Readings
- What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
- Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
- Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
- How would you justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of an production process. What assumptions would you have to make?
- How does your company make project funding decisions? How well does it work?
The MDCM Case
Work with your team to prepare project recommendations for the MDCM board. Please come (in class or on the Webex) ready to present what you think MDCM’s strategic, business and IT goals ought to be. Here is your assignment:
You are a member of the MDCM executive team. Use the information given in this case to help solve this management crisis with the other executive team members in your group. Your team should define the overall corporate strategy for MDCM, the business goals matched to this strategy, and the related high-level IT objectives. Be prepared to present your recommendation to the MDCM corporate board.
You don’t need to post anything on the case this week.
Sean Patrick Walsh says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
By implementing a standardized project proposal method, a project portfolio committee can approach the decision making process more objectively. Now, there is probably no concrete way to remove all subjectivity from the process, but by making the decision more objective it gives decision-makers a more clear cut method to weigh projects against one another. Uniformity also helps those who propose projects because the standardization gives those personnel a clear business case to build their project too, and helps them develop a way to “sell” their projects clearly to the committee in a way that weighs it against other projects in equal measurements. By having the projects compete in a uniform way, it may even help remove some of the “politics” from the process because, again, relying on objective measurements helps remove the subjective elements.
Information I would suggest be available for the projects would be as follows:
ROI – Gives a clear financial number to finance oriented business folks
Project Cash Flow Chart – Gives clear numbers broken out by cost, savings, etc. over course of project’s life
Any “synergy” generated by project with other projects in place, in process, or in pipeline
How is project aligned with business strategy?
How project develops value?
Where project develops value?
How far does project reach inside business (i.e. does it impact one area, or does it impact enterprise-wide)?
Are there impacts if project is delayed or foregone?
Andres Galarza says
Sean,
Good breakdown of the benefits of standardization. I’d also say that in addition to clarity, standardization also speeds the process of proposal reviewing up substantially.
Deepali Kochhar says
Definately Andres.
Streamlining saved time and effort of the employees and make the task less complicated also reducing ambiguity among the team members.
Richard Flanagan says
Sean,
Nothing about risk? What kinds of risk might you be worried about?
Sean Patrick Walsh says
I realized my error as I read other comments below. In regard to risk, I would be interested in:
Economic conditions, and the impacts on the project.
Political environment, both domestic and global. Any radical change could dramatically affect a project in any number of ways.
Key personnel/roles/skills involved on the project because losing that employee or employees could negatively impact a project.
Does the project compliment another project in a critical way, if so how, and the impacts.
Are any commodities involved in the cost structure because commodities pricing can change very quickly which could suddenly turn a profitable project into a losing project.
Sachin Shah says
I agree that all projects being proposed in a uniform way leads to conformity and standardization. I consider it similar to the items listed in a job application. Each company may have a certain different question or so, yet the main questions are all the same.
I think the majority of a project proposal should be generic questions”
– what is this project?
– which business unit does this project affect?
– If IS involvement – which groups? ie hardware, database, programming, analysts, support etc.
– Who is requesting this project? (key players)
– What impact or consequence if this project is NOT launched?
– Desired outcome of the project?
– Any downtime or potential drawbacks expected during the course of project or backout plan?
– How the project will be managed and tested?
Sean Patrick Walsh says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
Yes, and no. I think it depends on several factors:
Is the project complex or simple? A simple project will more than likely have less unknowns going into a project that could significantly impact implementation and costs than a complex project.
Is the project implemented quickly or does it take a long time? A project that can be implemented quickly will more than likely not have significant valuation differences since the cost-of-capital is less volatile over a shorter term than a longer time period.
Is the project local or global in nature? In a multi-national business a project that is global will usually have significantly more risks associated, and if those risks come to fruition than the costs, savings, and values could be moved in either direction quite a bit.
There is always the possibility of a “black swan” event too. What seemed feasible or important to do at a time could be completely worthless, or even MORE IMPORTANT, should an event happen economically, technologically, or politically at any given moment. That type of event could radically changes measurement values of a project too.
So, I think fundamentally a business wants to compare a project’s proposed benefits against its realized benefits to ensure the valuation process used for projects is beneficial to the company, but I think they also want to be realistic and reasonable when it comes to discerning between bad proposal analysis and changing market conditions impacts on the value of any given project.
Joseph Henofer says
Sean,
I agree that several factors do come into play when organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project. Would you agree that implementing a PPM correctly would help clarify those factors? In my opinion using the foundational tool (The Business Case) would help clarify those factors.
Sean Patrick Walsh says
I think the underlying assumption is that the Business Case tool is used, and that is where the business has the initial value measurements to compare the realized benefits against. I think even with a solid PPM that considerations may have to be taken because business, especially depending upon the industry it is operating within, is a very fluid and dynamic environment. There are just so many external pressures that can impact a project before it is completed that can radically change its value measurements compared to the original measurements that were estimated at proposal. For example, think of projects a big finance institution may have had in place this Summer going on in the UK. Well, the “Brexit” vote dramatically decreased the value of the British Pound. That factor alone would increase costs, and decrease benefits/savings, that were estimated in British Pounds for the project cash flows. Now, that business could have one of the best PPM systems in the business world, but anticipating that event impacting the project would be very difficult in the proposal stage of the project. Does that example make sense?
Joseph Henofer says
Absolutely that example make sense. I would think in the proposal stage of the project the business leaders would be looking at the industry trends of the market in the UK so they could make a more accurate financial assumption. From my understanding of the “Brexit” vote this was in the works for sometime, so evaluating the outcome of the vote I would think would be discussed in the proposal stage.
Sean Patrick Walsh says
If there is one group who does their homework with things like the Brexit Vote, it is financial investment firms and financial market professionals. If you go back and look at market activity prior to the vote, especially the VIX (Volatility Index), you can see they did not expect the vote to go that way. Also, the Pound moved negatively so fast and with such depth that Forex traders were not prepared for that vote direction either. So, if financial specialists failed to properly position themselves for the associated risk I can only imagine how much businesses came up short as well.
Joseph Henofer says
Sean,
Got it.. I do not have a lot of experience on the financial investment side of things but I will learn. Appreciate the insight.
Richard Flanagan says
Good discussion guys. The questions was about auditing the value of a project against its projects but your discussion is getting more into risk. There are two major categories of risk associated with projects, can you think of what they are?
Joseph Henofer says
Prof,
Would the two categories be
Business Risk – having to do with the risk of profits and loss
Pure Risk – Insurable risk like fire, floods, and injury due to an accident
Sean Patrick Walsh says
Qualitative and Quantitative?
Neil Rushi says
I think PPM does play a role here because it allows companies to view and evaluate if the projects taken were giving benefits and how to reap them once it was complete. I don’t think some companies evaluate the results with the plan after. It might have to do with maybe the uncertainty that the project wasn’t meant to be done, the benefits were low or maybe some management do not know how to properly evaluate the results.
Mengxue Ni says
I like what you said “yes and no” for this question. You listed out several situations that requires different proposals. But I do think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project. The most important reason is that they want to compare and record the differences in order to predict future projects’ performance. It is also can be used for risk evaluation.
Priya Prasad Pataskar says
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
A project proposal is a document that identifies the “wh” questions relating to the work that will be done in the project. It is a persuasive document.
A well formatted , well organized, technically detailed proposal is a strong proposal. Uniformity in project proposals will help build a strong case.
A company can build a standardized document based on best industry standards and its past experiences. A well drafted proposal means a well planned project. A uniform proposal will benefit in following ways
– Define a standard for the company and establish a brand value with the proposal. ex. formatting, including company vision and mission
– Details on the proposals will not be missed when there is a uniform format. It will take care that the important points which might not be in focus will not be missed.
– It will help build a strong case and a selling point for the project
– The proposal will act as a plan for project owners with the start point and defining scope of the project
– The aim, objective and scope will be in focus and well established to the customer and the company who is proposing
– A clear mapping to budget and investment will be done
– A standard document will maximize the completeness of the document
– An approved format will guarantee understand ability and avoid the use of jargon
information that must be available for all projects
– Objective, Scope, Aim
– Timelines and overview of schedule
– Steps in development and design process
– Investment cost and returns
– Issues addressed by the proposal
– Alternative approaches for the problem that the project is aiming to solve
– The impact of the project
Sean Patrick Walsh says
I really like your suggestion that “Alternative approaches for the problem that the project is aiming to solve” be added to proposals. Would you suggest having additional proposals attached to that proposal for each of those alternatives? I think by offering different alternatives that in order to consider them in the same manner as the original, or any other project, that the PPM team would need the same necessary information for a standard proposal to properly weigh those alternatives. This of course would make the lead proposal package much larger if all that additional information were included. I suppose too that the PPM team could just request that information in the event they wanted to weigh all the options against each other and possibly forego the proposal that was offered as the best solution to the problem.
Andres Galarza says
I think something similar is included in the project proposals we have at my job.
For example, we’re standing up a new computer laboratory for testing. A lot of new hardware is being purchased and a “checkbox” that has to be completed during the proposal process is to ensure that the organization doesn’t already have some of that hardware lying around and available for reuse.
This is good, because besides cutting down on waste, it is an opportunity to reduce costs.
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
Hi Priya, I agree with everything you said. It is important to have a set standard in place where all project proposals must follow. It will force the project sponsors to analyze the projects and see if there is an actual business need, and they will need to argue that point to have the project approved.
Having a standard will also have the approvers look at the project objectively. A project that looks like it will deliver good value and aligns with business strategy will not be passed over by a project that might deliver “okay” value and might not entirely align with business strategy just because of politics.
