I don’t think I’ve seen such a doom ladened presentation like the one from Stephen Jenner at the BPUG Congress last week, Stephen is the Director for Criminal Justice IT. The introduction was full of project failures seen in recent years in the public sector (not that many of us needed to be reminded) The presentation concentrated on public sector change, portfolio management and realising the benefits. – it could have been pretty dry stuff but Jenner was a good speaker – part tougue-in-cheek part passionate advocate for “we can deliver stuff in the public sector if we can manage to keep it real”. The presentation looked at failure in terms of costs and benefits and I particularly like the phrase “accused of ‘delusional optimism’” in relation to projec sponsors (it sounds like it should become a new gentlemen’s club for the newly initiated sponsor!)
The tongue in cheek bit came in when talking about the four classes of failure:
- The technical e.g., inadequate tools
- The psychological e.g., optimism bias
- The economical e.g., keeping projects going (which frankly really shouldn’t) to keep PM’s and others in a job
- The political e.g., strategic misrepresentation
Tongue-in-cheek or not, it’s not the first time I’ve seen these categories
Now I’m a bit of a sucker for a statistic and the only surprise I had with this one is that it is not higher;
“38% of respondents admitting overstating benefits at the investment appraisal process” John Ward, Cranfield School of Management
Do you think the intention, when organisations begin to look at creating a culture of best practice programme and project management, would ever come to this? What do they say “rules are meant to be broken”? I guess overegging the benefits is a fact of life and projects will always be delivered no matter what (pet projects spring to mind here) benefits are stated. There was also another phrase which got a laugh out loud moment in the conference, project managers (or the business case writer) who overstate the benefits are committing “benefit fraud”.
Some of the solutions included “be clear about the benefits you are buying”, and beware of “strategic alignment” as an investment justification. “Strategic projects” are projects without business cases. Spend more time doing your homework, failing projects don’t have good business cases. It got me wondering about the business cases – who actually writes them? Do project managers get involved at this stage? I know in my previous experiences the project manager has been responsible for this – I just wonder now how many of them actually knew what they were doing… or better phrased … were trained to do so?
Jenner talked about the need for alternative apprasial methods – in effect making it more difficult for anyone person to cook the books benefits wise. That’s where “gates with teeth” came in – does red really mean stop? When projects exceed tolerance does the organisation have the bottle to cease funding? Gates with teeth could ensure formal re-committment to benefits stated, but if gates with teeth became a reality wouldn’t many of the public sector projects just ground to a halt? Would the public sector ever grow teeth sharp and tough enough?
Independent reviews, how many times have you heard this from our government over the last 10 years? I know I’m sick to the back “teeth” with independent reviews but the “independent review” was offered up as part of the solution to avoid project failure. Thinking back to the statistic from War
d, couldn’t the independent review become yet another process for business case writers to be able to cook the books?
Stephen has a book out at the moment if you’re interested in finding out more about benefits realisation in the public sector – if his book is anything like his presentation it should be a good read.
