Information Technology Aligned» Project Management

Project Mission Statements – Justifiable, Objective Focus

John Brunswick — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:01:17 +0000

It is not uncommon for project mission statements and organizational mission statements contain lofty, heartfelt missions that sound terrific – but fail to translate into meaningful guidance for a project or company. If you ever had a chance to use the Dilbert mission statement generator before it was decommissioned, you may have created mission statements like the following, which highlight how NOT to create a mission statement -

“We have committed to synergistically fashion high-quality products so that we may collaboratively provide access to inexpensive leadership skills in order to solve business problems”
“Our challenge is to assertively administrate timely resources and authoritatively integrate enterprise-wide products while promoting personal employee growth.”
“It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer’s needs”

The above mission statements are ultimately empty and provide no guidance or control over the execution of tasks that will take place to fulfil them.

In his book Winning, Jack Welch emphasizes the need to take a pragmatic, no-nonsense approach to mission statement development if any real value is to be gained by it. Mr Welch states that “Too often, these exercises end with a set of generic platitudes that do nothing but leave employees directionless or cynical. Who doesn’t know of a mission statement that reads something like, “XYZ Company values quality and service,” or, “Such-and-Such Company is customer-driven.” … Give me a break—every decent company espouses these things!”

To make the most out of a project charter’s mission statement it must be meaningful enough to provide business justification, focus the project execution and provide a high level metric to objectify project results. If developed correctly, a mission statement will act as an excellent compass by which to deliver a successful project. This is done by clearly defining

WHAT the project is about – focus execution via this statement
WHY it is being undertaken – business justification
HOW it will be achieved – objective metrics for success

This might sound trivial, but it is amazing how often this fundamental criteria is not met. If this criteria cannot be clearly articulated by a project team, the project should not be undertaken.

Although the Project Management Institutes’s (PMI) Body of Knowledge can be idealistic, it does a good job of making sure that a project mission statement is clear in these respects and define it as follows – “Brief summary, approximately one or two sentences, that sums up the background, purposes and benefits of the project.” (from http://www.pmi.org/PDF/pp_besnerhobbs.pdf). In my abbreviated approach above, addressing the WHAT (goal), WHY (business justification) and HOW (metrics for success) will ensure that a foundation for project success is created based on a strong vision.

Misconceptions – Redesigns and Information Architecture

John Brunswick — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:29:55 +0000

In the world of web site management and development, the term “redesign” may at first seem harmless, but can have far reaching implications as to what will be done to deliver a successful project. I recently worked with a customer who was interested in redesigning various internal and external web sites for their organization. It quickly became apparent by observing their discussion that they were asking for something much broader than an exclusively aesthetic redesign. The word “redesign” is often generically used to refer to an updated look of a public web site, intranet or extranet. Unfortunately the expression “redesign” can be misleading about the actual work that will be needed to deliver a finished project and should alert anyone involved in the project that a much deeper understanding of the project needs much be gathered. This dangerous vagueness can been seen as the equivalent of someone telling you that you must pack for a trip, without knowing anything about the duration or destination.

Most major update efforts to a web site generally involve substantial work around “information architecture” that is combined with a visual “redesign” to meet the overall project goals. To complicate matters further there is also the possibility that the overall business messaging of one of more portions of the site may change. For the purposes of this discussion, we will only focus on the differences with design and information architecture from an implementation standpoint. This will help us to introduce formal, industry standard terms that will specify what is required to deliver a project.

To explain the various disciplines that go into a “redesign” it helps to think of a visitor’s experience at an art museum. The following aspects of a museum will help to map the analogy to the industry specific terms of User Experience (UX), Information Architecture (IA) and User Interface (UI).

Attributes of an Art Museum

Wings – analogous to major, top-level navigation on the site
Exhibits – can represent minor navigation that is dependant on what site area a user is in
Pieces of Art – content / applications that a user may interact with
Visitors – users

User Experience (UX)
The Information Architecture and User Interface disciplines both fall under the umbrella of User Experience (UX). Think of UX as how a museum visitor has perceived, learned and used the museum – or more simply – their overall experience. Visitors may not remember specific exhibits within a museum, but may recall that it was a pleasant experience. Within that pleasant experience there were a series of objective elements created that perception. Those elements are Information Architecture and User Interface.

In the world of corporate web site UX this equates to a site that is at its most fundamental level easily navigable, aesthetically pleasing and allows a user to achieve their goal of their site visit with minimal interference. In order to achieve this a solid information architecture and user interface must exist. When the word “redesign” is used for a project it will almost certainly involve both of these elements.