Richard Flanagan says
Priya
I also like your idea, particularly when there is a very viable alternative, maybe one that is more expensive but better aligned with the company’s EA. One problem that I have seen with alternatives is that they are often very weak proposals, i.e.. one really cheap alternative that solves nothing and one that is really expensive. When project proposers do this it hurts their credibility.
Mengxue Ni says
Priya,
A well formatted and organized proposal will be definitely stronger and more persuasive. It can show how much you prepare and time that spend on this project. Plan B is always needed under any circumstances. I think predicted risks should be also included in the proposal.
Neil Y. Rushi says
I agree with your answer Priya, any business planning to do a project(s) needs to have a plan on how to tackle it. I like the part where you mentioned to align it with the organizations mission because most projects should be focused on whether the organization can benefit from it and add more value or simply increase part of what it does on a daily basis. The risk of doing a project for the sake of just doing it can be bad if not managed right or it has nothing to do with the direction the organization wants to go.
Joseph Henofer says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
In my opinion you would want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way so that the decision makers would have all the information in a clear and concise format. If you had multiple projects laid out differently, the decision making process would be more time consuming and potentially lead to a misrepresentation of information of the project. Another reason why you want to have all projects proposed in a uniform way is so that when you use the PPM to audit a project during its life cycle it can be easier to locate whats working and not working on the project.
Below is some information that I would make available for all projects
• Background / Description
• Goals & Benefits
• High Level Scope
• Key Product Requirements
• Critical Success Factors
• Proposed Project Delivery Process
• Project Sponsor & Key Stakeholders
• Cost Estimates / Targets
• Target Dates / Milestones
• Assumptions & Constraints
• Known Risk & Issues
Mengxue Ni says
I agree with everything you said, Joseph. I believe that all projects should be proposed in a uniform way to improve efficiency. I like that you mentioned it would be easier for auditing as well. I think you mentioned all the information that a project requires. I realized that I didn’t talk about stakeholders and sponsors in my answers. All projects should have this information.
Brou Marie Joelle Alexandra Adje says
Professor Jan’s section
2-Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Project should be proposed in a uniform way to not only drive better business decision but also maximize resources. All projects must align with the strategies, goals, and objectives of the business. In fact, Individual project business cases can be compelling, but decision makers will need to look at the entire portfolio pipeline to determine the best course of action for the company. If all projects do not make sense as a whole, it will be hard to decide anything.
All projects should include the aim, purpose, outputs, means, all activities and costs required to realize the forecast benefits, and the methodologies for monitoring and evaluating.
Richard Flanagan says
Brou,
Don’t limit your thinking to just what’s in the pipeline. A company might have a project underway that is producing marginal results when something new comes up that promises (threatens) great returns (loss). You don’t want to do this lightly, but if you are sure about the need, killing the existing project and moving the resources to the new project is the right thing to do. Case in point, does anyone remember when Bill Gates looked at how the internet was exploding in the nineties and made every team in the company stop working on what they were working on and switch to working on internet related opportunities? This probably save Microsoft.
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I don’t think most organizations compare their projects’ performance with what they have forecasted. If most organizations did this, we wouldn’t have this problem where a large amount of projects are running over budgets, not meeting deadlines, and not even having an ROI on a project. Should organization compare their forecasts with actuals? Absolutely. By comparing these two variables, one is able to get a more accurate estimate when proposing another project.
Also, by seeing these delta of the variables, the team can dig deeper and ask they questions: how and why did we not meet the expected performance? Analysis can be done to answer these questions which would help them on the next project.
http://projectmanagementworks.co.uk/project-failure-statistics/
Richard Flanagan says
I agree Ahmed, so why don’t most organizations do this?
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
I think it goes back to your 2nd question, about why we would want projects proposed in a uniform way. One of the benefits of having projects proposed using a consistent standard, would be to conduct an analysis on the ROI. The analysis for the forecasts would be mandatory across all projects, if the company was falling this specific standard. However, this approach to proposing the project should not stop there. Since we now have all these forecasts across multiple different projects, after project completion it should be easy for us to go back and look at each of the projects and compare the actual to the forecast. This comparison would be part of the standard as well.
Most companies don’t do this. I don’t believe they have a standard in place for project proposals that is followed throughout the life-cycle of the project. I think whats happening, each project is being proposed in a different way, resulting in inconsistencies. Some projects might have their forecasts compared with their actuals, others might not. After project completion, the people in charge might have moved on to other projects and do not look back. With a standard in place, it will force organizations to have their projects looked at the same way. This would include comparing forecasts with actuals.
Andres Galarza says
Ahmed,
Something else to contemplate is not just that people in charge move on to other projects, but they might also move on to other companies and positions. At places that I’ve worked, a manager might only have 1-3 years in a position before he or she moved on to something else. This created a perpetual cycle of “reinventing the wheel” because hand-offs between incoming and outgoing leaders would often be fumbled.
Sachin Shah says
I think lots of companies do not do this comparison because of politics. There are some vested interests of executives or board members and they do not one each other to know the lack of financial success. There may be personal motives where there can be kickbacks or lobbying done by outside vendors and hence that is why a decision is made to go through with a certain project.
I see this happen in recruiting projects where a company selects a vendor and one executive is a “consultant” for that vendor. Some other companies are just afraid to see the results of this analysis and if the get it done, the comparison will just be ignored or “shelved”.
Candace Nelson says
Thank you for your response Ahmed. While reading it what occurred to me is that, not only is it important to assess the merits of a project vs. its plan while it is underway. It is also important after the fact to fully understand the reason a project did not achieve the proposed benefits, assuming the company did not make a decision to abandon it along the way.
If organizations are not permitted to learn from their mistakes, how will they ever perfect their approach. For instance, if the project failed to meet its cost projections, how and why did that happen and what could the team have done differently. The same applies to timing – if a project was planned to be completed within 6 months and it took 10 months to complete, what happened? Was it something that was not considered at the proposal phase, or did something happen during development? Either way, without the benefit of lessons learned, an organization may not have an opportunity to improve its ability to effectively deploy projects.
Perhaps the middle of the road answer is to establish tolerable limits within which results can vary, e.g. 6 months with a 25% margin, so an additional 6 weeks (24 months x .25) would be a reasonable extension of time before giving serious consideration to suspending a project. Just a few of my thoughts!
Paul Linkchorst says
Professor Yeoman’s Section
4. How would you justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of an production process. What assumptions would you have to make?
In order to have a project approved that makes a company more efficient or produce better results, one has to quantify the outcome of implementing such project. While many might try to quantify the project in terms of revenue or cost, it is more beneficial to quantify the project in terms of improved business outcomes/processes. The reason for this is because there are a number of factors that can affect whether a project meets a financial goal or not.
For example, I am an employee of a large desk manufacturer. I come up with an IT project that I have estimated to produce 5 extra desks per hour, which will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the manufacturing process. However, a natural disaster shuts down the plant for 2 weeks shortly after the project was finished, resulting in a poor financial year for the company. In the example, the project is based on the assumption that no outlying factors will affect the results of the project, such as the natural disaster. Even though the project didn’t increase revenue during this period, the project was still effective because if one were to measure the amount of time each desk was produced, one could identify that the time was shorter when natural disaster was not occurring. Therefore, when pitching a project idea, one should not quantify the project in terms of increased revenue, but instead of improved business processes which naturally result in increased revenue under ideal situations.
Richard Flanagan says
Well said, it is way to easy to assign meaning to correlations in the absence of logic. We once charted company productivity with the introduction of significant software projects. Email ruined productivity and texting increased it greatly. Why? Email was introduced just before the recession in the early nineties and texting was introduced along with SAP. The data appears to say one thing but logic says something else.
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
Hi Paul, I really like your last bit on when pitching a project idea, not to “quantify in terms of increased revenue, but instead of improved business processes…” In reality, most projects are either being measured in terms of increased revenue or cost reduction. Most, if not all, Executives care about one thing, the bottom line. This has fostered a culture where that is all we look at when we determine which project to choose. It is hard to change this. However, it doesn’t mean we should just go pick and invest in a project where we have the highest projected ROI.
Realistically, I also don’t we can propose project strictly on the improved business processes. Since managers and executives care about the numbers, I think we need to somehow translate the “improved business processes” into numbers. Are we reducing the time it takes to complete a process? We can do calculations and convert this to cost-reductions, $$$ money saved. Are we introducing a new process that is faster and allowing us to sell more items? We can calculate this as well and see how much profits have increased.
Loi Van Tran says
Interesting point, Improved processes is a legitimate selling point and can, in this case, be translated quantitatively. The increase in desks can easily be translated into more revenue, and the increased productivity can be translated in to direct labor cost reduction. I think that the assumptions for this scenario also has to be made clear that, we are assuming that business growth and sales remain the same, e.g., customers will continue to buy and we will have the capacity to produce the products.
That’s the ideal scenario, but part of the business case must also include the value, costs, and risk associated with this project. In term of strategic risks, what happens if new competitors emerges and takes market share from the company. The company may not be able to realize the projected benefits of the project. The project will be devalued, and if they had an effective PPM, that is capable of measuring the benefits of the project throughout its life cycle, then they may cancel the project and reallocated their resources to better compete in the market.
Andres Galarza says
Ahmed,
I agree and want to emphasize the point you made about having the sense to look “beyond the bottom line” and how that might not be as sacrilegious as it sounds. Reducing every business decision to cost strikes me as a highly foolish way to look at business.
I see the challenge as being able to quantify/qualify how a more costly decision that improves the business in a measurable way in regards to quality or experience should carry the same weight as the decision to reduce costs.
Sachin Shah says
Paul,
great posting. I think the situation for your company is very reflective of how the project was successful outside the bottom line\revenue. Moving forward the project is successful as the company is more efficient and productive and more desks are being created.
a project initiator needs to describe and explain how the sales cycle improvements would lead to less creaytion time and less man-power hours and less money on employee expenses, insurance, wages, and even also hardware or machinery. The details are plentiful, but some maybe long-term and results may not show in year one.
