Demystifying the term PROCESS: Projects follow processes

In this 7th post on the topic of "Demystifying the term process", I’ll explain requirement 8 of the 10 requirements that something must meet, before we can use the term ‘process’ in a mature service management context, according to the Unified Service Management method:

1. A process describes what has to happen successively, not the who or how.
2. A process can be interpreted with a verb.
3. A process can be counted.
4. Processes are not depending upon practical conditions (?).
5. Processes have a customer-relevant and unique purpose.
6. A process can be divided into sub-processes, but that does not change the process.
7. A process model organizes the processes.
8. AN INTEGRAL PROCESS MODEL INCLUDES ALL SERVICE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES.
9. In an integrated process model, each activity occurs only once.
10. All activities are steered using process control.

In the previous posts we’ve learned that practices are not processes, and that a customer focus requires that processes should be defined from a customer-relevant perspective. Now let’s compare your organization with a car, or a ship.

How many steering wheels would you prefer for your organization? How many captains on your ship?

?Of course, there should be only ONE captain on the ship, one steering wheel in your car. This comparison makes very clear that each organization requires a strategic choice for the leading principles, the leading ways to organize the work, the leading ways to deliver value, at least if you prefer an effective organization. After all, each inconsistency in your management system leads to an ineffective organization – and not only that: inconsistencies can also be destructive for the quality goals of the organization. And exactly that is what we see everywhere: fundamental inconsistencies in the way organizations organize their performance.

The nr 1 fallacy? Project management

Whenever I see an organizational chart including a Project Management Team, or worse – a Project Portfolio Team or even a Program Team, I know where to look for the cause of underperforming organizations. Not only is the success rate of projects horrifying low, the thing is, that many project managers have a goal that is conflicting with the interest of the organization – even though they think they contribute to that. These project managers got an assignment from a C-level manager, they got a budget, and they got the authority to take staff out of their regular work to contribute to the project. And last but not least – they think they can determine their own way of organizing the work, using one of the many project management techniques. They are the champions of the organization! They make it happen! And as long as popular frameworks like ITIL or COBIT say that Project Management is a process, or even that Program Management is a process, they will continue to undermine the strategic opportunities for the organization to ever become an integrated, holistically working, value-delivering organization.

Project management undermines the strategic goals of the organization

This way of doing Project Management is in direct conflict with rules 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 of the 10 rules above, and it is one of the most fundamental errors you can make in setting up a service organization.

As with DevOps, Project Management focuses on change – within a very limited scope. It has lost contact with the continuous value creation promise of the modern service provider, and it thinks that when the project result is delivered, the job is done – while everyone with an ounce of brain matter would understand that it then only begins.

Project management is often the second captain on the ship

Therefore, projects should always follow the processes of the organization. And these processes should comply with all 10 of the rules above, to ever enable the organization to be an efficient creator of continuous value, becoming a successful organization that is fit for a customer-driven future. And when project managers would learn to understand that, they would immediately be more successful, as they would use the organization’s singular management system, and they would embed their results in this holistic system, assuring the value creation that must have been the goal of their project.

Unfortunately, most project managers think they live on an island

This of course doesn’t only apply to projects, it applies to all activities of the organization: they should all be part of one holistic management system, for the simple reason that the organization needs one captain on the ship, one steering wheel in the car, one strategy for continuously delivering value to their customers.

Unfortunately, many teams and disciplines in the average organization see the world from their own, isolated perspective, as islands in the organization’s see, focusing on their own span of control instead of collaborating as a holistic system.

We should learn to see our organization through the eyes of one integrated management system

If you want to learn how to achieve this, you should start with the foundation of your organization. And that will most likely require that you unlearn a lot of what you have learned in the past – at least if you want your organization to ever achieve level 4 of the USM Value Maturity Model.

In the next post, I'll discuss requirement 9: "In an integrated process model, each activity occurs only once"

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