Advanced Multi-Project Management

Achieving Outstanding Speed and Results with Predictability

Gerald Kendall, Kathleen Austin

• Publisher: J. Ross Publishing
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781604270808
• eBook ISBN: 9781604277340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

Even in a well-managed multi-project environment, it is not unusual to see half of all projects completed either late, over budget or with cuts to original scope. However, the proven approach presented in Advanced Multi-Project Management has enabled large, medium, and even small organizations to consistently complete their projects faster, within original scope and budget, and increase the number of projects executed with the same resources by as much as 70%. The list of companies that have used this methodology for stunning results includes some of the biggest, well-known names in the world—Boeing, Rio Tinto, ABB, and Chrysler. This guide details the six gears that must work in unison to drive speed and predictability within an organization.

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PART I

WHY MULTI-PROJECT

ENVIRONMENTS ARE SO

MESSED UP

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There are many symptoms of problems: late projects, fights over resources, multitasking between project and operational responsibilities, scope changes, etc. There are thousands of books on project management, and even some really, really good ones. So why are project results still so unpredictable worldwide? Part I builds an understanding of the single, common root problem of all multiproject environments that continues to be ignored. Understanding the problem is halfway toward solving it. By the end of Part I, you will be ready to capitalize on the leverage points within multi-project management. Fortunately, there are only a few to master.

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1. Introduction—The Multi-Project Problem

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The Dilemma

For the first time in his long, successful career, Joe Turano felt like he was losing control. As director of European supply chain, he was next in line to take over from his boss as president–Europe for a major apparel company. Last month, Joe’s boss, Kevin Vaughan, told him that the company’s board of directors had approved a merger with a much larger company. Joe would have a new boss within a couple of months. But equally challenging, within six months, their supply chain would have to be fully integrated with the other company’s logistics, IT, and financial/ERP systems. This was an urgent project, necessary to show the stock analysts how successful the new company was. Failure to do so would put Joe’s position in jeopardy.

Joe’s stomach lurched as he heard Kevin’s voice call him from the corner office.

“Joe, where is that update you promised me on the status of the merger project? You know there’s a board meeting next week and they’re going to want to know that the project is back on track.”

“Yes, I know, Kevin. I’ll get it to you this afternoon. It’s just that I’ve been dealing with the truckers’ strike in France and trying to fend off retail’s demands for more marketing programs.”

“Joe, don’t lose your focus. Hey, how are those extra people I got you from engineering doing? They must be making a significant difference for you by now.”

“Um, sure,” Joe said, but the truth was written on his face. Adding resources had not paid off as he had hoped.

Joe already had dozens of major improvement projects on the go, including finding 15 new Chinese, Vietnamese, and South Korean suppliers; fixing shortages within their distribution and retail channels; opening two new distribution centers; improving the forecasting system accuracy; and providing better information for sales and marketing. Even without those projects, his people were busy enough dealing with day-to-day operational challenges. In addition to the truckers’ strike in France, his team had to overcome supplier schedules missed, new product introductions—the list went on and on.

Figure 1.1 Today’s multi-project performance is like the airlines—perfect mis-synchronization

Their most critical resources were already spread too thin between these existing projects and operational responsibilities. It was an enlightening example of misalignment between projects and resources (see Figure 1.1). How on earth was Joe going to find the time for himself and his people to integrate with another company?

Joe’s dilemma is generic to every company in the world that has to manage multiple projects:

Assign resources to start urgent new projects now

OR

Keep resources only on existing projects

In the past, Joe’s direct reports had often pushed back whenever Joe initiated a major new project. He had heard so often, “We can’t do it—we need more resources—we don’t have time.” Sometimes he would back off, but mostly he pushed his people hard and it seemed to work. All of his key initiatives moved much too slowly, from his perspective, but at least there was progress. He left late many evenings, but was rarely the last person to leave the office. Occasionally, he wondered if there was too much on everyone’s plate. Even he had trouble keeping track of dozens of major projects. Sometimes, he would get a resignation with the feedback that “this just isn’t a fun place to work anymore.”

But what could Joe do? He needed those projects to succeed in order to meet his annual goals. And now, he also needed to integrate with the newly acquired company at the peril of losing his job or, worse, keeping his job and stagnating for years. His people would just have to work harder over the next six months. If they couldn’t do it, he would find others who would.

Why Can’t We Get More Done with Existing Resources?

As Joe began to think about his available choices, he found none of them satisfactory. If he delayed new projects and tried to free up resources as they came off existing projects, he believed he would kill his chance of meeting the company’s quarterly and annual goals. Plus, from past experience, he knew that the integration with the new company would be painful and require a lot of time from his best people.

A second choice was to freeze some existing work. Again, his assumption was that would hurt his company goals. In the past, whenever he went to the president with any hint of freezing initiatives, his boss exploded. “If we can’t get ALL of these projects completed successfully,” his boss exclaimed, “I’ll end up missing year end targets. My job and yours will be down the drain!” he shouted.

