Learning Leader

Refreshing PRINCE2 Audio Series - Unscripted

One of the approaches we took in recording the podcast series at
www.pearcemayfield.com/audio was to record them more-or-less unscripted as conversations between John and me. We follow the content of PRINCE2, rather than try to paraphrase chunks of the manual we explore the design approach behind each feature.

So here was the scenario: as someone who had a role in delivering the original edition in 1996, I pumped John, as one of the authors, about the new look 2009 edition. 

What happened was that, very naturally, illustrations and experiences came to mind for both of us. What emerged was a series of informed conversations on an abstract Method related to the real world. This is produced something we feel is more engaging and memorable for people learning the new edition of PRINCE2 than if we were to have produced a slick, but anodyne, audio narration of the Method. 

Besides, enough people tell us that they find the book is boring enough already!

So I'm really pleased the natural spontaneity we achieved. (Someday we may publish the outtakes.)

A Model of Everything

The Holy Grail of the physical sciences, we are told, is the “Theory of Everything”. By this

I understand scientists to mean a single unifying theory that underpins the Universe, from the behaviour of the smallest atom to the movements of the 100 billion galaxies. We are seeing different sciences peek over their boundaries to others and realise that they are attacking different facets of our physical world with very similar models.Could there be a unifying theory that explains everything? That is the great quest.

In recent years we have seen something similar happening with the changing shape of management methods.  Models of change and methods from previously separate areas – such as project management and organisation development – are now beginning to ‘talk to each other’ and synthesise. We are seeing the emergence of common terms and of what some call ‘joined-up thinking’.

This is particularly evident in the area pearcemayfield comes from: methods and models whose development has been sponsored by the UK’s OGC and promoted by APM Group. Over the last fifteen years we have seen a convergence of language and a dovetailing of models in the following:

·         Project management (PRINCE2®)

·         Risk management (M_o_R®)

·         Programme management (MSP®)

·         Change management

·         Portfolio, programme and project support and assurance (P3O®)

·         IT service management (ITIL®), and

·         Maturity models (e.g. P3M3)

The OGC ownership of these has been significant in that it has worked towards convergence in successive publications of PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R, for example, in a way that the ‘free market’ of ideas in business and academia might not have achieved so fluently; hence the significance of all the Registered Trade Marks above.

In particular, I would point to two ‘unifying’ pieces in particular:

1.       P3O, which has a unifying diagram. The position of a P3O system of support and assurance is such that it must move across all these different management areas with some kind of cohesion. A P3O insists on joined-up thinking.

2.       Change management. Although not yet adopted by OGC, this has been pioneered by APM Group. As a topic it is far too inclusive to insist on neat boundaries, such as with PRINCE2 project management. Effective change involves thinking about strategy, values, benefits realisation management, individual motivation, leadership … the works.

As we introduce clients to more members of this family of models, we are less likely to show disjointed links. Rather we find clients appreciate how much the recent editions of PRINCE2(2009)  and MSP(2007) build upon one another and other approaches.

Of course, we would claim some credit for that, having had a pearcemayfield author on both….:)

The Psychic Noise of Risk

or

... how I stopped worrying and learned to love risk management ...

As regular readers of the blog will know, I am an admirer of David Allen's work, particularly his Getting Things Done book. 

Mr Allen takes a lists-based approach to personal management. I was introduced to mind mapping first, so I was a little snooty about lists, regarding them as a fairly primitive form of making notes. However, I now realise that's silly: mind maps themselves can be radial lists.

However, one phrase gripped me in David Allen's approach where he describes all the uncaptured things we need to do seem to swim around in our heads as "psychic noise", distracting us from being able to focus upon the matter in hand, or what is most important at any given time. "Yes," I thought, "this noise needs to get out of my head and onto paper so that I can have confidence that I will come back to it at a later, more appropriate time." Thus with the item 'parked' on an appropriate list or mind map, I can then focus on the immediate matter in hand.

Continuing the theme in my last post, risk, there is a similar dynamic when it comes to the value of identifying risk. Whatever we may be planning, there will be uncertain threats and opportunities. Simply naming these and working out appropriate responses become enormously 'uncluttering' mentally, as we go about our business planning.

OGC have now built this into their best management practice in projects (PRINCE2), programmes (MSP) and at all levels of the business (M_o_R). It is now standard practice in every business case to list the major risks and factor in the costs of sensible responses to them.

As I practice this more myself in pearcemayfield, I can say this works. I notice that the 'psychic noise' in my head is reducing.

