Delivery Effectiveness: Simple, Incremental, Value-Add for Effective Delivery

By Carl M. Manello

According to the Standish Group, a third of conceptualized projects are cancelled before they start and more than 50 percent of projects will exceed their budgets by more than 100 percent.

Hordes of statistics and reams of data are available that reflect the poor performance of organizations in meeting the goals of their initiatives. There are better ways to deliver.

Carl M. Manello, a veteran business executive and consultant, provides a blueprint to bolster project management in this book. Learn how to:

• keep projects on track, from start to finish;
• make an impactful difference with minor changes in thinking;
• focus like a laser on what is needed most;
• deliver more value from projects.

Many organizations rely on armies of certified project managers who can quote textbooks, but they fail to put their knowledge into action. That’s why this book is so important as it presents an opportunity to use well known—but not well used—principles, practices, and methods to manage projects.

To get better results than the project management profession has been able to produce since the middle of the last century, we must try something different. Delivery Effectiveness provides a simple approach to get better results.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665704809

Carl M. Manello

Carl M. Manello partners with and advises senior executives in their large-scale business initiatives to manage initiatives. He is an experienced executive with over thirty years of line management, program management, and operational experience in manufacturing, insurance, health care, and nonprofit industries. As both an employee and as a consultant, he has worked at more than forty corporations, including Ameritas, R. R. Donnelley & Sons, Fiserv, Zurich Insurance, Sears Holdings, Walgreens, and Motorola.

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Copyright © 2021 Carl M. Manello.

First edition Copyright © 2015 by Carl M. Manello.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher

make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book

and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-6657-0479-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0480-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906098

Archway Publishing rev. date:  04/05/2021

To my family who has patiently supported

my decade long pursuit to publish

CONTENTS

Preface To The Second Edition

Preface To The First Edition

The Pitch…

I am a coach

The Basics

Introduction

What’s so funny ‘bout Peace, Love and Project Management

Why Projects?

There is no Holy Grail

Challenge? What Challenge?

The DE Framework

1.    Background

The Why

Chaos Reigns

Closing the Great Divide

Linking Initiatives to the Business

There’s Not Enough Time

Maturing Capabilities

Stepping to Success

What’s in a Name?

2.    Investment Optimization

Numbers Should Not Stand Alone

Doing it Better…

Modeling it

Portfolio Management

Controlling the Release of Funds

Investment Management

What do you need to know?

Comparing Apples and Oranges

Decision Making Levers

Complex Approach Need Not Apply

Business Decision Checkpoints

Business Alignment – The Program Process Lifecycle

Life Cycle Phases

Liaisons – The Connection Points

3.    Delivery Optimization

Definition of Programs and Projects

The Project Management Functions

Delivery Assurance

Maturity Indicators:

Financial Management

Maturity Indicators:

Project Administration

Maturity Indicators:

Risk Management

Maturity Indicators:

Resource Management

Maturity Indicators:

Scope Management

Maturity Indicators:

Project Planning / Tracking

Maturity Indicators:

Implementation Management

Maturity Indicators:

Expectations Management

Maturity Indicators:

Monitoring & Reporting

Maturity Indicators:

Impact Management

Maturity Indicators:

Project Workstream Integration

Maturity Indicators:

Project Management Guiding Principles

Principle 1

Principle 2

Principle 3

Principle 4

4.    Resource Optimization

Defined roles

Career Path

Training and Development

Resource mix

Estimating

Time Flies?

Myth of the 40-hour work week

Still not about the tool

WIIFM

Value for Managers

Value for PMs and PMOs

5.    Project Management Organizations

A military perspective

Battle Plans

Obstacles to Success

Four Horsemen

Defining a PMO

What is it?

Organizational Differentiation

Value Focus #1: Functional Design

Value Focus #2: Span of Control

Clarifying Your PMO

What Can a PMO Do?

