Business Process Masters

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action” — Benjamin Disraeli

We often ignore things, hoping that they will get better by themselves. More often than not this is not the case.

As I pick up with the writing of my blog, I realize that sometimes it’s easier for companies and the people who run them to continue to do what they’ve always done. We to evaluate what we do in order to determine whether action is required.

In companies I have worked with, they have a term called BAU which means “Business As Usual”. It usually means the thing to thing we do “keeping the lights on” but what it really means is all process work, or work that’s not defined in a specific project.

Work needs to be classified in order to be addressed in the correct fashion. People need to understand that process work can be and many times is as important as the critical projects that management designates for attention. To properly address we need to set boundaries between projects and process so they can each be addressed appropriately.

I’ve had many occasions to have deep conversations with project managers or people who are pursuing project management as a discipline/career. One of the major complaints that I hear has to do with the fact that project management as a discipline is not valued in many organizations. I too have encountered this attitute on many occasions.

My main responsibility at my last company was initially to set up a formal Project Management Office for the IT department of a major financial services organization. Soon after beginning this position, I was sent to an off-site meeting. This gave me an opportunity to meet many of my peers in various divisions around the organization’s that were part of the parent company that worked for.

After dinner one night, I had the opportunity to speak to the CIO of the parent company. He was a man who worked his way up through the IT organization, and his last roll prior to taking his current position was CIO of the division I worked for. I remember having some initial chit chat with him when he asked me what I did. I told him I was brought on board to form a formal project office. I can still picture the expression on his face. He sighed, and said “yes that’s one of the things we need a lot of improvement in”. I feel I had this conversation many times over the next several years during my tenure at that company.

Project management is one of those disciplines which everybody understands is necessary to the running of one’s business. The main problem though is not with project management, but with the project managers not putting forward the fact that what they do is essential to the running of the company’s business. They allow other people to defined what they do and what it means to the company.

One of the main issues has to do with the fact that when a project manager is doing his job well, everything is working smoothly. It’s like the old adage, “Working here is like peeing in a dark suit, it gives you a warm feeling, but nobody notices”. The only time anyone notices the project manager is when things aren’t going well and they need someone to finger.

Project managers need to become an active partner with the business. They need to show that project management isn’t about just planning and distributing reports. Project management is critical to the business decision process. They need to become the go to person when the business environment changes and decisions need to be made. They need to be actively participating in the business decision process.

But this doesn’t happen automatically. They need to show their willingness to listen, to understand the business need, to understand the business benefit of what they’re doing, and to involve themselves directly and put themselves on the line. Only bold actions will change the perception of project management in the eyes of the business stakeholders, and make the project managers a valued member of the decision-making team.

When I first began to work in the project management realm, I encountered some interesting ideas within the companies I worked for.  Business and technology people would focus on effort associated with their “projects” while excluding the activities that run the day-to-day running of their business.  When I asked about this they responded that since the effort to “keep the lights on” was already paid for (ie. budgeted), they could use the resources associated with it as they please, without regard to the cost.  “Project” effort was budgeted separately and therefore would need to be directly accounted for.  This setup two classes of governance costing companies enormous amounts of time and effort.  We will be addressing this as part of this discussion.