Project Success Scan hand-held fan

We created a small booklet (hand-held fan) with some background for the Project Success Scan.

The following topics are addressed:

• How confident are you in the success
• Maturity models
• Maturity model theory
• Predictability
• Rationale Project Success Scan
• The four plateaus
• 15 PSS main focus areas
• Project management team
• Project characteristics
• Organization of projects
• Business organization and supporting services
• Approach

You can order your copy via Hedeman Consulting

Project sponsor commitment

The Project Success Scan showed that in 65% of the recorded projects, there is no support or active promotion by top management. See related posts.

A recent report “Executive sponsor engagement, top driver of project and programme success” from PMI and BCG uncovers three primary factors that can limit or inhibit sponsors’ ability to be effective: an organizational culture that leads to sponsors being overextended; inefficient communication; and lack of professional development of sponsors.

This PMI’s Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report addresses these factors and used feedback from 897 project management professionals and 232 project executive sponsors.

Some key takeaways that lead to better project outcomes:

The areas where executive sponsors most help projects and programmes:

• Rallying support of senior management;
• Intervention on escalated issues;
• Removal of roadblocks;
• Stakeholder management;
• Championing the project.

The most important project sponsor skills:

• The ability to influence stakeholders;
• The ability to work across different stakeholder groups to find win-win solutions;
• Leadership;
• Decision making;
• Effective communications.

Definitely a must read for project executives and project / programme managers.

To download the report, follow the link to PMI’s website: Executive sponsor engagement

Shocking results from a first analysis of 200 Project Success Scans! Part II

As stated in the previous blog I will summarize the missing questions in a second info-graphic.

In this blog we look at the same 200 Project Success Scans and focus on the following questions:

• Project definition,
• Project team,
• Project size,
• Organizational and technical complexity,
• Willingness to change, and
• PMO maturity level.

“Based on 200 reactions of the Project Success Scan it becomes clear that, despite many recommendations, we still think we know better how to run projects.”

See attached info-graphic (to download: PPS (Infographic I + II, 150428) v1.0)

Also here you see that:

• We accept to execute projects in 50% of the cases without defined goals and scope and a prioritized list of requirements.
• Only in 24% of the projects the willingness to change exists in terms of positive or productive energy.
• The size of our projects is in more than 50% too big and on top of that the organizational and technical complexity is too high.
• We accept in more than 66% to start with the execution with limited availability of the team.
• In 75% of the cases we think it’s better to reinvent than to have a centralized PMO to collect, define, maintain and share best practices.

“I still don’t get it.”

If you want to see your own project in a spider diagram compared with the average figures of these 200 projects, please fill in your own Project Success Scan:

Attached a link to our English quick scan: Project Success Quick Scan.  For Dutch: Project Succes Quick Scan

Shocking results from a first analysis of 200 Project Success Scans!

“Based on 200 reactions of the Project Success Scan it becomes clear that, despite many recommendations, we still think we know better how to run projects.”

If we take a list of success or failure factors you often see the same topics. The last year we asked many project managers or project executives to take the Project Success Scan questionnaire.

In the Project Success Scan we focus on the following areas by asking in total 15 questions:

• Plateau 1: The project management team: support top management, user involvement, project governance, competences and availability PM and team
• Plateau 2: Project characteristics: definition, business justification, organizational and technical complexity, and size
• Plateau 3: Organization of projects: portfolio management design, maturity, change capacity and willingness
• Plateau 4: Business organization: business organization and supporting departments.

If you look for reference at the top 10 from a Chaos report from the Standish Group you find several comparable factors. Besides the project related ones (our first two plateaus) we take the impact of the environment – portfolio management and complexity of the business or e.g. the IT landscape into account too, factors which are not part of the Standish studies.

Standish Chaos report top 10: 1. User Involvement, 2. Executive Support, 3. Clear business Objectives, 4. Emotional Maturity, 5. Optimization, 6. Agile Process, 7. Project Management expertise, 8. Skilled resources, 9. Execution, 10. Tools and infrastructure.

See attached info-graphic.

In the info-graphic (PPS (Infographic I, 150426) v1.0) I summarized results from 6 questions: top management involvement, user involvement, steering committee performance, project manager experience and availability, business justification and portfolio management.

• Why are the numbers 1 and 2 of every recommendation – user and senior management involvement – not always taken into account? In 65% of the projects there is a lack of senior management involvement. In 40% of the projects we think we don’t need users.
• In 50% of our projects we don’t have a project board or we have a project board without responsibilities assigned.
• Only 45% of the projects have a project manager with enough skills and time available.
• Only 40% of the projects have a business justification.
• Only 40% of our projects are managed via formal portfolio management.

“I don’t get it. Why are we not taken into account these recommendations? Why do we think we can be successful without these recommendations?”

In a next post I will go into the other questions of the Project Success Scan. questions regarding the project definition, the project team, project size, organizational and technical complexity, change capacity, and PMO maturity level.

If you want to see your own project in a spider diagram compared with the average figures of these 200 projects, please fill in your own Project Success Scan:

Attached a link to our English quick scan: Project Success Quick Scan.  For Dutch: Project Succes Quick Scan