Are we measuring our project triumphs through a blurred lens? Join me, Mounir Ajam, as we challenge the prevailing norms in project management. With more than three decades of expertise at the helm, I dissect the perplexing reasons why many projects sink despite seemingly calm seas. We're not just discussing the metrics of success; we're redefining them. As we navigate the murky waters of high failure rates and the desperate need for standardized success measures, we tap into the pulse of what makes or breaks a project's outcome—unfiltered client feedback, quantifiable objectives, and the art of aligning anticipated benefits with actual results.
In our latest exploration, I unravel the threads of communication breakdowns and executive support, revealing how they weave a tapestry of project outcomes. We take a critical look at the lack of robust management systems and policies that often lead us astray and ponder the transformative power of diversity within project management. The conversation turns introspective as we consider our own reluctance to revamp flawed procedures and the vital impact of earning executive buy-in. As we close, the stage is set for our next episode, where we'll delve into the role of diversity in building a stronger, more inclusive project management community. So, lend your voice to this vital discourse and arm yourself with the insights needed to steer your projects towards uncharted territories of success.
Explore more project management insights at www.urukpm.com
Are we measuring our project triumphs through a blurred lens? Join me, Mounir Ajam, as we challenge the prevailing norms in project management. With more than three decades of expertise at the helm, I dissect the perplexing reasons why many projects sink despite seemingly calm seas. We're not just discussing the metrics of success; we're redefining them. As we navigate the murky waters of high failure rates and the desperate need for standardized success measures, we tap into the pulse of what makes or breaks a project's outcome—unfiltered client feedback, quantifiable objectives, and the art of aligning anticipated benefits with actual results.
In our latest exploration, I unravel the threads of communication breakdowns and executive support, revealing how they weave a tapestry of project outcomes. We take a critical look at the lack of robust management systems and policies that often lead us astray and ponder the transformative power of diversity within project management. The conversation turns introspective as we consider our own reluctance to revamp flawed procedures and the vital impact of earning executive buy-in. As we close, the stage is set for our next episode, where we'll delve into the role of diversity in building a stronger, more inclusive project management community. So, lend your voice to this vital discourse and arm yourself with the insights needed to steer your projects towards uncharted territories of success.
Explore more project management insights at www.urukpm.com
Good day, howdy, and welcome to the 4 pm podcast. My name is Munir Ajam. My core passion is project management and community. I come to you with at least close to 35 years of experience and my eagerness to share knowledge and to mentor and coach and grow to see where we can help organization transform the way they manage project to a higher level. 4 pm which means project program, product and portfolios. A lot of our topics will be around this 4 pm. Let's get going. Welcome to the 4 pm podcast episode number two.
Mounir Ajam:
In the last podcast episode we asked a question which was what do you think? How are we doing as a project management domain? Is the project management domain in good health or something else? If you haven't had a chance to think about this or maybe to listen to our previous episode, just maybe you can pause this episode today and just think about that before you continue listening. So what do you think? Obviously, unfortunately, in these kind of things we cannot collect your input, but hopefully you have thought about this Now. We have been thinking about this for a long time and obviously our view is that we are doing good overall. I mean, we cannot say that we are in a bad shape.
Mounir Ajam:
The project management community has been around, formally or informally, for many years and decade. However, we still see a lot of pain points. Although many professional associations have existed for more than 50 years, project management literatures and content have been there for almost a decade. In some cases, we're still not doing enough, and so what we felt is that there is a need for transformation, and this is why we are calling this episode, the current state of practice, the case for transformation. Why do we need to transform? Or do we need to transform? Obviously, we believe we need to transform, and this is why this episode is here and now. We can only believe we need to transform. We made it our mission as a company to help organization transform, and here I will read for you our mission statement Through integrating people, processes and technology, we aim to transform how organization manage project, while leading the way to making project management indispensable for organizational success. That is our mission as a company, and everything we do whether for commercially, business coaching, mentoring, these episodes, the blog views, videos whatever we do is centered around this mission is to help transform the way organization manage project.
Mounir Ajam:
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Mounir Ajam:
So the question here do you measure project or program success today in your organization? How do you ask for feedback and surveys, opinion? Do you use quantifiable measures? Do you establish success criteria early on in the project or the program and assess success later on in line with the criteria you define? So, basically, you set the baseline and you measure against that baseline. And maybe one final question here Do you ever evaluate the outcome, success and benefit of your project compared to the anticipated benefit when you launch a project or program?