Leadership and Communication

Business Benefits

Business Relationship

People and Resourcing

Integration

Governance

Appendix 1 – Intake Questionnaire

Selected References

About The Author

PREFACE TO THE

SECOND EDITION

Efficiency tends to deal with Things. Effectiveness tends to deal with People. We manage things, we lead people. – Source Unknown

As we continue to lead companies through the 21st century, we need to provide answers as to what waits in store for delivery organizations. Will organizations continue to underperform (per the trends of the Standish Group’s Chaos Report)? Or will organizations begin to realize the incremental changes which can be made that will help them improve? Delivery Effectiveness is a point of view on a company’s abilities to raise the bar across an organization for delivery improvement. If we consider Delivery 1.0 as the application of general project management practices within Information Technology, Delivery 2.0 is a broader refocus to support the rest of the enterprise.

Finance departments run initiatives. Human Resource departments juggle portfolios of projects. Supply Chain teams must manage their specialized resource pool across a company’s needs. And the Office of the Chairman must balance the investment portfolio of the corporation. While the project management industry has primarily focused on construction, manufacturing, and information technology, the remainder of company’s delivery organizations have generally seen much less concentrated attempts to mature delivery. Delivery Effectiveness is a view for enabling improvements for any type of delivery team.

Why is this important?

Creating the processes and mechanisms for an organization to understand its operational delivery is critical for success in today’s market. There are numerous values that can be delivered:

• A better understanding of the scope and size of an initiative portfolio, with clearer impacts on budget and resources.

• The application of objective decision-making criteria to the launch, and the subsequent go/no-go decisions used to keep an effort on track.

• The creation of a view into the current and future state of delivery initiatives to provide greater assurance of getting to done on-time, on-budget, and to meet the specified value of the effort.

• An enhancement of the delivery capabilities for those leading the initiatives and enabling their accountability.

Who cares?

A top tier retail office products company looks to improve its enterprise delivery capability and bring proven practices to all internal initiatives. The Human Resources organization within a global biopharmaceutical company needs a better understanding of all its HR developmental programs and requires methods for monitoring progress. The office of the CFO at a leading university needs to inventory and assess the multi-threaded initiatives that impact the campus. The global services organization within a leading high-tech company needs to establish a portfolio management process to support the influx and delivery of projects to their governmental and retail clients. Each of these companies is in a different business. Each of them is working to improve the visibility to and control of their initiatives. None of these examples is an information technology organization. Delivery Effectiveness is needed everywhere.

It has been a long five years. During the down time of the first half of 2020, amid the global pandemic of the Corona Virus, and my departure from Ameritas Insurance (due to an economic reduction in force), I collected my thoughts and updated this tome with some insights and tidbits. Much to my chagrin, I had to do some extra copy editing and clean up left over from the first edition. It still surprises me how I can miss errors on my eighty-seventh read of the same material.

Even after leaving consulting in 2016, I continued to use this material. In my role as vice president of an application development and delivery team at Ameritas – where I was not in charge of the project management team – the guidelines within were helpful resources for coaching, mentoring, and helping a learning organization continue to grow. I have also been able to leverage these lessons in my role as an executive board director in my non-profit work. At the Lincoln Arts Council, staff members are not professional project managers. However, I have found kernels of Delivery Effectiveness that apply. Even non-PM professionals can leverage Delivery Effectiveness.

I am looking forward to my next role and finding ways to continue to tap this body of knowledge. I hope you will also find value in using what works within your environment.

Additional companies since the first edition include: Cenex Harvest States (CHS), Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, Waukesha County Technical College, Leonardo DRS, the Lincoln Arts Council, and Ameritas Insurance.

Many thanks for your interest in this work,

Carl M. Manello

PREFACE TO THE

FIRST EDITION

Delivery Effectiveness was initially conceived in 2001. I had been working on solution development materials at the time with Capgemini. I was trying to codify my thoughts into a form that would support a service offering for clients. After the integration of Cap Gemini America with Ernst & Young, the corporate powers in Paris decided to release the Global Financial Services team to which I belonged. Service offering development stopped.

