Part 1 - Anna and Jason meet..

Anna arrives at the office early figuring that a new job deserves an
early start. A few glasses of a reasonable white wine with her pals last
night meant that today, for once, the gym got by-passed. She also
wonders which (almost certainly male) idiot had bought the shiny new
sports car that sparkled in the sun shining on the company car park.

By the time Jason manages to get past the over-zealous security

guard and into his new office, Anna had tied up the loose ends of her
other responsibilities and cleared her desk for the new project. Her
desk features only a lamp, a smart laptop and three pens in a brushed
aluminium box. The mental desk clearing takes much longer than the
physical.

Jason and Anna are introduced and start to get to know each other.
This quickly and despite any logical rationale becomes a sparring
session. We join them in the third round.

‘So you have neither training nor experience of project management?’

says Jason to Anna.

‘Not much at all and nothing formal. I’ve worked as part of the team
on a few projects and I am a qualified accountant’. After a moment’s
reflection comes a probing forehand: ‘How are you on finance?’

‘We did spend a lot of time on finance at Harvard and as a consultant

within the big four you have to be very comfortable with a balance
sheet and cash flow forecasts. Have you managed many teams
before?’

‘I have had a small team on budgeting for some time but I have really
focused on the management reporting side ensuring that the board
have appropriate management information for every meeting’, she
explains. She does not mention that her small team was actually a
spotty work-experience youth whom she managed to put up with for
three weeks before passing him on to an unsuspecting credit control
manager.

Later Anna will describe Jason as patronising. In her mind this is as

bad as being a racist bigot with a side line in blood sports. Her
discovery that Jason owns the Lotus in the car park does little to
enhance her opinion of him.

Jason will describe her as ‘professional’ and as someone who ‘wants

to do well’ but he thinks of her in the same terms as those hopeful
secretaries in his old office; thus unwittingly supporting Anna’s view.
They are both adults and professionals and therefore they both, in
their own way and in their own minds, think about finding ways to
work together. Jason does better with this than Anna who just annoys
herself.

Jason has brought with him from his previous job a number of sources
of information and knows the value of presenting material created by
others especially when they can be described as experts. From time
to time both he and Anna refer to a website which, in a rare moment
of agreement, they refer to as ‘the framework’. They use this to get
concepts, ideas, methods and structures across to their colleagues.

Their first introduction to the framework is to get an idea of current

best practice in portfolio management and some ideas for the overall
structuring of the portfolio management organisation.

They find that topics like benefits management, risk

management and organisation management as well as techniques
like WBS and PERT for projects are all available on the website.

After a quick review, they decide to investigate each topic as and

when they find a need. They draw up a diagram that summarises the
overall structure and this is worth a moment of your time in quiet
contemplation, dear reader.

Jason explains that there really is little point in arguing whether a

specific initiative should be called a project or a programme.

He says, 'There are some things that are clearly programmes and
others that are clearly projects but there is a wide range of initiatives
that you could call either way. There is however clear water between
project management and programme management. Programme
management is a layer that links the projects to the strategy; it is a
pretty important layer in any organisation.'

Part 2 - Bob's article

Bob’s office is not as magnificent as you might expect especially if

you had recently left a ‘big four’ management consultancy or had
seen the office of the previous CEO of SpendItNow. Bob’s simple but
efficient desk supports a neat laptop with a landing pad to which the
screen, network, Phone, GPS and assorted other cables are
connected.
He has a USB coffee cup warmer.

That Bob is a bit of a gadget freak comes as a surprise to Jason. There

is a piled-high in-tray labelled ‘IN’ and a thinner tray of reports and
other papers labelled ‘OUT’. The third tray is mysteriously and
perhaps musically labelled in equally firm letters ‘SHAKE IT ALL
ABOUT’. Bob’s desk sports one executive toy – a model excavator - to
remind him of his humble start at the muddy end of the world of
commerce.

Bob had asked Jason to get to know the senior management team and
find out what projects are actually going on. After his first few days in
the business Jason manages at last to grab a few minutes of Bob’s
time.

It is very much Bob’s style to have a small lounge area where two
two-seater couches form an L shape containing a low coffee table.

Bob and Jason now sit on these settees sipping coffee delivered by
Bob’s healthy and physically fit looking personal assistant, Andrew.
Jason is reminded of his Aunt Anthea’s views of young female workers
in the office environment. Anthea Sherunkle much prefers female
employees likely to spend any significant amount of time near her
husband to be old, ugly and happily married to a sumo wrestler.

Jason outlines his concern that the more people in the company he
meets the more he turns up odd projects and bits of work going on.

He complains to Bob: ‘Not only are there loads of odd projects going
on but many of them seem to have some bizarre objectives. I found a
group of people in IT working on maintenance for a system that had
not been in use for nearly a year! I found another group who were
spending money on a facelift for a warehouse in Pontefract and
another group planning to replace the building altogether.

