PROJECT Management explored

It has dawned on me recently that the thing most organisations we talk to, say they are looking for is Consistency.

Consistency in the way their projects are managed, consistency in the language and terminology used, consistency in the data they collect, consistency in escalation and reporting.

All projects are different so does that mean they don't really understand projects and they want to ignore those awkward annomolies?  No in most cases not, they want to start from a consistent framework with conscious decisions and recognition that this project is different because of 'x'.  This approach brings to key benefits:

• the routine, less risky projects become smoother
• there is recognition where a project is significantly different and this is a risk flag for management

Of course there is still work to do to identify the core consistent parts of the process and to build these models.  Often customers start from an existing standard such as PRINCE2, Managing Successful Programmes or DSDM Atern but they may also use their own in-house standard.  The most successful implementations recognise the pattern and range of projects in the organisation and provide a number of method variations for different types of projects, maybe by value/risk/complexity criteria or by technical domain considerations.

Consistency is a good objective to have as long as you don't use it to try and constrain your projects.