project management - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

Most studies conclude: attempts to produce change in companies often lead to failure. According to a study conducted in 2013 by The Katzenbach Center, Price Waterhouse Coopers states that the success of change initiatives are only achieved in 54% of cases.

The mistakes in these attempts to manage change not only involves an economic and personal expense that does not produce any kind of benefit, but that set the precedent of a failed change. This creates a negative predisposition amongst the employees to adopt changes in the future.

Learn how to tackle project change with this e-book on PMO transformation.

However, change should be the backbone of business activity, as it is the only way to give effective responses to an increasingly volatile and unpredictable business world. Therefore, it should not be something that leaders decide to implement at a given moment when there is a crisis of their business model: it should be an attitude of constant improvement that is applied at all times in the development of the company.

However, change management policies continue to face difficulties when implementing them. Below are 5 reasons that may justify this failure.

1. Lack of anticipation of needs

One of the main characteristics that any leader should have is the ability to anticipate problems. The ideal problem is the one that you never have to solve and this is obtained by anticipating its appearance. Therefore, the change must anticipate the real needs. Market studies and socio-economic forecasts should guide the changes adopted by the company in order to adapt to the needs of customers even before they present them.

One way to perceive the needs of clients and employees early is to establish effective channels of communication. If these do not exist, the management of the company will only be aware of the real problems that arise in the daily work when the problem becomes too great. Establishing appropriate communication channels will allow customers and employees to express needs at the time they are presented, when the problem is still incipient, not when the problem has already manifested itself.

2. The strategy of change is not clear or does not occur at the appropriate speed

In order for the change to take place efficiently, it is necessary for the employees to perceive a purpose and a plan of action. If they do not exist or are not clearly explained, employees are likely to be reluctant to change, since they do not understand what meaning they have and are not aware of an appropriate action strategy.

Likewise, if one tries to adopt attitudes of change too quickly, these initiatives are most likely to fail, since employees will not be able to assimilate them properly. Therefore, the change must be fast enough to meet market needs, but slow enough to be efficiently enforced by employees.

3. Lack of alignment between the situation before the change, the actions undertaken and the needs of the market

When planning to introduce changes, it is advisable for leaders to gather all possible data on the state of the business and the market. This will allow the situation of the company to be understood before the application of change, to locate the most susceptible aspects of improvement and to plan the actions that will be undertaken in this respect. On the other hand, obtaining information must be carried out continuously throughout the change process, in order to detect the possible occurrence of risks and to plan the attitude to be taken before they arise.

In addition, it is important to consider that there are aspects of the company that are not included in the numbers. Some examples are employee satisfaction or degree of motivation. To be able to know this information, it is appropriate to promote a close communication between the leaders of the company and the employees to guarantee that enough confidence is generated to express the appearance of problems in the day to day activities.

A correct alignment between the situation of the company, the changes that are going to be introduced, the employees and the needs of the market will increase the chances of success of the change process.

4. Effective change is not led from above, but involves all

A change imposed from the top of the company is unlikely to be effective in the long run. For its establishment, it must be accepted and adopted by each of the employees.

For this reason, the greatest possible involvement of all leaders at all levels of the company, not just managers, is desirable.

In this way, the change will not be perceived as alien, but will be considered as its own and this motivation will facilitate its success.

5. The generation of a company culture guarantees continuity

Adopting a change-friendly business culture will make it easier for change to stay in place over time and for the company to be dynamic, making it easier to adopt new changes in the future.

The company culture is its personality, so if it is open to changes will facilitate that these are adopted in a consistent, simple and with guarantees of success.

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The fifth area of knowledge of PMI's PMBOK refers to all activities and processes related to responsibilities, policies and quality objectives. Quality is a key pillar in project management.

What does the quality of a project mean? Simply stated, the quality indicates that the result delivered by the project meets the defined expectations of the project.

According to the PMBOK itself, quality is:

"The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics meets the requirements."