Yulun Song says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
The important of having a target mix before starting to approve projects is to successfully deliver business objective. Many business leaders try to solve one question: how to deliver projects as promised. The reason of that is because they do not have an entire plan of doing a project, and the entire plan is called Project Portfolio Management. PPM is “focusing on the selection and management of a set of projects to meet specific business objectives.” (Wiley) All business leaders want their businesses to be successful, and project managers want their projects to be successful so the entire business will be successful. Before approving a project, we should build and develop a successful PPM. This successful PPM will help a company in five ways: how to locate the money to ensure the strategy aligns business needs, how to optimize capacities and resources, how well is the company executing, how to balance the changes and the resources on hand, and how to know the expected performance and benefits. After having a successful PPM (or target mix), the company can implement it and knows everything is on the track, finally successfully delivering business objects.
Richard Flanagan says
Yulan,
The target mix comes as a result of an organization’s complex set of goals. It cannot focus on just one objective but needs to pursue several at the same time. Thus, it plans on making investments in multiple areas to ensure that progress is made against all goals. By allocating its budget to each area it is setting a priority on each objective.
Deepali Kochhar says
Q 5. How does your company make project funding decisions? How well does it work?
At my organization, following steps are performed for project funding:
A. Submission of applications and administrative measures: It has following information about the project:
a. Project Name
b. Justification for project implementation
c. Detailed description of project
d. General objective of the project
e. Process goals of the project
f. Target groups of the project
g. The length of time expected to complete the implementation of the project
h. Project Budget based on Effort estimation
i. Summary of initial measures proposed for the sustainability of the project
j. Expected results and outputs of the project
B. Evaluation:
a. The initial evaluation is performed by the board based on the alignment of the concept with the investment framework and informs the applicants about the results of this evaluation.
C. Proposal Preparation:
a. It is performed by project or Program sponsors once the application receives the approval.
D. Proposal appraisal:
a. It is performed by the project or Program sponsors to assess and review the entire proposal. Board also supports the sponsors to perform this review.
E. Submission to the Board
a. Board review the proposal for the completion and acknowledges.
b. Decisions such as lowering the funds needed based on the Returns calculated or streamlining the process is taken by the board before the final approval.
F. Signature of the legal documents
a. Trustees are informed
b. Project sponsors are informed
G. The total fund approved is allotted
The process is very well streamlined in my organization. At every stage of the process, owners are defined and they do their part to complete the process. Owners conduct regular meetings to discuss the if and but of all the processes being included in the application. All the data is collected based on the past experiences, Return calculation and effort estimation.
Richard Flanagan says
Deepali,
Who are the owners of the projects in your organization?
Deepali Kochhar says
Professor,
In My organisation Project Directors are the owners of the project. They have direct involvement and oversight of efforts to identify, analyze the project needs. Also they are responsible to mitigate, and control project risks from start to completion.
Andres Galarza says
Deepali,
I assume this means that only Project Directors can submit project proposals/funding requests?
Wenlin Zhou says
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
PPM accomplishes its purpose by adhering to some fundamental actions. PPM:
& Ensures projects and programs align with strategies, goals, and objectives of the business.
& Communicates project and program details, including financial costs and benefits.
& Manages projects and programs as a whole. It’s a holistic, systems approach to business projects.
A project’s best interests are served with a thorough understanding of the needs of all internal users and as many external users as possible (other agencies, the public, etc.). Such identification allows for customization of the plan based on specific requirements.
A project’s data needs are dictated by:
• Legal and regulatory requirements imposed by donor and local
governments.
• Requirements imposed internally by headquarters and regional
management.
• Beneficiary and partner demands for information
• Internal operations
Resource: file:///Users/zhouwenlin/Downloads/PM4DEV_Project_Management_Information_System.pdf
Richard Flanagan says
Wenlin,
Think about the people on the Steering committee deciding which projects to fund and not fund. You hope to have many projects in each bucket representing your target mix. These should all be good projects meaning they are aligned with business objects, aligned with your EA, have good ROI’s. Now you have to choose among them. If the projects are not proposed in the same way, it will be very difficult to identify the best. Financial gamesmanship or great selling skills may lead the committee away from the best to the worst. If they are all proposed using the same method, then your have the beginnings of an apple-to-apple comparison.
Mengxue Ni says
Richard,
Do you think the most important reason for using same format projects is comparing? If you are getting projects from different companies, it is hard to find same formats though. Therefore, (correct me if I was wrong) this is only for external use.
Andres Galarza says
Mengxue,
Although the formatting (font, design, layout) may change when then come in from external sources, I would argue that there is still a form of conventionality between different Requests for Proposal (RFP) or Requests for Information (RFI).
Think about resume templates. Certainly your resume may have a different font size or layout, but the same general sections (education, employment history, etc.) have to be there.
This is I think that PPM could still apply to external bids.
Magaly Perez says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
I would want all projects to be proposed in a uniformed way because, I believe by doing it in a uniformed way will cut straight to the projects objective. In essence, the uniform manner would not exclude others intentionally (i.e. jargon, customers, department demographics, education levels, etc.). By implementing a project uniformed allows a standardization approach of some sort, the lay out will be more objective and clear to all parties involved. Obviously, there is no way to make certain a project is proposed in a uniformed way due to the inherent subjectivity in decision making. However, by creative a universal objective throughout the project, sets the tone of the project; this enables the key policy makers make more clearly concise decisions. Additionally, by implementing a uniformed project proposal formulates a foundation for its personnel by allowing them to work within constraints to stick to the object with little room to derail from the project. Not only that, but this standardization is more favorable for getting a project approved; it allows its team members the ability to formulate stronger cases which adhere to either selling the project to customers or the executive level. Overall, the uniformed approach to project proposals are more favorable and limits the sway of business politics and keeps the project aligned to its objective.
The suggested information I would make available for the project would be:
-Clear mission and objective for the project which aligns to the business objective
– Projects strategy (flow of project/ steps)
– Personnel involved
– The added value of the project (i.e. in terms of financial numbers, benefits to the business, cost, savings, etc.)
– The est. time needed to complete the project (i.e. projections and impacts on business)
Richard Flanagan says
Magaly,
Good as fara as you go but remember risk. Projects face two major kinds of risk. What are they?
Loi Van Tran says
I believe the two major risk for projects are internal and external risks. Internal risks are risk events that takes place within the organization. External risk are risk events that takes place outside the organization.
Internal risk which can be controlled and stems from the following factors:
1. human (skills & talent management)
2. technology (emerging technology)
3. physical (failure of machines, fire, theft)
4. operational (access to credit, advertisement)
External risk which cannot be controlled and stems from the following factors:
1. Economic (Market risks, pricing)
2, Natural (natural disasters, floods, earthquake)
3. Political (compliance and regulations)
Vaibhav Shukla says
Professor Jan Section
Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I think many of organization at present times are comparing their project performance to that which was proposed by the project. It enables not only to know how well are projects doing
but also gives the information needed to decide what can be done to
stay in place with achieving the target performance.
It also helps predict what can be happening in future by comparing the present state of project performance with the desired performance ,recognizing the challenges faced by the organization and countering it to it
It also leads to effective utilization of resources such that if by chance the project is assessed to be performing very bad in all parameters and its difficult for it to recover in given time and budget then termination of project can be a good idea and likewise, the typical project manager can look for opportunities to redirect his or her resources toward the projects of other project managers who would benefit from them more.
We can also take an example for typical IT projects and most of the companies are likewise shifting to the agile method which focuses on more flexibility and all the phases of SDLC are put in time boxed phases as sprints. Agile method emphasizes on assessment of project in every phase whether each sprints are achieving the desired goals
Joseph Henofer says
Hello Vaibhav,
If most organization at the present are comparing their project performance to that which was proposed by the project how many are successful at it? In some of my work experiences the organization has compared the project performance to the proposed project but only when a problem occurred. The company was doing it but in my opinion not well. I also had the benefit of working at places that do it well. For instance, at Comcast we were doing an operating system upgrade for 4 sites. The PM was engaging and very helpful in keeping project moving but also made sure it was staying aligned with the proposed plan. We avoided a lot of setbacks and completed the project a month ahead of schedule.
Binu Anna Eapen says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I think ideally any organization should compare their Project performance to the project proposal to know if they are on the right track, to check if the benefits of the project is realized and aligned with the plan.
The benefit realization at the project level has four stages:
Understand: Where the organization identifies the needs to be achieved and defines objectives expected from the project
Plan: A plan is developed to achieve these objectives
Realize: Try to achieve the goals. Here any deviations are identified and the necessary steps are taken to align with the objectives. As the changes occurs the business case is modified, corrected and updated.
Report: Actual versus the planned results are the studied and reported to the senior management and provide accountability of the project
Also the pre-documented proposal acts as a guide for the project which should be reviewed regularly to identify any areas that have been missed.
The requirements from the project might change as the project develops. This has to be tracked and also try to align with the original proposal or see for justifications as to why the plan needs to be changed in-case it is essential and if still aligning with the company objectives.
Source: New South Wales Government Department of Finance & Services. Benefits realization guidelines, Version 1.2
Joseph Henofer says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
It seems after reading the Project Portfolio Mgt Trenches Penny packer document most organizations have a difficult time setting up a PPM, so if they are comparing the project progress to project plan they may not be doing it right. In the reading it states that a PPM does work but the problem for most companies is the implementation portion. If the implementation of the PPM is not correct then your information that you receive when doing a comparison may be skewed. This may lead to making the wrong decision on a project. PPM forces you to think strategically and often requires organizational change across the business, which if it’s not supported is very difficult.
