Projects in Denial

Gotta love this. My newest client was given a $16m budget to transform/redesign an entire aspect of public health in a urban area over the next three years. The announcement was made last fall, and the money awarded in February. Currently, there is no dedicated project manager, project team, or approved plan.

I was hired because one of the client leaders realized that, to be successful with an initiative of this size and complexity, they needed professional project management knowledge, skills, and tools. The transformation approach, charter, and plan I have written bring PM standard practices and methods. Now, this public sector organization has little history with or awareness of these practices and methods. Instead, it has a long history of running projects extremely casually, JIT off the sides of their desks, without a plan, adequate resources, or adequate skills. In other words, not recognizing projects for what they really are and what they truly require.

Bringing a standard PM approach and methods into this organization will naturally require changes to typical behaviours because it is a major change (a true paradigm shift) to the way projects are usually run. If client behaviours do not change, then the approach and plan become meaningless window dressing. What I have been recently asked to do is retro-fit their typical tendencies and practices (such as making snap decisions in isolation without stakeholder input) to the charter and plan I have written, which will never work since their usual practices are completely contrary to good project management.

Basically, the client wants to have their cake (in the form of professional project management) and eat it too (in the form of not relinquishing their typical behaviours).

The result here is that the PM professional(me)and standard deliverables exist ONLY to give the impression that the project is being run correctly when in reality it's just business-as-usual. For example, project leaders were hyer-anxious because they did not have a charter. Now that I have written one, everyone is happier and more relaxed, BUT THEY HAVEN'T READ IT AND ARE NOT USING IT TO RUN THE PROJECT. Deliverables like project charters and plans are not just pretty documents; they are tools with which a PM "drives" a project.

If the client refuses to change their behaviours and actually use standard PM practices, then this should just be recognized openly, and the charter and plan either scrapped or re-written to reflect reality.