Project Management Blog

£200billion Government Projects at Risk

Projects, like businesses, often fail because they are not properly managed, and concern is growing over the lack of experienced project managers with the skills and knowledge base needed to deliver the large projects and programmes being planned over the coming years.

A small number of recent headlines;

- ‘The strong consensus has been that the NHS and DH need commercial skills as never before’ – DH
- Out of Control: How the Government overspends on capital projects – taxpayersalliance.com
- We must attract, retail and develop talent’ – NHS Employers
- £200bn government projects ‘at risk’ – Computer world UK.com

The National Audit Office (NAO) has recently released a report titled ‘Commercial skills for complex government projects’.

The report is part of a series of NAO reports examining the current level of commercial skills and experiences in the Government. The gist of the report encompasses the above news headlines! There is a huge gap in what they term ‘commercial skills’ and expertise of the people running major projects like the colossal NHS National Programmes for IT. Originally expected to cost £2.3 billion over three years, in June 2006 the total cost was estimated by the National Audit Office to be £12.4bn over 10 years and it’s still going! Watch out for this week’s news headlines on NPfIT as Alistair Darling pledges to curb government spending. Will the National Programme for IT be cut?

The government are currently sitting on a value of major project portfolio worth around £200billion! The projects have been deemed at ‘risk’ by the Government themselves.

Key Findings

- 44% of Senior Responsible Owners (SRO) of major projects did not have any substantial commercial experience
- 14 out of 16 departmental commercial directors believe OCG has done little to address skills gap
- 8 out of 16 government departments had effective commercial leadership
- The NAO identifies ‘project management capability’ as a core skill in delivering change

What do they mean by Commercial Skills?

Many PM’s have fallen into the profession of Project Management. Project Management skills are only a very small fraction of what makes a good Project Manager. Other elements include technical abilities, communication skills and commercial awareness.

It is very common for project managers to have worked managing internal projects, therefore never having a formal contract, having only informal reporting procedures, no external communications or interaction with customers, suppliers and third party partners and so forth. Therefore, they have never had the change to actually develop these imperative commercial skills.

These commercial skills may incorporate;

1.Client focus
2.Market/industry awareness
3.Financial awareness
4.Business focus
5.Risk management

Commercial Awareness according to the University of Liverpool is, showing that you can;

- contribute to an organisation’s goals by recognising, utilising and creating opportunities
- demonstrate an understanding of what is happening in the sector understand how workplaces and organisations are structured
- understand the nature/requirements of a job display financial awareness
identify, implement/monitor idea development
- interpret data presented in a numerical or graphical format

Back in June 2009 Arras People were awarded Approved Supplier Status from NHS PASA (now merged with OCG Buying Solutions). The Commercial Resources Framework was developed, available to the DH and all NHS organisations seeking Commercial Resources. Arras People is a supplier on this framework. In theory this means a supplier on a list available to the NHS/DH recruitment staff supplying competent, qualified, commercial resources. A company on this list with 100% sole focus on Project and Programme Management. Perhaps if this framework was of more prominence and people were truly aware of it, if it was actually utilised and supplier were engaged maybe, just maybe there would be less skill shortage?

It seems bizarre that with such a skill gap in the public sector this framework is not helping people to solve the problems highlighted in the report and help overcome employee skill shortages. I hate to ask but do staff know this CRF framework exists and aims of why it came about, do NHS staff know it is available to them?

Let us know your thoughts.

This weekend, I picked up my issue of the IEEE Spectrum which they've devoted to software failures and started reading the fascinating article: Who Killed the Virtual Case File? It details the FBI's failed Virtual Case File System from its start to its mind-numbing $170M collapse into a steaming pile of unusable code, 800 pages of recommendations, and quite a few destroyed careers. It's absolutely stunning with respect to poor project management, so I'm going to focus on this article for a couple days to lay out where some of their biggest mistakes were and potential ways the risks could have been mitigated.

About halfway through the article, this quote floored me:
Mueller blamed himself for the delay, because he'd asked for an accelerated schedule. But Higgins blamed Mueller's staff for not being straight with him about his agency's ability to deliver what he wanted.

"Did somebody come to you and say, okay, Mr. Director, sir, you can have it sooner, but it's going to cost you this much more money or you're going to have to do without something?" Higgins remembered asking Mueller. "And he said, 'No, nobody ever told me that.' And I said, 'Well, lesson No. 1: faster, cheaper, better. Pick two, but you can't have all three.'

Wow.

The motto of this site is "Connecting Developers, Building Worlds". I came up with that while I was sitting in a hotel room far from home trying to get my main blog off the ground. I originally wrote it thinking of what my goals are with dotProject. I believe that one of the fundamental reasons why so many software development projects fail is poor communication... between developers, with customers, with projects managers, with testers, etc, etc, etc. I believe that this still holds, but there is another aspect that I had not considered.

Over the past two months, I have given presentations on dotProject to NoVaLUG (Northern Virginia Linux Users' Group) and DCLUG (Washington, DC Linux Users' Group) and will be giving a presentation to NoVaJUG (Northern Virginia Java Users' Group) this evening (details here). These have been a great opporuntity to connect with the community, discuss issues with other software people, and meet quite a few great people. And it made me realize that there is something missing.

I am looking for up to ten project managers who want to write, discuss, and generally contribute to a group blog. I am looking for people of all backgrounds, experience levels, skill sets, and nationality, but there are two things required. First, the postings must be in English. A conversational style is encouraged, but basic grammatical rules should be followed. Second, you should post something - a book review (linked to your Amazon account if you wish), project management issue, a howto, etc - at least once a week. I have found that most of my entries take 10-45 minutes.

What do you get for this effort? Well, nothing financially as CaseySoftware has no intention of paying you because we're not likely to make a dime from this. We plan to provide all technical support, but more importantly, I see this as your opportunity to polish your writing and communication skills, to demonstrate that you are a professional, and - most importantly - to establish yourself, your expertise, and get your name out there.

Obviously there is nothing preventing you from starting your own blog somewhere with minimal effort. Unfortunately, you'd then be a lone voice and be responsible for all the content. This way, you can benefit from having numerous contributors and the increased traffic that results. After all, if a person blogs and no one reads it, did they really blog?

My goal is to launch on 12 September.

If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please drop me a message at webmaster [at] CaseySoftware.com with an example or three of your writing. These can be blog entries, recent articles, book reviews, etc. I need to see that a) you are a competent writer and can contribute to the community and b) you are serious about this opportunity.

Greetings and Welcome.

If you've found the Project Management Blog prior to 12 September, you are probably a potential contributor. Welcome and have a look around. The site is based on pretty much the same concept as CodeSnipers of having a group-blog which pulls numerous ideas and concepts into a single place for sharing, comparison, and hopefully a bit of improvement. If you are considering joining us, please take a look around.

If you're not a potential contributor, also Welcome and have a look around. You probably won't find much at this point, but be sure to check back often.