As I looked for a new job, I filled some of my time writing. I first crafted my thoughts into a white paper. As the white paper grew, I believed the subject matter could be turned into a book. Luckily, I was not unemployed too long. With full employment, the opportunity to dedicate time to a book was drastically reduced. Since that time, I have dabbled at writing. However, between a full-time job, taking care of a growing home (with two young children – at the time – and a wife who works full time), supporting my children in their interests, and trying to support a modest social life, book writing always seemed to take a back seat.

As the decade moved forward, my ideas from 2001 began to morph and crystalize into something more solid and more tangible. The musings were beginning to gel and I was beginning to realize I did have an alternate way to view the age-old problems of project management. The realization inspired me to spend more time in my basement office hunched over the computer. While writing was still not at the top of my daily to-do list, my motivation increased. To support moving my ideas forward, but in a simpler format than a book, I began blogging. I was able to explore many of the topics discussed in Delivery Effectiveness through the venue of online postings. I tied my blogs together through themes like ‘the Rock and Roll of Project Management’ and ‘the Art of Project Management.’ You will see references to these throughout Delivery Effectiveness.

To move this book forward, I needed the support of others. First, I must thank my wife, Julie. She has had to endure my moods, musings, whining, and distracted attention that all come with authoring, not to mention the baggage that comes with the life of a consultant. She has supported my endeavors completely. In addition to inspiring me to tramp on through my writer’s block and other challenges, she has shared stories from her jobs. She is not a project manager; however, Julie has shown me how other careers do conduct similar work to that of the PM. In addition, she shared stories that reflect similar challenges that project managers face which are not unique to project management. As an attorney who does corporate insurance defense, Julie is miles away from a PM role. But she does project management every day.

My children are inspirations. They were teens through the bulk of time completing Delivery Effectiveness (with all the associated high school and college hijinks and drama that come with those long years) but have still contributed to my thinking. Jacob and Becca have allowed me to explore avenues as a dad that I had no opportunity to do prior to 1995. Their participation in social clubs, at jobs, in a fraternity, and in sports (more on baseball later) has had a tremendous impact on me. Nothing like coaching to teach the lessons of managing others.

Next, I would like to thank my parents. Pearl and Seymour have always been completely supportive, even though I am sure they don’t understand what I do for a living. It is, of course, every parent’s role to support, to love, and to encourage their children. My folks just do it better than most (in my humble opinion). Dad gets a nod as my copy editor and inspiration. Dad was an English teacher in the Detroit Public Schools while I was growing up. His focus on reading and writing sunk in over time (as I certainly did not like either when I was a kid). He retired from teaching and moved to journalism. It has been great to see him share his sense of humor with all his readers and to see him receive recognition and rewards for his work.

My abilities as a consultant come from my mom. While I was growing up, she was very methodical and practical. Dad was arts and letters; Mom was math. I believe that my right-side brain development is from her. When I was little, she had me help with balancing the checkbook. I am not sure if that is where my knack for business comes from or not, but thanks, Mom! I seem to be doing okay.

Dr. Harold Kerzner and I met several years ago. I frankly do not even remember how I made his acquaintance. However, he invited me to participate in his book Project Management - Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence (both the 2nd and 3rd editions). In these editions I explored some of the topics detailed in Delivery Effectiveness. We have talked over the years; we have both presented at the same conferences; and we have maintained an ongoing email relationship. He has supported my effort of taking the material from blog and presentation to book form. In addition, Harold graciously agreed to give me his feedback on an advance draft of Delivery Effectiveness. I was lucky to have a great discussion partner and someone who was open and willing to share his own intellectual property, thoughts, and opinions.