They should be doing this so they can maximize the full potential of the project. By comparing the project progress and the project plan right they are able to make good decisions on projects and minimize resources and cost on projects that are failing or not align with the business strategies.
Fred Zajac says
How would you justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of an production process? What assumptions would you have to make?
1. The first step is to have the sales team and other key stakeholders in the sales process support. Each department involved in the sales cycle should know what the project is going to accomplish and how it will help the department. This is where you want to gain allies for your cause.
The assumption will be that everyone will follow the new sales cycle to the maximum capacity.
2. Develop a business case for the decision makers of the company. Show the business value. Talk about the current sales process, the goods & bads of the current process, and how the project is going to increase the good things and reduce / eliminate the bad things. Once you show the benefits, you assign value to each of the benefits.
The assumption is the value for each benefit. This will have to be assigned based on reasonable market value.
3. Funding for the project should be viewed based on the savings realized in step 2. The savings assigned would be broken down into monthly figures, which would justify the funding needed for the project. As the project progresses, the funds would be allocated based on the projections and results
The assumption is that your cost savings projections will hit or exceeded. You will need cooperation from everyone involved to make the project a success.
4. Show what might happen if the project isn’t put into place, or if they continue to keep doing the same thing. There is a reason you thought of this project. Chances are it’s because it makes your life easier. Compare the project to other companies who haven’t remained current with technology.
The assumption is trouble will happen. There is no guarantee the company will go out of business if they don’t do this. You have to be careful not to show what would happen if a blizzard happened in Florida. Show high probabilities and with high impacts.
5. Be passionate about the project, but don’t overstate the benefits or make unrealistic assumptions. Show the value through emotion. Use fear and pain, and try to assign a number to it.
The assumption is that the decision makers feel the pain and see the cure. The most difficult thing to do is to tell someone who has run a successful business that there is a better way of doing things.
Richard Flanagan says
So for your step #2, how would you go about describing the good things and bad things? What would you say/show to the Steering Committee to get approval?
Kevin Blankenship says
I would define the “good” and “bad” things as areas of the business that are either providing a benefit to the business, or areas that are inefficient or being large cost centers. Basically applying quantitative value to each area you are wanting to focus the project on.
Demonstrate the return on investments, efficiencies gained, and project specific metrics that will show the value added by the project. A strong business case needs metrics, and this is something the Steering Committee will want to see.
Ming Hu says
What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
Since any projects requires either money, equipment, material, people’s time or some combination of these, so considering the limitation of enterprise resources, having a target mix before approval contributes to optimize resources. It provides you a perspective of the whole landscape, not solely on merit of individual project, on how to invest on right things to get the biggest bang for the buck by resolving problems as follow:
Since one company already has projects underway, and a list of possible projects to add to that inventory, how do we decide which ones to add, and when to add them?
Given the availability of our current resources, should every good idea be implemented right now? If not, how to prioritize projects?
In view of the dynamic business environment that shifts strategic objectives over time, how to ensure the portfolio would be optimized in real-time?
How to understand, manage, balance the demand side and the supply side of the resource management equation?
Richard Flanagan says
Ming,
See my previous response about target mix. Companies need to pursue more than one objective at a time. The idea of having a target mix is to understand what areas you need to fund projects in. Then you decide on the best projects in each area up to the allotted budget. You do not look for the best projects overall as you might not fund anything in a critical area. Setting the target mix is how you decide what areas are critical to support.
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
Hi Professor,
I can speak from experience working in a critical area of a bank, that we do not really invest in any risky projects just because of high growth potential. We are more interested in making sure our core functions are working at its peak. The projects that we work on enhance our critical functions or fixes existing issues in these systems. Our main objective is maintaining and operating our systems and making sure nothing is “breaking”, due to the impacts it will have on production environment if something wrong does happen.
Richard Flanagan says
Ahmed
Good points. The obvious question is whether or not the bank is missing future opportunities by not investing elsewhere.. I certainly don’t know but a number of recent articles talk about “finTech” startups that are trying to disrupt traditional banks..
Ahmed A. Alkaysi says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
Organizations should not put all their eggs into one basket when it comes to investing in projects. They need to have a good “mix” of projects, resulting in a balanced project portfolio. This way, the company protects its resources, mitigates risk, and invests for the future.
A company investing too much into Running The Engine (RTE) projects and too little into growth and innovating types of projects, will not be able to grow and keep up with its competitors. Likewise, companies that invest too much in growth and innovative projects might start to experience issues with maintaining its current system.
Mitigating risk is another reason that a company will want to have a good target mix. If one project fails, at least it will not be detrimental to the existence of the company. An organization should never rely on the success of one project.
Also, there really isn’t one way to balance a target mix. A company that is very small and is looking to grow rapidly, can and should take risks investing in high growth and innovative projects. A company that is large and already established, as well as providing strong returns should probably focus more on investing in projects that strengthen its core component. It does not mean to ignore growth projects. They still need to invest in the future, and having a target mix will assure this.
Joseph Henofer says
Ahmed,
In my opinion I would think that the company that is very small would take less risk and focus on strengthen their core component versus what you have stated. I agree that the larger company should focus on strengthen their core component but aren’t they in a better position finically to take a risk versus a smaller company? You have stated “A company that is very small and is looking to grow rapidly, can and should take risks investing in high growth and innovative projects”, to me smaller companies would need to focus on their core component and establish themselves before making any risky investments for growth.
Fangzhou Hou says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
First of all, the approving projects usually involved the IT Strategy Committee. The strategy committee needs to analysis the IT resources that the company had, and the IT objectives that the company wants to achieve with considering the IT risks in a big picture. The problem is how to implement the plan and achieve the objectives, and that’s more likely related to the IT Steering Committee’s job. The target mix helps the company better achieve its strategic IT objectives. Since the IT Steering Committee needs to oversee the day-to-day management of IT service delivery and IT projects, the target mix allows the steering committee is able to achieve the objectives with more effectiveness, which means the IT objectives are not separated with each other and achieved one by one, but most of them have the inside connections, so that when the IT Steering Committee actually approve project plans, the complex set of objectives ensure the plans can focus on multiple goals at the same time.
Loi Van Tran says
The importance of a target mix is not base on a single objective but multiple objectives. Any organization may have, for instance objectives for growth, sustainment, efficiency/productivity, or innovation. The target mix ensures that the organization is considering and budgeting for each objective. Each objective requires resources (e.g., money, equipment, personnel). When projects are proposed, they fall into one the (example above) target mix to compete for funds. This ensures, for example, that projects to automate processes which is a cost-reduction project does not compete for funds with growth projects used to increase revenue.
This objectively sets the tone for each area and helps leaders make better decisions based on the merits of each project within that area.
Folake Stella Alabede says
i’m in agreement with your views Fangzhou and Loi.
I think the IT steering committee is an important designation for organizations to have (though it looks like a lot of organizations do not invest in having that, and that another reason most organizations dont compare their projects’ performance to what was proposed by the project).
like you said loi, “The target mix ensures that the organization is considering and budgeting for each objective”, and relating this to the case for this week – the MDCM case- even though there is a target mix, the steering committee could also help ensure that projects do not overlap and even contradict each other
Folake Stella Alabede says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way?
I feel all projects should be proposed in a uniform way because doing this strengthens credibility, and improves consistency and transparency of how projects are developed and proposed.
According to BA101.01 of COBIT5, there should be a standard approach for project management that enables Governance, management review, decision making and delivery management activities, and these activities should be focused on achieving value and goals (requirements, risk, cost schedule, quality) for the business in a consistent manner.
And this uniform approach should be updated based on lessons learned from its use.
What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Using COBIT5 and the Accenture Transformation case as an example, there are some basic information that should be available for all projects:
– A Steering committee
This ensure projects are not proposed and approved in an unstructured and haphazard process.
– Project alignment with business objectives.
– ROI analysis that should be thoroughly debated and if needed, adjusted
– Strategic Terms/direction
– management of scope, resources, risk, cost, quality, time, and communication. ( which will address issues on budgets, milestone/deliverables etc)
Mengxue Ni says
Flanagan Section
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Your organizations depend on the effectiveness of your proposals, so it will be easier by using proposals in a uniform way. Since a project contains many details, if you use the same format, it will be easier to locate needed information faster.
But sometime, other company would like to use their own forms, you will have to use their format. Also, there are different approaches for different projects. Therefore, the best way is having a standard format for all projects. When you are using the format, choosing depends on the project itself—adding more documents or deleting some parts. In other words, all projects are proposed in a uniform way but they are unique for different projects.
I suggest the following information that must be available for all projects:
Executive overview—project identifiers, project summary, overall project health and percent complete
Milestones and deliverables—current percent complete, planned star, planned finish, actual start, actual finish
Issue, risk and change management—open issues, open risks, open change requests
Team progress—tasks scheduled in the past, tasks completed, tasks scheduled in the future
Richard Flanagan says
Mexngxue,
Your list implies active projects (%step completed, etc.). If discussing proposed projects none of this will exist yet. Here we need to view projected value, ROI, timelines, risks, etc. For those projects that have already started, then your list is good. The Steering Team should look a both in case it wants to stop one that is running to move resources to a new one.
Alexander B Olubajo says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
I think in an organization project IT steering committee ought to establish a target mix before any project gets approved. A target mix presents the IT steering committee with an opportunity to review and evaluate every potential project for the organization and come up with and agree on a target investment strategy.
The importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects is to allow the organization to diversify the potential risks involved in each project as well as to allow the company touch on other project categories as opposed to just focusing on one project category (i.e allows an organization to diversify its project portfolio) E.g say only projects that has to do with innovating the company’s current modes of operation is approved by the IT steering committee, the company will be exercising most of their resources towards these projects and if one fails, may risk suffering the same fate for the others in that category. However, if there is a target mix in place, whereby projects from numerous categories are selected for approval, the failure of one or it’s output may necessarily not have the same as the others in that mix.
