This short (4+ min.) video is an excerpt from the presentation made at the Project Congress 2013 in Frankfurt, Germany .

Excerpt from:
Congress Report, 18 – 19 March, 2013 – Sheraton Airport Hotel, Frankfurt, Germany

Roadmap to OPM Implementation Excellence

Russ McDowell, managing partner at Russona Consulting shared many valuable suggestions to improve project success based on his observations and experiences of working with many different clients over a period of several years.

If we are going to “make project management indispensable for business results”, then we need to better understand our clients’ perspectives and issues, and how projectized activities contribute to those business results! It is important to realise that, from an executive’s viewpoint, they are trying to achieve their organization’s strategic objectives through “changing the business”. In pursuit of this, their focus is on results, not activities, tasks, and work packages; projects are a stepping stone, they do not provide benefits to the organization themselves.

In today’s world organizations face challenges from many different directions. Increased globalization, new markets opportunities, and pressure to reduce time to market are just some examples. Organizations cannot afford to stand still. Often, it is not the strongest or smartest organization that survives, but the one that responds best to change. While senior managers are quite capable of setting the strategic direction, the challenge they face is the need for a concrete, realistic action plan to implement the change; to move from those strategic objectives and goals to integration in the day-to-day processes of “business as usual”.

What they have realized is that implementing change in an organization is not the same as running the business. What provides higher success rates is the use of “projectized activities”; a combination of all three domains: portfolio, programme, and project management. This more complete view of the changes allow the organization to consider aspects of the entire life cycle in the solution: the rationale for having to change the business in the business case; the balance of where to deploy the resources of the business in the portfolio management selection of the most strategic projects, the actual project execution itself, and finally the integration of the project outputs (new or enhanced capabilities) into the “business as usual” operations. This last step being necessary before the organization will start to realize benefits and achieve planned outcomes. That is when the organization realizes value from the investment made in supporting the project.

The presentation goes through these ideas in a sequential manner. After discussion of the different domains needed in a complete solution, a simple model of project scoring / prioritization is reviewed. Using a readily available spreadsheet application, a rudimentary approach to the portfolio question is demonstrated. The approach focuses on how to select those projects which will contribute the most to the organizations strategic objectives, while not committing to more than is possible with the limited resources (people or money) available to work on those projects selected. The model also incorporates the support of a “balanced” portfolio in that it incorporates an analysis of how much of the budget is used in different investment areas.

The presentation then provides a quick analysis of why it is generally better from an organizational viewpoint to focus on completion of projects and not “timeshare” resources across multiple projects, causing delays to the completion of projects.

Having covered the areas of portfolio management (“doing the right projects”), and project management (“doing the projects right”), the presentation covers aspects of the post-project phase. In particular how are the benefits need to be detailed in business cases, and measured after the project is complete.

Projects should be selected based on their potential value they can bring the organization.

This selection should not focus only on financial aspects; rather it should be based on the contribution to achieving the organizations strategic goals. As Henry Ford once stated: “The greatest waste in business is doing the wrong thing well”. If we don’t select and support the projects which contribute most value, then the portfolio selection is not optimal.

Considering that multiple projects and assignments are included in a portfolio, companies often desire to do as many projects as possible while simultaneously satisfying the clients’ requests.

However, resources are limited. As such, there is a tendency to have resources divided across multiple projects. However, another approach is possible as well. Companies should consider doing projects iteratively, so that projects that demand the same amount of resources, scope, and duration are not undertaken at the same time.

From an organizational perspective, this means that single projects are finished faster since more resources can be allocated to them. Additionally, it allows teams to focus on a single task at hand, thereby improving team morale. In the longer run, such changes would reduce turnover of staff and clients, without a negative impact on the business environment.

In order to measure the benefits created by completing projects, baseline values have to be declared in the business case before the project starts. This establishes a solid methodology that allows for a direct comparison between the situation before the project was started, and the situation once the project has finished.

The maturity of an organization can be improved by using the organizational project management maturity model, which consists of the following steps: first, an organization should standardize its processes; second, the performance of these processes has to be measured; lastly, these processes have to be controlled and adjustments have to be made along the way. If done correctly, an organization can use this model to continuously improve its functioning.

To summarize, Russ McDowell proposes five questions that an organization should ask itself in considering its success in organizational change: 1. Are we investing in the right things? 2. Are we optimizing our capacity? 3. Are we realizing the promised benefits? 4. Can we absorb all the changes? 5. How well are we executing? The conclusion is that better project management processes results in more agile organizations.

One that is able to prioritize strategic changes and follow through to successful implementation.

Success being measured by the actual benefits realized and outcomes achieved. Organizational Project Management Maturity Models (OPM3) ® provide the foundations on which to build this capability. As organizations become more mature in their implementation of advanced project management techniques, this provides a competitive advantage over their competitors.

In this way, project management becomes indispensable for achieving business results.

About the speaker Russ McDowell is an independent consultant responsible for the set-up or management of numerous project offices, definition of project management frameworks, as well as the management of successful projects. He has contributed to the development of the field of “Organizational Project Management” through roles as: • Past Chair of PMI’s worldwide Community of Practice for Organizational Project Management, • Co-author of the book “Organizational Project Management – Linking Strategy and Projects” published in 2010, • One of PMI’s original instructors for their SeminarsWorld ® course titled: “OPM – Where do Good Projects Come From?”, and cited in three OPM-related PMI standards for his contributions in the development of:

• the Portfolio Management Standard, 
• the Program Management Standard, 
• and the OPM Maturity Model (OPM3).