Delivering IT projects, on time, on value, on budget

IT Projects fail to deliver their goals!

The success rate does not increase, but let’s keep going the same way.

Single-stage funding, project teams and the thinking that the reason for previous failures is the lack of planning and process control have led us to more detailed planning, more and more detailed business cases that focus on breaking down the delivery timescales and more prescriptive methods. We have been pursuing this deterministic approach to achieve perfection without success.

Build it and they will come.

Our project approach is based on thinking that customers will come to us; we are thinking inside out, as opposed to outside in.

We need to put the customer and user needs at the centre of everything we do and build for the customer needs. When we have the user needs at the centre we start to have a different approach. Instead of pursuing certainty, we start to look for a different kind of certainty, knowing how to invalidate our hypothesis about user needs?

Our ability to discover customer needs quickly and cheaply coupled with the ability to deliver against our discovery is the key differentiator.

Faster Organisation

Lean and agile ways of working enable organisations to learn faster and deliver. This alternative significantly increases the chances of success by adopting an evolutionary approach that is designed to navigate uncertainty, learning faster and adapting to new information.

Elements of lean and agile delivery

Hypothesis-driven
Pull-driven
Feedback
Visualise
Collaboration
Teams
Synchronisation & Coordination

Hypothesis-driven

We create certainty where one does not exist. We do this all the time and unconsciously, our approach to funding projects is no exception. We want certainty that our investment will deliver the results that we desire, so a detailed business case and project plan that creates the certainty we desire is required. The business case and project plan go through a series of elaborations until the project is approved or occasionally, rejected by the investment board. The problem is that we have created an illusion of certainty where our domain is uncertain.

Navigating uncertainty

Step 1

How do we measure success?

Define evidence of success upfront
Define the buyer persona
Define the hypothesis

We can now have a well-formed hypothesis

We have a hypothesis that delivering these features for these buyer personas addresses these needs and will deliver these outcomes. We know we have been successful when we have the evidence.

Define the measures first.

Step 2

Fund for the value of the outcome and the discovery needed to invalidate the hypothesis.

Fund the discovery.

Step 3

Learning, what are the experiments we need to invalidate our hypothesis with minimal investment?

Define the first experiment.

Step 4

Carry out the first experiment and measure the results.

Use what you’ve learnt to define your next experiment.

Step 5 (when the hypothesis is proven)

If we invalidate the hypothesis, that is great because we have now saved a lot of time and money. The majority of the hypothesis will be invalidated but the learning we gain from these will lead us to a better hypothesis and outcomes.

Start the build only when we have a valid hypothesis.

We know the measures.

Fund for the outcome

Measure, build iteratively, learn

PULL-DRIVEN

Our standard approach is push-based where we believe the sooner we start the sooner we finish and the more we start the more we finish which leads to slow and late delivery as the result of multi-tasking and diluted focus.

Pull-driven, work is pulled in when we have availability and capacity to do it, this is because we value finishing over starting.

How can I start my journey to achieving pull-driven work?

Start by measuring your delivery rate as a cumulative flow and add the rate at which you start new projects, see the chart below.

If your start rate exceeds your delivery rate, stop starting new work.
Only start new work after you deliver.
Measure work item ageing.

This approach of limiting the work in progress to a constant number, CONWIP, is one way of limited WIP. The cumulative flow for the above once we implement CONWIP looks like below.

VISUALISE

Visualise the goal using clear, concise wording that enables everyone on the team to have clarity of purpose, why we are doing this, and the success measures that build ownership.

Visualise the major knowledge discovery steps, here is a guide you may find useful.

COLLABORATION

With the ever-increasing complexity of systems and solutions, we need to collaborate and build formal and informal collaboration structures that accelerate knowledge discovery towards the same outcome. As the team size grows, we need to coordinate efforts to ensure alignment. We need to synchronise efforts from different teams early and fast so we can minimise the possible divergence. Agree on a synchronisation cadence and a method for synchronisation.

TEAMS

Teams are the fundamental building block for delivery within lean and agile ways of working and are long-lived and stable and are continually optimising for value delivery. These teams work as crews who have worked together and know what each member is capable of and what blind spots they may have.

SYNCHRONISATION & COORDINATION

Very few initiatives can be delivered by a single team, when we have a number of teams working on the same product, we need to synchronise their work and coordinate delivery to minimise delays and handoffs.

Chains

Where one service is responsible for producing work items that are consumed by downstream service.

Hierarchies

When work is broken down and decomposed that is delivered by different teams.

Networks

When services depend on another that is delivered and the prioritisation of work needs to incorporate these interdependencies.

FEEDBACK

We strive to continually reduce the time to feedback and increase the feedback loops so we learn faster and act on the information. When the feedback and our expectation are at odds we have learnt something new and we can make better decisions. We need to reduce the time between feedback to maximise our learning, reduce the cost of discovery and carry out small course corrections.

How does this help with delivering projects?

Visualising your goal increases the likelihood of achieving the outcome
Visualising your ways of working using a virtual kanban system makes the invisible knowledge work visible that enable you to manage the work better
Visualising start and completion rate as a cumulative flow diagram
Limiting the number of items in progress
Measuring work item ageing and acting on the sources of delay
Measuring progress based on completed work items
Use statistical forecasting to estimate your completion time
Taking small steps towards the ultimate goal, through hypothesis testing with frequent test and learn sessions with customers
Limiting work in progress and creating a pull-based system

The ultimate goal should be to create a pull-based system of work at the uppermost portfolio level to make the organisation as productive as possible and serve customers faster. To learn more about how we’ve done this for our clients at Value Glide, read about our Business Agility Transformation here.

How much time do you think you lose each day to delays and handoffs? Share with us in the comments below.

Connect with Value Glide!

Are you looking to adopt Agile ways of working? If so, SAFe, Scrum and Kanban could be the perfect solution for you. For expert guidance to successfully adopt and implement SAFem Scrum or Kanban, Value Glide is here to help. Our team has the skills and experience to ensure your Agile adoption is seamless and successful.

Connect with us for Agile Training, Agile Consulting, and Agile coaching.

Visit https://www.valueglide.com for more information.

Delivering IT projects, on time, on value, on budget

IT Projects fail to deliver their goals!

The success rate does not increase, but let’s keep going the same way.

Build it and they will come.

Faster Organisation

How does this help with delivering projects?

Connect with Value Glide!

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