Unravelling the DNA of a successful programme and project delivery

Delivery of major portfolios of programmes and projects creates a conundrum in most organisations. The simple, logical sequence for managing change is 'top down': determine the vision; shape the strategy that will deliver it; decide the major activities required to deliver the strategy (portfolio); form the building blocks (programmes); and design the work required to drive the change (projects). This leads to a hierarchical, or layer-cake, view of the delivery structure. The reality is that life is rarely that simple when it comes to actual delivery, for two key reasons:

• business as usual appears to get in the way
• in-house expertise, if it exists at all, is 'bottom up', with much more project management experience than programme or portfolio management expertise.

These factors create tensions between change and business as usual and lead to opposing pressures on the overall approach to change. The effect is a DNA-like entanglement between logic and capability that embraces both change and business as usual. What is required is a pragmatic approach to programme leadership that enables organisations to achieve strategic change despite the pressures of every day business and the challenges of internal capacity and capability.

Nirvana – it's easy isn't it?

In the ideal world organisations would follow a logical sequence in determining what they want to do. This will almost always involve change unless the organisation wishes to stand still, although there will also be a dimension of maintaining on-going routine activity, or business as usual (of which more in a moment).

Having determined what they want to do, and still in the ideal world, these organisations would then develop an approach to doing it. At its simplest this might be:

• Determine the vision
• Shape the policy or strategy required to achieve the vision
• Decide what needs to be done in order to achieve the strategic end, thus shaping a portfolio of activity
• Design the building blocks of the portfolio, ie its constituent programmes, many of which might be enduring rather than limited in term
• Build the collection of projects required to enable each programme to realise the benefits that will change the organisation, thus taking it one stage further towards implementing the strategy and achieving the vision.

Figure 1: The 'layer cake' view of strategy cascading into delivery
 

Reality – it's not quite so straight-forward

The reality, of course, is that life is never that simple, for a number of reasons. First, only very new start up organisations have the luxury of planning with a blank sheet of paper, unfettered by business as usual which has to be sustained and intermeshed with change activities. Immediately, a tension becomes evident between maintaining business as usual and supporting change.

Second, few organisations have the requisite skills to drive change hard enough to maximise success. By their nature, they aim to employ staff that are excellent at what they do and are specialists in their field. Rarely are those same specialists well equipped to think beyond the boundaries of their specialisation and drive change at a rate that will achieve the strategic ambitions required to fulfil the organisational vision of the future.

Third is taking the bottom up approach. Because management at project level is frequently the most structured change that can be coped with using integral organisational resources, the intuitive place to start is there – at project level. These projects then tend to be grouped together into collectives, that are soon labelled programmes, and these programmes de facto become the portfolio of change activity for the organisation. There is sometimes then a rudimentary check on a periodic basis to see whether the collection of programmes is broadly aligned with the strategic direction the organisation wishes to take. That, however, is the maximum extent to which change is structured at organisational level in many organisations.

The Paradox

The effect of the two complicating factors described above – the need to sustain business as usual, and the lack of experience of managing structured strategic change – is that the situation begins to look more like the representation in Figure 2 than the simple layer cake of Figure 1.

Figure 2: The DNA of Programme Delivery

We have the top down approach of:

• formulate the strategy
• shape the portfolio
• define the programme, and
• initiate the projects

Superimposed on the only way that most organisations can hope to implement change, which is essentially bottom up. All of this is conducted against a back-drop of keeping the business running in a way that is hopefully, but not always, aligned with the organisational strategy, rather than fighting against it.

The double helix represents the realities of driving organisational change – the conflict between top down need and bottom up capability – set against the back-drop of business as usual. The challenge is to determine how you can reconcile the opposing pressures and unravel the DNA of successful programme and project delivery. We will explore 12 key steps below.

