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IT consulting: Keys to keeping projects on track
Nothing beats real-world experience...

By Stewart Baines

Published: Wednesday 08 December 2004

When it comes to project management, what separates the wheat from the chaff? A healthy balance between formal methodology and hard-earned experience, says Stewart Baines.

Effective project management is key to success in any company. But in small IT consultancies - just like in any small firm - it's even more essential as losing a client due to late delivery could be the difference between posting a profit and going under.

So what's the best way to get it done?

There are a number of formal methodologies now being used in project management, sometimes at the expense of valuable experience. Many are government-led initiatives, created in an attempt to improve the public sector's record on buying services and hitting deadlines. Although public sector projects are stipulating their use, few commercial projects in the private sector as yet require or want them. For some project managers they are a pain rather than boon.

One of the most common is the 'Body of Knowledge' of the Association for Project Management (APM). The APM claims to be the largest association of its type in Europe with over 13,000 individual remembers, and the 'Body of Knowledge' is its formal set of qualifications, more akin to a career development programme than a set of strict methodologies. It is non-subject specific so can at times be too generic for complex IT projects.

Also used in IT project management is the IT infrastructure library (ITIL), the British Standards Institution's Standard for IT Service Management (BS 15000). It was set up by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the government's purchasing arm to manage outsourcing projects. Where APM is geared toward career development programmes, ITIL is more akin to process theory. It is a set of instructions on how to work collaboratively and deliver IT services effectively. Its emphasis, however, is in IT software services and is as suitable for outsourcing as it is project management.

By far the most common project management methodology is Prince 2 (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment). Used widely on public sector contracts it can be applicable to small as well as large projects. Prince 2 is widely available and like ITIL, is supervised by its creator, the OGC.

Its founding principle is that a project should have an organised and controlled start, middle and end. By representing all the main project participants - business, user and specialist - it provides assurances that a project remains viable in terms of costs and benefits (business assurance), that the users' requirements are being met (user assurance) and that the project is delivering a suitable solution (specialist or technical assurance). As well as assigning responsibility, Prince 2 has guidelines on how to manage risk, quality and control change.

Paul Andrew, principal consultant with infrastructure project managers PACS, says: "Prince 2 is much more common in the public sector than in the private sector. With our corporate contracts we may use a version of Prince but we have to adapt it to our needs. It's just too unwieldy to use all the time. The principles of setting up the project properly at the beginning so everyone knows what they're doing, what the success factors will be and the implications of failing or missing deadlines, is critical for reaching a successful conclusion."

Jonathan Wagstaff, managing director of Connectology Network Services, another infrastructure consultancy, agrees: "It's more useful for creating an audit trail - who's to blame, why did it happen, what happened exactly. It's got too much detail to be really useful in project management."

As well as being too detailed, few private sector clients ever have a clue about what Prince 2 actually encompasses. They don't have the same training budgets as the private sector so typically don't send staff away to learn how to pull their weight on the project board. And it's not the only thing they may lack. Few clients could be considered 'intelligent customers'. For Andrew, clients can, at times, be more problematic than suppliers and a good project manager must stay on top of them.

He says: "Clients don't typically have a project mentality. They have to concentrate on their day job, so sometimes they don't understand urgency and they can be a bottleneck which has cumulative effects on the rest of the project. The project must be a priority."

Being able to cope with unforeseen, or foreseen but intractable changes, can be the difference between a good and an average project manager. According to Connectology's Wagstaff says: "Great project management is about how you deal with exceptions. Average project managers can run projects when all goes smoothly but lose it when things go slightly awry. Any fool could run a seamless project, it's just there aren't too many of them around."

While formal methodologies remain out of favour with practising IT project managers, using software such as Microsoft Project to help with the task is common. Project isn't the only project management application - there are dozens of options, including Primavera Project Planner. But Microsoft Project, like so much software from the company, is de rigueur among IT project managers.

Not everyone is enamoured with the application, though. Nigel Atkinson, a director at NeoWorks, a small software consultancy, says: "Microsoft Project has extensive functionality and integration options that in my experience don't actually deliver much value in small projects. Critical path analysis is useful and the automated scheduling can either be really helpful or a complete pain. A spreadsheet is a useful and flexible alternative for project scheduling and management. It also has the advantage that members of the team are more likely to be able to read and understand the plan."

No one should be fooled into thinking a deep understanding of the inner workings of a bloated application gives anyone project management skills. "Being able to use Microsoft Project doesn't mean you're a project manager. It means you can use Microsoft Project," argues PACS' Andrew. "It's just a snapshot in time. I've often seen people using it with verve at the start of a project just to show the client what's going to happen. But when they get back to the office it's forgotten about."

For Andrew, there's no substitute for experience. "No amount of certificates in Prince or Microsoft Project training days will teach you how to be a good project manager. That can come only with experience," he argues. "Each job you do you learn a little more about good methods and problem areas. That's why there's no substitute for lessons learnt. We're on a constant drive to improve the way we do things, that's why experience is so essential."

Mark Raskino, a vice-president with Gartner Research, recently wrote that project management experience towers over qualifications and tools. "Most IT and business managers talk to us about high-calibre project managers in terms of the experience and skills they've learnt over many years - not which time recording package they know.

"The key issues are things like, how do they get out of situations? How do they make difficult judgement calls? How will they lose time here but gain it there?

"These decision-making heuristics are crucial to managing projects effectively."