Thus, quality management is the set of practices whose objective are to ensure the outcome of the project is sufficient to meet the goal or set objective.

Make sure you meet the quality of your ITM Platform projects

Unfortunately, this premise is often not met. It's very common to venture into large projects that do not meet the proposed needs. This can happen for multiple reasons, to which we can refer to as the three great enemies of quality.

The lack of communication between the sponsor and the team associated with the project is one of the most common ways of damaging project quality. There are times when the team appropriates the project from the collection of requirements, but the final delivery is not a suitable means to achieve the sponsors' goal. On the contrary, it may happen that the sponsor doesn't have a clear idea of how to reach their goal, so they can not give exact instructions regarding the requirements
The intangible quality. Quality has a lot to do with perception, so the client will have a different notion than the project manager or the analyst who is responsible for realizing the most complex technical details. In order for this subjective character to not become an obstacle, it is desirable to arrive at clear agreements and commitments on what quality means in the expected result. In the case of agile methodologies, these agreements become the guiding principle of the project iterations, coagulated under the notion of user story: a discrete requirement, the minimum that can be delivered in a functional way.
Conformity with what is planned. Or, what is the same, to think that the requirements will become a round product and finished as soon as all the planned work is completed. If progress is not measured continuously, assessing the needs for additional integration between requirements, adding new tasks and proactively solving incidents, the result may not be of the expected quality, but will be, at best, a product on which a second phase of work must be added.

To understand the great enemies of quality better, we will look at an example. Let us imagine that the project in question is a document management system with copy versioning, requested by an insurance company. The reason for requesting the document management system is that commercial area managers need to have visibility on all the policy offers that have been made to their customers to find guidelines in the negotiations and to design new promotions and pricing policies.

What happens in this project when the three enemies of quality are involved?

Lack of communication: The commercial management communicates the product that has been imagined that will solve their problems. However, it does not explain its business need in detail, preventing alternative ideas from emerging that could better serve that outcome, such as a CRM module with supply chain analysis and aggregate information. The systems team is based on the requested features of the document management model, cutting some characteristics whose implementation would be too expensive.
The intangible quality: When the product is delivered, the technical team and the project manager are satisfied and estimate the quality of the result by 90%. The most ambitious features are lacking, but they may be added at a later stage. The document manager works, is better than before, and deadlines and budgets have been respected. When the commercial director announces the new system to his team, he finds that nobody knows how to use it how it was intended. Understanding the dynamics of negotiations and extracting data is a long and expensive process. Although you can manage your documents well and improve productivity a little, no new pricing policies will emerge.
Conformity with what is planned. Along the way, there are characteristics that could have saved the project, such as the connection with the payment and supplier management system, and an apparently minor technical problem has prevented the new document management system from highlighting the changes of the latest version With the previous ones, facilitating the work

What does it take to manage quality?

Constant outward communication. It is necessary to understand the reasons and motivations of sponsors and clients to internalize what are the best requirements that guarantee quality.
Negotiation and agreements to define the quality of results
Pro-active problem solving
Adoption of good practices. To help in this regard, we then review the good practices that, according to the PMBOK, should be followed by the project manager in collaboration with the team members to manage the quality of the project.

Phases of Project Quality Management

1. Quality planning

Quality planning is done in the first phase of the project. The quality plan can be an independent document, although it is better that it is part of the total project management plan we have prepared, it is a way of unifying the norms and criteria that govern the quality of our products or services. It establishes the rules, variables and factors that will govern the processes, tasks, activities and projects of the organization.

The quality plan of the project establishes the standards that will govern it. These standards may be standards of the company itself or also of the client, if for example it has an ISO of its own quality and sets its own minimum requirements. The contributions made by our client will allow us to establish the quality objectives of the plan itself.

The quality plan allows for establishing the deadlines and procedures of the quality controls in the project itself, so that it fits the marked requirements and the expected objectives.