‘We seem to be spending a lot of money and devoting a great deal of

people’s valuable time to activities that could not, under virtually any
circumstances, deliver any benefit to the company.

‘Of course some of these are recognised as projects but many are just
sort of happening. The only differences are that they are not seen as
projects and no one seems to be accounting for the time being sent.
In fact I don’t think anyone accounts for the time they spend on
anything at all.’

Bob gets the picture and it does not surprise him much. The mental
picture he gets is of a faceless group of people stuffing ten pound
notes into a drain in a gutter in a street that seems to have hundreds
of drains stretching out into the middle distance each of which is also
surrounded by a group of faceless people bending over the drains
with money-sized pieces of paper in their fists.

He turns his mind back to Jason’s presentation. Half his mind notes
that Jason hardly ever talks, he always seems to present. ‘…..and I
think we need to devote some time to finding out what projects are
going on and what are coming up and grab the horns of the bull on
this one.’

‘I agree completely’, says Bob, ‘I’ll organise another away-day and get
everyone to send you details of any projects they’re doing at the
moment. I’ll mention what you have found in general terms without
listing any specific project. That way they’ll be forced to mention
everything in case you, or another director, already knows about it’

Jason, just for a moment, gets a glimpse of the yawning gap between
management consultancy and management but quickly shakes this
off as too disturbing by half. He is however delighted to have got
Bob’s commitment to this process.

Bob gazes out of the window for a moment. Uninspiring is a very

polite word for the view of next-door’s factory that is available from
Bob’s window. But inspiring it must be for Bob comes up with one of
those two plus two moments that mark great managers and
executives.

‘Our HR people have asked me to write something for the next house
newsletter so perhaps something about the way we do projects might
start a pincer movement on unnecessary projects. If we get everyone
thinking about projects and why we are doing them as well as getting
all the managers to report to this event you’re planning we could get
some….. err……weeding done right now.’

‘There you go’, says Jason in a way that, being a little condescending,
slightly tests their family and business relationship, ‘what will you
say?’

Now it is not every day that a house magazine of a large organisation

carries a photograph of its CEO in the bath, however modestly this is
arranged. Photos of senior people standing on a staircase or sitting
behind a desk and certainly wearing a suit are much more normal.
This issue of the house magazine is a complete change from the norm
and gets everyone talking in the canteen, corridors and smoking
areas in the company car park where it breaks up talk of the new
Lotus sports car.
Cautiously at first but with increasing vigour the editor, having read
the article written by Bob, has talked him into posing for a side-on
picture of in his favourite Sunday haunt. Fortunately for all concerned
only his head and a bit of shoulder is visible above the side of the
bath.

This is the article that appeared a few days later in the house journal
below the instantly famous picture.

Bath Tub Projects By Bob Sherunkle, CEO.

I’ve been thinking about the many projects we run at SpendItNow.

Somewhere, I thought, there must be a cornucopia from which

brilliant ideas for projects flow. But my search recently ended in the
bathroom when I realised I was asking the wrong question.

Let me explain.

In most organisations many, probably most, projects start off life in

the mind of a senior manager taking a bath on a Sunday morning.

On Monday, now fully dressed, said senior manager rushes into the
office with a head full of the new initiative. By Tuesday afternoon a
team will be working on a feasibility study and by the following month
the company will have committed to the project.

The bathed manager focuses on the excitement, pleasure and sense

of achievement the project should deliver. He is forced to come up
with a few reasons to ‘justify’ the project. But, let’s face it, the very
partial originator of a project is about the worst person to justify their
own ideas. Life would be simpler if an independent group evaluated
each project.

It is a bit like setting off for a drive in the country: there is no specific
objective other than to have the fun of driving the car and maybe
keeping the kids quiet for a bit. If the car passes a pleasant pub
serving tasty food the travellers might stop, eat and say ‘that was a
lucky find’. The drive ends when they get back home.

Like many projects, at journey’s end, some money has been spent,
some people have had a good time but they are all back where they
started. This is fine for countryside excursions but not a great way to
start projects.

This organisation will soon be starting down a route that will lead to a
very different way of thinking about projects.

In this new world, we will first set our own overall, corporate
objectives in a strategy document. This will try to describe the kind of
organisation we intend to be in the future. We will aim to define the
differences between our current and future states therefore defining
the organisation’s ambitions. We will bring as many people as
possible into this process – everyone will have their say about where
the company should head and about how it should get there.

When we have outlined our ambitions for the future we will have a
vision to work towards – the state we hope to be in – a destination for
our journey.

To get from our current state to the future is the journey the company
will set out upon. Business change is a journey with a start point and
a destination; projects are the vehicles we choose to use.

