Few projects finish on-budget, on-time, delivering results expected by customers. Yet there is no shortage of industry best practices from which to learn. What is missing for most organizations is a tailored version of those best practices, tuned to the culture, embedded in the skills of the people, supported by appropriate technology. Only when all elements of people, process, and technology come together can projects be executed effectively and efficiently.

Building an Appropriate Solution

Because each organization's culture and experiences are unique, an organization cannot simply import a set of project management practices from one successful organization or directly implement an industry standard reference model as a working process. Creating a project management capability requires a holistic solution focused on organic development of the people and the processes, with judicious selections of supporting technology. The tough challenge is where to start.

Phased Approach Based on Business Value

As with any investment, building an organizational capability must solve a business problem and create business value. Thus, a solution starts with understanding the current state, to see what practices are in use, what is working, and what is not. That base is extended, evolving processes, providing targeted training, mentoring, and motivating teams to build their capability. Key to each solution is a set of measurable business goals, based on the reasons for improvement. Questions like these often elicit the relevant goals:

• Are customers concerned about quality of products/solutions being delivered?
• Are projects consistently over budget? Late? Missing expectations?
• Are requirements continually changing, projects put on hold, to address the latest big idea?
• Is it impossible to keep good staff because of the workload and chaos?

A sound solution requires careful change management, leveraging lessons learned from decades of quality and process improvement. The figure below shows typical activities, guided by experienced facilitators, as an organization goes through analysis, planning, pilot, deployment, and measurement phases of a full solution.

Project-Based Learning Approach

Some aspects of a solution require training, and that training must be appropriate to the solution. Traditional training techniques of lectures and case studies are seldom effective. Effectiveness of this type of training is often measured with instructor and course evaluation surveys (called “smile sheets”) at level 1 on the Kirkpatrick scale of learning effectiveness. Our project-based learning approach for training enables much higher knowledge retention and applicability, that associated with Level 3.

Project-based learning enables class participants to use their projects as the “case study,” learning how to directly apply course concepts and techniques to their work with the aid of experienced instructor consultants. For example, in the Project Management Fundamentals workshop, participants develop parts of their project plans and associated work products. In a Use Case Workshop, participants develop example use cases for a project on which they are currently working. Upon finishing each course, the participants should be well-equipped to complete the work expected of them by their organization’s project life cycle. Over time, using the project-based learning approach enables the organization to realize the business value of learning at Kirkpatrick Level 4.

Project-based learning is also key for the individuals in the training. As illustrated in the Average Retention Rates diagram, the level of retention from training activities is highest when participants in a workshop practice the skills by actually doing their own work using the new skills.

Ensuring and Measuring Business Benefit

Each solution is motivated by some organization business need, captured in business goals and measures of business benefit.

Examples of goals and measures that are often used include:

• Improved customer satisfaction, measured by regular customer survey responses
• Reduced levels of delivered defects, measured by trends in defect density, cost of quality, maintenance requests, or support center activity
• Improved predictability, measured by schedule estimation accuracy, cost estimation accuracy, or requirements volatility

Many other goals and measures are relevant, driven by specific organization needs. Success with a solution is ensured if it is directed at critical business needs. Thus our tailored solution starts with identifying the relevant goals, and measurable performance to the goals is monitored throughout the deployment of the solution.

Project-based Learning Approach

Project-based learning workshops consist of short lectures to teach a concept and/or tools, followed by skill-building exercises applying the concepts and tools to project work of the participants. This is followed by in-depth applied exercises, using the collection of techniques as a whole, tailored as needed for the organization's life cycle and processes, to address the near term activities of the participants' projects. Participants are guided by instructors during the workshop for both the skill-building and the applied exercises.

Learning with Project-based Workshops

Most traditional training uses a lecture format. That is the least useful in building skills for the workplace. Adults learn best from activities in which they directly use the skills being taught.

As illustrated in the diagram, the level of retention from training activities is highest when participants in a workshop practice the skills by actually doing their own work using the new skills. This is the approach of the applied exercises in the project-based learning workshops described here.

Training with Measurable Impact

For many years, training organizations have offered skills development training in a variety of ways. The Kirkpatrick scale is commonly used to judge how well training meets its goals, using four levels:

1. Reaction - having student respond to surveys of how well they liked the training
2. Learning - determining what principles, facts, and techniques were learned in the session, often using pre- and post-tests
3. Behavior change - evaluating how on-the-job performance has changed, generally in the first 3 months after the training
4. Results - measuring business impact, often in areas of efficiency, cost reduction, or increased revenues, as a direct result of the training

While the first two levels are easiest and the most often used, the third and fourth levels are most significant to a business. Project-based learning workshops equip trainees to make direct use of the learning (level 3), and enable their organizations to quickly see level 4 results.

On-site and Public Offerings of Project-based Learning Workshops

Workshop elements vary slightly, when offered on-site for one organization or as public training for participants from several organizations. The table below summarizes the project-based learning approach for the two settings, using a Project Management Fundamentals Workshop as the example.

Dr. Janet Ply, Ph.D., PMP

Janet has spent 20 years as an IT professional helping organizations build effective project management and IT delivery capabilities. Examples include:

• Leading several successful CMM initiatives for companies including Fidelity Systems Company, AT&T Solutions, Unisys Health Information Management, Cincinnati Bell Information Systems, and several smaller companies
• Building PMO’s for Acxiom Corporation, Trilogy Software, several $50M+ programs
• Developing Project Management Certification programs for Management Concepts, Inc. as well as numerous tailored internal corporate project management training programs
• Developing an agile, business value driven delivery approach that was adopted by numerous clients
• Recovering several very large projects and building the needed project management infrastructure and organization to successfully complete the projects

Dr. Joyce Statz, Ph.D., PMP

Joyce focuses her consulting efforts on enabling software organizations to maximize their productivity and competitiveness. With more than 30 years of experience as an IT professional, her consulting activities of the last 15 years have met needs of people ranging from CIO to individual developer. Examples include:

• Developing measures for the CIO of GM, to enable Third Generation Outsourcing of IT
• Providing guidance on best practices for process improvement for Gartner Research
• Analyzing PMO performance for the City of Los Angeles CIO
• Mentoring the work of process groups at Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Sony, General Motors, Intel, and many others
• Building and teaching a curriculum of 30 courses on project management, process improvement, and sw development practices, used for more than 2500 days of client-site training at TeraQuest
• Developing a project management certificate program for the Software Quality Institute at the University of Texas
• Leading the Process Improvement Working Group for Practical Software and Systems Measurement (PSM), the foremost software industry measurement organization

She recently served as a Vice President in the Worldwide Services organization at Borland, integrating process offerings into Borland’s software businesses. That work followed on from the acquisition of TeraQuest, the software process improvement company that Joyce co-founded and co-led for 12 years. Joyce managed various levels of software development over a period of 15 years at Texas Instruments, as well as being an early proponent of software process improvement.