PROJECT Management explored

Practicing what it preaches, OGC, the owner of the swirl methods set (PRINCE2, MSP, MoR, ITIL, P3O and the Gateway Review etc) periodically publishes lessons learned from projects and programmes it is involved with.

In September it published lessons learned on the SRO (Senior Responsible Owner) Role in Major Government Programmes and as you can imagine this made very interesting reading.  This was based on a review undertaken following an analysis of programme lessons learnt and Gateway Review feedback. It summarised that the SRO role could be made to work more effectively by addressing the following:

• Better understanding of the role
• Selection of the right people to act as SROs
• Giving SROs real accountability and business authority to resolve issues
• Ensuring SROs have relevant delivery skills and experience, including commercial awareness
• SROs dedicating sufficient time to the role
• Improved continuity of the role through the project life-cycle
• Improved tools, guidance and development opportunities for SROs
• Provision of adequate supporting resources

It goes on to say that these recommendations will be promoted and worked back into the guidance, including the MSP revision which is getting underway shortly.

Irrespective of the name SRO (mainly used in UK government) which most of us would more widely recognise as a Sponsor, if the person ultimately responsible for a project doesn't understand their role, grants insufficient time to it and lacks the skills, experience and support to operate effectively, then however effective the project team, the project will be at risk..

Such a frank and honest assessment of the situation and subsequent attempt to start addressing it deserves praise and we should each consider whether as PM we would be prepared to tell our Sponsor they were a risk to the project?  Difficult? definitely, but usually worth the downsides.

Finally I leave you with a quote from the summary paper " over half the Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) are in their first SRO role, and nearly half spend less than 20% of their time on such duties.  Lack of relative experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change".