to CTB and onwards to

RTB again (a transition from csBAU to fsBAU). Transition from one form of ‘normal’ to a different or

once ‘future normal’. At some point a new csBAU exists but it may be hard to point at a specific event or

day on the calendar that marks the start of a ‘new’ normal.

Third Timeframe in fsBAUis also the First Timeframe in csBAU: Benefits have started flowing and stabi-

lising and are growing from the ‘normal’ operation of the organisations systems and culture.

Figure 6, Three x Three with fsBAU & csBAU shown with RTB / CTB management’s focus; Simon Harris

Second Timeframe in csBAU: Harvesting and optimising benefits from the last project to transition out-

puts into operational use. Operational tuning and Continuous Process Improvement and 6σ’s DMAIC are

the order of the day. Eventually the 3rd

timeframe is a tail-off of benefits (or an abrupt seismic shift oc-

curs).




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Third Timeframe in csBAU: for whatever reason change is on the way fsBAU’s first timeframe is in pro-

gress. Socialising of the implications of changes on “how we do it here…” must be preparing the emotion-

al response people have to change, particularly non-negotiable change. Most business change is actually

non-negotiable in terms of arrival and “What we want is…” but is almost always open to debate and selec-

tion of “How we could/ will deliver that as a fsBAU is…”!

In the business sector the new benefits replenish and enhance the coffers used to fund the project investment.

In the public sector measure of worth is more complex but just as achievable.

Some projects are new ventures that create systems and culture but many projects amend existing systems and

cultures.

Starting with the Engine Equals Product Development

To tune the corporate engine we need to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of PRODUCT development

lifecycles. Traditional (predictive), exploratory and adaptive approaches all have weaknesses. Great results oc-

cur when we balance ‘whole of product lifecycle’ issues such as the effects of design integrity on through life

costs.

Every product has need of agile (iterative and progressive and adaptive) practices to explore uncertain and un-

stable contexts. Every product benefits from predictive (or design first) approaches in places. Best results oc-

cur when both approaches are used as an integrated whole. Choices should be made from understanding of the

product development lifecycle’s effect on acquisition and ownership issues through life. This is in contrast to

‘religious’ wars based on xenophobia of a foreign doctrine.

The tools and techniques of Agile, Six Sigma, Lean, PMBoK Guide, PRINCE2, Dialogue mapping, Kanban,

Dimension Four® and more all have a helping and complimentary contribution to make. To reject any for any

reason other than ‘not relevant here BECAUSE…” is a sin against the equity owner’s or the tax payer’s best

interests. ‘Practitioner’ ignorance of available tools and xenophobic influence over which is selected for use

are cardinal sins.

As Well As Power Generation

It is necessary but insufficient on its own to balance development and ownership concerns through matching

the combination and choice of product development practices. We also face the challenge of knowing what the

right problems are to apply this power to. Determination of which road to be on and which direction to face

are strategy issues.

Strategy’s challenge is to describe a future-state-of-business-as-usual (fsBAU). Within this topic are many

needs. First the determination of strategy is probably for most organisations a ‘Wicked Problem’. IE there is

no absolute answer, no answer is provably correct in advance, everyone has an opinion with as much chance

that hindsight would prove them correct, that attempts to address the problem change the nature of the prob-

lem so repeated trial and error approaches do not develop a refined approach and there are no definitive tests

that arbitrate between ‘in-progress; continue’, ‘oops-wrong; try-another-route’ and ‘OK-finished’.

Second project management writings over the last 50 years or so have predicated that a project must start with

a well-defined objective. A fairy tale for most real project teams! A blinkered supplier side focus dominates

the guidance widely circulated to date. Consequentially determination of strategy at direction-setting level

lacks well-known powerful tools that help the expression of vision as a concrete start to solution development.

Third the strategy needs to be communicated to those who will live with the consequences. When we have ca-

pability to do that viscerally we may then have a fourth problem.




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Negative Response to Notification of Change

Communication of strategy often has a highly predictable reaction that is well expressed by Machiavelli in

The Prince (published 500 years ago in 1515). I can paraphrase Machiavelli as “those who might prosper are

apathetic until success is guaranteed while those who will lose-out are active opponents from the start”.

