Delivering better projects

Issue

More and more change is now managed through internal project teams: there can be many such teams operating at one time in even quite moderate sized companies. Statistics show that 31% of these projects are cancelled and 53% come in well below expectations. Finally only 16% of projects come in on time, on cost and on scope.

So, even your most carefully selected project teams may have more experience of failure than of success. It follows that leaders and members of such teams may well be chosen more for their knowledge of how things have been run poorly in the past than for their ability to assure future success.

Hardly surprising if that success may be slow in coming. How then can management generate sure-footed and consistent success?

Solution

Many of us will remember long hours of DIY or a youthful love hate relationship with an elderly car or motor bike. The secret lay in having the appropriate tools - and the experience to use them correctly.

The good news is that finding those tools and mastering the experience does not have to be a lengthy and expensive struggle.

Your best people can go further still:

As well as becoming competent mechanics in just a few weeks, they can start facilitating the skills growth of their own teams.

Their combined success in project management and skills facilitation then contributes to building a continuous improvement culture right across your organisation.

How it works

Here are five distinct stages in generating consistent success:

Stage One: Design the Tool Kit. Setanta helps you select from our simply scripted master manual of tools. We help tailor the language used to match that of the organisation.

Stage Two: Build the Mastery. Team leaders first master the tool kit for themselves and then work with us to tailor a modular set of high-energy workshops for their own teams.

Stage Three: Facilitate Team Learning. These leaders help facilitate the tool mastery workshops. Each half day workshop promotes the mastery of three to four key tools. A measure of self learning is built in and the exercises are highly participative.

Stage Four: Understand the Process. One of these workshops is a half day 'Cayenne' business simulation from the Swedish experts Celemi. It provides a competitive learning environment. It demonstrates that the work of the project team is more than just a matter of tools and budgets: maintaining the support of senior management and generating the enthusiasm of the end users are both as important to success.

Stage Five: Pilot for Success. Involvement in piloting live projects is the final Stage in the professional qualification of team managers and members alike.

How it is different

One could easily take a cynical view that modern process reengineering methodologies
are about taking the longest possible time to generate little substantive change - but to
maximise long-term dependency on external consultancy.

Our competence helps your people to generate success in days and weeks rather than months or years. We train your people to facilitate their people's mastery and to manage success on initial and subsequent projects.

The result is a growing cadre of confident and competent process change masters - and
a culture of self-help and continuous improvement.

Results

Because we work from the outset with your team leaders we are building mastery from
day one.

A recent client had failed twice over three years to build process reengineering competence into the organisation. Within ten weeks from launch our Phase I was completed. The six Process Engineering Managers and 13 Account Architects mastered the 25 key tools of the Tool Kit and were confidently deploying them on 8 current projects. The average satisfaction on the learning was over 80%. Phase II used an expanded Tool Kit in 5 major departments, 15 Process Engineering Managers and 88 Architects and Analysts.

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