Abstract
The training and consultation effort, performance-driven project management for the Turkish Cypriot community in Northern Cyprus, was funded because implementation of project plans was not satisfactory. The community was faced with considerable challenge. Non-performance was an issue for all stakeholders, directly affecting incomes, access, quality of life. Over nine months the result was upgraded manager/consultant project management skills. Both quality of project design and implementation of projects radically improved. Project results closed the fundamental performance gaps, with a remarkable 80% of the projects completed within timeframe and budget. These included retail sales increases, higher certification scores, new product/service launches, and cost savings. The level of understanding of organizational project dynamics was raised significantly, along with the skills needed to manage projects with a performance-driven approach. This sustained effort was evaluated in the design and early stages of implementation of the second wave of projects.
TopOrganizational Background
Delivering technical assistance in developing countries has high stakes, and success can translate into significant improvements. When the outcome is of value to the local stakeholders, the end users are seriously invested. The funding or development agency and host authority are invested in objectives contributing to their agreed outcome. In a dynamic situation, projects are the usual approach to move step by step toward the agreed social and economic objectives (Kelly & Novak, 2007, 2010).
The authors’ professional experience; along with academic and business research, acknowledges project management as a significant weakness – often, failure – in a significant percentage of applications (Discenza & Forman, 2007). We as managers and implementers have trouble moving from a plan, a stated objective, through implementation to a result. This limits potential value of the results to the end users. This troublesome experience and acknowledged concern, coupled with research findings, calls for a focused effort. This is one successful approach.
The Performance Driven Project Management (PDPM) program is designed in accordance with organizational theory, the clients’ expectations, and especially to provide practical tools to get the agreed project outcomes done, to the standards or criteria required. Equally noteworthy is that project management is the critical process which metamorphoses interventions and initiatives into successful economic and social development.
Yet, few who manage projects in the developing world have any project management training -- let alone performance driven. Alas, projects are rarely approached from a performance standpoint. In this case, an international donor was funding a capacity development program for the Northern Cyprus small business and nonprofit community (Coughlin & Kelly, 2009). An initial assessment of these sectors identified weak project management skills as a cross-cutting issue to be addressed.
PDPM is applicable across sectors. A performance approach can be coupled with any topical technical assistance. It can avoid the most common mistakes, break down silo mentality, and eliminate putting project outputs at cross-purposes by enhancing project planning and communications. Benefits with a performance driven approach include assistance in decisions concerning resource allocation, setup and design of the project, monitoring and feedback procedures. Another important element focuses on iterative evaluation -- identifying the critical measures of effectiveness, sustainability, and ownership. The stakes are high.
It has been noted that the characteristics, tools, and benefits of PDPM exactly address the failures of traditional project management and/or the non-use of any organizational (systemic) project management protocol, as detailed in studies over several sectors and perspectives.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Trade Off Decisions: Often called the project triangle, it is labelled – scope, budget/cost, and schedule/time. These must be in a workable balance, and that balance must be defended by the project manager’s boss. The balance is key and often ignored. You cannot keep increasing the scope without affecting budget and/or time. This balance is easily lost when not using performance driven approaches because commitments become unclear and specifications change. When a ‘project manager’ reconfigures the workplan in isolation, there is a high probability that the balance is disrupted and the likelihood of ‘on time, on budget, to specification’ is radically diminished.
Project Management: The effort of delivering something of value for the user of that output. Projects have a beginning and end point, compared to process management which is ongoing/repetitive. Although processes can be broken into projects and projects can be elements of programs, this is a defined effort with resources assigned, timeframe designated, and quality/criteria established.
Feedback: There are three kinds of feedback, to the individual or work team. Catchwords for the first two are ‘doing things right,’ and ‘doing the right things’. Efficiency and effectiveness. The third feedback is on the team member’s communications and respect for the others on the team. This can radically affect the readiness for the next project/assignment.
Second Order Learning: A consideration of the ramifications of actions, an integration into the conceptualization of the topic or action, the widening of perspective to accomplish this.
Performance Driven: Performance is a complex of elements integrated to produce an output, that meets the criteria and specifications for which it was implemented, in an efficient manner. Productivity and competence are elements, along with the support of an administrative and managerial function, which work to allocate (and move) resources appropriately. Performance requires a degree of agreement or planning, and a degree of ‘recovery’ or closure and readiness for the next challenge/project/assignment.
Criteria/Specifications: Each step of the process is a completed deliverable, and to confirm the quality a description of requirements is necessary.
Silo Mentality: A first order thinking approach – not considering the cross-functional workflow, specifications, timing, resources and absorptive capacity. Acting in isolation.
Consultative Decision-Making: Team members are involved in and provide input to changes in project plan although the team leader finally decides; members provide valuable input as they are the ones who must know what they are delivering, to what specification, when in the process (what deliverables proceeds, by whom and what for will your deliverables be used, etc.).
Map Day: One of the key elements of managing projects with a performance conceptualization, requiring information (accurate and shared) on tasks; negotiation on criteria, blockages/changes, shift in project triangle balance; commitment to accomplish deliverables to specification; agreement to the flow (steps, precedence and concurrent steps).