Step 1 Top down and bottom up alignment

It is easy to conceptualise about an 'obvious' need for the theoretically ideal top down approach to be aligned with the more practically orientated bottom up aggregation of projects. But why is this alignment important, and how is this actually achieved in practice?

Experience suggests that unless there is coherence between organisational strategy and what is actually happening on a day to day basis there will always be inherent contradictions in the working lives of the organisation's staff. This causes misunderstanding about priorities, inconsistencies between the directions of travel of different parts of the organisation, and lack of unity of purpose at team and individual level. Essentially, without an overall aim to which all can relate there is a very high chance that everyone will choose their own aim and seek to achieve it regardless of the adverse impact on everyone else's. This is at best counter-productive and at worst wholly destructive. Individuals work best if they understand the reasons behind their endeavours and feel they are contributing to a greater purpose. Alignment of objectives from top to bottom in an organisation is therefore a strong pre-requisite to successful performance management of 'business as usual' and under-pins the 'golden thread' of objectives cascaded from organisational to individual level shown in Figure 4. It also becomes an essential ingredient for successful delivery of change.

Figure 3: The golden thread of cascaded objectives

A top down and bottom up alignment of the double helices shown in Figure 2 can be achieved if you:

• Have a clear understanding of how activities at all levels align with the strategy required to achieve the organisation's vision
• Adopt a pragmatic approach to shaping portfolios of activity and accommodating progressive movement towards aligned strategic change
• Have the flexibility to dove-tail projects in terms of time as well as in overall 'fit'.

Step 2 Understand the strategic alignment

It is helpful to be able to understand the complete picture and lay it out against a timeline that enables us to spot potential contradictions and pinch points. A so-called Level 0 Schedule – or Strategy Chart – allows those engaged in portfolio planning to see where the complete set of activities is likely to place intolerable demands on the organisation. Only when that visibility can be achieved is it possible to do something about managing the situation to lessen the impact before things become critical. This top level schedule not only provides insight into how the jigsaw all fits together but also enables familiarity with the route that leads to the organisational vision.

We believe it is necessary to make someone responsible for over-seeing delivery at this level. In many organisations we have worked in we find either that the role simply doesn't exist or that it is held at too junior a level in the organisation and that the incumbent is ridden over 'rough-shod' by more senior programme directors* . The person responsible for portfolio oversight should ideally be directly accountable to the management board and have the authority to speak on their behalf when required. This arrangement has worked very successfully in Transport for London, where Moorhouse helped create the Oversight function in order to support the TfL Commissioner in the undertaking of this role.

Achieving strategic alignment between change programmes in a portfolio is not in itself sufficient. A further essential ingredient is that the governance arrangements between and within programmes and their respective boards must also be thought through carefully. Many organisations will have a very limited pool of people capable of acting as Programme Directors and Project Executives. The moment they have to 'double up' and cover more than one programme they will inevitably find themselves with conflicts of interest. In one particular example where we were invited to support one programme amongst a set of several, plus a number of separate projects it was clear that there were tensions between activities. Subsequent investigation showed that the governance arrangements involved such a web of conflicted interests amongst senior managers that it was almost as if failure had been designed in.

Mini Case Study 1

Step 3 Recognise the realities of meeting in the middle

So, it is clear that direction should be given 'top down' in the first instance. However, this should be followed up as quickly as possible afterwards by reality checking to ensure that the direction given can actually be delivered: this can only sensibly be done 'bottom up'. Planning requires a measure of both to be realistic, which involves close interaction up and down the delivery tiers within the 'pyramid' from portfolio level at the top, to project level at the bottom.
Those coordinating delivery at a senior level must understand the delivery challenges at the junior level, and the practices being used to deliver change at the coal face. This sounds obvious, but the reality in many organisations is that those at the top of the organisation have never been involved in the intricacies of delivery at project level. As Programme Directors or SROs they need to be able to ask pertinent questions and constructively challenge programme and project teams. This is often best achieved by coaching to enable them to understand and fulfil their role fully, and we have been involved in much of this type of support, often on a one to one basis.