Instead of starting off talking about projects, we’ll start by talking

about the improvement and the benefits we would like to bring about
and aim to deliver.

Then we will try to find projects that will deliver those required
changes and those benefits, all of which align with the overall
strategy, all of which lead towards the organisation’s vision.

Here is a simple example from another organisation – one of our

competitors. They aimed to improve customer relations and carried
out a survey showing the percentage of customers that come back to
shop in the stores regularly. In an attempt to raise this from 10% to
20% over two years they decided to run some customer care training
and introduce a loyalty card scheme.

The loyalty card scheme involved three projects: An IT support

system, a marketing launch and the setting up of a new team to run
the card services. They combined a customer care training workshop
with an introduction to the loyalty card for the staff. Two years later a
second survey showed that their repeat business was up to 18%. Not
quite the 20% they aimed for but pretty close.

It is the way of thinking that attracts me – they knew what they

wanted to achieve and established projects to achieve it.
You will find your managers are being encouraged to think firstly
about benefits, change and improvement and then about instituting
projects to bring about the desired change. They will monitor each
initiative throughout its life from concept to the harvesting of the
benefits.

We can all still enjoy our projects (and our Sunday morning baths) but
in the new world the destination will define the journey and the
journey will define the route we take.

Part 3 - Another away day

And so it happens. A mere 30 days pass before Bob, with Jason sitting
at his right, opens an all-day workshop in the local conference centre.
The agenda is simply the company’s project workload. Most of the
board are present and quite a few senior managers. IT is especially
well represented.

Bob does not say but does remember that before this meeting and in
the first few hours and days after the event was arranged, blood was
spilled. Fortunately businesses tend to use terms that over-dramatise
the boardroom battles and wars between departments. The only real
blood that was spilled leaked from a secretary's finger after a small
accident with a pair of scissors.

But all sorts of silly, useless and misguided projects got summarily
canned.

Calling the meeting had the effect of getting each Director to instigate
a search for project expenditure within their specific divisions. This led
to a minor witch-hunt amongst the senior managers and this in turn
led to some hard words in the lower levels of management. A cascade
of quiet cancellations and abandoning of projects immediately
followed. Much of this was done on the basis that saying ’we
cancelled that some time ago’ is a lot better that hearing the
imperative: ‘cancel that’ even if ‘some time ago’ was actually
yesterday morning.

A large number of miscellaneous bits of on-going work, too small to

be regarded as projects but nevertheless collectively draining away a
very significant amount of resource time failed to come to light. A
number of people, each working on self-initiated mini-projects were
allocating their time to assorted budget categories where the budget
owner was not very watchful.
One team leader had had her team working on a little home-brewed
idea to provide some new automatic reporting on the sales database.
Her plan had been to collect a large number of brownie points by
showing everyone the finished article and being only slightly smug
about it.

The time spent on this work had been allocated to another project
where the project manager didn’t seem to know why his budget was
loaded by the addition of a group of activities that he knew nothing
about.

This project was arguably not a terribly good idea as another team in
another area were officially working on exactly the same problem, the
wheel was therefore being invented twice.

The unofficial project team, and others like them, simply stopped
work on the project with a sigh. Those teams where timesheets were
not being done at all or where timesheet reports were so vague as to
be less use than no timesheet at all, simply redirected their efforts. A
number of mini-projects got unceremoniously and quietly dumped
with phrases like ‘this one is going on hold for the moment’ and ‘we’ll
have to switch priorities’ being employed. Thoughts and expressions
mostly unprintable in a project management textbook were also
widely employed.

By the time the away day workshop starts, only projects that at least
make some kind of sense, or are so far down the track as to be
unstoppable, have survived. The lack of smugness and the slightly
worried brows of the team prove the value that workshop has already
delivered and removes any danger of Bob and Jason looking like the
Spanish Inquisition.

Jason starts off by presenting the overall structure diagram from the
framework summarising the overall portfolio management process.

He leads the discussion and gets on with the business of the day
explaining how the diagram shows that an organisation’s vision of the
future should lead to portfolio management – the process of
identifying and authorising programmes and projects of work.
Portfolio management at a strategic level leads to the definition of
programmes and these in turn lead to specific projects. He points out
that there will be normally a range of independent projects as well.

The diagram also suggests the roles people should take, all of which
leads to a smoothly run business with good control over its
programmes and projects. This is a very high level overview of the
framework and there is much greater detail which Jason says they will
keep for later.

He tries to warm up his audience and to get them to think about the
overall vision and strategy of the organisation.

Jason then proposes that they think of about the programmes and
their benefits.

He says, ‘Once we have defined our programmes it will be a simple

matter to define the projects that will best deliver the programme and
its benefits. It is quite rare for a single project to deliver benefits, it
nearly always take a few projects, managed together as a programme
to maximize the return on investment.

