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PMO | Why Don't People Use Project Plans?

10/9/2024

 
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We frequently encounter individuals who need to be more excited about creating and using project plans. Here are some of the top reasons:

Can't Plan. There are cases when the nature of work doesn't allow us to make a plan. For example, when the dev team can't control the request inflow, there is no way for them to plan ahead. Usually, in this case, we observe that the project plan becomes a record book or notepad tracking the efforts instead of planning the work. 
Analysis: No project plan needs to be created. Instead, using an agile board to track deliverables should be sufficient, but we need a tool to discover problems. Resource management and workload assessment before task assignment are essential to ensure efficiency. 

People don't know how to create and use project plans. When developers manage their projects, creating and updating project plans are neither their priority nor their expertise. Therefore, there's a common impression that project plans are not helpful as they are often not created and updated correctly to demonstrate their value. If we don't see the plan bringing value, we tend to treat it as redundant and bypass it.
Analysis: Create a simple, agile board or auto-create high-level project plans to guide the operations. 

The plan is created too complex. This could be the other extreme. Still, the expertise of project management plays a role here. Some project managers showcase their work by creating overly complex project plans that later hinder updates due to excessive work.
Analysis: This needs to be more organized. The plans should be simple enough to play a role.

The broken window effect. Many project plans are abandoned after people fail to keep them up-to-date. Then, the plan gets abandoned, creating a messy ground that no one would like to update or clean up later.
Analysis: We would hold the PM responsible and monitor to keep the project plan clean and up-to-date and keep evaluating values from the updated plans.

In summary, the central reason why people don't use project plans is the lack of perceived value. What value does a project bring to the team? Is it worth the effort? How does it impact their OKRs or KPIs? These are vital questions that need to be answered.

Suggestions:
1. Don't enforce the creation of project plans for all projects.
2. Create simple, high-quality project plans with analytics driving decisions.
3. Perform regular checks and value analysis from the plan.

Let us know if this analysis and suggestion make sense to you.
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Createing a Project Risk Register

8/24/2023

 

​A risk register is a project document that lists potential risks to a project. This document is created from a risk breakdown structure (RBS). 
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A Risk register can be used to identify risks, understand their likelihood and impact, and recommend risk mitigation actions. You can download the document to quickly set up risk mitigation practices.​

​Establishing a standard risk register helps the project teams follow the best practices for dealing with risks. The following is an example risk register with 46 typical IT project risks with a calculated risk assessment on RBS.
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What should I do when setting up a new PMO or making changes to an existing PMO?

9/30/2022

 
When we establish a new PMO or change the existing PMO practices, we can follow an assessment process described as follows: 
  • Workflow optimization typically takes six weeks, starting from understanding each process's business processes and workflows. For each process, we need to know what the business uses, the steps, who are involved in each step, and the relationship between the steps.
  • New process setup typically takes 8~12 months to implement if there is limited executive engagement. The process setup requires stakeholders to review and propose the new process for buy-ins short proof of concept project to test the new approach and collect feedback. Then, we followed the implementation of the process with details guidelines and support. 
  • Project flow restructuring: After we set up the business process, the project management needs a deep dive that takes 12 months, which is the destructing based on industry best practices, which typically fall into Agile, Waterfall, or something missing both. 
  • People change: this is a challenging part that usually takes 12 months. We must understand each team member's and stakeholders' perspective, expectations, and working style. The goal is to make sure their voice gets heard, engage their participation, and accommodate their needs for long-term support. 
  1. New sdtarndard adoption. Typically takes 12 months to gain momentum. The process requires early engagement for input, creating standards, and review with the team, starting with initial adoption and collecting feedback. The bar should be introduced in steps to avoid dramatic changes in the process and sudden void increases in the overheads. 
These are the PMO setup and change management that we have experienced. We hope this is helpful to you. ​

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