There are a host of others that I would like to thank, some of whom don’t even know I am writing this tome. I am sure that I cannot do justice to them all. My great thanks to Rich Wiedenbeck and Jim Pietrzak for helping to brainstorm back in 2000. Thanks to Arnie Brown and Jack Peiser for letting me help them coach baseball for so many years. Thanks to several other discussion partners who helped me flush out the ideas that took form as Delivery Effectiveness, specifically Brian McHugh, Dan Ahern and Rich Wigstone. And thanks to all my employers and clients who have helped shape me by allowing me to consult with and for them: Advocate Health Care, Allstate, Amcol International, Aon, Boeing, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Capital Group, Deloitte, Fiserv, HAVI Global Solutions, Health Care Services Corporation, Jones Lang LaSalle, MillerCoors, Motorola Mobility, Motorola Solutions, Option Care, Red Bull, Sears Holdings, Slalom Consulting, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Trissential, Trustmark, United Airlines, U.S. Cellular, U.S. Foods, Walgreens, and Zurich North American Insurance.

With great thanks to all,

Carl

THE PITCH…

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got – Henry Ford

It is my general thesis that to improve the way projects are managed and delivered, the project management profession needs to address new ways of thinking. New thinking is often built upon the successes and tribulations of the past. This book is my own bridge from the past to new ways of thinking. In the mid 90s, I worked for R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, which was an international printer of books, magazines, and phonebooks. I moved from a role establishing their internal system audit competency to the driver of their relatively new Enterprise Program Office. Organizationally housed in the Technology Center, our team had the support of the Chief Technology Officer (at the time, the company had no Chief Information Officer). Our primary charge was to bring oversight and governance to projects across the enterprise.

During this time, the company undertook two large enterprise-wide initiatives: a financial system replacement program (FSRP) and a revamp of their manufacturing facility technologies (e.g., printing presses, binding lines, and the associated IT infrastructure). Neither of these two efforts did particularly well. The FSRP program eventually was implemented. It was late and over budget. The manufacturing program was aborted after two pilot efforts spent more than $50 million (there were to be another 48 implementations after the pilots!). While there were scores of issues with both these initiatives, one of the primary stumbling blocks was a lack of focus on effective delivery.

These were some of my first Ah Ha! moments about ‘new’ thinking in project management. Donnelley project teams struggled with basic PMI concepts like scope management, budget management, issue/risk management, and they certainly missed the mark on requirements. Throughout this book I will use anecdotes from Donnelley and other companies to help illustrate how the thinking behind Delivery Effectiveness addresses basic project management failings. It is my intent to use these pseudo-case studies to help convey what might otherwise be academic theories. My intent is not to proclaim mine as the true and righteous path. Instead, I intend to illustrate how some minor perspective changes in approach can make an impactful difference with project management and governance. I trust that since many years have passed since these anecdotes occurred that history will protect those un-named herein.

I am a coach

A baseball manager is a necessary evil."

– Sparky Anderson¹

For more than a decade I coached baseball for my town’s park district leagues. Even during the final years, while my son was in high school, coaching was required. The kids were a little less open to it in their later years, but the coaching was still needed. I equate my baseball experience to that of my career as a consultant: While many clients believe they do not need any help, I find that support, coaching, and mentoring are required.

I enjoyed working with kids on the fundamentals (i.e., stopping a grounder or improving their pitching mechanics). I especially liked being on the field. My favorite part of coaching was being the first-base coach. From my vantage point – someone removed from the play (I was not the one running the bases, after all) – I was able to help runners do better. Whether it was by providing another set of eyes looking for the pick-off move at first base or helping the batter gauge the risk of trying to take an extra base off his hit. Either way, I was able to provide the support to help make the players more successful. Coaching is not just standing there looking pretty (though some coaches in our league thought that was all it took).

As much as the players were certain that they knew the game, they always needed encouragement (whether in a hitting slump or while having a bad day on the mound) and reminders about what to do (e.g., get a secondary lead-off during the pitch). For as long as these kids had been playing ball, they were still developing and learning. One of the great managers I had the opportunity to work with used to say, I can always accept a physical error on the field. A mental mistake is simply not acceptable. As coaches, we are there to help players avoid the mental mistakes.