‘The strategy outlines where our business should be going, our

collective ambitions and aims. Benefits arise from the changes or
improvements deliver to the organisation and the projects and
programmes are a way of delivering those changes.’

He goes on to explain:

‘Projects create outputs.

‘Programmes combine outputs to create an outcome.

‘The organisation utilises the outcome and realises benefits. The

benefits are measures of the improvement achieved. All of these must
be consistent with the strategic vision’

‘For example’, he says, ‘we might want to enter the French market
with the intention of stemming the huge drop we have observed in
alcohol and tobacco sales in our stores near the South coast ports. To
do that we would need to acquire some stores in the right locations,
extend our computer systems into those stores and add the ability to
work with and convert Euros, set up a new marketing and point-of-
sale team to work in French and so on.

‘We could probably calculate the income levels we might expect over
time without the change and the levels we might expect with the
change. We can estimate the investments we will need to make and
this means identifying the projects we need to undertake along with
their likely costs. We can also estimate the demand each project will
make on our own people.

‘By combining the investments, benefits and resource demands of the

portfolio any organisation can take sensible decisions about all
current and possible projects and programmes.’
Bob realises that Jason’s occasional ability to put a foot straight into
the nearest available cowpat has surfaced again. Bright, young Jason
has just told the mature and experienced board that they have been
making non-sensible decisions for some years. Bob thinks he had
better wade in, first slightly attacking and then supportively.

‘That is an approach but there are two points in my mind. In the

example you just gave you said we would have to handle Euros. Now
there might be many projects that share this need such that we are
already getting ready for Euros when we think about the French
market – how would we deal with that?’

Jason says ’that kind of thing is very common. Sometimes one project
contributes to a wide range of different benefits and in different ways.
Some people categorise their projects into three types:

Direct: projects that contribute to direct benefits.

Enabling: projects that deliver no direct benefit but which are vital to
the delivery of a whole range of benefits from other projects – your
Euro project?

Passenger: projects that can only add to benefits expected from other
projects.

‘Also’, Jason continues, ‘it is not hard to draw a diagram connecting

benefits to programmes and projects. I hope you are familiar with a
benefits map……?’

Jason’s eyes sweep the room searching for anyone prepared to

announce their lack of knowledge on this topic. His eyes cloud over
slightly when he realises where he learned and used this technique.
When he worked as a consultant he would frequently challenge
everyone to admit that they don’t know about some technique before
proceeding to blind them with his expert knowledge of it. But at
SpendItNow he is part of the same team and he needs them to
understand.

He quickly moves on.A combination of all Jason's presentations is

available here in Anna's files

‘Well a benefits map shows the benefits we aim to deliver and

implications they have for change at different levels and locations of
the organisation. Here’s one I prepared when I was doing a
consultancy job for Brook Bicycles, just down the road from here.
They’ve given me permission to use it as an example.’
Jason brings up a slide to show the example benefits map and asks
everyone to note that most benefits are achieved through a number
of outcomes and that each outcome is supported in turn by a number
of outputs.

He goes on to explain ‘A single output may contribute to multiple

outcomes and a single outcome may depend on multiple outputs. The
relationships between outcomes and benefits may be equally
diverse’.

They furiously agree that the impact of change is a major barrier to

the achievement of most benefit and any improvements in
understanding at the ‘shop floor level’ can only be a big help. Most
people have absolutely no idea why they are being asked to change
something and most people dislike change of any kind so the whole
thing makes them suspicious and often cynical of their management’s
motivation.

Once this concept and the language it uses has been absorbed, and
trying to resist a slight smirk, Jason asks Bob, ’You said you had two
points?

Bob racks his brain for his second point and finds it third drawer down
on the left. He wanted to address the slight insult to the directors that
Jason had made earlier – the one about them not making sensible
decisions.

‘You are making this sound like quite a mechanical process but it is
true to say that this company, like many others, has been doing loads
of projects and been very successful to date relying on something
other than this technique?’

Jason gets Bob’s point in a flash and realises that some compliments
are called for: ‘Please don’t get the idea this is a mechanical process.
It is only a framework within which experienced and knowledgeable
people can make decisions. That knowledge, experience and those
‘hunches’ if you like, are all what makes a board and therefore a
company work really well.’

The non-executive director has risen from his somnambulant state

and asks a question that hints at what he has missed. Fortunately for
him it is not that unreasonable a question.
‘Is a benefit part of a project or is a project part of a benefit?’

Jason replies that benefits and projects are separate. A few projects
have only one benefit or, to look at it a different way, some benefits
are achieved through only one project. But in most cases there is a
many-to-many relationship between projects, outputs, outcomes and
benefits, which is why we group these projects into programmes.

