The four secrets for major project success

Introduction

In a series of articles I examined why the UK has struggled to successfully deliver major projects. By presenting the results of a portfolio of research programmes undertaken by MIGSO-PCUBED and our industry and academic partners I have shown that modern projects suffer from four issues that increase the risk of project failure:

• the quality of business-to-business relationships across the project’s organisations,
• the speed of decision making to address major risks and opportunities,
• the adoption of modular design solutions to enable agile delivery, and finally,
• the extent of digital integration leading to improved productivity

In each article I have defined actions that can be taken to eliminate the root causes of these failures. Now it’s time to put this all together and present a new paradigm for the delivery of major projects. This approach is relevant for the modern age we live in: the 4th industrial revolution.

First of all it’s necessary to look at the history of how major projects have been delivered throughout the previous industrial revolutions.

History

The history of project management is linked to the development of new technologies driving new delivery approaches. Systems Engineering theory refers to this delivery approach as the enabling system - A system that complements a system-of-interest during its life cycle stages but does not necessarily contribute directly to its function during its operation stage[1]. Note: the “system of interest” is the thing you are trying to build, i.e. the objective of your project. When project managers develop their project management plans for their projects, they are developing an enabling system and should use a systems engineering approach. However, many project managers don’t do this and some aren’t familiar with the technique. But it’s how it should be done and it’s the lens I’ll use here to review it.

So, what enabling systems have project managers used throughout the ages? Usefully, we now recognise that there have been four industrial revolutions and project management systems have broadly evolved in the same stages. This underpins my assertion that the history of project management is linked to the development of new technologies.

Before the industrialisation of society, projects were largely delivered by the command of kings or emperors and relied upon the vast availability of biddable resources and large financial reserves. Great projects were delivered, such as the great pyramids of Giza, but the costs were astronomical in modern terms and almost certainly unaffordable in a competitive environment. Which leads me nicely to the most concise definition of project management I know of. Attributed (probably incorrectly) to the Duke of Wellington who reputedly said that:

“Engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound”.

Whoever said it and whether the target should be less than 10 shillings, I think it’s the most appropriate definition of the value of project management. Interestingly, it was quoted shortly after the advent of the first of the industrial revolutions. And here they are:

• The 1st industrial revolution: Towards the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th, mechanisation brought great efficiencies to agriculture, manufacture and transport. This led to the development of canals, railways and the growth of industrial towns and cities. It was also the age of the project management superstar: Brunel, Stephenson(x2), Brindley, Telford, Watt and many more, delivering the first industrial megaprojects. The techniques they used were based around enlightenment principles and the new factory system, whereby products could be produced using new materials and to much greater tolerances, resulting in the ability to modularise designs and deliver in planned stages.
• The 2nd industrial revolution: The latter part of the 19th century saw the introduction of new sources of energy (electricity, gas and oil) and new communication systems (the telegraph, the telephone and radio). It also saw the first production lines and a focus on the division of labour and the scientific management of production. Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol and the man whose name is mentioned every day in project management offices, Henry Gantt were the leading thinkers at the time. They created perhaps the first paradigm of project management, based on the predictability of human performance. Essentially treating people as machines in a system whose performance can be reliably predicted and forecast. I would argue that this is still the project enabling system we use today.
• The 3rd industrial revolution: Another century passes and the invention of computers, programmable logic controllers and robots leads to automation of processes and significant productivity gains. At the same time we see the large engineering organisations introducing new techniques, such as PERT planning, failure mode and effects analysis, decision analysis, risk management, computer aided design and many more. We also see the introduction of systems engineering helping us to integrate these tools into a single system. This leads to the codification of project management and the publication of the first project management bodies of knowledge. Martin Barnes created the concept of the project manager, introduced the iron triangle of cost, time and scope and with others founded the Association for Project Management.
• The 4th industrial revolution: Over the course of the last decade or so we have seen the development of the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and new sensor technologies leading to an information revolution. To my knowledge we are yet to see any parallel development in the project management enabling system in the major projects world, but we do see techniques aligned to these new technologies, such as Agile, being used in other sectors. And that is why it’s time to define a new paradigm for project management, suitable for the 4th industrial revolution.

A new paradigm

My assertion is that the project management enabling system has not moved forward significantly from the time of Gantt, Fayol and Taylor. The 3rd industrial revolution brought developments in engineering tools, but few new project management tools. True risk management is now well established and has significant benefits when done well, but other approaches such as PERT planning didn’t have much impact on the current systems used by project managers.

