Project Management Trend: Turning Change from “Roadblock” to “Gateway”

To quote Albert Einstein, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So why do we continue to hear statistics about how many projects come in late and over-budget? Why is that so many organizations continue to rely on traditional project management methodologies and tools but still expect fewer project failures? The key is embracing that “managing change” IS the key.

According to Gartner’s report, “Predicts 2011: PPM Goes from Managing Projects to Managing Value an...,” “the time of traditional project management being the answer to every problem has ended. With change being the ‘new normal’ in project management, using a traditional approach as the default for almost all project work is quickly becoming damaging to achieving real results; Change needs to be expected, not avoided."

To that end, Applied Extrusion Technologies, Inc. (AET), a manufacturer of the polypropylene film that encases everything from bags of chips and cheddar cheese to DVDs, was looking at a multi-year SAP implementation and needed a new project management tool to help ease the process.

Jim Burger, Director of Information Systems, at first deployed MS Project Server because of its reputation and robust feature set. Soon Burger realized that MS Project Server’s traditional command-and-control style project management wasn’t working for AET.  Using one project manager to assign all activities and tasks -- with “set-in-stone” due dates -- did not account for daily changes to project plans, thwarted collaboration and simply did not align with their workplace culture.

Additionally, there was such an administrative burden that it took a full-time certified project manager just to manage the work environment – before even starting any actual project management!

“For every 10 changes we'd make, we'd have one mess-up that would corrupt the project plan," leading to a "just don't touch it" attitude, said Burger.

He needed a new project management solution that could accept change, estimate timelines, help plan tasks at a very detailed level, increase team collaboration, and yet be flexible enough to accommodate a unique workplace culture with a variety of work styles and approaches.

He selected LiquidPlanner because of its ease of use, dynamic “smart” scheduling, and familiar-for-workers social media collaboration environment.

More importantly, LiquidPlanner eschews traditional command-and-control methodologies for a “bottom up” approach: team members build their own tasklists and collaborate via Twitter-like activity streams and wikis.

“For folks on the ground doing the work, particularly on large projects, it can be easy to put the blinders on – instead, with things like chat, transparent collaboration and a central project location they can see they are part of something bigger. As a project manager, you are managing to this commentary. Commentary becomes the energy that drives an adaptive project plan!"

Jim Burger, Director of Information Systems, Applied Extrusion Technologies

Another important factor for Burger was that the scheduling engine is "effort or reality-based," meaning it tracks the actual time a worker spends completing a task and calculates the probability of individual tasks and project goals being completed by certain dates.

This "reality-based approach"— relying on transparency and visibility into what is actually happening on the project -- allows AET managers to better set daily priorities and compare estimates to get an accurate picture of progress. By being able to analyze a project from all levels, they can accurately assess what does and does not work. Mistakes are never repeated twice.

The ranged estimates are “more in line with how people think” and "help take some of the stress out of estimating," says Burger. And it’s impossible to overload resources in LiquidPlanner, so no team member is ever booked for more than 100 percent of their time.

It also means he doesn't have "to dictate the same method for every task," another departure from the command-and-control style of traditional project management.

Ask Burger and he’ll say he much prefers this “bottom up” approach as compared to traditional “top down” methodology where the centralized project manager assigns all tasks.

As an added bonus, the “tasklist” approach to project management did not require much, if any, formal project management training – a huge factor in the rapid adoption of LiquidPlanner.( AET’s LiquidPlanner user group grew from 10 to 40 in just a few months.)

Finally, says Burger, “We did not anticipate the impact and the value that the social team collaboration environment driven by LiquidPlanner would foster.  We knew it was necessary for project managers to have visibility, but this deeper, cross-team visibility has helped us be much more effective as a project team.”