Jason explains that starting off with a single project and trying to
understand if it is viable is worthy but does not address a number of
key issues connected with the other projects running at the same
time and those planned for the near future.

He writes some key words on a handy flipchart and explains each one

Prioritisation : Where is this project or programme in terms of

priority relative to others?

Resources : What resources does it require and how does that fit
with the availability of resources in the organisation?

Logical dependencies: Some projects logically depend on other

projects. For example a multi-site software implementation project
may depend on the installation of a new cloud based infrastructure.
What projects depend on the project under consideration and on what
projects does it, in turn, depend?

Shared benefits: Some benefits depend on a group of projects. For

example a new hospital ward is only useful when the building project,
equipment commissioning and the project to provide the staff and
support are all complete. A delay in any one of those three separate
projects will prevent the opening of the ward.

Degree of change : Most organisations recognise that there is a

non-numeric but still relevant, maximum and sensible level of change
that an organisation can deal with. This applies to the organisation as
a whole but also to separate departments, groups, functions and
individuals.

Only by examining the overall portfolio can this be understood and

considered.

‘But,’ says Jason ‘there is much of this technique we cannot use today
as we don’t have ways of collecting all the necessary information. So
we are going to rely on your expertise to estimate and comment on
each project, programme and benefit.

‘So let’s take a look at our whole portfolio. In principle, it will look
something like this’. He calls up another slide.
‘This should ideally be a top down process’, he explains ‘but as we
have a number of projects already up and running we need to think
these through in terms of our strategy.

‘Starting from the bottom up, you can see that projects are grouped
into programmes and these programmes are grouped under the
overall portfolio and this relates to the organisation’s vision.

‘Also whilst many organisations break their projects into functional

areas there are often cross-functional projects and these often cause
the most problems.’

The ever-interested CFO pops a question: ‘Are you saying we should

merge our programmes into one overall portfolio?’

‘No, not just yet. Firstly we should get a better understanding of our
important projects and programmes.’

Everyone’s thoughts turned to Bob’s recent article in the house

magazine.

Jason pauses for breath and sips his ever-present water: ‘Do we have
a strategy for the future and can we express it in a few words?’ Jason
avoids the vision element at this stage as this would probably take all
day to explain, never mind resolve.

A long and rambling conversation follows which, unsurprisingly does

not end with a degree of agreement on the challenges the
organisation faces.

Based on what he knows the company is already doing, Jason

proposes a brief strategic statement:

In order to retain market share, SpendItNow must increase customer

volume by 8%. This will be achieved by increasing retail space and
widening the product range.

The Retail Director is keen to get on and says: ‘Let’s move on to the
projects.’

Jason is less keen to do so: ‘Let’s see what initiatives we might set up
to deliver this strategy. For example if we want to get deeper into the
larger store marketplace do we need to build some new large stores,
buy some or extend stores we already have?’
‘All of the above’, says the Retail Director who finds himself getting
enthusiastic about all this despite his earlier cynicism.

Having swung back to talk about overall, long term strategy they do
agree that they all wish the business to grow - and growth for
SpendItNow translates into larger stores. For some this was so basic
as to be under the level of consciousness.

For the director who nodded off early in the day the whole discussion
is definitely below his level of consciousness as he has again slipped
into slumber. It appears that his wife has recently given birth and the
baby is causing them both sleep deprivation.

After a discussion in which the Retail Director plays a large role, some
general points are agreed about the opening of large stores, the
closing of some smaller ones and assorted extensions to existing
stores. This is all expressed in very general terms and only
occasionally are specific stores mentioned and only then as examples.

The Retail Director knows the number of stores and can quickly relate
them to size expressed in terms of floor area, turnover and number of
tills: ‘So in summary,’ he says, ‘today we have two superstores, 50
medium sized units most of which are in outer-suburban areas and 35
small stores in areas of high-population but with limited space.
‘If the trend for us should be towards more Superstores and larger
stores, these smaller units are going to be very hard to expand and
improve. I think we need to sell some of them off.’

Another director throws his proverbial hat into the proverbial ring:
‘The easiest way of quickly establishing ourselves with a much larger
number of new, large stores is through acquisition.

‘As you all know I have been looking at StackemHigh and they have a
number of suitable units very few of which compete geographically
with any of our own stores. We both have stores near Gwent but apart
from that they are already in areas we have identified as being our
own target zones. Their typical unit is a new-build, out of town, large
superstore and could very easily be changed to our brand. So by
following through with the acquisition talks we could get on a fast
track to quick expansion.’

