PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Why best practice guidance makes sense for public sector projects and programmes Mike Acaster, PPM portfolio manager at AXELOS, discusses risk management and best practice.
A
chieving success in public sector projects means dealing with an environment of
limited budgets, enormous complexity and a demand for the greatest efficiency.
But the biggest challenge in the public sector might be the presence of diverse and highly subjective opinions. The political dimension also adds complications, with government sometimes wanting radical change to meet its agenda. Ambitions are large, timescales short and with little chance of reversing decisions.
So, what part can best practice guidance play in this domain?
Best practice developed by AXELOS evolved from the UK public sector’s bid to manage change projects within limited budgets. And, in a period of austerity, public organisations are faced with drastic decisions regarding their change portfolio.
With a typical success rate in major project delivery of circa 39%, it’s imperative to become more efficient and effective at delivering projects. This needs highly trained and competent people, who are then coached and mentored as they begin delivering projects. And, in using any of the best practice guidance, organisations are adopting tried-and-tested approaches, which heighten the chances of success. It also gives public bodies a pool of competent people to deploy on an array of projects and programmes.
For example, the Management of Portfolios (MoP) enables an organisation to review all change underway and understand the associated costs and benefits. Meanwhile, Management of Value (MoV) provides techniques to understand how value can be maximised against the overall objectives.
Knowledge of that type comes into its own under so-called ‘burning platform’ conditions; a metaphor taken from the world of oil rig fires, where people were faced with a stark choice:
Successful Failed
Challenged
2004 29%
18% 53%
2006 35%
19% 46%
to jump or not to jump. Importantly, if your property is on fire, you can save something but not everything: so what do you value, what do you save?
If you’re running a multitude of projects and programmes and can’t cover the costs, something needs to stop. You could choose to slice 10% from every budget, but if the cuts subsequently increase up to 50% of the budget, that guarantees projects or programmes will deliver nothing. So how do you decide what to cut? Can you base it on the passion of the people involved – or do you have an objective methodology to rank and prioritise all the projects? MoP has mechanisms to help match activity against the strategic aims of the organisation.
The AXELOS best practice Management of Risk (M_o_R) enables organisations to understand what the risks are at various levels, including the strategic level. It could be reputational risk to the organisation or the potential that the end customer might not like the changes that the project or programme proposes.
But as well as embracing the type of best practice guidance already outlined, organisations may also want innovative solutions for projects. For that, you need to create a business case to justify the investment required, as well as ongoing justification for a project to be completed.
This is where PRINCE2 comes into play. And now, PRINCE2 is in the process of being paired with agile methodologies. Each approach does something different – respectively project management and agile delivery – but com- bined they bring a host of benefits to projects being managed as a coherent whole.
2008 32%
24% 44%
2010 37%
21% 42%
2012 39%
18% 43%
What public sector practitioners will get is the best of both worlds: the agility, responsiveness and innovation that project and programme sponsors and stakeholders are looking for, plus the ability to satisfy the investing organisation that there is a managed approach.
This helps to justify the overall investment and provides a degree of assurance that things will go to plan and, if they don’t, problems will be escalated early in the process.
If there are clear risks to overcome in delivering a project, an organisation might use an agile process with short cycles, each feeding into the product cycle. That gives you the ability to look at how the project is progressing and make adaptations if it’s going off-track.
Other best practice approaches to consider are the Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) and P3O. The former helps organisations understand how well best practice and processes are performing, while the latter offers a repository of knowledge and expertise.
Training, coaching and supporting teams in best practice guidance is about enabling people to run programmes and projects efficiently and to protect the invest- ment, as long as the en- vironment supports the methodologies.
Mike Acaster
FOR MORE INFORMATION W:
www.axelos.com
public sector executive Oct/Nov 14 | 41
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76