Joe thought about hiring subcontractors, but by the time they would be available and brought up to speed, it would have about the same effect as the other choices or worse—it could drain his best people in supporting the contractors. In the short run, he would have to explain the added operating expense without the results to show for it. And he wasn’t sure about the longer run—so often, subcontractors couldn’t deliver the results, couldn’t take the pressure, and often left just when they were turning productive, putting more pressure on his most experienced people to carry the dual load of doing the work and training new subcontractors.

Another choice was to simply add the new project to the existing load and let his people figure out a way to cope with it. Deep within his brain and his heart, he feared this one the most. His best people were already upset about what from their perspective was the constant overcommitting. From their perspective, this caused extensive overtime. Their overtime frustration was compounded by scope changes, rework, and missed deadlines, all blamed on the resources who were working the hardest. Several of his best people had told him that their families would not tolerate the extensive overtime much longer. No, there had to be a better way.

The Criteria for an Answer

If there was a possible way out of all of the daily conflicts that could be a win for everyone, it would have to meet some tough criteria. The solution must:

1. Get more project work done with the same resources, with less overtime
2. Get all projects completing faster
3. Make projects much more predictable in his world of constant surprises
4. Be simple (i.e., easy for his team to understand) and fast to implement

Joe had tried too many times over the past five years to solve these problems. One of his program managers had strongly recommended new multi-project software. Accepting this recommendation, Joe worked with IT for a full nine months to evaluate different multi-project software solutions, negotiate with a vendor, implement the new software, convert existing data, and train all project, program, and resource managers. The multi-project server approach made it easier to share project data between project and resource managers over the web, but didn’t fundamentally change how the project tasks were managed. They squeezed about a 3% improvement in project execution out of that multimillion dollar effort—barely enough to make a dent in the problem and pay for the software and implementation costs despite IT’s near perfect effort.

He tried increasing head count. His company had almost double the number of project managers as two years ago, which seemed to cause all projects to slow down. These additional project managers created a much higher demand for other resources. They were now hitting time-consuming bottlenecks because of holdups with legal counsel, users unable to absorb the change quickly enough, and demand on IT, administration staff, and other resources not even taken into account when the projects were planned. All of this increased exponentially over the past two years and held up project tasks for long durations. Sometimes it was an executive decision that delayed things. Sometimes it was a supplier delivering late. Sometimes it was a stage gate review.

In fact, Joe had also implemented complicated initiatives such as project management maturity models and certification programs for project managers. He had spent a lot of money on training project and resource managers, with minimal or no tangible impact on project durations. Projects were completing just over 50% on time, on budget, and within scope, which Joe was told was above average. Big deal!

Six Elements of a Solution

It would be incredible if Joe had been able to invent the full answer to these challenges within a few days, or even weeks. As it turned out, it took Joe a full year to put together the common pieces that at least correlated to high success. He researched the web, listened to over 50 videos presented by organizations that got major improvements in project management (see Appendix B), read 10 profound books (see Bibliography), attended conferences, and spoke with project management solution providers who focused on results rather than just process or software. He discovered that the answer had evolved over the prior 15 years. Joe noted that every organization which had documented tangible results had six common elements. These elements had to work in concert to meet all of the solution criteria he had previously identified, and so he pictured them like gears perfectly meshed (see Figure 1.2):

• Gear to mesh the amount of project work in process. When a system is so clogged with work that almost every task is waiting, drastic action is required to get fast results. In this case, the drastic action is to cut the amount of active project work significantly (e.g., often by 50%) and then stagger projects to match organization capacity: When a system behaves like our air transportation approach, it takes more than a few canceled flights to permanently remove the problem of overloading. Joe reasoned that he could have 30 active projects completing within the next year, with a 50% track record of on time, if he kept doing the same thing. However, by reducing the number of active projects in half, to 15, he knew he could meet one of his criteria to get more work done with the same resources and his second criterion of getting the work done faster. What Joe discovered was that his organization did not need to kill any of the remaining 15 projects. It only had to freeze them, and then all 30 projects would get done faster. To get the results, it also did not matter to the system which 15 started out as the active ones and which were frozen (he knew that choosing the projects to freeze would be done easily by using his company’s overall projec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface
• Biography
• Web Added Value™
• PART I-WHY MULTI-PROJECT ENVIRONMENTS ARE SO MESSED UP
• PART II-OVERVIEW OF THE PERMANENT MULTI-PROJECT SOLUTION
• PART III-PROJECT PLANNING, NETWORKS, AND RISK AVOIDANCE
• PART IV-INSULATING PROJECTS FROM VARIABILITY
• PART V-ALIGNING AND ACTIVATING MULTIPLE PROJECTS
• PART VI-MULTI-PROJECT EXECUTION
• PART VII-ENTERPRISE PROJECT RESOURCE PLANNING
• PART VIII-MULTI-PROJECT SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
• PART IX-EXECUTIVE BUY-IN AND CONCLUSIONS
• Appendix A: Strategy and Tactics Approach for Multi-Project Management
• Appendix B: Success Stories and Video References
• Appendix C: Sample Enterprise Resource Categories
• Appendix D: What about Agile?
• Appendix E: Complete Case Study on Project Planning
• Bibliography