They also decide to take Bob’s desire for a better check-out system as
a specific example of an innovation that supports the strategy, partly
because of his seniority, partly because an unstructured survey of
customers showed this to be an issue and partly because it was
suspected that their competitors were working on the same problem.
They decide that they simply do not know enough about Bob’s check-
out ideas to seriously evaluate the idea. Jason translates this into a
short introductory discussion about risk and how the risks associated
with the project are high because the idea and the technologies are
unknown at this early stage. They decide it is a strategic imperative
to find out more about this idea which is becoming firmly established
in their minds as the e-Trolley project.

They then realise that they have assembled the beginning of a

strategic portfolio.

The IT Director feels it is time to contribute before his life becomes

intolerable: ‘What you say is true but the barrier to this is going to be
in the IT area. StackemHigh have a completely different approach to
IT systems and we could not easily integrate their systems with ours.’

He would, at this point, normally dive off into long technical

discussions about the differences between distributed and centralised
databases and multi-access processing but somehow such topics
seem too detailed for this level of conversation. With an extreme
personal effort of will he stays at the high level:

‘We would need to install whole new systems in their stores as part of
the refit and arrange some kind of data transfer from their legacy
systems to our own databases. If we don’t do that we will not be able
to take full advantage of our buying power, we will be prevented from
using our loyalty cards in these shops and I have no idea how we
would work stock control and pricing.

'So yes, by all means, let’s go ahead with the take-over but please do
not forget that the IT side will take nearly a quarter of my team for
the best part of a year, and that’s before we even consider the e-
Trolley.

'We can do everything eventually but we can’t do everything today.

Miracles, in IT, take time.’

This news does not go down well just as bad news has a habit of not
doing. The one-liner about miracles taking time helped to give the
bad news something soft to land on when it eventually stopped going
down.

In a fairly rough and ready way they start taking the process to its
next stage by trying to estimate what work they could actually handle
in the next year. Jason makes notes on a flip chart.
Bob notes with satisfaction that his brainwave has earned itself a
name – the e-Trolley project – a shopping trolley that will automate the
customer’s check out process.

‘There are two issues to face,’ Jason explains, ‘There is the hard,
quantitative ability of the resources to deliver new work in IT, retail,
PR and so on and it should be possible to estimate at a broad level
the resources that will be required for each initiative and to compare
this with the availability we either have or can get. I know it is usually
possible to increase resources, given enough notice. This can be done
by hiring in contractors or expanding the work force and some
allowances can be made for this.

‘And we cannot forget the business as usual workload – known these

days as BAU – and the non-project workload.

‘Most people,’ he explains, ’have a normal job to do apart from their

project workload and this can be thought of as a very high priority
project. BAU has to be considered if we are to plan realistically with
the resources we can actually make available for project work.

‘Additionally’, Jason smiles at the group,’ people like to take holidays,

get sick, go off on training courses and take maternity and paternity
leave. We should assemble data on these as well to ensure
reasonable allowances are made.

‘But there is also the change limit – the impact of change on the
organisation and specific groups within it.

Organisations that make a lot of simultaneous changes tend to get

overloaded with change and this is much harder to estimate and
prepare for. Some organisations that have adopted too many
initiatives have floundered as some of those changes have been
delivered but others have not and staff were de-motivated.’

Jason does not elaborate on his previous employer and ‘big four’
consultancy that had made exactly this mistake. That this catastrophe
had taken place within their own organisation and not for a client
made it worse.

The result had included a great deal of introspection by people who

thought that ‘we of all people know how to run projects’; the creation
of a new system for approving internal projects; the premature ending
of a number of aspiring project managers’ careers; the incidental and
unofficial creation and transfer of some people to the new ‘scapegoat’
resource pool and a few departures of disaffected staff.

However, he does talk a little about a contour of [Link] he

explains, refers to the fact that change can effect an organisation in a
patchy way. There is a contour, which if it were possible to sketch,
would show that some groups are hardly affected by change at all and
yet others suffer from a wide range of simultaneous changes which
they find confusing, overwhelming and very hard to deal with. Such
people are unlikely to have great respect for their management.

So Jason pleads for a small number of carefully selected programmes

and projects that are:

 Strategically aligned

 Highly beneficial

 Within the capacity of the organisation’s ability to change

 Within the capacity of the organisation to accept change

One athletic looking director speaks aloud a thought that is currently

coursing through a number of brains: ‘Surely you are saying that the
way to improve on the delivery of projects and programmes is simply
to take on fewer of them? That seems a bit like reducing your time for
a marathon by shortening the length of the race’

Jason has heard this before: ‘It is better to run and complete 4 half
marathons than to fail to finish in 2 full races. We will be better off if
we set and achieve some objectives than if we set and don’t achieve
all of our possible targets. What is important is the number and value
of the benefits we deliver rather than the number of projects we start’

The conversation moves on to setting targets for benefit delivery. It

takes some time for some of the board to get their heads round the
difference between an output and a benefit. They decide that a new
store is an output, the increase in income from that store is a benefit.
A new warehouse or goods handling mechanism would be an output
but reduced handling costs and reduced damage would be benefits.