Mounir Ajam:
Obviously, every organization, when they launch a project, regardless what it is, whether it's for money or profit or non-profit or government, whatever the case might be, they are expected anticipated benefits from that project. Do we actually measure that after the project is finished? Do we come back in organization today and measure whether that project delivers that outcome, again in a quantifiable way. I can give you an answer because from my experience, I can give you my experience. Often enough on most of these questions we've seen that organization don't do that.
Mounir Ajam:
And one reason again going back to the main header of this topic, which is the absence of project management success standard or project success standard. So we don't have definition. If we don't have definition, or at least a common definition, every company could have its own definition, but if we don't have a common definition, then as an industry, how can we measure? How can we measure whether we are making some good progress or we are basically reducing the rate of failure of project or increasing the chance of success? Again, without proper definition and standardized way of measuring, how can we tell? Now, I don't think there is a single way we can measure. However, in each industry, at least in each type of industry that uses project management, we can define and we can establish some common guideline and standard. So we don't clearly distinguish.
Mounir Ajam:
Another area here another factor that we have a problem with is that not only we don't have proper definition or standard or guide, we also often do not differentiate or distinguish between a project success or failure and project management success or failure. In other words, when you ask people, when we talk about project success online and our social media and our link in post, what are we talking about? Are we talking about technical success? Are we talking about project management success, or are we talking about product delivery success, or are we talking about business or objective success? Notice, I've mentioned four things here, and the reason I mentioned those four things because they relate to something we have developed years ago called the four dimensions of project success. Now, I'm not going to explain them today. We will dedicate in a future episode for this topic and we'll include maybe a link to a video and maybe a blog article, because that includes the visualization of this topic, but one of those topics that it will be good to see, some illustration of these four dimensions that I just mentioned. So I will close this part by saying we need something that we can depend on, at least within each domain or industry, that in order to, when we talk about project success, we have a common reference. Otherwise, we only end up with getting subjective statement.
Mounir Ajam:
Now the second part of this episode, part two, is the high rate of failure. Now, I'm not saying definitely. I need to be absolutely clear. I'm not saying project fail because we don't have definition right. That has nothing to do with it. Just the lack of definition or common standard doesn't allow us to measure properly.
Mounir Ajam:
However, what we know and based on the numerous research information that is published out there and some of it might be questionable, some of it might be sensational reporting and I'm using this term where we talk about only one in 1000 project fail, if we don't provide the criteria, when someone tell me, regardless who that person is or whatever they come from, or whether they come from a respected organization or not, when we say one in 1000 project fail or 80% succeed, doesn't matter either way. What is the standard? What is the foundation? What is the basis of those claims? I'm not saying one in 1000 success, only one in 1000 success. That is a lie, of course, I don't know. The question is that what is the basis for that number? When I say 30% success or 60% success or 70% success or failure, what is the reference for that information? If we don't have that, then we are basically just creating a lot of posts where we debate and debate and debate, but with no conclusion or no proper pass forward.
Mounir Ajam:
What we know is that, despite this argument, if you look at certain I'm not going to name any, but example I will mention. There is one without the name, one organization that often people question their surveys but for many years they've been publishing surveys so I can say maybe I don't trust their way of measuring. However, when for 20, 30 years they've been measuring, let's say, using the same method, right or wrong, and they're basically telling us that project success is only about one third of project are successful and two thirds are challenge or are failure, then definitely that raises flag. That means a lot of, at least subjectively, we can say maybe this is the case when we look at studies by Oxford University. They publish a lot on capital project and infrastructure project. They publish a lot of really serious stuff where high degree of failure. One organization I respect is called Independent Project Analysis and they do a lot of benchmarking in the capital project industry and they have done quite a bit of intensive research right and one book published called Industry and Mega Project that talked about only 35% of mega project under that study were successful and the average size of a project under that study was about 3.2 billion dollars, in some cases over budget and over run were up to 40%, if not more. Now imagine 40% on a billion dollar. 2 billion dollar, 3 billion dollars. How much money is that? What can we do with that money? And this is only one study of maybe 300 projects.
Mounir Ajam:
Today there are trillions of dollars being spent on project and project management and yet we still see a high degree of failure. Now in my books I talked a lot about the actual research and our pitch tech. We talk about that, so I'm not going to go through a lot of percentages here, but I'm going to say basically, whether we are dealing with industrial, petrochemical, oil and gas, renewable infrastructure technology, the rate of failure is high. Now here I need to again remind you to distinguish between project management failure and project failure. Now project management failure could be obviously the project might end up being over budget or behind schedule, but still deliver something of benefit, and now, maybe lower than what we anticipated. Maybe we don't achieve the full benefit we expect, maybe our return investment is lower than what we expect, but at least the project is completed, with project cost schedule problem and maybe some quality problem. However, the project was ultimately finished and is in use.
