Thomas Cutting, a certified project management professional at Keane Inc. Image Credit: Seth Joel
Hadrian's Wall stands as a monument to the battle between process and freedom. Built by the Romans in northern Britain between 122 and 130 A.D., the 74-mile barrier marked the final frontier of the vast and powerful Roman Empire. On one side stood law and order. On the other, men painted themselves blue, screamed like banshees and went all but berserk in their fight to remain free. Likewise, process- and quality- focused methods like the Capability Maturity Model and ISO 9000 impose law and order within an organization. Studies have shown that the consistent use of processes increases repeatability, productivity and quality while decreasing project delivery time. But these same processes can appear as a wall to the business people who are pressured to get their ideas to market. The project team ends up on the battle line between the program management office (PMO) enforcing the procedures and the business people seeking to retain their freedom. I have seen project managers burn out striving to please both groups. Here are some practical ideas to keep process from driving everyone berserk: Question processes. Processes are not always as helpful as intended, but a successful process matures over time through the addition, adjustment and removal of pieces. In my own experience, a form used to track project defects was one of those processes that offered limited payback. Its intent was to record the point during application development where defects were introduced so that we could determine how to improve. The time it took to record and analyze the information was disproportionate to the results, however. We questioned the process, found it unnecessary and removed it. Educate everyone. Once a process is understood, it's important to communicate it to the project team and other stakeholders affected by it, including the business stakeholders. Warning: People frequently resist a new procedure. The temptation for project managers is to shirk responsibility by saying, "The process group makes us do it." While initially this may get you sympathy, ultimately it will cause frustration and animosity toward the processes and the project. Reduce redundancy. Having multiple meetings or reports with the same purpose is just as insane as it sounds. One strategy to avoid this is to combine the team and business status meetings. Another is to combine multiple projects for the same business unit into one status meeting. If multiple groups need to receive status reports, agree on a common format to avoid duplicate efforts. Be aware, however, that if the original reports serve completely different purposes, combining them may not offer any benefit.
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