They decide that a new IT system is a deliverable but, with some

humour, some mention that they have never seen any benefit from
any IT system ever. The IT Director asks if better information is a
benefit.

‘That raises a good question’, says Jason. ‘It is a benefit to the people
receiving the information as they are in a more informed position.
Such people are called stakeholders as they have a stake in the
project or programme’.

‘Some stakeholders will benefit from a programme but many will not.
A group of people who are to be made redundant by a cost cutting
exercise or replaced by some technology are clearly stakeholders who
will not benefit from the change.

‘Project and programme managers talk about stakeholder

management being a process of identifying all stakeholders and their
interests. Some managers find the concept of disbenefit useful as it
describes the negative effect some changes have on some people.

‘So we must decide if we are talking about benefits owned by the

whole organisation or benefits to the many and varied stakeholders in
the organisation. When we talk about benefit management I think we
must concentrate on benefits to the whole organisation.

The Retail Director asks if all benefits are financial.

Jason explains that financial benefits are important to many

organisations but there are other types of benefits and some
organisations have a mixture of financial and non-financial benefits
and some have only non-financial benefits.

‘Government’, he says’ spends considerable time considering non-

financial benefits. Think for a moment about education, health and
social security where you will see the objective is to balance delivery
of a range of services and the cost of running the operation. I do not
think we should get into the issue right now but many people are
using the Balanced Scorecard approach to define their non-financial
strategies so that the impact a programme will have can be
approximated and aligned with an expressed strategy.’

A number of people are prepared to admit not knowing much about

Balanced Scorecards so Jason briefly explains.

‘A Balanced Scorecard provides four perspectives each relating to

major non-financial measure of the organisation’s perceived success
such as customer satisfaction, staff motivation, image in the market.
The original authors did propose their own set of four perspectives but
there is no reason why an organisation should not choose its own.
Each perspective also contains a number of Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs). Each KPI should preferably be measurable and
include items such as:

 % of staff leaving the organisation per annum

  levels of customer satisfaction derived from customer surveys

 lengths of queues or waiting times

 amount of time taken to answer support calls

 % of repeat customers

 levels of complaints

 levels of wastage and theft

‘KPIs are therefore measures of the success of the organisation in

non-financial terms. The amount of impact that a programme will or
does have on the organisation in non-financial terms can be thought
about and sometimes measured in terms of these KPIs.

‘KPIs may vary considerably between organisations reflecting the

organisation’s functions, purposes and priorities.’

The CFO listens to this short discussion on KPIs but maintains the view
that all benefits in the end come back to hard cash. ‘I’ve not worked
for government, but there is no point of improving our customer
loyalty levels unless they come back and spend money in our stores.
There is no value in a better material handling mechanism unless it
reduces the wage bill and the cost of damaged goods. In a business
like ours, there is only hard cash at the end of the day.’

Whilst they all agree this is the case they do recognise that some non-
financial benefits are very hard and perhaps impossible to translate
into cash. ‘What part of our total turnover can be regarded as due to
an increase in customer loyalty?’ asks Bob, ‘How does our advertising
help our bottom line?’

In the end they all accept that it is impractical to think about anything
other than both financial and non-financial benefits and that they
need to prioritise their own non-financial benefits in some way based
on the idea of Key Performance Indicators.

‘In these terms can we think about the benefits of some of the
programmes and projects we have identified? Let’s start with the e-
Trolley idea. What might it achieve?’

Part 4 - The e-Trolley, justified

Jason sees that no one else is about to commit commercial suicide

and put the e-Trolley project in a chair with a bright light shining in its
eyes and give it the third degree so he does so himself. He raises the
challenge for Bob to justify his project in benefits terms partly
because it shows him to be a fearless member of the team able to put
his own career behind the good of the company and partly because
he convinced Bob two days before the meeting that it was essential
for the e-Trolley project to be well argued. Jason has learned a lot
about internal politics.

Bob agreed to let Jason question him in this way on the proviso that
Jason helps with the benefit case. So Bob is able to list all of the
benefits he and Jason had been able to dream up in pretty general
terms for the e-Trolley project.

Jason almost succeeds in keeping a know-it-all smile away from his

face.

The first benefit, ‘says Bob’, is in improved customer satisfaction

though quicker and easier checking out. I read a survey carried out
by one of those Watchdog TV programmes recently. By the way, they
are called watchdog programmes because most of the audience are
family pets’

A dutiful chuckle circulates the room despite the poor joke.

‘Anyway, the survey showed that the single most annoying element in
the whole shopping experience is the check-out process. People
dislike the queuing and jockeying for position and are convinced that
other queues seem to always move faster than their own.