With a target mix being important to IT Project Portfolio management, I do feel that the types of projects that gets selected for approval or that are given more preference defers/varies based on the nature and business of the organization.
Loi Van Tran says
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Standardize process for project proposals ensures that decision makers are able to objectively view and compare the value, cost, risk, and ROI of each project on a leveled playing field. Each business area or function may have their own way of viewing a project’s merit; a production line using automation to increase output, IT increasing system availability, or marketing increasing online line touchpoints to increase sale. The metrics for these business areas are not the same, and for a steering committee to make decisions based on on these subjective or individualized metrics would be difficult. A uniformed project proposal method reduces the subjective metrics and allows decision makers to compare all projects on the same metric system.
Information that should be included in a project proposal:
1. Executive Summary – Overview of the project
2. Objectives – What will the project achieve
3. Scope – what is included or not included in the project
4. Deliverables – what is required by the stakeholders – tangible results
5. Value – What business value will the project deliver (ROI, Payback-period)
6. Cost – How much will it cost to complete the project
7. Risk – immediate and long-term risks associated with the project. What would cause the project to fail?
8. Assumptions – what facts or supposition were considered when developing the business case.
Richard Flanagan says
Good list. Under risks I would also add project vs business risk. Project risks are risks that might cause the project to be late, more expensive, or fail altogether. Business risks are risks that the project might succeed but the business fail. Think of a firm that decides to move all its sales online. It might get its e-store built perfectly, on time, on budget but the customers may decide they only want to buy in a physical store. The project was a success but the business will fail if something is not done.
Alexander B Olubajo says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
All projects should be proposed in a uniform way in order to give/project the same angle or perspective to its decision makers and approvers. I think in most cases the committee responsible for approving projects will want projects to be presented to them in a uniform way so that they can look at the requirements, numbers (in terms of cost), resources, risks etc. that will be involved in every individual project. From a financial perspective, using project templates to propose new projects will allow them to all use the same metrics and calculations, thus giving the steering committee a first-hand view of how each project will directly cost the organization. Since, each project will be using a uniform formula, steering committee can easily make a decision on which projects to pursue and which of them should be ignored or rejected.
In a general scope, I would suggest the following information must be available and reviewed for all projects by a steering committee prior to approving them:
i) Return on Investment (ROI)
II) pay-back period
iii) value/impact of project to the business
iv) associated risks of each project
v) length of each project
vi) available resources/cost for each project.
Alexander B Olubajo says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I don’t think most organizations today compare their projects’ performance to which was initially proposed by the project. I think they neglect this important step/stage not because they want to but because they don’t feel the need to after a project’s completion. Most project management offices often feel satisfied once a project has been delivered, hence don’t feel compelled to compare to which was proposed by the project. In a situation where the project doesn’t get completed on time, uses more resources than allocated, doesn’t deliver its purpose/objectives, and/or doesn’t provide the intended/anticipated value or any form of positive impact to the business, then PMOs tend to compare not only the project’s performance but also its strategy as well as the information used during the initial proposition of the project.
In some scenarios even when organizations that compare their projects’ performance to which was proposed decide to do so, they often find it hard to obtain accurate results of the comparison. This will happen in most cases if there is no documented account of the implementation of the project. Due to that, it will be almost useless comparing the performance of the project to its proposal.
As logical as it would seem, you will be surprised to find that some organizations don’t even set checkpoints and milestones for projects during the course of its life cycle to enable them the opportunity to the gauge the success rate of a project. Organizations that do this puts themselves in a position to review the project and it’s proposal or even abort the project if need be, saving them from the ultimate failure of the project after its completion.
Loi Van Tran says
I agree with your assessment. If most organizations were to have a properly implemented PPM, then not so many projects will go over budget, time, and doesn’t deliver on its objectives. These are the reasons that IT projects fails. Proper management of project through PPM; First allows the organization to see where each projects falls into the organizations strategic objectives, Identify which objectives the project is aimed for through target mix, allocate and prioritize the funding for each project base on the business needs. PPM allows the organization to monitor and evaluate project risks and benefits throughout the projects life cycle to ensure that projects continue to deliver its projected benefits. It enables periodic risk assessment to help decision-makers plan for unforseen event or mitigate new risks.
I think that most organizations don’t do this because it lacks a governance structure. Most business managers and leaders are more concerned about the bottom line. Proposal of projects are viewed on individual basis instead of enterprise-wide or project decisions are made based on “experience” rather than facts. This is an example of an organization who is unwilling to change and change is part of a successful enterprise-wide implementation of PPM.
Folake Stella Alabede says
Chipping in to Alexander n Loi’s comment,
i think this is something most organizations should do, they should always compare the projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project.
I feel this would even help in any future projects they have to work on, which again brings us to the second question of having all projects to be proposed in a uniform way.
It helps to eliminate redundancy, you wanna see what didnt work for the last project ? why/how did we go over budget ? why didnt we meet proposed milestones / deadlines ? and these reasons are incorporated into the standardized project uniformity, and organizations can learn from their previous mistakes and avoid making the same mistakes for future projects.
I wonder what the reason is that organizations don’t take this seriously, its like a check mate that should be done all the time, probably they dont understand the importance of and lessons to be learned from comparing the projects’ performance to what was proposed by the project.
Probably this should even be introduced as part of the roles and responsibilities of the IT strategy commitee ( but i guess thats even if the organization has an IT strategy commitee right?), so they have the responsibility of checking the projects’ performance and what was proposed by the project
Nathan A. Van Cleave says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way?
What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
With a uniform method to present projects, review boards and decision makers can efficiently sort through the key pieces of a project to make informed decisions about what projects should be approved. Information that should be included when presenting projects:
– Business Strategy Aligned to or Business justification
– Sponsor agreement
– Scope – With business requirements clearly defined and vetted between business and IT
– Costs – The total costs (+/- % or refinement) would be dependent on the project approval stage/level/gate the project is in
* Vendor proposals in many cases must be refined through this process as well
– Risk Assessments
Nathan A. Van Cleave says
5. How does your company make project funding decisions? How well does it work?
All IT projects at my company must be approved through a series of demand boards. Each of these boards are made up of increasingly senor level management and each project must gain approval through a series of Gates (0-5).
§ Gate 0 – Project Ideation
§ Gate 1 – Project Scope 50% defined, Costs defined +/- 50%
§ Gate 2 – Project Scope 100% defined, Costs defined +/- 10%
§ Gate 3 – Development
§ Gate 4 – Implementation
§ Gate 5 – Benefits Realization
All projects are placed in Tiers (1-3) based on the total estimated project costs. All Tier 1 (>$2M) and Tier 2 (>$1M) must be reviewed at our Global IT Project Review Board for approval. All other Tier projects are reviewed and approved through country/business level demand boards. Approval for funding comes at the Gate 2 review when all costs have been defined +/-10%. At that point, development can begin. In certain instances, I have known projects to be approved after development had begun (“develop at risk”) or approved with actions to complete in due time.
Overall, this system has done well to appropriately manage the projects that are brought forth. It is not surprising that most Tier 1 & 2 projects are approved as they are most likely strategically aligned to a business or global strategy.
Candace Nelson says
Nathan – your company has implemented a very impressive process for making IT investment decisions. While I was reading the approach, and contemplating the seemingly effective governance structure that is in place, I couldn’t help but wonder whether and how your company compares their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project. I would be interested in hearing about if, and how they do that. My gut instinct is that they probably do it, and that they likely do it well!
Xiaodi Ji says
Nathan,
I like your company’s process for the program. It look likes very simply but very useful for the company. Actually, I real like gate 1 and gate 2. Your company uses two step to define a program and budget which I believe is very important for the program. I think it is very hard for leaders to view the whole program in period time. They may have different idea between reading part 1 or 2 and part 5 or 6. Thus, just define 50% of the program for the gate 1 will give some time for both headers and employees to think about what they real want to do. Then using gate 2 to make a final decision.
Sachin Shah says
I think this is a great process and simple is usually most effective. In my company, which is a hospital, even IS projects usually go through Medical\Clinical leadership. We need to let them know what the initiatives are. Leadership is always interested in scalability, no IT downtime, and accessibility to data. Those are the projects that usually get approved. There are other important projects yet they are less prioritized.
Folake Stella Alabede says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I think most organizations dont compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project.
And going by the cases/articles we’ve read so far, it’s a practice that should be followed by organizations.
Doing this helps to know what benefits to expect from a project and to track the realization of those benefits as the project progresses. And this is where question 2 of this week about all projects being proposed in a uniform way might be of interest, especially when the uniform approach is being updated based on lessons learned from its use on previous projects.
Organizations that don’t this may not realize the full potential benefits of their investments.
Said Ouedraogo says
Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
Frankly, I think most organizations have some sort of methods to compare their projects performance to what was proposed at the beginning. I think the right question here is How most organizations compare their projects’ performance to what was proposed by the project? I can’t imagine an organiztion that just implement a project and not comparing the performance of the project according to the project plan. It’s a matter of methodology.
For example, some projects go over-budget before the end or even before the implementation. This is due to bad decisions and also to the way the organization was deploying resources according to the project plan.
Joshua Tarlow says
Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
Most organizations probably do not compare a projects performance to the original proposal, although there are some that do. First, it can depend on the size and scope of the project. If the project is complex and projected to take more than a year to complete there may be little desire to compare the two after the fact unless it is an extreme failure. IT can also be alien to many people which can prohibit a comparison itself. Most people simply want their technology to work without knowing the “how”.