Many organisations are good at delivering in silos, using organic project management capability, but much less good at breaking down the silo walls and managing the inter-dependencies necessary to enable collective delivery at organisational level. Inter-dependency management can only sensibly be coordinated at the next management tier up i.e. programme level manages inter-project dependencies, and portfolio level manages inter-programme dependencies. In a situation where internal experience is focused at project level and there is little experience of structured delivery at higher management tiers this can be prove to be a challenge. External support coupled with strong skills transfer to build internal capacity is often the only sensible way forward in this situation.

Step 4 Shape your portfolio with pragmatism

We have already described the help that a single 'big picture' of organisational change activity and business as usual can provide – the Level 0 schedule, or Strategy Chart. Initial versions of this picture will either be aspirational – i.e. how you would like the picture to appear – or will be realistic and will immediately highlight potential difficulties. Rarely will everything fall into place perfectly in the first instance, so what should be done to move things forward?
It is useful to start with a representation of where we are now, and another of the full set of activities optimally synchronised. These two views then provide the limits within which a number of interim schedules can be shaped. Together they illustrate a migration plan to get the organisation's activities from where they are now in relation to one another, to where they need to be.

It has to be acknowledged that this migration will take time to achieve because it will involve delaying some programme and project activities and, if possible, speeding up others. It will almost certainly extend the overall duration of the total portfolio of activity, but the reality is that this would have happened anyway and probably had far greater adverse effect as the pinch points and tensions impacted in an unforeseen way rather than being identified in advance. We frequently talk about being prepared to stop projects where the business case no longer exists, or because they are no longer relevant, but we rarely consider synchronisation of programmes and projects so they work to reinforce each other, rather than to defeat each other. Capacity and resource planning tools can assist in optimising portfolio synchronisation.

Mini Case Study 2

Step 5 Recognition that business as usual must also change

Many organisations embarking on the road to change are inclined to regard business as usual as separate from change activity. The types of comment many will hear from staff in these organisations are “I don't have time to commit to change because it gets in the way of the day job”, or “I'm involved with a project, so don't need to worry about the day to day activity of the business”. It may seem obvious that the two are inextricably linked – that change initiatives are there to improve the way business as usual is done – but so often this simple point is missed in practice. This is why we portray the DNA of successful programme and project delivery not just as the double helix of change, driven top down and bottom up, but also show the helix embracing business as usual. Unless this balance is got right there is a tendency either for change to be resisted or for the daily pressures of the organisation to be ignored. The former leads to failure through inability to adapt, and the latter leads to collapse of current service delivery in the quest for change.

How is the balance achieved? There are three essential ingredients:

• Genuine ownership of change by the right people throughout the business
• Focus from the out-set on benefits management, building on a rigorously tested business case
• Willingness to drive the change programme hard and think innovatively to achieve the desired objectives.

Step 6 Own change throughout the business

Whilst we firmly believe that programme and project managers from outside the business can be very successful, we are equally clear that 'ownership' of programmes and projects by Programme Directors and Project Executives (Senior Responsible Owners), must be by people who are part of the business. Furthermore, they must be people with the necessary links into appropriate levels of the organisation's routine line management structure, otherwise the governance requirements outlined previously will not be met.

There is a need to create firm links between business as usual and change mechanisms and we suggest this is done by embedding change champions at all levels in the business. They are members of the organisation's staff drawn from every corner of the business who have a particular affiliation with the change programme or project. Ideally their workload should be split so they spend a high proportion of their time doing their 'day job' and the balance working closely with programmes and projects to ensure their knowledge of intended outcomes and outputs remains current. This enables them to act as change agents, enabling their own business units to prepare for the change that will be required if genuine business benefits are to be realised from their programmes and projects. If this does not happen there is an inevitability that whilst projects may deliver their outputs – perhaps a new technical system or revised business process – no real value to the business will be created because people will still do 'business as usual' in the old way.