Extreme Management

We have extreme sports, where people take a sport and push it to the limits for the sake of a 'rush'. I remember seeing a group of hang-gliders launching off the top of Mount Kilimanjaro once. There was a basic skill - flying a hang glider - pushed to extremes by the situation.

Something similar can take place with basic management skills, skills like delegation and meetings management. These are so basic that they are assumed skills. But put managers into extreme situations, then these skills are often found to be pretty weak.

Consider a project. with all the challenges required to manage a cross-functional group of strangers working together sometimes on a one-time-only basis. This is an extreme management situation even thoygh 'project' may be quite a normal mode of execution. Strength in basic management skills such as delegation and meetings management are crucial here. And yet they so often fail.

In the PRINCE2 project management method, management by exception is one of the key principles. It presupposes the ability of senior managers to delegate effectively. When that fails, the principle is not lived and the project itself is likely to flounder.

This week I was with a client where there was a distinct absence of any evidence that senior management could delegate well. In ordinary operational circumstances this would not have been exposed quite so vividly, but here it neutralised the effectiveness of a good project manager. A project requires good delegation skills. To some it can seem like extreme management.

Go configure! #PRINCE2

Yesterday I was briefing an audience of project managers on the recent changes in the PRINCE2 Refresh. I was at pains to stress the sleekness of the new version, how it had been stripped down, how the number of processes has been reduced from 8 to 7, and so on.

Then I went too far. At least for one member of the audience. I said that the Components (now called 'Governance Themes') had also been reduced to 7 by losing the chapter on Configuration Management.

It was then that I spotted this gentlemen, visibly discomforted by this. I'd left him with the impression that PRINCE2 no longer advocated care and control over a project's growing assets (aka 'Configuration Management'). I immediately attempted to correct this misunderstanding; PRINCE2 now treated this topic within the Change Chapter (formerly 'Change Control').

This didn't satisfy him. For this gentleman configuration management was a vital part of best practice project management and therefore deserves the visibility of its own chapter in any project management method. Indeed, the original PRINCE method (1989-1996) has its very own volume, albeit a thin one!

Well, I agreed with his concern, but only up to a point. However, I disagreed with his conclusion about visibility. When we understand what configuration management is - a clear versioning and control of all assets, combined sets of assets, control over the assembly of components into a coherent configuration, being able to manage stable releases, to track back, and to be able to roll back to previous configuration states - when we understand all this, then my point is: surely this is a general management discipline, and is not particular to projects. For example, delegation is an absolutely crucial management discipline in applying PRINCE2 well; yet it doesn't merit its own chapter in a book about how to manage projects well. This is immediately obvious because delegation is a generic management skill, not the exclusive preserve of project managers. So it is with configuration management.

So should project teams practise good configuration management in the volatile world of fast-moving projects? Of course they should. But then this is a normal discipline of business.

Timing Training

There's nothing more useless than gratuitous education.

My son, Robin, was a delegate last week on our PRINCE2 for Practitioners course. It was fascinating getting feedback from his whole experience. He found the course intense but rewarding; a sense-making of much of the chaos and jumble that made up his previous experience on projects.

Our conversation turned to his readiness for such training. Robin reflected that a few years ago he would simply have not brought enough reference points from his own experience to understand the relevance of much of PRINCE2.

To paraphrase the Bard - 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when trained at the ebb, leads on to fortune.' There is such a thing as premature training, gratuitous training, which is far less valuable, pointless even, than when training is timed to build upon some pertinent experience. 

Perhaps good training is like telling a joke well: its very much to do with timing.

Aftermath of the PRINCE2 Refresh Breakfast Briefings

On Tuesday we held the penultimate of our public Breakfast Briefings at Imperial College, London and had a very good turnout. One client emailed this unsolicited comment afterwards:

The breakfast briefing at Imperial was one of the best I’ve attended on Project Management due to the clarity of presentation and the gravitas of the speakers / representatives in the audience. Well done to everyone involved.

It's always nice when people generously and spontaneously give this kind of feedback.

Also we've had a response from this month's emailing to our clients and we have one corporate client request an in-house briefing. This will happen in September.

There is one public breakfast briefing left on our schedule - Oxford University Press, Oxford, on Tuesday 18th August - and you can still book places.

Could PRINCE2 be like a mattress?

In this post I'm playing around with similes, exploring ideas. As a trainer I'm hunting for a good illustration. "PRINCE2 is like ..." So let me try this one out on you and let me know what you think...