Organizations can also be irrational, inefficient, and not spend or manage investments wisely. A postmortem comparison would definitely be the best way to learn from mistakes, accurately judge the projects success, and apply the knowledge to future projects. But, many don’t and in some instances repeat the same mistake in different projects. It can be politics, complacency, or lack or competence, but I don’t think it is an uncommon problem for many organizations.
Jianhui Chen says
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
I think that why all projects to proposed in a uniform way just like why English language needs a “uniform” grammar. All projects are proposed in a uniform would be more easier for communication and detailed.
I would recommend that information that must be available for all projects as following:
An overview of the reasons for the project
A detailed description of intended results
A list of all constraints the project must address
A list of all assumptions related to the project
A list of all required work
Needs for personnel, funds, and non-personnel resources
Description of risk management
Source:http://www.dummies.com/careers/project-management/what-your-project-plan-should-cover/
Yu Ming Keung says
What are the sources of Electromagnet Pulse (EMP)? Why is it a physical security threat? How can an organization defend itself against EMP?
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a high-frequency burst of electromagnetic energy caused by the rapid acceleration of changed particles. A catastrophic EMP would cause the collapse of critical civilian infrastructures such as the power grid, telecommunications, transportation, banking, finance, food and water systems across the entire continental United States—infrastructures that are vital to the sustenance of our modern society and the survival of its citizens. EMP can be used as a weapon of mass destruction and Boeing has announced that it successfully tested an electromagnetic pulse.
The sources of EMP are:
1) A deliberate electromagnetic weapon attack
Without causing any harm to humans, the effects from an IEMI weapon could disable regional electronic devices.
2) A nuclear device detonated in space, high above the U.S.
A High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) detonated 30 miles or higher above the Earth’s surface would destroy electronic devices within a targeted area without creating blast damage, radiation damage, or injuring anyone.
The EMP can cause damage to electronic equipment within an organization or it can affect its performance. An EMP could permanently destroy all electronic equipment including hardware, software, and data.
An organization can protect and defend itself against EMP by:
1. Having a business recovery plan to resume their business loss
2. Provide battery backup power for essential equipment.
3. Provide the above protections to essential equipment, such as emergency communications and traffic signals.
Sources:
http://empactamerica.org/our-work/what-is-electromagnetic-pulse-emp/
http://www.empauthority.com/what-is-emp/
http://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/emp.htm
Yu Ming Keung says
Professor Jan’s section
2-Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
You would want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way because you want the decision make to make the best decision in a uniform way. You also want all the projects to have all the information in a clear and concise format with the alignments of strategies, goals, and objectives of the business.
According to Project Portfolio Management:
PPM accomplishes its purpose by adhering to some fundamental actions. PPM:
Ensures that projects and programs align with the strategies, goals, and objectives of the business Communicates project and program details, including costs and benefits
Manages projects and programs as a whole, providing a holistic, systems approach to business projects
Information I would suggest that to be included in all projects:
1. Objectives – what it is trying to achieve
2. Steps and Time – how many steps the org has to take and how long will the project take to achieve the objectives
3. Scope – what will be included
4. Cost – How much will it cost
5. Assumption – what the project assumes
6. Constraints – what are the limitations in the project
7. Risks – the probability of project risks and how the organization should response to the risks
Yang Li Kang says
How would you justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of an production process. What assumptions would you have to make?
I would emphasize the long term benefit and the plans to achieve the long term benefit. For example, if a manufacturing plant is able to produce 1000 units and only sell 800 units a week, it may seem redundant to increase production units because there is no additional demand for more units. However, the increased capacity of the plant also means potential for growth. Very rarely do companies want to stay at the current position. Most companies want to grow and expand their business. The increased capacity will give the company an opportunity for more projects that could lead to growth such as a sales campaign sell more products or even an expansion into new territory. In the long run, if successful, the company will be able to bring in much more revenue.
Mansi Paun says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
In any Business organization, it is important that some projects be given a go-ahead as opposed to other projects considering what value is achieved by the project. Certain projects could be easier or quicker or cheaper to implement however, they might not deliver as much value or Return on Investment as another project. It is important that blunders in project selection be avoided as the negative outcomes could be very huge. So, to make the decision making process streamlined, simpler and transparent, it makes sense to propose all projects to be proposed in a fair and uniform way in the form of Business cases.
Some information that should be available in all Business cases could be :
• Objectives: The expectation from the Project that the company hopes to achieve
• Scope: The extent or reach of the project
• Deliverable: These are the tangible results that the project would deliver
• Value: Financial results that we hope the project to deliver. This could include the gross profit %, customer satisfaction, probability of new business generation such as future deals or contracts that could be won upon successful completion.
• Cost : Monetary value or price of resources required for the project
• Risks: Possible impediments or things that could go wrong to successful project completion causing the project to fail
• Assumptions: Presumptions or supposition that the project team thought of at the time of creating the Business case.
• Other information : This is any other information that the approving committees should be made aware of which could provide more information about the project such as possible loss of business or dipping customer satisfaction if the project is not delivered, project completion affecting another project, stakeholders and sponsorship etc.
Wen Ting Lu says
Please disregard this post, While have two community site open, I pasted into the wrong class discussion board.
Wen Ting Lu says
1. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
By introducing uniformity to the submission process, a project portfolio committee can look over and judge each individual work more objectively. Although an unique and unbiased way to compare two projects could be difficult to find, a method that allow a standardized proposal might be able to give reviewers easier time for a closer comparison. Similarly, this form of unity would provide a convenient guide to build new projects. In addition, the decision makers could eventually have a way to weigh against two very competitive but similar projects with equal measurements. The method of proposing projects in an uniform way should provide the committee a great way to fairly and objectively compare projects.
Information I would suggest to be included in all projects are the following:
=objectives
-scope
-cost
-assumption and constraints
-risks
Noah J Berson says
Uniformity is key to establishing a business process. Efficiently reviewing proposals saves time for those who have to make lots of decisions. It also makes it easy to compare potential projects to each other.
A project proposal should contain the same information each time. The highlights include the triple constraint of scope, time, and cost. The project should also give a background on why this project is important. A key point of a project is to have specific and measurable goals so the main ones should be listed. The stakeholders, such as the sponsor, the project manager, and the client, should be mapped out. A project evaluation guideline, a way of figuring out the project has reached its goal, should be given as well. More details can be given later as the project becomes realized.
Xiaodi Ji says
Noah,
I agree with your idea. Although sometime we hate formal document, uniformity really helps us a lot. When we write our paper, we may spend half of all time to correct the form of the document, which sometimes make us crazy, especially when the software does not run well. However, when we read other people’s documents which do not use good form will also makes us crazy because it is very hard for us to location something. Therefore, for the enterprise, they have to read many documents everyday. The formal documents help them find everything easy and quickly, which can save a lot of resource to evaluate a new project.
Kevin Blankenship says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
A business always has multiple objectives to maintain steady growth, increase stability, and continue to function as a business. When a budget is created, money is allocated across the organization to pursue the business objectives set forth by the senior leadership and board of the company.
In order to meet goals and support critical areas, establishing a target mix is important. This is so investments can be prioritized and projects supporting those targeted areas are funded and have buy-in.
A target mix will always vary based on the company, and will change based on business goals and needs.
Anthony Clayton Fecondo says
Kevin, your analysis for this question addressed a couple issues that I didn’t even consider. For example, you mentioned how investing in each of the categories helps the company to maintain all the functionality it needs in order to sustainable. My primary argument was that by diversifying the project portfolio, there’s a higher change that more of the projects will be successful thus decreasing the investment risk. However, after reading your points, the business really has no choice, but to invest in each of these categories (at least a little bit) in order to remain operational
Kevin Blankenship says
Anthony, I think an effective project portfolio has both of those aspects worked into the planning. I definitely agree with you as well that diversifying the portfolio decreases the investment risk. I think it’s possible to both cover areas to stay function while diversifying risk. If a project fails in one area, the company can always roll back to the old way, while the other projects in the portfolio will continue to give benefits to the organization once they are completed.
I definitely see these as going hand-in-hand.
Ryan P Boyce says
1. The importance of having a target mix of projects before starting to approve projects, is it prevents a company from viewing each IT project in a silo. It is important to diversify projects or get a good mix of initiatives that seeks to support the general business processes and the strategic transformation of the company. Creating and approving projects on an individual basis has the potential to pull a company from this overall goal. Say, for instance, company X decides to approve projects as the need for them arises and the first few projects they approve directly support the immediate business needs and underlying functionality of the company. Approving these projects immediately pulls resources away from funding and running projects that promote growth and innovation for that company. At this point, company X is now just sustaining its’ operations. Had they defined a good target mix of IT projects, they would have been more inclined to approve just one or two of those projects, leaving resources for more unique IT projects.
2. All projects should be proposed in a uniform way so that they may be graded upon completion in the same way. While different projects may bring different areas of value to the company, they should all, ultimately be doing two things: either saving the company money or making money for the company. If project A is proposed in such a way that the value of the projects is defined by one set of standards, those standards will dictate the level to which value was added. If project B is proposed in a different manner than project A, the value may be perceived differently. At this point, the way in which projects are graded may be the same but what the project actually delivered will be different. The information I would suggest that be available for all projects would be the cost of the project, the scope, the time expected to implement, whether the project was making or saving money, what metrics would be used to determine the success of the project, who is implementing the project, and who is responsible for the success of the project.
3. Yes, I certainly think companies compare actual project performance to what was proposed. I believe an example of this is how project managers/executives tout projects as being under budget or on-time. As I’m sure most of us have seen, issues arise during projects. Unforeseen variables almost always arise and the likelihood of unforeseen variables arising during extremely long projects is extremely high. With this is mind, project proposals often do not become the best means by which to compare project performance but initial proposals are still the most used metric. If a project goes millions of dollars over budget, executives are not going to forgive this just because issues arose during the project. In the same sense, if a project goes millions of dollars under budget, project leaders will be rewarded for this based on the initial proposal. I believe companies do this to maintain integrity across projects. Inconsistent measures of project performance will almost certainly have a negative impact on financial resources.
