Project Benefit Realisation and Project Management. Raymond C. Young

1.1 6Q Governance (TM) as a business canvas.

The rest of the handbook is organised in the following way:

       Key concepts

       Chapter 2: The 6Q Governance questions

       Chapter 3: Tools and techniques

       Chapter 4: Further insights

       Appendices: Detailed case studies – for practice

Key Concepts

      Project Management Success vs. Project Success

      Before we launch into the six Questions, there is an important concept to establish: what is success in the context of the new normal? A lot has been written about project success in terms of time and cost, so much so that for most people, this is their only understanding of success. It is a blind spot for most practitioners. As long as the project delivery team can argue that they delivered what was agreed in the project brief and as long as they can do it within the constraints of time and budget, they will be seen as successful. Of course, there are many nuances to this argument by adding additional dimensions such as innovation, stakeholder management, leadership, entrepreneurship, and others but, ultimately, they all boil down to whether the project was on‐time and on‐budget.

This is the idea of project success that we are criticising in this book. We are not saying that projects should be seen as if they are unbounded by earthly constraints such as time and budget. But we are saying that a more strategic view of project success is necessary to come up with a meaningful execution strategy. For example, the question of whether stopping a failing project early should be considered a failure or success is never asked in the traditional execution sense. It would invariably be considered a failed project. In the same vein, a project that delivered nothing but a white elephant – an asset that is expensive to maintain but of very little or no use at all – would be considered a success as long as its deliverable remotely resembles what was promised in the brief when it was put together even if the world may have changed since then – and it will have changed.

      So, how can we then change the emphasis to project success rather than project management success? This is the main riddle we will try to address with this handbook. Having been involved with projects and their management in various shapes and forms collectively for several decades, the main problem we’ve seen is one of failing to achieve alignment between policy, strategy, operations (outcome thinking), and project delivery (output thinking).

      Currently, projects are not measured on how they are aligned with the ever‐evolving strategy and operational requirements of their respective organisations, but on how they aligned with their own plans suggested at the outset. Therefore, the front‐end planning ends up being a proxy for measuring project success, regardless of whether the project plans made sense in the first place. Then, as the project unfolds, project plans are often put forward with an entirely different mindset and agenda than what is described in the business case. Indeed, the underlying rationale of the project brief is to provide an early outline and a justification for the project with the main ambition of going very little beyond having the sponsor pushing the go button to get the project sanctioned. In this handbook, we will argue that this is the problem to be solved. At the heart of the problem are the often‐rushed planning and design decisions that take place at the inception of the project. This is what needs fixing, the fact that project execution does not conform to them is simply a corollary.

      We should embrace serendipity, but not forget what projects are for – getting things done. But ‘things’ can often be a lot different to that what we think at the project outset and ‘done’ can mean different things in different situations. We are writing this handbook to understand the success of projects as its alignment with not be on time, on cost, outputs, but rather with the operational and strategic purpose that the organisation has set out.

This change in emphasis is exactly what makes it nightmarishly difficult to deliver the project as an ‘accidental project sponsor’ as any one of us can potentially find ourselves in such an accidental role. We have started by putting this marker on the ground: projects need to focus on realising (evolving) strategic goals. Project management success (on‐time on‐budget) is a secondary objective, and the so‐called experts must not be allowed to dominate the conversation by their misguided efforts. This book will try to shed some light and build a roadmap for what is clearly a daunting journey full of trials and difficulties. But before we start, let us take one more deep breath and discuss strategy and its importance for the success of projects.

      Strategy and Policy Execution

      After discussing what projects are for strategy and business operations, it is time to reflect on the other side of the coin – what strategy and business operations are for the projects we deliver. The short answer is – everything. Let us start by discussing the importance of strategy.

      We would like you to pause and rank the importance of the following governance issues:

       Risk and compliance – Avoid litigation, reputational risk

       Strategy and planning

       Board composition, diversity, and performance

       Government regulation

       Executive compensation – alignment with shareholder expectations of performance

       New technology and its impact on the business

      Strategy is probably far more important than you think. At a minimum strategy ensures the long‐term survival of an organisation and good strategy will lead to above‐average performance. The following statistics show that these are not motherhood statements:

       For small businesses, ineffective strategy contributes to the problem of 50% surviving no longer than 5 years and 64% not surviving for more than 10 years [18].

       Poor strategy in large businesses results in underperformance. Booz Allen Hamilton found in a five‐year study of under‐performing US organisations [19] that 60% of the value destroyed was due to strategic errors, 27% due to operational errors, and 13% due to compliance problems.

       In the public sector, strategy is a confused concept [20] and we often talk about policy instead. A study of the State of Victoria in Australia, normally considered an exemplar, found $100B had been invested into projects over a 10‐year period without any evidence any high‐level policy goals had improved [9]. A follow‐up study in the State of NSW also in Australia suggested that, more generally, only one in five policy goals are positively impacted [8].

      In discussing the role of a board, Henry Bosch (former chair of the Australian National Companies and Securities Commission, now ASIC) states:

      The board’s first responsibility is to ensure that the organisation has clearly established goals; objectives and strategies for achieving them; that they are appropriate in the circumstances; and that they are understood by management (1995:93).

      Before reading on, we suggest you go back to the earlier question and reconsider the relative importance of the governance issues. On reflection, do you find the strategy is more important than you first thought? Management consultants Booz Allen support a performance rather than a risk emphasis for governance and made the following observation around the time of the Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco scandals:

      More strategic value has been destroyed in the past five years as a result of strategic mismanagement and poor execution … than was lost in all of the recent compliance scandals combined [19].

      So, strategy is important. However, it is not necessarily the