Last week, the Third Annual Best Practice User Group Congress (BPUG Congress) took place in London. The BPUG is acually a membership group that are focused on the OGC suite of products (PRINCE2 etc) and supported by the OGC and APM Group. The Congress itself is an intimate affair, 
with delegates from both public and private sector, in fact, any organisation that uses OGC products in their programme and project management capabilities. The two day event has a combination of main room guest speakers and parallel streams of sessions so delegates can pick which sessions are most suited to their interests. The Congress also has a small select area of exhibitors (Arras People exhibited alongside some of our friends within the project management industry).
The Congress was opened by Sir Nicholas Montagu, the ex-boss of the Inland Revenue who shared his experiences as the head of the largest change programme the HMRC had ever undertaken. He talked about change being “unsettling, distracting and expensive” and how the key for success was the sheer amount of time devoted to the initiative by the senior management team. He also said that “proper project management and proper contract management” is key to the public sector when managing change on this scale. He added that ”change by definition increases risk; if you don’t attack the risks, the risks attack you”.
When asked by a member of the audience about the biggest mistake he made, he talked about the diversity awareness training that was put in place for over 800 managers. He said that in hindsight he would have paid closer attention to the after effects of such training as there was a lack of support (helpdesk etc) to deal with the sheer number of help requests from the managers post training. He also shared his keys to success, following another audience question; the top team absolutely have to be all on board; get enough people both above and below on board so the people against change couldn’t do any damage with their negativity and instigate absolute irreversable momentum.
I also had chance to hear from Tony Smith, Regional Director at the UK Border Agency and SRO for Olympics 2012. Tony talked about what determines “business as usual” versus projects. A term I’ve never come across was “Enhanced BAU”, which in Tony’s world meant “don’t get additional budget but expected to deliver more for the same costs”. The UKBA certainly have their work cut out for them with the Olympics as well as the other programmes and projects being delivered at the moment (E-Borders, Biometric Cards etc), and oh yes, they’ve also just seen major 
reorganisation changes over the last three years.
I also had chance to see “The Journey from Ignorance to Enlightenment: Portfolio, Programme and Project Integration” from Lizet Murray, Head of Business Change at Santam, an insurance organisation in South Africa. Lizet covered the journey to a Portfolio Management Office through the maturity and use of PRINCE2, MSP and P3O. Lizet introduced a term I’ve not seen before which showed the impact of change on an organisation. The “heatmap” came from their portfolio office software tool and enabled a clear representation of where the impacts are across the organisation as change projects and initatives were started. This is a particularly good view for the portfolio office to push out to senior management and any value add services like this all add to the case of having a PMO function. Lizet’s key points to rolling out the PMO were;
- Evolution not revolution
- Trial and error – learn from the experiences
- KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid
- Do it with them, not to them
- Clarity is king – link concepts to anchors (like the lifecycle model)
- Take your own medicine
There was one contradiction though, when asked by the audience member “how did the stakeholders take on the portfolio management approach?” The answer was “with difficulty”, to some extent the Portfolio Office had to enforce it, which kind of contradicted the “do it with them, not to them”
And finally I saw Chris Cattaway, who covered Project Management in a Crisis (take a look at the previous blog article), and was focused on projects in developing countries. The latest new thing for project management in NGOs (Non Government Organisations) is the new certification, PMD Pro. The certification has been specially created for project people working within development type projects and above all else gives these projects a common language as they are commonly methodology agnostic.
The BPUG Congress website will be updated shortly to share all the presentations from the event, keep checking back for the updates.
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