Project Process and Methodology

We advocate the use of a consistent project approach in your organisation, and have used PRINCE2, the methodology created by adapted to suit requirements, in both public and private sector organisations. If you have a good process which everyone can follow they will know where they are, what to do, when to do it, and what their responsibilities are.

Get off to a Good Start

It’s always best to get off to a good start. No-one ever establishes a good start without certainty of where they are going, what their intended end result is. The eventual success of your project is a question of knowing what you want to achieve. This is more than a statement such as ‘to have a new building’ or ‘to relocate to better offices’ or ‘to have a new IT system installed’. You need to set the project up so that the eventual aim can be realised – and it is a lot more than installing a new system or relocating to a new office. The result has to be functional; the office has to work; the IT system has to be useful and be used. And in all cases it should be better than whatever you already have.

So get off to a good start by establishing a business case, working out what the costs and benefits are, considering the risks, and making sure that it is genuinely achievable.

This will require deep thought. Creating a good business case is rarely achieved alone – there are lots of other people involved. Involve them. It might help to have someone else to facilitate the meeting, to gather information individually and collectively from users, suppliers, contractors, and anyone else who is a stakeholder. Involve others.

This would ensure that the team is properly engaged leading to a shared vision of the goal. There will always be resistance to some ideas, but through dealing with criticisms and conflicts the overall goal can be clarified and the team will grow a stronger ambition to realise the goal.

You know your starting point and your goal. Create a plan. Unless you really do know what all the steps are, this is unlikely to be a complete plan the first time you sit down to write it. Break it down into manageable pieces, work out what the stages are in your project, and make sure that the first stage is planned properly. Moving on to the second stage is best done when you are sure that the first stage is complete. But always plan and plan again, breaking the work into individual components and assigning the work to individual people. It is often best to write the work down as a series of outputs or products with clear guidance on the criteria for acceptance.

 

Monitor progress. There will be some bumps along the way – a plan is not a promise, and few people know exactly how long a task will take or what it will cost. Recognise this, keep the work under review, keep everyone informed on progress, and make sure that they all know what they must do and when they should complete their work.

Regardless of the project there will be some changes, not only to the work as it progresses but also to the processes and procedures in your organisation if your goal is to be met. So there are two aspects to change, and we should ensure that they are considered separately.

There is change control as part of the project, aspects of the work that change to cater for conditions as they emerge. Perhaps you need different power arrangements to cater for your new IT systems, new office layouts to comply with new staffing. The changes involved affect the progress and cost of the work and are normally part of project controls. To prevent the inclusion of extras and of changes that are not within the scope of the work you will need a control arrangement to enable acceptable changes to the work to be included while ensuring that anything else is excluded.

The more complex second type of change concerns acceptance by all of the stakeholders of the new processes and procedures which, for example, a new customer services centre would introduce. People take time to absorb what the change is and how it will affect them and their work, time to reflect on their changing role, time to accept that the changes are intended to provide benefits to customers and therefore to the organisation. If your change is particularly complex you can help achieve it by including training, staff workshops, supplier gatherings, customer focus groups, newsletters and website updates to inform people of the changes so that they feel involved and are engaged. If this is not included in your plan and there is a sudden change to your systems, your stakeholders will suffer enormous pressure when the change goes live.

Recognise therefore that change is part of the project and plan for it.

This process of absorbing and accepting a change illustrates a common problem. We might recognise what someone’s problem is, see that they are motivated to do something about it, and then instantly provide them with the answer, jumping directly from Motivation to Conclusion. It is better to go through the sequence ofproviding them with more information, perhaps clarifying and checking, enabling them to process that information so that they work out the conclusion – a sure sign that they have bought into your goal. This diagram, coupled with the previous one, can dramatically reduce the time required to manage change.

Adoption of anything new follows the same pattern as the one for new products, although the time involved varies enormously. We only need to look at the way mobile telephones have developed to see how quickly new products are adopted by some users and how long the overall change takes for the general population. Those who pilot the new product, service, or process will be able to encourage others to adopt it, but there might always be people who are unhappy with the changes. Your goal, though, can be expressed to take this into account.

You’ve thought about your project, planned it carefully with the team, engaged everyone in changes along the way, rolled the result out to the users, suppliers, and customers. The project is now over and you should be able to obtain the benefits. Celebrate with the team to recognise a happy ending.