The key to success in this regard – for we do recognise the reluctance there will be amongst hard pressed line managers to release scarce resources to fulfil change champion roles – is to create a senior post in every programme to provide the focus for the network of change champions. This is the role of the Business Change Manager. In the most successful change programmes we have supported the Business Change Manager has not only acted as the 'head of network' for the change champions, but has also been the overall owner of benefits and the benefits realisation process, and has been of equivalent seniority to the Programme Director with a hot line to the top of the organisation. This enables very strong constructive debate between Programme Director and Business Change Manager, working in both directions. The Programme Director thus has a route to facilitate business engagement in the programme, and the business has a route to ensure the programme delivers the outcomes required to enable the change necessary to achieve the vision. This is a very powerful arrangement when it works well, but it is regularly ignored or implemented half-heartedly.

Mini Case Study 3

Step 7 Focus on benefits management linked to a rigorously tested business case

It is surprising how many programmes and projects we are asked to support do not have a sound, clearly articulated business case on which programme definition or project initiation have been based. Without a strong business case it becomes very difficult to define what the initiative is intended to achieve in terms of change to the organisation, ie to business as usual. Furthermore, with no business case there is no basis for defining the benefits sought, and unless these can be defined clearly and their realisation owned across the business, there is little chance of them actually materialising. In this regard benefits should be treated just like any other form of objective and given single point accountability for achievement, and described in SMART** form.

Like most aspects of programme and project management there are well-tested processes and tools to support benefits management that will assist organisations greatly in their efforts to get a real return on investment from their programmes and projects. The use of benefits profiles and registers enables systematic recording of hard and soft benefits to be achieved. Benefits realisation schedules, linked to programme delivery schedules, can help portray the real timetable against which the organisation can expect to see the benefits of its endeavours.

Step 8 Drive the programme hard and think innovatively

Driving a programme hard to achieve results is a particular skill with which we should recognise not everyone is blessed. It requires a particular way of thinking and someone who knows how to make things happen in a practical sense. If these skills are not available within the organisation there should be no reluctance to bring in external support, although we would always advise our clients to ensure that, in so doing, they also get a strong dose of skills transfer as part of the arrangement, thus growing internal capability.

Whether delivery is led by an internal manager or an external appointee, the programme must be owned within the business at Programme Director level, and the changes required within the business must be managed by someone who knows the business intimately. Thus the Programme Director and Business Change Manager must be internal appointments. If they do not have the requisite programme delivery knowledge this can be provided through expert external support, but it is rarely a successful arrangement to have an internally appointed Programme Manager and an external Business Change Manager.

Finally, it is a truism that change should be driven at the fastest sustainable rate. This often turns out to be much faster than is initially realised, and unless this is done change is frequently out-paced by circumstances, giving an appearance of no benefit being achieved at all. This requires 'out of the box' thinking, a channel for good ideas to be fed from the business to those managing change, and willingness amongst those delivering change to listen.

Mini Case Study 4

Step 9 A consistent approach to change management

Many organisations have no standard way of doing things. The military use the term 'doctrine' to describe this standard way. At its most simple just 'an accepted way of doing things': it is certainly not a means of stifling initiative. The key point here is that everyone should operate in the 'accepted way' rather than try to invent, or more frequently re-invent, alternatives. Translate this into a change environment within an organisation and this requires a number of relatively simple things to be done. Without these we believe successful change will often stand little chance. The determinants as we see them are:

• Use consistent programme and project management techniques, run to an organisation-wide method
• Develop a core of expertise for driving change
• Recognise that change delivery must become a core skill and reward those who do it well.

Step 10 Run programme and project management to an organisation-wide method

There are many programme and project management methodologies in existence. It is more important to choose a method and use it consistently across the organisation, than to be overly concerned about which method is used, since most work well. However, it is clearly helpful to choose something orientated towards organisational needs and circumstances where possible.

