Building a Strong Foundation for Projects with Effective Systems

Unlock the competitive edge your organization has been missing with a masterclass on the strategic essence of project management. As your host, Munir Ajam, I bring nearly four decades of experience to the table, unraveling the intricacies of constructing a robust and adaptable Organizational Project Management (OPM) system. This episode is a deep dive into the alchemy of people, processes, and technology, and how this trio can serve as your company's bedrock for innovation and efficiency.

Prepare to explore the significance of integrating processes with human competencies and the role of technology as a powerful enabler. I shed light on the importance of flexibility within project management frameworks, the establishment of competency baselines, and how professional development programs can elevate your team's prowess. We'll also delve into the potential of internal certification programs customized to your organization's unique needs. Join the conversation and contribute to the evolution of project management excellence, as we dissect the transformation that a solid OPM system can bring to your organizational success.

Speaker 1: 0:07

Good day, howdy, and welcome to the 4pm podcast. My name is Munir Ajam. My core passion is project management in community. I come to you with at least close to 35 years of experience. My eagerness to share knowledge and to mentor and coach groups help organizations transform the way they manage project to a higher level. 4pm's tent in this case is shortened for us for what we call value, which means project, program, product and portfolios. So a lot of our topics will be around these 4pm. Let's get going. Great day and welcome to episode 4 of the 4pm podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:59

Today's topic about the foundation of transformation, which is essentially focusing on organizational project management. If we are going to transform how we manage project and organization, we must start with the system, the infrastructure, which means the organizational project management system, the policies, the guidelines, the procedures, the methodology that we need to help us manage project and if we want to expand the spectrum, managing project, program, product and the entire portfolio. As a refresher, in episode 2 we talked about transforming project management as a general topic. In episode 3, we stressed the need to understand that our domain and respect our diversity before we start a transformation journey. Our approach to this transformation effort involves two independent aspects. The first is organizational project management, which is the foundation of transformation and that's today's topic, and the second is a value delivery methodological process, which we will cover in the next episode. So today we will be focusing on organizational project management and what does it take to build an effective and sustainable organizational project management system? And when we say sustainable OPM system, that means it must depend on three pillars of people, meaning competence, processes, meaning methods and technology. So people, processes and technology as three pillars of a sustainable organizational project management system. So as we start, we want to reflect on in this first episode okay, on what are we going to cover today? We will divide the episode, as usual, in multiple parts, and part one we will talk we introduce the organizational project management and project management system. In part two we talk about the processes pillar. In part three we will talk about the people pillar and then we will shift to part four where we talk about the technology pillar and basically we will start wrapping up the episode. So let's go through part one.

Speaker 1: 3:32

The first aspect of understanding, recognizing and accepting the project management is strategically important and can be a competitive advantage, and also if we can reach the level of where project management is truly a competitive advantage. That means project management can become indispensable for business results. Unfortunately, we have seen a lot of pain in the area of project management, to the point where many organizations do not accept or recognize or respect project management enough. And part of that, as we discussed in earlier episode, is possibly our fault. We have not been able to deliver excellence to executive and organization so in a way we could have gotten ourselves onto what I like to call the cycle of dooms. You know we don't perform well, executive will trust us less. You know we start to performing even worse and worse, or maybe we stay the same. We don't see any improvement as a result. Executive are not going to see the value. We need to reverse that and to be able to reverse and to get to the point where organizations and executive accept, respect and recognize project management to become an indispensable for business results. That means they need to see it's becoming a competitive advantage. That means they are able to produce and deliver product and deliver and complete their project faster, better, cheaper than their competitor.

Speaker 1: 5:07

How can we do that? As we mentioned, the foundation is to build a robust, sustainable organizational project management system that sits on these three pillars that we discuss processes, people and technology. So what do we mean by the process pillar or the processes pillar? In this case we're using the word processes generically. It could be anything from policies, which are the things that are part of the governance, to method, to procedures, to guideline that we need as an organization to use to manage project, program, product and portfolios. We need to have a consistency, a standardization in these areas.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Now, when we talk about consistency and standardization, we do not mean set in stone one size fits all. Project management is always adaptive. We repeat that probably in every episode. Project management is highly adaptive. That means we must adapt to the need of the organization, the need of the project. However, we don't always start from scratch. We must start from a foundation Including the processes, the standard processes, then the style, the culture, the way we manage project. All of these might be highly dependent on the individuals involved. So what does it mean? To have the process in place, and sometimes people like to debate which come first, which is the most important, the process pillar or the people pillar?