4. The way in which I would justify a project that improves production yield is to show how less material is needed to produce the same amount of product or, in financial terms, how the project will save the company money. I believe an ROI analysis would be sufficient to show that the investment made in the project ultimately leads to a positive return in less spending on raw materials. The assumptions I would have to make for this project would be that the cost of the raw materials does not fluctuate during the implementation of this project to a point where my initial analysis is inaccurate. I would also have to assume that the company’s IT project portfolio was capable of supporting a such a project.
Anthony Clayton Fecondo says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
Having a target mix ensures that you take on an appropriate amount of projects in each of the project categories which diversifies the risk of your investment portfolio. IT projects are notoriously risky endeavors and can have significant financial drawbacks if they fail. However, these investments are also essential to the continued success of any business. Prior to taking on projects, it’s important that an organization creates a target mix based on the companies risk appetite. By creating a target mix, the company knows ahead of time how many projects it can take on in each category and remain in an acceptable level of risk.
Anthony Clayton Fecondo says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
All projects should be proposed in a uniform way in order to streamline the approval process. If all the metrics are uniform, comparing projects becomes an easier and faster process. I think the important information for each project would be:
1. Which category the project falls within
2. How the project synergizes with the corporate strategy
3. What business need the project addresses
4. What’s the scope of the project
5. The deliverables of the project and an associated timeline
6. What’s the total cost for developing/implementing the project
7. What’s the expected ROI
8. What’s the projected success rate of the project
Anthony Clayton Fecondo says
I forgot to include assumptions on the list of project information. Assumptions are crucial information for these projects because if the underlying assumptions are wrong, the project will flop. I recently read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and this book really emphasized the importance of making assumptions in order to satisfy an unmet need, but also the importance of testing your assumptions as quickly as possible and as inexpensively as possible in order to validate the assumptions. In order to try to avoid a failed project because of a wrong assumption, it is important to have the underlying assumptions analyzed by everyone in the decision making process to make sure they’re plausible.
Anthony Clayton Fecondo says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
Most companies don’t compare the performance of a project to their expectations because most companies don’t establish quantitative measures for the success of a project and once a project is implemented most companies focus on if the investment is profitable or not. I think that oftentimes, real business isn’t as thorough and methodical as the processes that you read in books or learn in business school. I feel that after implementation, many will think the project proposal has served its purpose and it is forgotten. However, I’m sure there are companies where the projects’ performance is compared to the projections. I just think that the companies that follow strict and effective portfolio management practices are the minority.
Candace Nelson says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
In order to ensure the organization is giving proper consideration to starting new IT projects or moving forward with those that are in progress, management needs to know what all of their options are so they can make appropriate and informed choices. The IT Project Portfolio needs to balance organizational needs vs. resources, and IT budgets are generally constrained. Additionally, a portion of the IT budget must be allotted to maintenance of existing systems and high priority upgrade requirements due to changes in laws, regulations, etc. Hence, it is imperative that management allocate the remaining funds in a manner that supports achievement of objectives, growth, innovation and technological efficiency.
Candace Nelson says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
In order for management to make effective decisions about the appropriate IT project mix, they need to be able to compare the initiatives. If similar information was not available for all projects being considered, it would either be incumbent upon management to “fill in the gaps” or to exclude certain factors from consideration if they were not measurable across the portfolio. Failure to present information in a uniform way would likely increase the time and decrease the efficiency of the selection process, and it would undoubtedly have a negative impact on the overall effectiveness of the of the chosen project mix.
Although it is difficult to determine what information that should be available for all projects without giving consideration to the industry, market, customer base and other inherent factors, the following is a list of general measures to include when choosing an appropriate portfolio mix: alignment with business and IT strategy and existing technological architecture; technical, financial, legal and other risks; cost, return on investment and payback period; availability of technical, human and other resources; impact of change on workforce and training requirements; impact on customer satisfaction and retention; market / competitive considerations.
Kevin Blankenship says
I like your point about management “filling the gaps”. While some flexibility should be granted to project teams to guide a project, it’s important that projects start from a uniform position. Having management fill in the gaps after the fact would definitely slow down the project and hurt the whole project portfolio.
I’ve seen projects that were started, for example, before business requirements were fully developed. Having to chase down BU for this information ended up delaying the project by a few weeks. It was not a significant amount of time, but enough to cause strain on the whole team. This was due to a lack of oversight when the project was proposed without the complete and proper information.
Candace Nelson says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
It is difficult to say whether “most” organizations assess their projects outcomes vs. that which was proposed. I might answer this question differently for a government contractor or a public utility than I would for a company that is not as highly regulated, or a technology based company compared to a service provider. What I can say with certainty is when organizations do perform such comparisons they are more likely to achieve cost efficiencies since projects that are underperforming may be reconfigured or ceased while they are underway as opposed to after they are complete and found to be deficient since resources have already been depleted. Additionally, a public company with strong leadership, a fully engaged Board of Directors, and knowledgeable shareholders may be more likely to secure their investors stake in company assets by ensuring technological investments are sound than would a non-profit organization.
Jaspreet K. Badesha says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Projects should be proposed in a uniform way to expedite the decision making process. If there is a standard application that one must fill out it is easier for the person or group of people to review it against their criteria and approve or discard the application. For example, if the amount of effort to roll the project out is minimal and the return on investment is high but it is high risk the project may be discarded because the risk may outweigh the ROI. However, if there is a project that has a mid range rollout/ development process but has high ROI and low risk there is a better chance that this may get approved. If these were not written in the same order it would take the approver a longer time to sit down and weigh the differences between the projects. However, if they were created in the same template then it would take the approver minutes to distinguish which one was more valuable.
Information that should be available for all projects would be
1. Objective / Goal
2. Value
3. Amount of Effort / Cost
4. Risk
5. ROI
Jaspreet K. Badesha says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I do believe most goal oriented organizations do compare their projects performance to that which was proposed by the project. This is done so that the company can analyze the project and see if the projections that they forecasted for revenue (or savings) is actually on track or accurate. They can also decide whether it is a project that is worth maintaining or keeping. For example, if the company spent 1 million dollars on a project thinking that the project would pay for itself within 2 years and make business processes efficient but hasn’t event earned 10% of its cost back and the intended business user isn’t using it, you may want to cut your losses and stop throwing money into maintaining this project. If this evaluation isn’t done, you organization could be throwing money in development and maintenance out of the window.
Xiaodi Ji says
Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
In my opinion, I think that uniform way has two advantages.
First of all, everyone knows how this process runs. Uniform way must write down on the policies which every employees can see it. They can follow this thing to find out what should they do in the time and what should they do for the future. For example, when we want to get our drive license, we can go to website to check what kind of thing that we should take. Then we prepare all things and go to the traffic department to get it. It save us much time. Meanwhile, once we cannot get our license, we can know where we do wrong and what should we prepare for the next time.
The second one is that uniform way can help employees think they program or project deeply. Everybody can have many thoughts one day. Once they have idea about the company and program, they tell them to the management or the leader of the department. Then, headers’ job become judging ideas, some may valuable while lots of are useless, which not only increasing headers’ press, but it also decrease employees’ effective. However, when we use uniform way. Employees need that they should deeply dig their idea before show it. For example, when we have a very good idea about a new program. We want to right it immediately. However, when we start writing writing software engineer document. Huge number of problems come out, what our users real want, what kind of software can be sold in the market, how to design our database, how much we will spend for each step and so on. Then we will calm down, think deeply about this program and complete it.
information that must be available for all projects
1. Why should we develop this program?
2. Where can we use this program?
3. Who will use this program?
4. What kind of risk will we meet?
5. How much should we pay for this program?
Alexander B Olubajo says
Xiaodi,
Nice assessment!.. I think the question you are asking are all solid, however you will probably want to ask more financial based questions or provide more financial information than just how much it will cost. I believe other financial information that members of the steering committee will want to see in order aid in their decision making will be things like Return on Investment (ROI), Pay-back period etc.
Andrew P. Sardaro says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
Projects proposed in a uniform way increases the efficiency in the decision making process of projects. The information is presented in a uniform and consistent way removing any heavy lobbying/politicking for approval. This uniformity allows a steering committee to identify the best projects to approve.
Information that I would make available for all projects:
• Project Background and Description
• Project Benefits and Deliverables
• Target Dates
• Risks and Issues
• Cost Estimates
• Key Players
Ivy M. McCottry says
Andrew – good call on listing risks and issues. I think that along with risk, we should list mitigation opportunities and event likelihoods. It’s always better to call it out than to be surprised. There are qualitative and quantitative impacts to buffer and management.
Andrew P. Sardaro says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
Organizations should not heavily invest in projects within one area (Innovation, Growth, Efficiency and RTE as examples.) Organizations should address more than one objective at a time. having a target mix helps you understand what areas to fund projects in, and then decide the best projects in each area to fund. Your target mix of projects should be aligned with business objectives and have good ROI. Having a good target mix also allows you to mitigate risk of single project failure within the organization.
Sheena Thomas says
I totally agree with your thought “Organizations should address more than one objective at a time. having a target mix helps you understand what areas to fund projects in, and then decide the best projects in each area to fund” What if our VP or CIO at Temple just focused on Security related projects and didn’t give sufficant funding to NS or DTLAN related project? That would negatively affect a number of business critical and client related projects.
Ivy M. McCottry says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
Business objectives are not one and the same. Therefore it takes diversity in course of action to achieve business objectives which requires a pre-considered/vetted target mix as a criteria for approving projects that should be purposed to achieve business objectives and overall corporate strategy.