Industrial revolutions also have a huge impact on the way people are treated and the other important development of the 4th industrial revolution that needs to be embraced by the project management enabling system is the way we now treat people. We live in a society that increasingly values and respects people. What was considered acceptable treatment of people in the workplace only a few years ago is now seen as completely unacceptable. We encourage diversity, strive for equal opportunity for all and want to protect the mental health of the people that work for us. We do this because it’s right, but also because we now recognise that motivated people are the most powerful way of ensuring project and business success. Demotivated, fearful people will hide issues and distort the perception of progress. Some would say they will even lie to protect themselves in a harmful environment. Taylor’s principles of scientific management treat people like machines in a system and I think many modern projects do the same, because of the enabling system they implement.

I would describe the current project management paradigm as follows:

Project information is collected centrally by a project management office using large Gantt charts and comprehensive risk registers to advise the project leadership team of progress and issues so they can act appropriately. Rigorous governance is implemented to ensure actions are agreed by all stakeholders before significant changes are implemented. Designs are developed using a computer model which is managed centrally and compiled from information provided by supply chain companies. The decision to commence build is made when all design issues have been resolved and the design is complete. Suppliers are selected in competition using the "most economically advantageous tender" technique. Contracts are the main tool for ensuring the suppliers perform as expected and financial risk is transferred to the supplier wherever possible to protect the client.

Based on the research undertaken by MIGSO-PCUBED over the course over the last few years I believe this leads to the four failures I have outlined in the previous articles and a new paradigm is required. And here it is:

Project information is shared with all relevant users who can access the information in real time via a shared data environment managed by an information management office (IMO) which uses high level performance metrics to measure progress and transfers task level ownership to small, agile delivery teams which have significant autonomy, the ability to self-govern and confidence in how long external decisions will take to make. The IMO provides the project leadership team with a real time view of the project using project, engineering and asset management tools which interact in a digital environment, integrated across the entire supply chain and where there is no duplication of data. The design of the asset is modularised and the delivery organisation is aligned to these modules. Each module is released to build once its agile backlog budget has been spent and any interfaces with other modules have been resolved. The suppliers are selected based on competence and behaviours. Collaborative supply chain relationship plans are developed for each key supplier, recognising the actions needed to address all seven dimensions of the relationship, which is actively measured. Financial risk is retained by the client and the suppliers are incentivised to reduce this risk to a minimum.

This transition is shown diagrammatically below.

This leads to a 4th industrial revolution approach to project management which is based on modular design, agile delivery, integrated digital environments and mutually beneficial relationships with all project organisations. This will allow the people working on the project to be treated in the way modern business demands. A focus on collaborative behaviours, agile delivery allowing sub-optimal tasks to fail fast, digital team-working from multiple locations and the ability to change direction quickly when action is required.

Guidance for Project Leaders

The purpose of our research and the objective of these articles is to provide advice and guidance to project leaders. Much of the previous research on this topic focuses on macroeconomic, political and investor level causes of failure: ensuring the project starts right. However, I think this is a vain hope. Of course, the project initiation process needs to be improved and we can do much, much better, but politics, financial constraints and vested interests means that most (all?) projects will never start right. When the project leadership team is appointed, the project they inherit is the pretty much the one they’re going to have to deliver and it won’t be perfect. We advocate a stoical approach for the project manager. Don’t worry about what you can’t change and focus on what you can.

Stoics accept the world as it is and resist emotional reactions to issues. When the project leadership team picks up the project, they need to reassess the business case in the context of their ability to deliver. They need to use systems engineering techniques and the new paradigm to develop a work breakdown structure (the enabling system) based on the product breakdown structure (the system of interest) and then every work package in the original proposal needs to be released to the agile delivery teams as a planning package (i.e., change its status from “agreed” to “proposed”). Once the delivery team and the information management office have agreed the time and cost for each task it can be converted back to a work package and integrated into the project budget. Once they have measured the real life governance model they have been given to work with, they can then add the decision making activities to the (high level) schedule to determine a realistic forecast duration and budget.

This will allow them to produce the first project plan that they believe in. This will almost certainly be more expensive and slower than the business case (for all the macroeconomic, political and investor issues identified by other thinkers). The project leaders need to take this back to the stakeholders and make clear this is the best they can do. They need to be brave and protect the project team. This is the real skill of the project manager and to take us back to where we started, we can now refine Wellington’s quote:

“A project manager is a person who can do for ten shillings what any fool can do for a pound and they can prove to their client that it really can’t be done for nine.“

[1] https://sebokwiki.org/wiki/Enabling_System_(glossary)