Synergy — The Economics of Integrated Project Management

The hot topic lately in meetings and the odd conference on Integrated Project Management (IPM) often focuses on the mechanics of achieving that state, bound by the implied definition of current regulation, which has also become–not surprisingly–practice. I think this is a laudable goal, particularly given both the casual resistance to change (which always there by definition to some extent) and in the most extreme cases a kind of apathy.

I addressed the latter condition in my last post by an appeal to professionalism, particularly on the part of those in public administration. But there is a more elemental issue here than the concerns of project analysts, systems engineers, and the associated information managers. While this level of expertise is essential in the development of innovation, relying too heavily on this level in the organization creates an internal organizational conflict that creates the risk that the innovation is transient and rests on a slender thread. Association with any one manager also leaves innovation vulnerable due to the “not invented here” tact taken by many new managers in viewing the initiatives of a predecessor. In business this (usually self-defeating) approach becomes more extreme the higher one goes in the chain of command (the recent Sears business model anyone?).

The key, of course, is to engage senior managers and project/program managers in participating in the development of this important part of business intelligence. A few suggestions on how to do this follow, but the bottom line is this: money and economics makes the implementation of IPM an essential component of business intelligence.

Data, Information, and Intelligence – Analysis vs. Reporting

Many years ago using manual techniques, I was employed in activities that required that I seek and document data from disparate sources, seemingly unconnected, and find the appropriate connections. The initial connection was made with a key. It could be a key word, topic, individual, technology, or government. The key, however, wasn’t the end of the process. The validity of the relationship needed to be verified as more than mere coincidence. This is a process well known in the community specializing in such processes, and two good sources to understand how this was done can be found here and here.

It is a well trod path to distinguish between the elements that eventually make up intelligence so I will not abuse the reader in going over it. Needless to say that a bit of data is the smallest element of the process, with information following. For project management what is often (mis)tagged as predictive analytics and analysis is really merely information. Thus, when project managers and decision makers look at the various charts and graphs employed by their analysts they are usually greeted with a collective yawn. Raw projections of cost variance, cost to complete, schedule variance, schedule slippage, baseline execution, Monte Carlo risk, etc. are all building blocks to employing business intelligence. But in and of themselves they are not intelligence because these indicators require analysis, weighting, logic testing, and, in the end, an assessment that is directly tied to the purpose of the organization.

The role and application of digitization is to make what was labor intensive less so. In most cases this allows us to apply digital technology to its strength–calculation and processing of large amounts of data to create information. Furthermore, digitization now allows for effective lateral integration among datasets given a common key, even if there are multiple keys that act in a chain from dataset to dataset.

At the end of the line what we are left with is a strong correlation of data integrated across a number of domains that contribute to a picture of how an effort is performing. Still, even given the most powerful heuristics, a person–the consumer–must validate the data to determine if the results possess validity and fidelity. For project management this process is not as challenging as, say, someone using raw social networking data. Project management data, since it is derived from underlying systems that through their processing mimic highly structured processes and procedures, tends to be “small”, even when it can be considered Big Data form the shear perspective of size. It is small Big Data.

Once data has been accumulated, however, it must be assessed so as to ensure that the parts cohere. This is done by assessing the significance and materiality of those parts. Once this is accomplished the overall assessment must then be constructed so that it follows logically from the data. That is what constitutes “actionable intelligence”: analysis of present condition, projected probable outcomes, recommended actions with alternatives. The elements of this analysis–charts, graphs, etc., are essential in reporting, but reporting these indices is not the purpose of the process. The added value of an analyst lies in the expertise one possesses. Without this dimension a machine could do the work. The takeaway from this point, however, isn’t to substitute the work with software. It is to develop analytical expertise.

What is Integrated Project Management?

In my last post I summed up what IPM is, but some elaboration and refinement is necessary.