Speaker 1: 6:47

Well, obviously, processes. You know, until we have AI take over, you know, someday in the distant future, processes are developed and designed and established by people. So we need to have some kind of a processes or at least a set of people whether they are internal from the organization or external to build the process. So we started with the process. So in this case, what we are talking about is that we need to have the systematic approach for standardization. Now, one big area of processes is what we like to call method, or methodology. Right, when we have an organization, they want to manage project or program, what would be the methodology that we have to follow? What kind of lifecycle, what kind of decision point, what kind of criteria do we have for making decision or accepting project or rejecting project? Or, if a project is in trouble, what do we do to terminate the project? There's a lot of processes here as part of the governance and and methodologies that we need to establish an organization. We will have many topics in the future in this episode where we will talk about different aspect, for today we just want to introduce that high area.

Speaker 1: 8:00

One warning before I close this part on the process is we must be careful with rigidity. Rigidity is anti-agile, it's fragile, right? So basically, if you put a system where it is very rigid, what you're going to end up with sooner or later is going to break. Now, what do we mean by rigid? Again, set in stone, guideline, dictatorship style, autocratic style. You must do one, two, three, four, regardless, right, when we get those kind of situations, sooner or later project manager are going to revolt or they are going to start bypassing or violating or ignoring these processes in place. So we have to accept the idea of continuous improvement. Again, that might be a separate topic by itself, so let's leave it here for now. So to close, we must build an agile system that encourage innovation, continuous improvement. That is the only way to achieve a higher level of organizational maturity, which will produce the better result and maximizing shareholder value.

Speaker 1: 9:09

It's time to shift to the second pillar, which is the people pillar, as we mentioned. Obviously, processes are built by people, but now what we are saying here? We need to have the people who are going to execute, manage and handle these project, program, product and portfolios. And when we talk about people, we need to start maybe with a two definition and because sometime we use them and we confuse them, which is the difference between knowledge and competence.

Speaker 1: 9:44

Unfortunately, one of the problem here is with many certification out there that they claim to be competency based exam a reality. They are knowledge exam. You are only being tested to make sure that you have an understanding or a knowledge of a certain guide, a Pumbak guide, a Prince II guide, something like that. So a knowledge based exam is demonstrating that if you pass, if you secure one of those certification, that mean you have demonstrated that you have the knowledge. That doesn't indicate that you have the competence. Now what's the difference? Competence, by definition, that mean you have acquired the knowledge. So it starts with knowledge. But now you are also can demonstrate, you can prove that you can apply that knowledge and achieve consistent result. You know this definition I just shared may not be a textbook definition. This is my definition, which I'm sure align with the global definition, right? So knowledge is I know something. Competent is I mean I am competent to do something. That mean I can do it and I can do it well. So we need to start with that item.

Speaker 1: 11:02

If organization invests into generic certification or generic training, that's not bad. That's a good idea. However, when you go into generic certification or generic training, the problem is you are teaching your people a specific language, right? However, the case is, or the question would become are your system, the processes that you have in place, aligned with that knowledge that your team is acquiring? If it doesn't align, then again you just taught your people another language but they cannot speak it at work.

Speaker 1: 11:41

So we have to be careful and integrate. This is why we don't like who come first, people or process. To us they are highly integrated because an idea to have competent people in highly mature organization, we must have those people competent in the processes that have been established for that organization. So this always we advise executive and organization first build your process. If you have internal people to help you build it, great. If not, maybe you can work with your internal people on some external. And if you don't have internal people at all, then you have no choice to depend except on external. But the more you can build it with your internal resources, the best. And then you must move to the next level, which is train and develop your people through different type of development approach on the job, off the job, competency based, establish a competency baseline so your people are competent in the processes that you have established for your organization. So to reinforce this point, if you don't have processes and many organization today that's one of the gap we see in practice is often enough.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Depend on people, people. They send people to get generic certification. They become certified. However, every project manager, every team member have a different knowledge background, different, different knowledge foundation, different background, different interests, different experiences. So everybody manager project their own way. Some of them might be doing a great job. Some people might be doing a mediocre job. If you have a lot of accidental project manager, maybe you have a lot of risk involved. So, as a result, if you have a lot of people working on project but you don't have the process, you could still deliver some successful project, no question about it. However, as an organization, are you able to deliver consistency? That's one question. Second, are you able to improve and elevate your performance? These are the question. Without process, people cannot do it. So it's very important that we have to depend on building that process, and I'm repeating, probably to re-emphasize some of these points.

Speaker 1: 14:06

So, once we establish a process, as we said, we need to establish a professional development program. How do we do that? Well, first, maybe you need to set, establish your competency baseline. What would be for different roles, whether you are dealing with project manager or program manager, product manager or sponsor team member, technical team member or project management team member, executive or board of director. Even so, you will have to establish some kind of a competency guidelines. It's okay for the different roles and different levels within the organization. What do we expect those roles to know and to be competent in? And we can establish some kind of a competency guideline.

