Is your methodology a melting pot or a tapestry?

In large organizations it takes a village to deliver a project.

There are multiple internal stakeholders who must collaborate and contribute to generate project success. Many of them will have requirements of their own which they expect will be met. Some of these relate directly to the project’s underlying business rationale whereas others satisfy regulatory or policy compliance needs. On top of those will be other requirements which only serve the intake or engagement needs of specific stakeholders.

When it comes to project management methodologies and supporting systems, having multiple internal stakeholders can be challenging. Each might have their own distinct intake process which they use to receive and analyze project requests and they are also very likely to have some unique informational and control needs. In order to satisfy the combined requirements of all of these partners a project team might have to complete multiple artifacts or update multiple systems. If they don’t do so, they risk being held up at a critical project gate.

Waste, redundancy and bureaucracy give project management a bad name.

While there may be limited opportunities to influence external partners to integrate within our existing methodology or systems, this should be a core objective when engaging internal ones. No doubt there will be resistance at first as anyone would prefer that you meet them on their terms by using their templates or updating their systems. But chances are that their requirements are not currently being fully met, information provided is stale or they are being engaged too late so you could present alignment and consolidation as one path to quality.

Technology can help reduce redundancy through data feeds and integrated workflow, but before you start enhancing or consolidating existing systems the processes which these systems support will need to be aligned. Data elements in core artifacts need to be identified, analyzed, mapped and then merged wherever possible. Quality gates need to be augmented to satisfy not only core project assurance needs but also the objectives of the control partners. Reports will need to be analyzed and bolstered to satisfy the information requirements of a broader audience.

Developing and deploying such a unified project delivery framework is not easy but once the dust settles it could substantially reduce your portfolio delivery costs, improve time to market and boost employee morale.

Sometimes a melting pot is better than a tapestry.