Another call for human IT project management
Brad Hinton has an item On customer experience for information and knowledge projects. This is a telling example of the opposite of what we'd like to see:
I was talking yesterday afternoon with a professional colleague lamenting the difficulties of information management implementations. He was asking (rhetorically) why it was so difficult to get implementations to work when the project plan and methodology had been so carefully worked out. And how come there was still confusion about workflow and work policies and procedures when the vendor-client relationship had been so professionally managed by the systems and implementation team (of one). He sighed deeply, shook his head, and said: “and now we have the system and we’re well into the implementation, but after that we need to start the change management process!”
Brad's post focuses on the idea of customer experience and he makes the connection between being aware of what your customers / colleagues / clients need and how you might go about designing the project.
I really like this connection between "good experience" and the development of viable project plans that get to the heart of creating a change within the organization. Otherwise, why bother doing the project to begin with.
The long and short is that the project must account for the needs and concerns of the people who are expected to be impacted by the project, even if these people aren't going to "do" the project itself. It is these people who know the rules and justifications for the way things happen today. Why would we avoid talking to them to find the speed bumps and shortcuts that exist within the organization?
4 Comment(s)
said:
This is an interesting comment, Forrest, but what is the alternative? How do you implement a change that happens to have an IT component?
Is the problem in the way "project management" is typically run? Or is there something else at hand here?
said:
I think it's project management itself. Large efforts were completed successfully prior to the advent of Project Management. It's a methodology or approach to achievement that has its place in certain circumstances. In others, a different approach or language for achievement is necessary. Sooner or later, PM will be viewed as simply a subset of potential approaches rather than the single way to do everything.
I run a website about Project Management and I do think, myself, that everything is a project (take a look at this series Project Management in my Life).
However, I do agree with Forrest when he's saying that people are getting very strict about Project Management, and following certain methodologies. The most successful PMs do not care about methodologies, they only care about getting the project done.
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I wonder why no one ever seems to ask the obvious question: Why are we using "project management" when it seems to be a very poor way to bring in a new IT system?
I think it's because the people who are in charge of these things think in a way congenial to "project management", while the rest of the world does not. In fact, I'm betting to most project management people can't even consider what that would look like. The PMI has gone so far as to say that everything is a project (which is prima facie ridiculous). I've consulted to IT groups in several Fortune 500 companies and found them quite project mad, even though it was obvious that it only worked for a subset of their work.