Speaker 1: 14:48

There are some models out there, however, you can establish. If you are large enough organization, you can also establish your own. So that is would be one level, because at least now you have defined a baseline to develop your people on that. Now, how do we develop the people? Of course, there could be a lot of training, ideally in line with those processes you're built. They could be on the job monitoring. They could be some kind of a coaching program, a mentoring program, a shadowing program. Notice I mentioned these as different things and because each one of them is a little bit different. So depend on the nature of the organization and the culture of the organization. You might have something that combine all of these or you could have one or the other. So a mentoring program is very important, a shadowing program could be essential, of course, coaching and the training and monitoring was this process. Now, if you are in a large organization, who knows, maybe you can establish your own internal certification program. We have a model we'll be happy to share with you and then to build your own certification model.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Now again, here we're not trying to critique what exists in the market. What exists in the market is good as generic certification, whether it's French 2 or PMP or C-APM or IPMA, level D or IPMA, maybe even level C. However, they are not all certification are equal. Some of them are better than other. Some of them most of them are knowledge base, some of them are competency base. But even when those are competency base, they are based on general processes, not your own internal processes, as you heard me say, which come first. People of process. They come together. They are really essential to us.

Speaker 1: 16:43

Out of the three pillar, these are the most important pillar to establish, which lead us to the last part, which is technology pillar. Now, technology is becoming more and more important in all type of organization, which is important, however. However, technology is there to help us be more efficient. Today we have, obviously, the buzzword is AI. Everybody talks about AI. However, when you go to AI, some of the learning management tool and you try to ask question and then people think you know, obviously they're not necessarily pure AI, but basically, when you look for, you start to look for information, you can get a lot of garbage. There are a lot of good stuff out there and a lot of garbage out there. So, technology, if it is a double-edged sword, if it gonna trust what come out of technology blindly, we might be cutting ourselves. That's why we must have the processes in place, we must have the competent people, and when we have those two pillars satisfied, then technology becoming an enabler, it become a way of helping us become much more efficient, much more effective. We are able to do more with less. And when it come to technology, obviously there are tools out there and there are systems and there are what we call solution which might be more definitely much more advanced than a tool.

Speaker 1: 18:17

With this I conclude the main topic for today. It's happening that this is one of our shortest so far episode, but that's the idea we're trying to produce this episode to be about 20 minutes plus or minus and maybe with a maximum of 30 minutes. So, in order, before I close this, I want to, if you allow me, this is to take a minute of marketing, as we share this knowledge. We know many organizations have not built their organization project management system. You will be surprised. Even large organizations have not built it. So obviously you know small, medium, if any small medium organization have built some system. I think that would be admirable. But what we know and from different regions of the world we've worked in multiple countries and multiple regions is that many small to medium organizations do not have formalized processes in place, ie organization project management. But unfortunately what we found out is a lot of large organizations also don't have it and when some organization might have something, it probably all need to be improved and or maybe it's not digitized. However, we must say we have seen a lot of organization with great system in place and they produce great result and they are lead, they are the leader in their industries, right. So that demonstrates that effective project management, competent project management in organization was higher level of project management, maturity, achieve success. So the minute of marketing is about.

Speaker 1: 20:02

We know that the condition in the market that you know we don't have enough organization was enough. You know built and system in place. So what have we done as a company? We built it. We built the ROOP platform, which is a digital solution to allow organization to manage project, program, their product delivery and portfolios. We built it as, not as a tool, we built it as a comprehensive solution, versatile solution. Now, what does this word mean? Comprehensive and versatile? That mean it's adaptive and scalable to different kind of industries, sector, domain, vertical, type of project, size of project, complexity of project. So it's highly adaptive and scalable in that regard. In addition, it also includes most of the processes, the guideline, the governance structure of how to manage project, all of that built into the system. So if you, as an organization, don't have a system and you want to build a system, it might take you months, if not a year or more, and it might cost you hundreds of thousand dollars, if not a million dollar or more. With the ROOP platform, you can start to use it almost immediately. We're talking about almost immediately. That mean within hour, days or week, depending on how much complexity you have and the way you want to manage project, and with minimal investment.

Speaker 1: 21:37

So forgive us to introduce this minute of marketing and in an educational podcast.

Speaker 1: 21:48

With this we come to closing this podcast.

Speaker 1: 21:51

We talked about transforming project management and that has two aspects. One of those aspects is the organizational project management as a foundation for transformation, which was the topic for today. We introduced the topic of OPM and what is an OPM system. We talked about the pillar that goes into a sustainable OPM system, such as the people, the processes and technology, and with this, basically, we just want to remind you that this episode is part of what we call the outreach trio, which means you can also probably see related videos on our YouTube channels or related blogs on our blog site, and you can access all of those from our website knowledge tab. As before we close, we would love for you to reflect on this episode and, when we post it on social media, share with us your view. Where do you might have a different opinion? Where do you might disagree or agree? It would be great to hear your opinion so we can create an exchange and help us improve future episodes. The only thing left is to wish you success today, tomorrow and always.

The 4PM Podcast

Building a Strong Foundation for Projects with Effective Systems

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