It is likely communication of strategy triggers an immediate, emotional and normally negative response which

we need the means to deal with. Again tools and techniques exist but outside the suggestion of being ‘consul-

tative’ what is available is not well known. Note also that ‘consultative’ has many large problems when ap-

plied to “What should we…” and is best restricted to “How can we…?”

Figure 7, How People & Organisations React to Change

Boardroom tools that describe the fsBAU clearly and early allow the socialisation process to start. When strat-

egy is well communicated it is adequate to triggering all the design activities in both product development and

future-operation teams that are critical to the ultimate generation of benefits (IE success). Participation in the

design of the future generates buy-in – a quality often bemoaned as missing by project managers. Unsurpris-

ingly as they are rarely equipped with a visceral and visual description of the future by those sponsoring

change and so, often they take little if any action to actively create buy-in.

For each contributing domain of technical expertise strategy is a goal received

from outside (often from ‘above’) the team that the team must acclimatize it-

self to so as to reach acceptance and then translate the goal into actionable tac-

tics, resourced, sequenced and executed actions – a set of tools and techniques

described by ‘classic texts’ in terms that are somewhat disjoint from the

boardroom cascade and lacking in the ‘and back-again’ escalation of Devil-in-

the-Detail exposure of concurrent contradictions in constraints.




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Delivering Power

With delegation and then socialisation and acceptance then debate of solution merit and escalation of concur-

rent contradictions we are laying bare the crucial success factors for the creation of well-functioning teams

within and across organisational levels.

Attaching the commercial wheels to the road and steering around obstacles is achieved by the communications

cycle that runs from goal definition, through team development, through solution proposal and escalation of

issues for refinement of solutions design at ‘superior’ levels of the hierarchy. Each organisational level’s solu-

tion design is what is delegated to the level below as their goals.

When:

goals are socialised to overcome the typical immediate shock-anger-resistance reactions and

how to reach the goals is debated in a culture of open challenge and search for solutions where

team member’s contributions are valued whether they sway the argument or not and

failing solutions are identified as such, discarded and the solution search restarted

… then issues needing re-design of goal or constraint at higher level are only escalated when truly required.

Another way to express this is ‘re-route to deliver the goal not the process as needed’.

Generation of value results from integration of well understood development lifecycles applied at boardroom

direction setting, management operation and development and technical operation and development levels, so-

lution (re-)design at business strategy and technical tactical levels and development and delivery and the ad-

justment to the vision of the fsBAU until it is the new csBAU. Benefits proceed through a period of ramp-up

into stabilisation and long term harvesting.

The Solution Set

We will have attached the Power To The Road When…

… those at the top of the organisation can map mission and values and context to vision and options and then

as a team pick and commit to a direction and stand ready to resolve issues in order to drive and steer the or-

ganisation towards its future state business as usual. … the selected vision is cascaded as a goal with constraints and resources to management who as a team de-

sign and commit to how the future state business as usual will become reality. They cascade the how as objec-

tives to the operational and development staff and stand ready to respond to escalated issues. …mechanisms and time to accommodate reaction to change are routinely in place, and when escalation of is-

sues is routinely in place, and when decision making at every level employs horizontal dialogue and is timely

and is informed and is NOT absolute but situational, fluid, reactive.

Conclusion

The above could all be summarised as “Good communication” but this simple summary is only meaningful

after the full description of the many threads within ‘communication’.




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About the Author

Simon Harris, PMP, CGEIT, IPMA-D, PRINCE2, MoR

speaks, consults, mentors and trains on governance of

change.

Simon helps client’s investment journey from Boardroom

to boiler-room and from “light-bulb” to benefits harvest-

ing by showing where Dimension Four®, PRINCE2®,

and PMBoK Guide help direct, manage, and develop. We

call it New Generation Thinking. Follow Simon’s

thoughts @pm_ngt and #pm_ngt.

He can be contacted at [email protected] and

+44 77 68 215 335. Website: www.LogicalModel.Net.

All trademarks are the property of their registered owners in the United Kingdom, the USA and other countries. Statements made in this article are the opinion of the author.

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.logicalmodel.net/

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