2. Quality assurance

The quality assurance can be measured through an independent evaluation of the project processes. It is a question of supervising to verify that the plan is in accordance with the purpose we had set ourselves, and for this we must check that all tasks and activities meet the requirements set.

We advise you to appoint a project control team to assume quality assurance responsibilities. It is not only a question of measuring the final result, but also of controlling and supervising the different phases, tasks, activities and dependencies.

It is also important to make reports that improve the perspective, justify the changes and correct errors or point out improvements during project management.

3. Quality control

Quality control is similar to quality assurance. The difference between the two concepts is that the quality control is carried out by the team that works in that phase, process, task or activity. On the other hand, quality assurance is supervised by a group outside the group that works at that stage.

Quality audits are carried out on an ongoing basis in each project management process. In this way, the team ensures that the result meets the standards set in the initial quality plan.

These types of audits or controls can be carried out through inspections, reviews and tests. Thanks to the integration of quality control in a systematic way in the process, we have the margin and capacity of reaction, besides the possibility of correction in case of any failure or error. It is important that you make and update a record of the tests, a history that feels the basis of learning to avoid future mistakes in that project, or another one in your company.

4. Continuous Improvement

Quality controls and quality assurance are implemented from the quality plan. The goal is to correct errors and ensure that the result is in accordance with the target or end mark, and meets the set standards. It is desirable to involve all stakeholders in quality controls to be able to rectify and make deviations from the initial planning if satisfaction with progress is low. In projects, transparency is often the mother of quality.

The quality management of the project allows us to continuously improve, advance and grow our company. The project manager has to be documented in the initial phase on the quality management of other plans, which will allow him to improve efficiency and avoid repeating mistakes. Hence the importance of records of controls and quality assurances, as well as reports, since they not only allow to lead the current project, but also provide for and alert about future.

All the team involved can collaborate by providing ideas for continuous improvement. Shared satisfaction contributes to commitment and involvement. And all this has a positive impact on the company, its services, products and projects that you want to carry out. The initial phases in which the foundations and the organization are established are fundamental for the later development.

This article belongs to a series on the 10 areas of knowledge of PMBOK. Check out the previous articles in the series:

The 10 areas of knowledge. 1: Project integration management

Integration with the ITM Platform Project Menu

The 10 areas of knowledge. 2: Project scope management

The 10 areas of knowledge. 3: Project Time Management

The 10 areas of knowledge. 4: Project Cost Management

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Managing a portfolio of innovative projects incurs many difficulties, such as the establishment of a culture of continuous evaluation in order to validate the hypothesis, or the difficult collaboration of multidisciplinary teams with no prior experience to rely on. For those who lead the innovation strategy, the biggest challenge is to have a tool that allows distinguishing the relative importance of each project in order to prioritize its implementation.

As the ratio between innovative ideas and projects reaching the final stage is very low, it is especially important to ensure that the highest value projects are approved. It is worth noting: innovation projects are very inefficient. It is necessary to spend time and money on research until you get an idea that is really worth pursuing. But that does not mean that you do not have to control how much time and money you spend, or what activities.

That is why this type of portfolio usually follows a lean philosophy: it starts from a hypothesis or idea that must pass through successive phases of refinement and validation.

Thus, before the existence of a project in the execution phase, there is the proto-project: first the idea or hypothesis, then the MVP, which requires pivot points. When the starting hypothesis is not endorsed by actual experience, or only partially, the proto-project can be reoriented in the light of what has been learned.

As pivoting generates additional costs in the search for commercial and technical viability, innovative proposals must be constantly evaluated to consider which ones should have room to generate inefficiencies and additional costs until a sound foundation is found - and which are discarded so that the investment is sustainable.

Innovation and corporate values

Innovation projects in large corporations are usually characterized by responding to a vision that goes beyond the business, also pointing to values such as Corporate Social Responsibility, environmental sustainability or the consolidation of one's own innovative culture.

