Stories by Jed Simms

The Project Sponsor should manage the project manager! Now, this may be news to some project managers (and some Project Sponsors!)...

Ultimately accountability for the returns on investment lie with the Project Sponsor and governance team. So they should be actively reviewing and approving several aspects of the project. This should not be a 'tick and flick' type of approval, but a due, considered review with consideration as to the pros and cons and downstream implications.

The project team cannot make everything happen on its own; it often has to rely on the position, power and persuasion of the governance team.

In the case of an 'egg and bacon breakfast' the chicken has contributed, but the pig has been committed. In this context (only) you want your project sponsor to be a 'pig' - i.e. totally committed to your project. If they are only 'interested' or involved because of their position they are unlikely to demonstrate the necessary level of leadership.

If you are having difficulty with your Governance teams, it is not surprising. Project Governance is not so much "misunderstood" as "not understood". People just don’t know what it is and, therefore, what senior management needs to know or do to be effective.

You must be able to demonstrate how the progress and status of a project is going to be tracked, and how the value is going to be protected -- and then delivered.

A business case is just words unless someone is accountable for delivering the project's promised value.

Having a value proposition is only of value if it is deliverable. In this section you need to show that the approach you’re proposing (including any technical solutions you are adopting) are feasible and the best approach, and that the associated risks are manageable.

Hey, now we get to the costs. But the costs are now ‘the costs of delivering the value’ (rather than the benefits being the off set of the costs — a very different perspective).

Central to the business case is the value proposition — what value shall the organisation get from investing in this project? This may sound obvious but the value proposition is often largely missing in most business cases because they’re the result of upside down thinking.

The first section of a business case needs to justify why we are even considering this project/program. If you can’t justify its reason, rationale and relevance than the project should be immediately culled.

For a document that has been around for many years, it is surprising how bad and how misunderstood business cases are.

I recently sat in on a project team management meeting. They agreed that the project (which was under three months old) was off the rails and they did not have the capability to deliver the expected benefits. I was thinking, “You could, but not with the conventional project and change management approaches you are using.”

The past 20 years has seen the rise of the ‘expert’ — for example, expert project managers, business analysts, architects and six sigma folk. These ‘experts’ all help to move the project away from the business and its staff. “They” will deliver the project, becomes the business’ view.

I sat opposite a PMO that had no authority but just collected and collated project reports and forwarded them on to the governing committee. They knew that many of the reports were misleading or blatantly incorrect, but they had no authority to question them or highlight this to the governing committee.