Information Architecture (IA)
Information Architecture dictates how the various wings of the museum are laid out and where various pieces of art are displayed within the wings. IA helps visitors to arrive at various focal points throughout the museum by way of a logical paths. To create logic paths, many museums lay out their exhibits by geography or time period. This helps visitors to enjoy some level of continuity throughout their visit.

IA helps connect users to content and or applications that they require based on their needs. IA can be simple or complex in relation to the diversity of content and actions that a user will experience during their site visit. IA is by its very nature organic and will change over time to continue to try to meet the needs of an organization’s constituents.

IA is like a blueprint of the museum or an upside down tree diagram that attempts to group exhibits and their contents in some logical manner, helping people easily locate them. Somewhat unlike the physical world, sites can allow visitors to arrive at one particular content item or application from a variety of paths.

User Interface (UI)
As visitors locate their areas of interest within the museum and walk through various exhibits they will constantly interact with singange. Museum signs can come in a variety of styles, are potentially highlighted by lighting and can be placed at a wide variety of places throughout the rooms. Rooms can also be painted different colors and contain many types of molding and flooring. Perhaps some exhibits allow visitors to press levers or buttons to engage audio recordings about various works.

UI allows users to interact with and consume underlying content and applications (art / audio) that are grouped together based on the IA that was addressed in the prior section. The UI sets the visual tone for the site – colors, fonts, positioning of various content and or application on the page. A good UI supports maximizing the value from IA underneath it. A visitor to a museum is going to most likely want to visit a specific set of works and be exposed to reference materials around each one of them. The optimal UI will help the visitor to maneuver and consume this with ease.

To further elaborate on this – leaving our museum analogy for a moment – it helps to think of the variety of MP3 players on the market. The Apple iPod is arguably the premier device on the market for variety of reasons, one of the strongest being its very easy to use UI. The iPod lets music listeners quickly and elegantly access their music.

Closing Thoughts
The next time that someone talks about doing a site “redesign” stop to contemplate what is really being requested. Most often a redesign is not purely aesthetic. As organizations change and grow it is essential that they continue to make their online efforts as effective as possible in supporting their businesses. This means that the User Experience will need to be supported by great Information Architecture and User Interface implementations.

Large Project Success – Pragmatic Phasing

John Brunswick — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:43:17 +0000

I marvel at the complexity of various finely made time pieces. I cringe at the complexity of various projects. A timepiece is generally valued by the number of “complications” or moving parts that it has. Conversely, a project is punished by the number that it has. Unfortunately the possible surface area for project issues grows exponentially as the number of tasks within a project increases.

Working in technology consulting all of my professional life it might seem that it would be to my benefit to sell and manage a variety of large, complex projects to drive revenue. It can actually be detrimental and somewhat like a race car going too fast in the corners. If a project looses control and never crosses the finish line both the client and I have lost. I am not a management consultant, but clearly understand that is not a good approach to doing business.

The key to winning is to deliver the project in smaller, cleanly scoped and controlled phases.

Most importantly – the project must really be approached in a phased manner – it cannot just be lip service from the project team. At the end of the day a business sponsor will be expecting some business value to be produced from the project efforts and steering away from the phases approach in any regard blurs the lines around that sponsor’s expectations and can derail the project.

Consider these steps in order to help support and create a pragmatic, phased approach that I hope can assist you in delivering predictable benefit to your project sponsors.

Pragmatic Phases Project Approach

Projects only begin to provide value once they start to support or produce for the business that they are designed for:
1. Fight the urge to bundle all of the business value into a single, monolithic development effort. If that efforts stumbles or is halted, the business value is impacted
By phasing the project value can be provided to the business much earlier in the overall project life cycle
1. In almost every project it is possible to decompose and prioritize various business benefits that will be made available by the project completion
2. Review the list and sort it by the priority of each business benefit
3. Observe various dependencies and finalize the list c. Schedule your project into phases on the basis of the list
Treat each phase as a traditional project: a. When complete each phase should yield a working deliverable available for review, revision and release. b. Continuing to think pragmatically each release does not need to be made public, but should be treated as though it were final given its place in the overall project life cycle.

Hopefully the above tips help project teams avoid trying to “boil the ocean”. There are many good project teams that have fallen short of their potential by trying to address all requirements in a long running project and ultimately failing to deliver a working product. By approaching those same projects in a strictly phased manner they could have greatly increased their chances at getting their projects out of the door.

I look forward to additional thoughts on pragmatic approaches to project management for larger projects. Please feel free to drop me a line or comment.