Two further aspects are clear: that once a method is chosen it is best to stick with it rather than continually chop and change, and that there should be clear recognition that programme management is not the same as project management, so different methodologies should be used. Frequently we have spoken to programme managers who have never been trained or who say “I've just been on my PRINCE2 course” failing to appreciate that this is about project management and has not actually prepared them for their programme role at all.

Having decided upon appropriate methodologies they should not be applied slavishly. Scalability is a strong characteristic of most methodologies in current use, and it is always possible to apply them in a manner which is proportionate to the need without diluting the under-pinning principles.

Finally, having decided upon methodologies for delivering projects and programmes, be prepared to provide the resources necessary to use them properly and make them work for you.

Mini Case Study 5

Step 11 Create a core of expertise for driving change

In an era when many would say it is good practice to pare businesses back to their core and out-source everything else, we are regularly asked why organisations should regard change management using programme and project management techniques as core business for them. Our simple answer is that managing change in a systematic, repeatable and reliable way must be regarded as core business for any organisation that expects to endure in a rapidly changing world, unless they are prepared to bring in external support continually to help change things right at their heart.

We strongly advocate the creation of a programme and project management support centre*** in the many instances where change is an accepted fact of life. This provides a focal point through which the full portfolio of activity can be managed on behalf of the management board – an Enterprise Programme Management Office able to assist with strategic planning and monitor and report progress during delivery. It allows a core of expertise to be developed which can be used to support organisational change from within. It allows ownership of the chosen methodologies and a focal point for those who have recognised expertise in their use. It provides a means by which delivery assurance can be provided to the top team on those dimensions of change most critical to achieving the vision for the future. It can also be used to find appropriate coaching for those senior people in the business filling important governance roles in programmes and projects, but who have little or no experience of what these roles require of them. Within Moorhouse Consulting we have a number of people with extensive experience of supporting the development of such support centres in a wide variety of organisations.

Step 12 Make change delivery a core skill and reward it accordingly

The route to fast-track promotion, particularly in the public sector, has not traditionally involved doing things; rather in deciding which things need to be done. Whilst there is now a clear consciousness that this focus on policy rather than delivery is unsustainable, there is still a reluctance to recognise that those who deliver change well are rare commodities, and to reward them and create career opportunities accordingly.

It's worth considering whether successful delivery of complex change is so important that you might appoint a head of strategic programmes, with a direct line to the management board, to pull it all together and act as the focal point for such strategically important work. Those organisations we have seen that have done this certainly appear to be able to manage change with much greater confidence and precision than those who continue to adopt ad hoc approaches.
Finally, avoid taking people who have no experience of formal change delivery and putting them into key delivery roles just to give them experience of this work before they move onto more senior positions. This work is too important to be used as a career 'tick-box' alone, and many of our consulting assignments arise because this has been done and has then gone wrong.

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The Final Word

We cannot offer a panacea, but we do believe we should share our experience. There are no quick fixes to delivering effective business transformation but we genuinely believe that a structured, holistic PPM approach is the only way to deliver consistent, directed and meaningful change. If organisations were to do just some of the things described in this paper their reliance on Programme Leadership consultancies would diminish fast. Whilst that is not in many companies' long-term interest, I think we owe it to you to point it out and we would, of course, like to help you on your way.

*By Programme Director we refer here to the 'owner' of the programme, or the SRO (Senior Responsible Owner) rather than the Programme Manager responsible for day-to-day delivery.
**Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resourced, Timebound.
***The Cabinet Office and Office of Government Commerce initiated a very successful programme to introduce PPM 'Centres of Excellence' to central government departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies in 2003. There was no expectation that the term 'Centre of Excellence' would be used universally within the title of such units within departments and organisations and we support the view that such nomenclature is typically self-defeating, hence our use of the term 'Support Centre'.

© 2011 Moorhouse.