Mounir Ajam:
Then we have project in general, when we talk about project failure or success, in some time we end maybe some project that actually fail, and usually those are either terminated early, they're never finished or when they're finished, nobody care about them, nobody uses their product. So, in a way that is waste, a lot of waste of resources, of money, of budget, of you name it, not to mention the frustration and probably the career ending for many people. So we know, based on a lot of literature, including some of my work and my own research, that we do have a high degree of failure. Again, I mentioned Oxford University, ipa, others as well. Pmi basically tell us in capital project, at least 70% of these projects suffer from cost or schedule. Again, there are a lot of research studies by independent expert all over the world. So failure is more common than success. This is a problem for all type of organization, all sector, whether technology, infrastructure, oil and gas, industrial, medical, whatever the case might be, and it's all over the world. So this is a problem.
Mounir Ajam:
Now, we highlighted the lack of statistics where we will be able to share some good numbers that are understood. We talked about failure and success and the high rate of failure. Now, what are the causes? And here, if we ask 10 people to tell us what caused the project to fail and if you like you can pause and start to think about it, and I'm sure we could hear 50 to 100 reasons. I mean, even if you pause right now and you think about it, you probably come up with five or six reasons on your own. So why do project fails? Is it 50, 100 reasons? Are there cause or failure? Now, if we think about the root cause, for example, there are many ways to determine the root cause and there are many techniques and business techniques. So I'm not going to go into an academic discussion right now, but let's give you an example.
Mounir Ajam:
So, for example, if we say communication, recently we've seen a lot of posts to say that communication is the number one problem for project failure. Is communication the problem, and in this case, what I mean by that? Is it a root cause or is it a symptom of something else? If you really think about it, most likely it's a symptom Communication problem, material problem, delays, resource problem, competency problem, whatever you call you might call a problem that we face on a project. If you think about it, you will probably can understand that that is a symptom, not a root cause. Why do I say that? Because if we have a problem in communication, it's probably because we don't have the proper system, the policies, the guidelines, the procedure of how to communicate effectively and here I'm not talking about how we talk basically the communication on project, the ability to keep people informed, the stakeholders, who we probably do not have a proper systems in place. In that case that's a root cause.
Mounir Ajam:
Or, if a system is in place, it's often ignored or not used or not followed properly. And it's interesting to find throughout my 30 plus years of life and the professional work in my career, I've always experienced that it's easy for people, including me in the past, before I learned and I woke up it's easier for us to violate a procedure, to ignore a procedure, to bypass a procedure or a policy or a guideline if we don't like it or if we don't think it's practical. Rather than trying to raise the discussion that we need to change that policy, procedure or guideline, we take the easy way. We shouldn't be. The easy way is by deviating from the process, violating it, ignoring it, whatever the case might be, but we don't spend the time and effort to raise the issue with our management or if we are the manager, to spend the time, to take time out of our daily busy running life to try to change something that we think is not logical or shit doesn't work. So this is why we have many often we run into problem that we might have a system but the system could be outdated.
Mounir Ajam:
So here what we are saying is that the root cause partially is related to the system. But let me be more elaborate on this. Here is what we think. Obviously, we cannot generalize, because this is a likely scenario and it could vary from one organization or one industry to another. The root cause this is, in our opinion, as a root, project management and obviously my opinion as Munir Hajjan. The root cause is two sides of the same coin.
Mounir Ajam:
The primary issue, the primary side, is that the lack of adequate lack of adequate recognition of the strategic value of project management by executive. Sorry, guys, I am an executive, obviously in a small company, so I'm not trying to badmouth the executive here. However, executives rightfully so probably have seen a lot of failures in project management. So it's getting to the point where project management is becoming a bad word. Executive don't to a large degree. They might not say this, but I know they feel it inside that they don't trust project management enough. Now, I know I might be exaggerating here, but really think about this.
Mounir Ajam:
Often a lot of organizations still do not have proper project management system, policies, guidelines or even project management departments or PMO. I will talk in the future about PMO versus PM department. But for now, what we're saying? They don't have project management formalized in their organization. Why? Because they don't see the value. If they see a value, they will organize it because they don't see the value.
Mounir Ajam:
And again, whether they don't see it because they have not been given enough information for awareness or because they've seen in their past project management failed to deliver. So whether it's we caused that problem, we shut ourselves I'm talking about we meaning project management community. We shut ourselves and the foot by not delivering success. As a result, we lost the trust of executive. Or maybe because the executive are not aware about the value and we haven't spent enough time educating or sharing or helping them understand the value, and of course, not through theory, through practice and through demonstrated value. As a result of that, we end up with a situation where, again, the lack of adequate recognition of strategic value of project management by executive which contribute to the second side of the common, because executive may not see the value.
