Many organizations bundle their projects with a set of management expectations, a business case, a budget and then hand it to a project manager for execution. As a result, the opportunity to build a strong foundation is often an uphill struggle. If significant change is required to the original assumptions, the project manager is in conflict with management who are now invested in not changing the expectations already set. How many times have you (as PM) wanted to start the project “RED”? Did you?

Project setup is critical. At Projects in Focus, we define project setup as the work that needs to be conducted prior to execution. Such tasks include concept development/initiation, requirements and initial design, and in some projects, solution selection and contracting. Project setup is the most critical determinant of whether the project can deliver successfully or not. After all, correcting a project in execution is more difficult, time consuming and costly than investing sufficient time and effort in building a strong foundation for success.

2 ways in which organizations can achieve more with their projects by investing more in project setup include:

• Create more focus on project setup: In response to this need and the critical importance of excellence in this area, Projects in Focus has created a new role, Project Management Architect (PM architect) to focus on these foundation stages of a project. These are a different set of skills and experience than what is required for project execution. The PM architect can be used for critical project or to manage a portfolio of projects where project success is strategic &/or critical.

• Leverage the portfolio management approach, where a portfolio of projects competes for funding through a project gating process. This allows staged investment and establishes budget baseline for project only when the project setup is complete. At each stage, requests for funding is given only for the next stage. Funding by the capital committee/executive team is only made for project execution. Project setup funds are owned by portfolio owners and are used solely for the initial stages of projects.

Execution phase can be smooth only when the groundwork has been successful. Getting this done requires specialization. Leaving out the project management disciplines in the early stages of project is not a strategy for success.

Agile software development (Agile SD) provides some key lessons for designing projects. Incorporating agility into project processes can transform project value and the quality of the project outputs.

Key lessons learned can be taken from the principles supporting the Manifesto for Agile Development. These are: Continuous delivery cycles; Cooperative, enabled, and self organizing teams (engaged in production); Clear interactive face-to-face communication; Technical excellence & good design; & Simplicity

A Bit of History: Methods have advanced significantly since the traditional Waterfall method, which was originally designed based on the building construction modeling approach, was introduced in the late 1970’s. The key principle of Waterfall methodology was ‘to develop a perfect design as changes are extremely difficult to be incorporated later.’ Incorporated in this approach are many layers of safety nets to ensure the perfect design is created before coding or building starts.

In construction projects, it is easy to understand why this was necessary prior to pouring the cement. In earlier software development projects, there were similar constraints to making design changes in the later phases of development.

In the 1990’s, the Waterfall approach was modified and iterative approaches became popular. This was where each major module went through a cycle of detailed design, build, and user review, significantly reducing the feedback loop. The customers (end-users/sponsors) had three reviews in which they could make changes within reason i.e. no major database changes before a formal change process was required.

Agile SD takes iterative development to a different level. The design, development and testing leverages the business knowledge which forms a part of the team, constant feedback, and automated and written testing prior to code development by the developer.  The benefits of this approach include:

• Delivery is broken into small chunks based on an overall design concept
• Complete team: business knowledge and & other expertise is available to the development team during each build cycle
• Testing is built first 1) ensuring the design is understood and 2) allowing immediate feedback.
• The risk of delivery of new components into production has been reduced to the point that continuous stream of incremental changes can be placed into production.

Learning: While many project types will not be able to shorten their delivery cycle to the point where there is continuous delivery into the production stage, some lessons for good project design include:

• Reducing the time between output and feedback, thus making design/delivery as incremental as possible,
• ‘Chunking’ delivery into small, fairly independent testable and versioned components, so that putting them into production incrementally is not a major risk to the overall operation
• Having the necessary knowledge available within the team (daily contact)
• Building quality management into the design, build, and testing processes with the objectives of providing specific, actionable, respectful and timely feedback.

These are all good objectives when designing your project.