For example, BBVA has an ambitious innovation strategy centered on Big Data. As the ultimate goal is to better understand the behavior of customers to provide better services, efforts are directed towards knowledge creation. With important ramifications: the key professional is no longer the traditional financier, but the data scientist, who "dominates statistics, knows how to program and also understands the business". The various initiatives that emerge from BBVA's Big Data strategy struggle for finite (though abundant) resources, which is why Marco Bressan has decided to concentrate on the centralization of information to begin with.

Start prioritizing your portfolio of innovative projects with ITM Platform

On the other hand, the means that any corporation has to materialize an innovation strategy is its portfolio of projects. In order for the portfolio of projects to have sufficient bearing, portfolio management must be the explicit responsibility of a corporate unit, often the management committee itself.

In the case of General Electric (GE), verticals include aviation and transportation, but they extend to materials as diverse as software, health services and water.

A sample of the diversity in GE's innovative portfolio

Unfortunately, as innovative projects are often completely unpublished and very different from each other, it is often difficult to know which projects are to be given preferential treatment. Is it more important that the project produces a social return or contributes to the modernization of the technological infrastructure?

Given the difficulty of comparing two innovative projects and knowing which will bring greater value to the company, it is crucial to have a criteria for making complex choices objectively.

Complex decisions are often subjective

A complex choice is one in which the alternatives are weighted based on more than one quality, so that there is no optimal alternative that surpasses the rest.

For example, several factors are taken into account when choosing an internet service provider: price, quality of customer service, the speed of the line and the reputation of the company. Usually the more economical services offer lower speeds, while more established brands often offer improved after-sales services. The decision is never obvious.

Complex choices are made daily. Often, as is the case with internet providers, the final decision is usually subjective, because whoever decides does not have the necessary time or tools to decide which option gives the maximum value. This hasty dimension of the decision allows competitors to appeal to the consumers' emotions and win with arguments less related to the service itself.

However, it is obvious that whoever leads the innovation program of a corporation can not be carried away with emotion. You will have to give reasons for your decisions, rely on data and get the push and commitment of many teams, who often work in remote locations.

Complex corporate decisions:

Portfolio prioritization with AHP

Without a technique or method to compare between the different value criteria, each choice between projects is difficult, equivalent to the choice between ethical values, such as freedom and equality.

Although there are dozens of prioritization methodologies for product requirements, there are not many alternatives in the world of project management.

The most convenient method for responding to complex choices representing the alternatives between innovative projects is AHP, an acronym for Analytical Hierarchy Process.

In short, AHP is advisable because:

It helps build consensus around how to implement the innovative portfolio strategy
It is linked by definition to the criteria, values and business objectives
Shorten the political discussions
Increase the commitment with the decisions taken, since all the criteria of the corporation are represented in the right measure.

This technique allows for comparing, in a table format, the relative importance of each criterion or objective.

The resulting table does not hierarchize in absolute terms. That is to say: it does not classify the objectives from more to less important, since that is an oversimplification. On the contrary, it allows us to attend to fundamental nuances when it comes to assessing the diversity of value propositions delivered by innovative projects.

For example, in the case of an innovative portfolio one could compare the importance of the following objectives:

Improving innovative culture
Increase market share in digital services
Modernize the technological infrastructure

Let us now imagine that the management committee of a corporation devotes a meeting to compare these objectives and discuss which is more important for the strategy comparing them in pairs. The conclusion would be something like the following table:

Although matrices can be done by hand or in Excel, it is convenient to have software that allows calculation and is integrated with the project management itself, such as ITM Platform.

Thus, not only is there a system that helps to perform the analysis, but its results are registered and connected with the evaluation of the projects themselves.

By linking each project to the objectives and criteria it supports, ITM Platform indicates which projects contribute the most value and should start sooner.

Of course, the work of evaluating the proposals will remain a difficult art, as well as the elaboration of innovative proposals, with all the market prospecting exercises, identification of tendencies and uncertainty for the future.

