Directing A Project Primer - project_board

When novice boards start to talk about being in control, the first thing they will think about he’s reports, meetings, getting commitments, measurement metrics, and generally just giving direction and authorisation.

Actually, not much of the above is wrong in itself, but the first mistake that is often made after a plan has been agreed, is to hold the project manager to account for any deviations of the plan and to make sure that these are minimised. Again, not much of that is wrong in itself.

But there is an important step that needs to be agreed at the outset, and certainly applied whenever a plan is approved.

In a perfect world, plans would be approved and then managed against which no deviations nor corrective actions necessary. I would go so far as to argue that getting a plan signed off and then holding the project manager totally accountable for any deviations is unfair and unjust.

In the real world, for a variety of reasons, many of which may be outside of the sphere of control of the project manager, deviations will occur. Some may be able to be corrected by the project manager, but others may not.

A typical project will be normally subject to six performance aspects:

Cost
Time
Scope
Quality
Risk
Benefits

If the project is to deliver a piece of equipment used in a hospital, then you could argue that the above six aspects would need to be prioritised. For example, if it were to be used in life saving operations then clearly quality comes first.

You could argue that the sooner the project is delivered and the smaller the budget, then more could be used across many different hospitals.

The point here is that all projects are different, and that the above six performance aspects will need to be considered in the light of the nature of the project.

For example, how much cost deviation from the budget is acceptable, and how much delay to the delivery of the end product is acceptable. How much risk is acceptable, and is there a range of financial benefits within which the business case will still be seen as viable?

And here you can start to see the missing aspect of control.

Organizational Control and Management By Exception

Consider the organization of a typical project; at the highest level you may have the project sponsor or senior organisational management, at the next level down you would typically have the project board (responsible for direction and authorisation), the next level down but by the project manager, and below that role would typically be the specialist team of are making the specialist products (for example an it system, a new office block, and you help desk, ect).

As each of the above levels we would need to determine how much deviation plus or minus should be given for each of the six performance aspects, before it must be escalated to the level above.

The challenge for a project board is to determine the priority of each of the performance aspects and the amount of plus or minus deviation for each before it must be escalated to the next level.

So you can see that the project manager may set a level of deviation at work package level, the project board will set a level of deviation at project stage level, and senior management will set the level of deviation at project level.

The flexibility of this approach can now be clearly seen. The project manager may see the main priority at work package level being a range of quality tolerances, whereas the project board that stage level may see the priority as being eight timeframe. By re-assigning appropriate tolerance bounds for each of the above them a tight level of control can be obtained.

It’s important to see here, that escalating a situation to the next level should not be seen as failure, but merely recognizing the need that the next level of management need to be informed in making the decision as to what to do next.

Of course, merely setting tolerance deviations and nothing else, could be seen as abdicating responsibility and only reacting to problems escalated from the management level below.

For this reason it is important to also have regular reports on progress or otherwise, and that these should include performance against these tolerance deviations. This will allow the next management level up to spot trends of these deviations being “eaten into”, and taking timely corrective action if needed.

What I have described above is what PRINCE2 calls tolerance. If you think about it, tolerance is hardwired into the way us humans behave. A parent would automatically set tolerance in terms of acceptable behaviour to their children. When this tolerance is exceeded, then the parent takes appropriate corrective action.

In summary, the subject of management control is one that needs careful consideration and should be tailored according to the characteristics of each particular project – for example how complex, how risky, how important, and how expensive.

But the approach I have described above is central to the success of the project by pre-thinking what are the key performance aspects of each project are, and agreeing an escalation process for each level.

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