During John's Breakfast Briefings on the 2009 edition of PRINCE2 I've been reflecting on a basic tension that is deliberately placed there for anyone wishing to apply it. The tension is between principles, which should never change, and that the method should be tailored. It's paradox. But the ancients valued paradox as way to greater insight and wisdom. Perhaps we should too.

Why does this apparent contraction work and, not just work, but produce better results?

Well this is where my search for similes comes in.

I think PRINCE2 is like a mattress. A mattress has certain constraints - its basic dimensions, its cover and binding - but it also has a 'give'. It has flexibility.

A few years ago my wife and I made one of our best purchases. We invested in a good quality mattress, one of those tempura mattresses that shapes itself to your body whilst giving you support. It was a little on the pricey side, but it has paid dividends in many comfortable nights' sleep. The mattress has a set shape and the structure of the material will only 'give' so much before it resists.

It seems to me that PRINCE2 has constants in its principles, a given structure, that make a project recognisably a PRINCE2 project. But project by project will take its own shape.

So let me know what you think of this simile, or if you can think of a better one.

PRINCE2 Refresh: More signal, less noise

We had another successful Breakfast Briefing yesterday, this time hosted by our partners in the Lifelong Learning Unit at Cardiff University. There was a good number of people there and yet again delegates raised some interesting and novel observations.

For example, John was explaining the design approach to refreshing the PRINCE2 book, a work that literally hundreds of thousands of project managers have come to regard as a standard reference. He explained that he and the others in the authoring team had not just  reduced the number of pages, not just reduced the processes from eight to seven, removed the techniques chapters, reduced the components from eight to a series of seven themes, but also the theme titles were deliberately shorter:

During the discussion time that followed, one project manager felt that this keyed into common usage more directly and removed some of the 'noise' of the older version of PRINCE2. People more naturally talk about 'Quality' than 'Quality Management in a Project Environment'. The latter is no doubt more precise, but quite complex; and it does not exactly roll off the tongue.

Talking to this lady afterwards I realised that yet again, less is more, that too much noise reduces the clear signal.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this version has a better signal to noise ratio, as they say.

If you would like a copy of the new Managing Successful Projects using PRINCE2 or the Directing a Successful Project using PRINCE2, then come along to one of our two remaining Breakfast Briefings - Imperial College, London on ... July, and Oxford University Press, Oxford on ... August - where we will be selling copies with £10 off. To book your free place, just email our office or call +44(0)1234 227 252.

See you there!

Repeating History

A theme developing in this blog recently has been the matter of learning lessons, particularly around the new edition of PRINCE2 project management and its principle of Learning from Experience.

A genre of reading that has been badly neglected by me has been history. Recently, in rapid succession I read two major histories: The Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, and D-Day by Antony Beevor (the latter a father's day gift from my older son). Both of these gripped me, although in quite different ways.

In The Great Game Hopkirk unfolds the epic 19th century struggle between the two super powers of the day, Russia and Great Britain, for control of High Asia, a geographically romantic but inhospitable region. There was the drama of human folly and great heroism on both sides. But also as I read this in the early 21st century, there dawms upon me the appalling reality that imperialists have learned very little from this, particularly in executing a military campaign in Afghanistan; or, for example, from the fickleness of the British politics over this era, depending on whether the Tories or the Liberals were in power at the time.

Then I picked up Antony Beevor's Book. As a teenager I had read Cornelius Ryan's account of the D-Day landings, The Longest Day ,and more recently, like many people, had seen the movie Saving Private Ryan, so I was aware of the near disaster on Omaha Beach. Oh, but the shambles of the Normandy campaign in the following three months was a revelation. 

For example, I'm no military historian, but I do know that nearly a hundred years before in the American Civil War the Confederates at Gettysburg were better integrated into units of calvary, infantry and artillery, and so had the edge in the early part of the battle, but that they failed to press home their early advantage. Amazingly, this lesson appears to been learned again the hard way in Normandy in the summer of 1944. It took some while for the Americans to 'get it' that they would be more effective if they coordinated armour, infantry units, artillery and air strikes closely. The British never did seem to learn this, despite taking on the lion's share of the panzer divisions during the campaign.

So what are the lessons here for project managers? 

I believe we humans are less likely to learn and adapt from the experiences of others than we like to think. We are apt to dismiss the experiences of our predecessors as irrelevant and so we learn the expensive way. We really do need to take this into account in valuing and living the PRINCE2 principle of Learning from experience.