‘People spoke about feeling harassed into unpacking and re-packing

quickly so as not to delay others. Everyone hates having to unload all
of their purchases and then repack them. In addition, our own very
simple preliminary survey shows a surprisingly low fear of the
technology (except amongst the older group of customers) plus a
good measure of support for an attempt to do something about the
check-out problem. We got nearly 100% support from the disabled
customers.

‘To complete this first benefit there will be better service levels as the
customer should know how much they have spent so far and can
price any item using their own barcode scanner. This will save both
our staff and our customers some considerable time.

‘Secondly we will increase the sales of certain items especially in the

hygiene and pharmaceutical areas. We believe there are a significant
number of people who do not buy personal things from us because
they have to be counted and displayed for all to see. Some people are
intimidated by having their depilatories, suppositories, prophylactics
and even hair dye displayed to their fellow shoppers. I estimate a
0.05% increase in sales due to this change.

‘Thirdly we will be able to reduce the number of check-out points in

many stores. This will release floor space for display shelving and
reduce the number of staff we need to keep each store running. I
estimate a 7.5% reduction in both check out staff and required floor
space in the stores that take on the e-Trolley. It will be like expanding
every store, something that would normally cost us thousands at a
large store and even more on a superstore.

‘Fourthly we lose a lot of goods by breakage at the checkout. A

significant quantity of goods, and especially fragile items like glass
containers including jars and bottles as well as cakes and soft fruit,
get trashed at the checkouts. As a policy we replace these items free
of charge to avoid the inevitable arguments about whose fault it was.
I estimate this to save us £500,000 per annum.

‘We will use this new technology to generate some good public
relations and publicity. We’ll be seen as a progressive, thinking
organisation that does its best to help our customers to make their
lives easier.

‘Finally I think we are going to reduce shrinkage. We lose a lot of

goods through various forms of carelessness and theft and I do not
expect this new system will add to the problem, it should bring about
a reduction. Customers will not be able to use a check out station
operated by a neighbour or friend who kindly misses a few items. We
will lose about the same quantities under people’s coats and in their
bags as we do now. I will be conservative and not put any value on
this. All of these benefits need work but I hope you can see the trend.’

Bob has made a strong case and knows it. He has been weak on some
numbers but his authority and confident delivery make up for any
shortfalls in facts. Within the SpendItNow hierarchy this has been the
best-presented and most explicit case for undertaking any project
there has ever been and that by some considerable distance, so
whilst it may not be perfect it is far better than any other previous
attempt. Jason smiles inwardly and glances round the room. Oddly he
finds himself wishing Anna had been there to see it.

Once the collective jaws of the directors have been scraped off the
conference room floor and whilst still on a high they adjourn to lunch,
a part of the day’s proceedings many had been looking forward to. No
one was looking forward to lunch as much as Jason had been looking
forward to Bob’s justification of the e-Trolley.
With Jason’s help and after a great deal of discussion, they break
down the overall strategy into three programmes and Jason’s diagram
now looks like this on the whiteboard:

The e-Trolley pilot project stays in the list of projects to do and they
come up with a general list of initiatives but decide to leave the
acquisition to one side recognising that the window of opportunity
might soon slam shut on the stubby fingers of delay.

After some discussion and defensive statements from various

directors a complete list is drawn up. Jason fiddles around with his
computer whilst the others drink coffee and he assembles a diagram
showing the current level of knowledge about the projects and
programmes, and highlighting the gaps that need filling in. He
projects this onto the screen for all to see.

They realise that having worked on a more rational basis they have
set themselves on a route that actually makes sense.

They note that there is a cross functional project in the Stores

Systems Project which supports and plays a part in both the Stores
Building Programme and the Stores Operation Programmes. They
decide after some discussion that responsibility for the project must
lie clearly somewhere and eventually plump for the Stores Operation
Programme.
Jason draws the result of the discussion on the whiteboard.

The IT Director feels slightly mollified as his workload has been shown
as being difficult to manage.

Jason makes a rare mistake by congratulating them and almost as

hastily steps back to cover his tracks. Directors and senior managers
do not like to be congratulated or castigated by any young man but
Jason manages to both in one sentence. : ‘Well done everyone –
we’ve managed to bring a clear vision out of chaos…..ah…. I mean
that this morning we had…. I mean I had….. a great deal of confusion
about where the organisation is going and now I am much clearer.
Thank you all for that.

Jason thinks to himself that first he belittled them, then he insulted

them and finally he made it seem that they did all that work for his
benefit.

He is really glad that Anna wasn’t around to see that.

Bob touches Jason on the shoulder and gives him a warm smile as the
event closes and the directors set off for home in the gathering gloom
of evening.