I propose that Integrated Project Management is defined as that information necessary to derive actionable intelligence from all of the relevant cross-domain information involved in the project organization. This includes cost performance, schedule performance, financial performance and execution, contract implementation, milestone achievement, resource management, and technical performance. Actionable intelligence in this context, as indicated above, is that information that is relevant to the project decision-making authority which effectively identifies specific probable qualitative and quantitative risks, risk impact, and risk handling necessary to make project trade-offs, project re-baselining or re-scope, cost-as-an-independent variable (CAIV), or project cancellation decisions. Underlying all of this are feedback loop systems assessments to ensure that there is integrity and fidelity in our business systems–both human and digital.

The data upon which IPM is derived comes from a finite number of sources. Thus, project management data lends itself to solutions that break down proprietary syntax and terminology. This is really the key to achieving IPM and one that has garnered some discussion when discussing the process of data normalization and rationalization with other IT professionals. The path can be a long one: using APIs to perform data-mining directly against existing tables or against a data repository (or warehouse or lake), or pre-normalizing the data in a schema (given both the finite nature of the data and the finite–and structured–elements of the processes being documented in data).

Achieving normalization and rationalization in this case is not a notional discussion–in my vocation I provide solutions that achieve this goal. In order to do so one must expand their notion of the architecture of the appropriate software solution. The mindset of “tools” is at the core of what tends to hold back progress in integration, that is, the concept of a “tool” is one that is really based on an archaic approach to computing. It assumes that a particular piece of software must limit itself to performing limited operations focused on a particular domain. In business this is known as sub-optimization.

Oftentimes this view is supported by the organization itself where the project management team is widely dispersed and domains hoard information. The rice bowl mentality has long been a bane of organizational effectiveness. Organizations have long attempted to break through these barriers using various techniques: cross-domain teams, integrated product teams, and others.

No doubt some operations of a business must be firewalled in such a way. The financial management of the enterprise comes to mind. But when it comes to business operations, the tools and rice bowl mindset is a self-limiting one. This is why many in IT push the concept of a solution–and the analogue is this: a tool can perform a particular operation (turn a screw, hammer a nail, crimp a wire, etc.); a solution achieves a goal of the system that consists of a series of operations, which are often complex (build the wall, install the wiring, etc.). Software can be a tool or a solution. Software built as a solution contains the elements of many tools.

Given a solution that supports IPM, a pathway is put in place that facilitates breaking down the barriers that currently block effective communication between and within project teams.

The necessity of IPM

An oft-cited aphorism in business is that purpose drives profit. For those in public administration purpose drives success. What this means is that in order to become successful in any endeavor that the organization must define itself. It is the nature of the project–a planned set of interrelated tasks separately organized and financed from the larger enterprise, which is given a finite time and budget specifically to achieve a goal of research, development, production, or end state–that defines an organization’s purpose: building aircraft, dams, ships, software, roads, bridges, etc.

A small business is not so different from a project organization in a larger enterprise. Small events can have oversized effects. What this means in very real terms is that the core rules of economics will come to bear with great weight on the activities of project management. In the world in which we operate, the economics underlying both enterprises and projects punishes inefficiency. Software “tools” that support sub-optimization are inefficient and the organizations that employ them bear unnecessary risk.

The information and technology sectors have changed what is considered to be inefficient in terms of economics. At its core, information has changed the way we view and leverage information. Back in 1997 economists Brad DeLong and Michael Froomkin identified the nature of information and its impact on economics. Their concepts and observations have had incredible staying power if, for no other reason, because what they predicted has come to pass. The economic elements of excludability, rivalry, transparency have transformed how the enterprise achieves optimization.

An enterprise that is willfully ignorant of its condition is one that is at risk. Given that many projects will determine the success of the enterprise, a project that is willfully ignorant of its condition threatens the financial health and purpose of the larger organization. Businesses and public sector agencies can no longer afford not to have cohesive and actionable intelligence built on all of the elements that contribute to determining that condition. In this way IPM becomes not only essential but its deployment necessary.

In the end the reason for doing this comes down to profit on the one hand, and success on the other. Given the increasing transparency of information and the continued existence of rivalry, the trend in the economy will be to reward those that harness the potentials for information integration that have real consequences in the management of the enterprise, and to punish those who do not.