Ivy M. McCottry says
2. Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way? What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
I would want all projects to be purposed in a uniform way to:
1) Try to achieve apples to apples comparisons when feasible and reasonable
2) Ensure critical criteria is addressed and not missed (because business success is defined in some way that needs to be met)
3) Provide clear articulation to support subject matter literacy regardless of who is reviewing the project proposal especially if proposals go through tiers of gate-keeping
4) Establish intentional project and/or portfolio management for efficiency purposes and as the right thing to do
I would want to see quantitative and qualitative information for who, what, how, when, where, why, and what’s in it for us – core benefits. Quantitative information would include core benefits such as return on investment, break-even analysis, cycle time improvements, cost savings, churn reductions, net adds, etc. Qualitative information would include new organizational and operational efficiency, impact considerations, and implementation plans. For example, a project could impact business units, product/service life cycles, corporate reputation, etc. It’s important to have a clear picture of what the project is about, who’s involved, answers to various “why’s” and how the project fits into what we say is our business and our purpose for existing.
Ivy M. McCottry says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
Projects are supposed to fill needs whether it’s creating new growth or eliminating pain points. Changes to the company (strategy, leadership capabilities, resources, assets), market (competition, resources, suppliers), customers (needs, price sensitivity, capabilities), or employees (morale, availability, skills fit) could influence project scope change. I think it’s worthwhile to do a pre and post project performance assessment just for lessons learned. Debriefs/project post-mortems are beneficial for insights about how to handle future actions especially actions that are sizable investments. From the PPM reading, the key benefit to comparing projects’ performance is determining if benefits were realized.
I think organizations conduct project performance assessments based on the importance of a project which is typically determined by the amount of financial investment. The higher the value of the project, the more visible the project is. I think organizations do not conduct project performance assessments because of not allocating time to the process and not building the project performance assessment into workflows for project management.
Ivy M. McCottry says
4. How would you justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of an production process. What assumptions would you have to make?
I would justify a project that shortens a company’s sales cycle or improves the yield of a production process if the project improves more than one metric associated with customers and indirectly employees and has attainable benefits to the bottom-line and shareholders. Those metrics could include sales (more sales) or revenue (greater revenue from more sales or higher price points), customer satisfaction (improvements/upticks from customers better served by us and us better serving our people, who serve our customers, by providing better systems).
Xiaodi Ji says
Ivy,
I agree with your idea that a new project should improve something from the old one. We spend extra money in doing new project. If we do not get anything, then why should we do this. However, there are some complex situation that this project cannot get benefit immediately or it will cause a short time lose. I think for those projects, we should make decision not only based on how many function those will change, but also consider can we bear the loss. For example, when some company set their softwares free for the individual, they have to evaluate that whether they can handle those loss.
Ivy M. McCottry says
Xiaodi Ji – thanks for the feedback and the consideration. You bring up interesting points. I think that what you mentioned allows for staging or phasing project implementations not only for ease of impact, but also for gauging that impact to the enterprise.
Folake Stella Alabede says
1. What is the importance of having a target mix before starting to approve projects?
A target mix helps an organization know what projects are pending and helps to categorize the importance of each projects. (and they should also be aligned to business objectives).
One importance is that having the target mix helps an organization prioritize projects and thus, they can approve the projects in order of importance. Not having the target mix might not be beneficial to an organization. For example, the organizations might have approved a project, only to see that weeks down the line, they have a far greater and more important project that also needs to be implemented, so depending on resources, do they stop/pause the first project to start on the more important project ? is there funding to run multiple projects concurrently ?
Using my organization as an example, the internal audit team have been trying to get some projects approved for close to 3 years, to help us with our audits, but our projects are submitted with lots of other projects, and we keep getting pushed further down the line because there are “more important” projects that needs to be approved and implemented urgently. Right now, I don’t even know where we stand with our proposals, but this could be one of the advantage of having a target mix. Granted that our projects are necessary and important, we also see the reason and need to approve all those other projects before ours
Xiaodi Ji says
Folake,
A less important project give space for the most important is very common in the company. I think company always balance the benefit and cost for a project. If this project can get more benefit, many companies may give up the former one. It sounds like cruel and not fair for the people who are doing former project. However, even a huge enterprise cannot hold to many project in the same time. For example, Microsoft had to stop update for Window XP to open a new project Window 8.
On the other hand, I think we should not give up a project that we already did. We may choose freezing it. Saving all of project’s file in some place to make sure that one day when we need this project, we can take it and continue it which may save a lot than start everything from the beginning.
Sheena Thomas says
3.Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I can’t speak for most companies, I can only speak for the companies I worked for and the projects I was apart of. From my experienced each company I worked for compared most of their critical projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project. This was to ensure the following:
-status updates
-to see if any critical issues came up that would affect completion date.
-to ensure that key players are getting the help they need from key departmental resources.
-funding
Sheena Thomas says
2.Why would you want all projects to be proposed in a uniform way?
A project that is proposed in a uniform way gives a clear and concise understanding of the project. The uniform proposal will help key players to understand the purpose of the project and the steps needed to complete the project.
What would you suggest as information that must be available for all projects?
-Purpose of project
-benefits (short & long term)
-Departments affected (positively or negatively-down time, outage) by project
-Test Plan
-Start & Completion date
-Training
-Funding Amount initial amount & any quarterly or yearly amounts
-Project Manager
-Names of all key department heads and their resources needed to complete project.
-How many man hrs would the project take and do we need to hire specialist, contractors, programmers, etc.
Andrew P. Sardaro says
Sheena,
I agree with your assessment that a uniform approach to project proposals gives the key players a clear understanding of the purpose and steps needed for approval. I also like the two items you suggest for project proposals, test plan and training. These items would influence the money and resources needed to complete the project, and influence the decisions of approval.
Sachin Shah says
3. Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I absolutely believe that organization’s compare the project performance against what was proposed. I work in an hospital and so much patient care , although not a project, is driven on outcome.
What is it that we are planning to do or go with this project? That is what is asked before the project. After the project “what good came out of this project”? How much did the project cost to implement and how many resources were used and was it worth it. Every business has a way of measuring the return on investment.
Leadership will have to evaluate risk and understand the importance of the project. Basically what happens if the project is not even started? Or leadership needs to account for the initiatives met and compare that to where the project fell short. How do we know where a project fell short is by comparing it to the proposal.
Xiaodi Ji says
Do you think most organizations compare their projects’ performance to that which was proposed by the project? Why or why not?
I think that some organizations do this. During the process of the project, companies need know how this project doing. It can run those project under control. First reason is that if this project’s performance is not good as it was proposed, we can find the reason why it happened and what should we do to improve to avoid the risk.
The second reason is that we can improve our project. Some projects have some background when they were proposed. However, when companies run those projects, situation may changed. Thus, the projects need change follow the situation. Therefore, evaluate projects’ performance real help us to make right decision to improve the project.
I also think many companies do not do this because when company to do this will spend many sources in it which sometimes may not valuable. For example, when we spend one week to estimate a project, we just get the result that this project is well. Thus, what is the value for this compare.
Therefore, I think the period is the main point for this. How long should we check this project is the key.
Ivy M. McCottry says
5. How does your company make project funding decisions? How well does it work?
In a certain part of our business, funding decisions are driven by subscribers and revenues. The decision makers are business unit leaders from across various businesses. I think the process works well. However, I don’t think that there is sufficient tracking of target mix. I think the process has openings for redundancy if business unit leaders aren’t aware of existing projects or if the process does not require project owners to acknowledge similar efforts in their business or other businesses in the enterprise.
Alexander B Olubajo says
5. How does your company make project funding decisions? How well does it work?
Since I work in the Engineering IT organization within my company, I can only speak to how project funding decisions are made. Projects in my organization go through something we call a “FLEXWAVE” project life cycle management. It’s a framework that is implemented for projects related to engineering products, test tools, and services/solutions. There are 6 phases of FLEXWAVE Life Cycle Management; Concept, Definition, Development, Validation, GA and EOL.
–Concept Phase: which validates a project’s feasibility to meet the business’ objectives.
–Definition Phase: coordinates the product requirements, design, development, testing, Supply Chain, repair, quality goals, and support activities for successful deployment.
–Development Phase: completes the Product design, development, design verification, system level test and the identified deliverables.
–Validation Phase: plans and executes the customer validation activities, and prepares the manufacturing facilities, Repair centers and support teams for product release.
–GA Phase: completes: product readiness, Supply Chain readiness, repair readiness, and product release. This phase continues past product release into product support.
–EOL Phase: The EOL phase takes products, service and support to retirement for a product.
The project funding decision is made at the “Concept Phase”. At this phase, the business strategy team will have identified a project prior, so this phase pretty much validates the project’s feasibility to meet the overall business objectives and approve the project tailoring. At the concept phase, the main activities are to complete the product proposal, identify potential customers and develop estimates for the project timeline. Items like financial cost and ROI are also analyzed at this phase. Then there is a “concept checkpoint” which provides the SMT with the information necessary to assess the viability of the proposed product and project management plan of intent. It’s purpose is to confirm it meets the following:
— Timing fits and is consistent with the company’s Strategic Objectives (Scorecard)
— Product/system requirements meet the customer’s expectations
— Business Case is viable
— No inter-program or competing program priority conflicts exist
— Project risks have been reviewed for customer impact and do not conflict with the customer’s requirements
After the review, a decision is made by the SMT to either approve or opt not to pursue (not approve). If approved, the tailored project framework is locked and any changes to remove an agreed upon deliverable or checkpoint require a justification record (supported in the Digital Contract Book). No justification is required for tailoring a new deliverable into the project framework.