Mounir Ajam:
As a result of that, we notice in a lot of organizations there is an absence of any effective or sustainable organizational project management system. And when you say system here I don't talk about technology, I mean system that includes policies, guidelines, procedures, including technology and PMIS, and whatever else that needed to help us effectively manage and lead project program and entire portfolio. So which one comes first? I think both you know in a way. That's why we say to side of the common you know we don't have a proper system. So every project person, project manager, manage project. You know we end up with basically what we call the accidental project manager. People practice project management on their own way of thinking, but that they leave is best, and obviously that used to be the case for many, many years, recent years, maybe, with certification more formalized. But I can tell you I'm not going to go there today. I don't think certification has helped, unfortunately. But again, that's a huge topic by itself. We leave it for now.
Mounir Ajam:
What we know is that today in many organizations we've seen or worked with, obviously we don't have a proper system. Now why? Maybe because the executive don't believe. Now in some cases we have organization, have system, but again is like what I said before it could be outdated, people might choose to bypass it.
Mounir Ajam:
Maybe I can share a case here, an example years ago a client of mine, a major global company, asked me to come in and to evaluate how can we improve their project management system. And when I was meeting with many of their managers said we don't need you, we have our manuals. Said okay, one, two, three manager, executive, basically all the, we don't need you, we have our manager. So we had a meeting with many of their project manager and project team leader at the lower level and we start asking questions how do you do this, how do you do that? And everybody will come up with a different answer. Said wait a minute, I thought you guys have manuals. Who use them? And the old days manual used to be created and sit on the shelf collecting dust. Maybe when they first release, people use them.
Mounir Ajam:
But then, sooner or later, maybe somebody say ah, you know this, this guy doesn't work and this guy does out of date and this guy doesn't make sense and this guy is full of BS, so ignore them. And all of a sudden we start to ignore those system and we go back to an ad hoc scenario where everybody does it whatever, which way they want, so that and maybe that start to get into the cycle of doom. Then project suffers, executive don't? They start to feel like, hey guys, you're not delivering and of course we end up basically with you know, repeated cycle of doom. So what is the proper OPM that?
Mounir Ajam:
We will have many episodes on that in the future, so I will not talk about it today. I just want to introduce it. That brings me to the last part of the presentation or of the episode. We should talk about transformation. So how can we transform project management? I will keep it very brief today because, again, we will have many episodes on this. These are huge topic it's just impossible to cover in a short episode. How can we transform project management In this context? Remember the 4pm. So when I talk about, I'm not talking about only managing project, we're talking about product, we're talking about program, we're talking about portfolio.
Mounir Ajam:
We believe we need something that is centered, focused, emphasized, all over the idea of value delivery, value delivery. We must deliver value. Project owners, all companies, renewable energy companies, hospital, clinic, hospitality, hotel, restaurant. They don't care about physical doing, project or project management. They care about the value the project gives them. When we do a new software, we don't care about the project itself, and I mean by this we don't care or executive don't care in the sense about the mechanism of getting that result. That's important. They obviously they care. However, what they care about the most is the value that is delivered. You can have great system processes, guidelines, software, fancy chart, beautiful performance chart, dashboard, but if you cannot deliver value, it means nothing. Think about that. We must learn how to deliver value and unfortunately, even some guide and project management in up to recent years they think project only. We should care as a community, as project management. We should only care about delivering output, which means a physical product. Ah, I delivered this wall, great, but the value of that wall. So from that perspective, we need to focus on that, and then I will be again.
Mounir Ajam:
I will be expending on this in the future topic. Today I want to say there are numerous ways to help us transform project management and this is why this is an objective and a mission for us. Our approach as a group project management as a company is centered on the principle, idea Integration to deliver value. So back to value right Now. What does that mean? I will leave you on suspense for now.
Mounir Ajam:
Time to close this episode. Remember, we talked about the lack of definition of project success standard or guide on a consistent way of measuring success. We talked about the high failure in project and project management. We talked about the root causes and we talked about the need for transformation. Now I want to close, and we'll probably make it a habit in every episode. We'll try to help you think about the next episode, which is in the next episode, we will discuss something related to transformation, but as basically deal with the idea that to transform, we must first respect our diversity in the project management community. So what do you think that means in the project management context? What diversity means? How can we respect our diversity? Again, think about this question, and when we start posting on our social media, I'd love to hear your opinion and feedback. With this, I want to close by saying we wish you success today, tomorrow and always.