Organizational Agility

It is hard to just get projects done, let alone worry about whether the business believes they will get the results they need. So the cycle continues; business distrust of IT and poor communication between senior leadership and the project office.

There is a ground breaking effort to target business management leaders with project management information of specific interest to them. A book is being pulled together on Organizational Project Management (OPM) that aims to create knowledge about the interfaces among projects, programs and portfolios, how projects benefit the ongoing operations in organizations and how strategic objectives are attained through projects.

What’s your opinion; does the industry need this book?

Do you have something to say about this topic? If so, see OPM for more details.

Overall, “maturity” is a hot topic these days. In fact, my organization just conducted a massive overhaul of IT infrastructure based on the premise that we were not ‘mature’ in basic services across the board. We not only made that statement of ourselves but for each of the major “customer” organizations we serve. It became the basis of seeking outside support to transform our IT infrastructure using a combination of consolidation and outsourcing in the attempt to buy mature practices and processes.

In the case of IT Infrastructure, we used ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL ), which is pretty much the de rigueur for the infrastructure crowd. Of course, you cannot even begin to discuss maturity models without getting into CMMi, which is the grand-daddy of them all (http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/general/index.html ). But CMMi “can seem to be overly bureaucratic, promoting process over substance.”1 And then there’s COBIT, which provides a framework for best practices for IT practitioners (http://www.isaca.org/ ). I will not try to describe our favorite here (OPM3) other than to say that it is a worthy newcomer, which has yet to show its metal. And there are many more created and cultivated for professional use only (or exploitation, depending on your view).

So, you really have to have an understanding of the business strategy, culture and organizational structure to determine how to map a maturity model. Unfortunately, most maturity models do not really address strategy, culture and organizational structure, other than to say, “You should have some”. Most models, because of the heritage from CMMi are myopically focused on the processes and the attempt to reach continuous improvement. They forget that organizational environments are quite different and their desires and objectives are quite different (just like people). We need a model that is able to adapt to organizational context as a precursor to the assessment.

I recently came across a model which ties the OPM3 context to the Organizational Strategy, in a way that finally gives executives something to hang on to for their purposes and also allows the translation of Project-Program-Portfolio processes into Operational needs. Attached is a simple depiction of what is described in detail in the book “Executing Your Strategy, How to Break it Down & Get it Done”, by Mark Morgan, Raymond Levitt and William Malek. It shows the context in which effective strategy is defined through the understanding and definition of organizational “Ideation” (defining of purpose, identify and intention), Vision (defining goals and metrics), and Nature (defining culture and structure). Engagement occurs through the interaction of strategy and portfolio management, which then leads to Synthesis (program and project management), which then drives Operations through transition processes. OPM3 clearly fits in the Synthesis and Transition activities and has tried to position itself for the set of Engagement activities. But what has been missing is the context for Strategy, which is the Ideation, Nature, and Vision. Project Management (and therefore Organizational Project Management) is a change mechanism, so it must provide a feedback loop to the Nature and Vision parts of Strategy, and either provide an alignment or change them.

Here are the authors’ six imperatives of strategic investing:

Strategy-Making Imperatives

Ideation: Clarify and communicate identity, purpose and long range intentions.

Nature: Align the organization’s strategy, culture and structure.

Vision: Translate long-range intention into clear goals, metrics and strategy.

Project Leadership Imperatives

Engagement: Engage the strategy via the project investment stream.

Synthesis: Monitor and continuously align the project work with strategy.

Transition: Transfer projects crisply to operations to reap the benefits.

I will conclude this piece by defending OPM3 again. The biggest criticism stems from it being big and complex with its breadth of capabilities. I think it is our jobs to find ways to present it in simpler terms that help others see the core aspect. This means we need to do more to improve the practice and show greater business value. I think it has come a long way and we have all invested ourselves in it. Now is not the time to give up.

Footnotes:
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model

Last month Ginger Levin had an excellent blog about the strengths of OPM3 standard and asked: “Where are the customers?”
And it is indeed a very good question why it is not selling like ‘hotcakes’ when other models like OGC’s PRINCE2 and PMI’s own knowledge foundation, “The PMBOK Guide”, have. The fact is that neither OPM3 nor P3M3 has yet sold in any significant numbers.
 
So, who is to blame?
 
To understand who to blame we must first understand why and if there are any to blame.
 
First of all we need to recognise that there are huge differences between project management knowledge foundations and methods and big organizational improvement models like OPM3 and P3M3. The differences between the fairly simple models and the big models are comparable to the discrepancies between a Mazda 3 and a Mercedes CLS Coupé. The first one is small, simple and rather inexpensive whereas the last is big, complex and expensive.
 
Imagine that Mazda wanted to enter into the market for luxury cars. Toyota has tried with their Lexus. And even though they might claim to be successful, they have still after many years not been able to threaten luxury brands like BMW, Mercedes and Audi.
 
The reason is obvious. The Toyota brand is not known as a luxury brand – neither is Mazda.
 
Making a parallel it becomes evident why PMI has not yet succeeded with their OPM3 standard. PMI is not known for its capabilities within organizational improvement models. This is the first reason PMI has not succeeded yet.
 
Toyota has been a half success. But only because Toyota in their development and marketing of their Lexus has used engineers, designers and marketing people with deep knowledge about luxury cars.
 
The question is whether PMI has used people with deep knowledge – theoretical as well as practical – about organisational improvement or whether they have used people in the R&D and marketing with knowledge about project management. PMI’s website tells the truth. Only volunteers who are PMP certified are considered to be able to contribute to a product that is as far away from project management as Mercedes CLS Coupé is from Mazda 3. This is the second reason PMI has not succeeded yet.   
    
The third reason can be identified by looking at other grand organizational improvement initiatives like TQM and the Learning Organisation and at excellence models like EFQM and Baldridge Award. The initiator of all these has been academia with a theoretical ‘drive’ to understand factors of success and performance. This theoretical drive stands in stark contrast to PMIs practician driven R&D approach. And even though it might not look as a big problem – it surely is. The inertia within academia combined with the fact that PMI’s model has been developed by praticians generate unnecessary challenges for PMI’s marketing of OPM3 because it becomes even more challenging to market the model through some of the most effective marketing channels – peer reviewed articles in the big business journals.
 
The fourth reason can also be learned by looking at EFQM and Baldridge Award. Both models seem to balance the accuracy of complex reality with practical simplicity quite well. It is very hard to see the same balance when looking at OPM3 with its gigantic amount of capabilities and best practices.
 
As PMI are to publish their next version of OPM3 soon it is a question what can be done.
 
First of all PMI should investigate if the awareness and comprehension of the model are with the people who take the decisions to buy. I bet – they are not!
 
Secondly, conviction must be created in order to make people buy. But conviction is hard to create when academia doesn’t support the model and when the model seems to be far too complex to offer practical help to most organizations most of the time.
 
If PMI truly want their standard to succeed they must confront the brutal fact and invite organizational development and behaviour theorists together with process improvement theorists into the R&D when the next release is to be made and they must ensure that this R&D is aligned with the marketing strategy.

Søren Porskrog