But there is a basis in the management of the information that must be demandable. The facilitated prioritization that we have explained in this article has the great advantage of generating consensus and supporting informed, renegotiable and easy to communicate decisions.

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Financial services are an infallible measure of your time

At the time of European colonization, the great adventures of exploration were only possible thanks to the issuance of loans by the great bankers of the time.

In the western United States, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, banks operated with minimal regulation. To build trust in its users, the bank was often the most solid building in the entire settlement. During the time when remote communication was done by MORSE code and the train lines forced to coordinate the schedules in remote territories.

Nowadays, the need for trust and guarantees has not changed, although the means to produce it uses current technologies.

Monitor the contribution of your technological projects to the development of the business with ITM Platform.

Entities providing financial services to private users move trillions of dollars around the world, and mainly include commercial banks and insurers. The transition to increasingly more digital users has forced this sector not only to provide online banking services, but to give access to those same services in mobile applications.

The pressure on banking to modernize its IT systems

And it's not just about designing an attractive and useful online banking application.

A commercial banking mobile application is only possible as a result of dozens of different projects, such as:

Making remittances to other banking entities
Secure authentication system with fingerprint
Account management, with recovery of historical information and permanent updating of the latest movements
GPS navigation to find the nearest cashier or office
Viewing of information

All this does not take into account all the technological infrastructure with which the online banking application must be connected in order to be launched, nor the legal and compliance obligations to which this type of operations are subject, including the protection of data during its recovery , treatment, storage and communication.

Competition is fierce: according to a Ernst & Young report launched in 2016, in most surveyed countries, the general public relies more on mobile banking services from supermarket chains or digital home banking to traditional banks' online banking applications .

If these projects were not managed in a coordinated way, it would be impossible to guarantee the service. What's more, it would be crazy to think that it would work at the time of launch. That is why every financial services company needs to manage its projects in a coordinated manner.

That means that, without addressing all the implications and connections between the new application and existing systems, and without coordinating projects based on these connections, at some point we will find this message when we open our online personal banking application:

"We are experiencing some technical difficulties. Apologies for the inconvenience."

If we reach this outcome, coordination has failed. Meaning having to abandon the project management to deal with the crisis.

The message has as many causes and variations: login problems, failure to update data, procedural problems.

However, the result is the same: loss of customers and reputation.

That is why, for the organizations that manage to coordinate their projects, competitive advantages immediately ensue. In addition, attracted by a comforting user experience, new customers arrive in flocks. The most robust building in the city has been erected, perfectly visible on every mobile screen.

Financial services and project management

In order to avoid messages like that and to construct a robust strategy of technological delivery, the responsibility of the CIO of a banking institution has to be the general of his army. In order to coordinate their activities, these profiles should focus on at least 6 major responsibilities:

Develop projects for all business units of the organization with equipment and limited funding, often responding to direct demands for new internal projects.
Contributing to productivity goals consistently.
Leading the digitization of the service portfolio.
Modernize information systems, which are often decades old. The transition is difficult, but without it the overall response time will be compromised. In addition, problems of backward compatibility may arise as soon as there are strong demands to implement new technologies for a user, such as direct mobile payment.
Reducing contingencies that impede active planning and "putting out fires" effectively.
Use credible measures to see if teams are working on appropriate projects.

The 11 questions for financial services projects

These responsibilities require access to aggregate information, such as that provided by portfolio management tools, and which can be summarized in 6 basic questions:

What projects are currently being implemented?
What projects are planned?
What resources are available?
Are there limits or restrictions on the use of these resources?
What other projects can be implemented with current capacity?
What are the dependencies between projects?
What are the options for resolving conflicts for the use of resources between different projects?

In addition, there are other questions whose response is likely to require meetings and deliberation. The following 4 are some examples.

Are there unapproved project proposals that merit efforts in the light of the current situation, or do they have synergies with other projects already initiated?
Given the follow-up of the projects, is it appropriate to cancel any of the ongoing projects?
Have resources been planned according to project priorities and job-specific competencies?
Is there any review of objectives and priorities affecting project implementation?

