Best Practices are an organisational destination – do not rush!

Andy McComments off.

Do you recognise the image above??   It’s that of Sisyphus, who must endlessly carry a mighty rock up to the top of the mountain, but just as he gets close, something causes the rock to shift; it comes crashing back down to the bottom and he must start over again.

This is a perfect analogy of how many Operations / Project Managers feel on a daily basis when trying to implement, what equates to practices that are not much more than simple common sense, yet so many organisations have such a hard time or face resistance in implementing them!

In many organisations, implementing a PMO (or even just PM practices at a local level) can seem like that uphill struggle.

It’s popular to think that things would be so much better if your execs and colleagues would just do what we (the professionals) tell them.

Things would be better, wouldn’t they?  Well maybe not….

Not if we’re planning to have them implement best practices as the solution to their problems.

The operative word, is “best”.

 

Best practices are what the best organisations do (or some of them anyway!)  If you are just embarking on a quest to implement Best Practices, don’t let this blog make you think you are not in a ‘good’ organisation because best practices are not currently followed (just by realising the need for improvement, it has launched itself out of the bottom quartile). Perhaps it does want to observe best practices … some day.  However. don’t let it injure itself (and you) by biting off more than it can chew. There will always be time for more bites later.

 

In F1 races, the best drivers in the world regularly tailgate one another at distances measured in inches at speed of well over 100 mph. It reduces drag and saves on fuel consumption.  In that world, it’s a best practice.  What if you learned how to do that yourself?  What if you decided to try that on your average motorway, where you have a plentiful number of pretty competent drivers — but few, if any, are world-class. Those drivers aren’t ready for best practices yet, even if you are.  If you force the situation, there’s going to be a spectacular pile-up and, despite all your skills, you’re going to be right in the middle of it.

 

I clearly support professional practices.  I have several certifications that say so, but if your organisation hasn’t yet acquired the habits of accountability and transparency (among others), then today is not the day to launch into a set of practices that the dominant culture simply will not support.  You’re going to have to ease into it, or if you have realised that it will not ever be supported, perhaps it is time to look elsewhere!

 

There’s no shame in that.  How many IT-vendor organisations have achieved level 5 on the Software Engineering Institute’s maturity model?  Most that claim to have done so are really talking about some little-specialised cell within their overall organisation.  Almost nobody does all the best practices at all times, and all of them work their way up to it.  If your organisation is having problems with basic project (or program or portfolio) management practices, it may just be that what you’re trying isn’t quite basic enough, so extending these practices is not going to alleviate the problem!

 

The PMBoK, and the other practice standards published by PMI describe best practices.  Because they are called “standards”, many people tend to assume that this is the standard that everyone is meeting, rather than a compendium of things that you will probably be doing once you have your act together.  Most of those standards actually state that there is a life-cycle for the adoption of these practices, but they are pretty consistent in leaving the impression that once you get your sponsor’s approval, you refine your requirements (which are, basically, the practices described in the rest of the standard) and you execute move into the execution phase.

 

If you’re in that early stage of process adoption, that’s not how it’s going to happen. You’re going to have to work on that “requirements” bit. Work with the other line managers to determine what problems or issues they are facing in their world; work out how those might be solved with some specific practices that happen to be in the PM inventory.  Then implement just that.  Solve just that problem. It will be very quick, and your peer managers will appreciate it.  Don’t expect any thanks; just be glad they’re letting you play with them.

Get some wins under your belt.  Once you’ve shown how some seething irritants can be resolved by applying some PM practices, you’ll start getting co-operation (in fact, you’ll start getting demands to do more). Don’t push the envelope; just do something else to solve a problem they really want to solve.  You’ll soon discover that fixing one thing related to PM almost always means you have little choice but to fix the other plethora of things that are connected to it.

 

Some of you may be saying: “But the contract I’m working on requires me to institute practices conforming to xyz standard.  I can’t do what you suggest”.  But you can. Remember, you can count the organisations that are truly fully compliant with any of the professional standards … maybe not on the fingers of your hands, but it wouldn’t get into three digits.  As long as your END point is compliant, then you are instituting those practices.  Just not immediately.

 

Taking the simmering approach, you’ll get to a respectable maturity level much faster than if you tried to jam everything in on Day One, and it will live on after you are gone.  Best practices are what the best organisations do. But be aware, at some organisations there may be lots of talk about best practice’s, but they want to use the buzzwords and stake claims without actually implementimg the necessary changes or want change to happen before the project is ready to deliver….. if you are a Ops / Project Manager in this circumstance – beware, the blame and responsibility will be used to undermine the implementation and to stop the unwanted change.  Choose your organisation wisely, do not get sucked into a career of frustration!

 

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