Management consulting is remarkably like coaching. As a business consultant, I am called into environments where a dispassionate, third party expert view is required. I have never run a large corporate claims adjudication function. I have never managed the financial operations of a supply chain organization. However, with my skills and knowledge of process, management, tactics, and metrics I can aid leaders who do run these organizations.

My niche is helping companies run large-scale initiatives. I have worked with numerous businesses over the years to improve their capabilities in this space. Just as I am surprised that some high school players have made it through the ranks without some of the key basics (like catching a pop-fly), I am also surprised at the inner workings of some of the top corporations I’ve been privileged to serve. Even in profitable operations, the opportunities for increased efficiencies are tremendous. I am continually surprised how these companies got as far without the basics.

Whether developing the table-stake capabilities of the project managers or designing and implementing a project management organization, I have contributed to the development of several PM delivery teams. My understanding of the inner workings of project management fundamentals, their related value to the organization, and my ability to communicate, train, and coax change has led my clients to improve their game.

The Basics

The value of an outsider’s observations is significant. I have had the opportunity to coach from within corporations as an employee. I find that the timelines become extended as the coaching role is less appreciated when operating on the inside. As an additional set of eyes, I can provide vision to organizations to help them understand where their process inefficiencies are and how to improve and implement proven practices tailored to meet their organizational maturity.

As a consultant, I can reinforce PMs, teams, and organizations about the basics. I work continually to remind clients why, even if it appears to be extra work, that benefits are realized from the processes, deliverables, and the tools of project management. With my experience, I can support and add value even for veteran players. Consultants understand how to develop a game plan for improvement and have the experience and record to prove the approaches work. Analogous to my coaching friend’s creed, I can accept a mistake in the execution of a project management framework; however, I cannot accept the omission of fundamentals.

Delivery Effectiveness is an opportunity to use well known – but maybe not well used – principles, practices, and methods and try them in a new way. To get better results than the project management profession has been able to deliver since the middle of the last century, we must recall Henry Ford’s words above and we must try something different to get different results.

By leveraging the framework and proven practices of Delivery Effectiveness, I believe that any organization can get the best stats and have the best season possible. I feel just like Sparky did, in some cases, business consultants are a necessary evil.

This is the major leagues, people…let’s play to win!

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress. – Alfred A. Montapert (The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life – 1977, Prentice-Hall)

The art of project management is of vital importance to the Company. It is a matter of success or failure, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence under no circumstances can it be neglected — Sun Tzu, The Art of War (paraphrased)

Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverbs 29:18, King James Bible

INTRODUCTION

What’s so funny ‘bout Peace, Love

and Project Management

As I walk on through this wicked world,

Searching for light in the darkness of insanity,

I ask myself, is all hope lost? – Elvis Costello, (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding

What is so hard about managing projects? Man has been managing projects for thousands of years. Formal disciplines for doing so have been around for more than half a century. But results are appalling. According to the 2018 Standish Group Chaos Report, approximately one third of projects succeed. The thesis of Delivery Effectiveness (DE) is to break down processes and practices into digestible, actionable parts that can be implemented over time and that can demonstrate value. Simple. Incremental. Value-added.

Few of the concepts in this book are revolutionary. However, I believe that the approach and methods used to implement these proven practices are different. Once into the heart of the book, readers may exclaim, "Well, of course, I know that!" However, the proof is in the execution.² While some of the measures outlined within may seem obvious, many companies fail at realizing improvement. I believe this is in part because they break off more than they can handle. Projects are not successful, so the charge is to rewrite the PM approach, methods, standards, tools, and templates. Projects are too slow, so the choice is to convert the entire PM organization to Agile (notwithstanding the fact that the organization does not have a solid understanding of what Agile is). We are spending too much money, so leadership decides to implement a leading-edge portfolio