In order to be able to respond adequately to these questions, it is necessary to use the project portfolio of the organization as a repository of ideas and proposals that are evaluated, analyzed and initiated according to a constant cycle.

In many organizations in other sectors, the portfolio steering committee is comprised of directors from various areas, each of whom provides input on priority projects. This model can also be implemented in banks or insurers; the key is to find the balance between the technical feasibility criteria of IT managers and the business vision.

On these foundations, the digitization, innovation and commercial development projects of any financial services entity will be protected by a robust governance system with guarantees of success.

If you liked this blog, here are some related blogs that you may find interesting:

How to manage multi-project organizations

How SaaS-based project management has surpassed the MS Project model

Integration with the ITM Platform Project Menu

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Why make status reports?

Every project needs a status report , also known as progress report, in which the status of the project is clearly, accurately and objectively reported.

Start feeding your project status reports with live data on ITM Platform.

A project status report is intended to provide an evaluation of the progress and communicate execution details. Therefore, the development of the progress report is of great importance, since it is vital that it be carried out following a predetermined model. Only in this way will the users of the reports be able to compare them with each other:

Comparing status reports for different phases of the same project gives you a better idea of the distance covered, analyzing how far future projections from previous phases have been verified or denied
Comparing reports from different projects is crucial, especially among similar projects using Gantt charts, to understand where discrepancies between estimates and real data are

If you do not have a reporting model in your organization, you are missing out on the advantage of being able to compare reports. To make matters worse, homogeneous models allow users of such reports to find the information they need quickly, as they know how it’s structured. This is one of the aspects where by a Project Management Office can bring great benefits for internal communication in an organization.

A status report contains a brief description of the main elements of the report, establishing causes and explanations that justify and give context to the data. Metrics and graphics will allow the user to understand the progress of the project in a very short time.

The executive summary: Basis for monitoring a project

This section requires an objective description of how the project is running . The summary should present clearly and simply the most important results of the project, including:

Milestones fulfilled
Deliverables and quality
Risks or unforeseen events
Relationship between estimates and real, in at least three aspects: resource allocation, costs and deadlines
The difference between the estimated progress and the progress to date. If the date of delivery is considered unrealistic, this alarm signal is the first step to alert the customer and negotiate a new date with him.

On the other hand, the executive summary is very effective for a detailed follow-up of the unplanned challenges that arose during project development, as well as actions to be implemented in the short term , so that any eventuality can be mitigated.

The purpose is to ensure that the project continues on the path to success, delivering the project on time, with the expected quality.

Project progress reporting: steady progress assessment

The constant evaluation of a project is vital to know what countermeasures should be taken to make the project successful. Hence the preparation of this section outlines the most problematic areas of the project.

Likewise, suggestions and corrections can be advanced to solve a specific problem. As the project, often, cannot wait to receive feedback on these aspects, decisions are already taken, so this point can delineate already decided actions.

Registration Template: Project Control

The status report should generate relevant information about the risks recorded. It is advisable to start from a registry template by means of which you can retrieve useful information in an orderly way. This registry template will contain:

Project Risk Factors,
Probabilities
Project impact

You can visit ITM Platform’s free risk assessment matrix to compile this information quickly.

Know all about metrics: Promotes project tracking

Managing a project is only possible if you have the tools to quantify the different parameters involved, offering objective and comparable data. Thus, you can measure, for example:

Delivery times
Quality of the deliverables, based on the number of requirements included
Costs incurred to date
Percentage costs over total
Amount of unanticipated costs incurred
Hours worked, either per worker or by professional category

Result indicator

If the result is not a material product but a service, and the project covers the phases of implementation and marketing, there will be a large number of quantifiable aspects related to the result, such as the number of users, their average cost, and so on. These indicators will serve to measure the quality of delivery.

If you are interested in knowing which indicators you can use to manage your portfolio, you can continue reading these articles: