Project Manager June 2015

project JUNE-JULY 2015 / $8.95 INC GST

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MANAGER

THROUGH THE LENS

A FRESH LOOK AT

SCOPE WHAT’S TRUST WORTH?

VISUAL FIRST AID

DIGITAL EVOLUTION

Integrity matters but experience rules in business relationships

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• CONTENTS JUNE-JULY ISSUE 3 FIRST WORD

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4 NEWS & VIEWS 8 MEET THE MEMBER Air-Vice

Marshal Chris Deeble talks us through one of the most challenging project roles in Australia, Joint Strike Fighter

10 THE NEW TRANSACTIONS OF TRUST Technological

commentator Shel Israel asks exactly what trust is worth in today’s business economy

12 THE NATIONAL COUNT’S DIGITAL EVOLUTION The

Australian census is adopting new technology to gather valuable demographic data faster

16 HOW TO GRAB SCOPE BY THE TAIL Whether you’re developing

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a time-sensitive app or powering up a statewide power grid, scope dictates every aspect of your project. But are you making the most of the choices open to you?

22 THE GREEN PHASE TO COME

Project consultant Peter Newman believes we can help Australia to become a global leader of sustainability by aiding development, not restricting it

27 VISUAL FIRST AID Three leading

visual storytellers reveal their narrative secrets to help you and impress your stakeholders

30 FIVE WAYS TO COLLABORATE WHEN YOU’RE FAR AWAY

Dispersed teams that go the distance

32 MOCK THE CLOCK Time is our

most precious commodity. Gain in the race against the clock with these timemanagement tips

33 ASSESS OR ACTION Are you driven

by problems to solve, or do you lock in criteria before the project starts to cut out surprises? Two experts explain their different approaches to scope

AIPM REGULARS 34 THE AIPM UPDATE 36 THE OFFICE What is the role of project management offices in the changing world of scope management?

38 CHAPTER CHAT 40 TALKING POINT ElectraNet Project Manager Elena Zagorenko discusses high standards and cultural clashes in her professional journey

CONTRIBUTORS

RODNEY GEDDA

IAN GRAYSON

ADELINE TEOH

Rodney is an experienced IT journalist and a former project manager and process engineer. By day, he’s a mild-mannered analyst for research firm Telsyte (an independent business unit of UXC Connect). On page 4, he asks archaeologists how they project manage their digs (and what’s in their knapsacks).

Ian explores what’s required for successful remote collaboration, page 30.

Ian’s focus areas of digital business transformation and telecomms inform this exploration of the technical and cultural challenges facing dispersed teams. Ian is the former technology editor of The Australian.

Setting and adhering to scope is a foundation of good project management, but it might be subverted by circumstances and, in very poorly run projects, might be missing entirely. Adeline delves into modern approaches to scope at the intersection of Lean Six Sigma and Agile methods, page 16.

project MANAGER 1

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• FIRST WORD WHO ARE WE? Project Manager is the magazine of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM).

Level 9, 139 Macquarie Street, Sydney NSW 2000 (02) 8288 8700 info@aipm.com.au www.aipm.com.au National Manager Marketing and Communications Michael Martin Published by Hardie Grant Media 4/50 Yeo Street, Neutral Bay NSW 2089 (02) 9908 8222 www.hardiegrant.com.au

IAN SHARPE NATIONAL PRESIDENT

General Manager Clare Brundle Publisher Alison Crocker Managing Editor Sophie Hull Editor Nate Cochrane Art Director Dan Morley Designers Hayley Clark, Sheree James Production Jamie Galsim Advertising Manager Kerri Spillane (03) 8520 6444 kerrispillane@hardiegrant.com.au Cover illustration The Project Twins Print Bluestar Web Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily endorsed by Project Manager magazine or the publishers. All material is copyright and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission of the publishers.

O

f course scope and scope management are part of our bread and butter as project practitioners. The concept is relatively straightforward, but scope can become enormously complicated in practise. For example, there’s a whole order of magnitude between the scope of organising a corporate event as opposed to a joint strike fighter program, across multiple countries and countless subcontractors (see page 8).

Managing scope in the right way is crucial, and with delivery pressures mounting, we have to remain cool and focused to ensure we safeguard the trust placed in us.

One of the first things we must do on a project is ask: what does success look like after the project; what need are we trying to fulfill? If our senior stakeholders can’t define this, we often end up producing outputs from the project that are not well suited to addressing those needs.

But what if the solution and enabling scope is prescribed, yet will clearly not meet the need? How should we act as ethical practitioners? It is unethical to proceed with something you know that cannot deliver any value to that organisation.

We have an accountability to be a safe pair of hands in industry, for projects.

So our duty of care must be to diplomatically work with those stakeholders to show how what they want delivered will not deliver that outcome.

This issue focuses in-depth on the challenges of effective scope definition, planning, monitoring and control and closure.

With great respect,

UPCOMING ISSUES Aug-Sept: Business transformation Oct-Nov: We are seeking article ideas and project case studies on the theme of the rise of project management offices, as well as other topics that members would like explored, news items and experts to interview. Please email a short summary of your idea to Managing Editor Sophie Hull at communications@aipm.com.au.

Ian Sharpe, MAIPM, CPPD

project MANAGER 3

• NEWS

NEWS HOW TO PROJECT MANAGE AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG DR THOMAS WHITLEY PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA How do archaeologists engage with regulatory agencies and manage stakeholders?

In Australia and the US, there are regulatory bodies that manage cultural resources. The ability to gain [traditional-owner] support comes from having a long, positive working relationship. That means we may target research topics that strengthen the community’s ties to their heritage.

How can working in inhospitable and remote areas impact a project?

We try to anticipate issues [for] remote areas.

This can be done by doing a risk assessment for safety issues. Adverse weather can put a hold on excavations or surveys quickly and, if no alternate plans are prepared, lead to significant downtime.

Technology is allowing us greater freedom to explore ideas about the past and test them in interesting and innovative ways.”

How has modern tech changed archaeology?

Technology is allowing us greater freedom to explore ideas about the past and test them in interesting and innovative ways. In the past few decades, field archaeology has taken advantage of digital technologies. Starting with GPS more than 20 years ago, we now employ methods to record site, feature and artefact locations. Tablets with data-recording apps are replacing paper forms.

Digital photography is creating photogrammetric 3D models of excavation areas, structures and sites. We use remote-sensing tools such as groundpenetrating radar, magnetometry and highresolution aerial photography taken by drones.

What are the negative effects of a dig?

We strive to create no lasting environmental damage by backfilling and re-establishing the topography.

There were cases of severe environmental damage in the past when an excavation was in an area prone to erosion, but any archaeologist who might work in such an area will plan ahead to minimise impacts.

What’s in a typical archaeologist’s knapsack?

Most archaeologists have a knapsack of their favourite tools: camera, camping equipment, first‑aid kit, sunscreen and especially insect repellent.

1

2

1 Solid planning leaves archeologists free to focus on discovery in the field.

2 Drones now assist with high-resolution, low-altitude aerial photography.

3 Dr Whitley undertook a dig at the World Heritage-listed Fremantle Prison in 2013.

4 to 6 Dr Burke’s team on site. Orchestrating delicate treasure hunts into the past, archeology has always been held as a fascinating undertaking in the public consciousness.

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5

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SPOTLIGHT SCOPE

gibber plain was very unexpected for me, since we didn’t expect any rain at all.

4 Today, we also have laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Those specialising in remote-sensing and digital modelling like me also bring our drones.

Can project management help archaeologists?

Most archaeologists must learn project management on the job. In the past few years there was a concerted effort to develop courses such as UWA’s Master of Professional Archaeology to train students to manage projects and also in business, marketing, tenders, negotiation, budgets and supervisory skills. These are characteristics of successful project managers, and are lacking in traditional academic training.

How do you manage project scope on a dig?

Scoping of field projects begins with a research proposal. The archaeologist will then write a schedule and budget. One of the biggest problems on site is finding more material than anticipated and exceeding your budget. In many cases, they may have to stop excavation and plan a return. The archaeologist should build in excess to cover this contingency.

Images: Thinkstock, iStock

DR HEATHER BURKE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT FLINDERS UNIVERSITY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA How can working in inhospitable and remote areas impact a project?

The most unexpected is access to sites and, in looking for them, you find other things you didn’t expect. The environment causes unexpected issues.

Being bogged on the edge of the Simpson Desert

How much is now armchair archaeology and how much still has to be done in the field?

Archaeologists are always looking for new and better ways to record spatial data or to ‘see’ the site in new ways—geophysics was probably the first new technology that was taken up widely by archaeologists. I don’t think there’s ever been any such thing as armchair archaeology, since even theorists get into the field regularly.

Where do you typically find funding?

There is only one source of large academic funding —the Australian Research Council. Most smaller funding would come from universities, specialist facilities such as ANSTO (grants for dating) and sometimes community heritage initiatives.

What’s in your knapsack?

I have two—one for my excavation gear (with everything from secateurs, gardening gloves and kneepads to trowels, brushes, photo scales, flagging tape, tape measures, tent pegs, compasses and more). My other one is for my gear: digital camera, GPS, notebook, recording forms and other paperwork, water bottle and hat. It would be a great idea to compare backpacks.

How did your training prepare you to become a field archaeologist?

I was trained in a department that taught indigenous and historical archaeology, so I think this is the greatest gift. It is always a balance between the ideal and what you can deliver practically, but any good archaeologist needs a solid background in both.

Were you ever taught project management as a discrete subject?

No, but I wish I was. I suspect that I would not have realised what you really need as a professional (students often don’t) with many different jobs to fulfil.

How do you manage scope on an dig?

You always allow for contingencies, particularly on consulting projects that cost your client money each day. But there are going to be things you can’t predict. There is usually much more leeway on academic projects, since the time pressure is rarely there, nor the imperative for the next stage of a project to begin.

So you think your project has too many constraints? Pity poor Bangkok commuters who have to live with a pedestrian overpass that’s at least 40 feet over a busy highway and is intersected by power lines. That’s right, the power lines from existing electrical circuits run right through it.

Rather than re-route the power lines, project managers on the overpass just built around them. Watch the video at http:// on.fb.me/1FBuYQL.

96

YEARS

219

DAYS

3 HOURS

9 MINUTES

15.56 SECS Expected Australian female life expectancy in 2054-55, a rise of three years from today and 1.5 years more than men, according to the 2015 Intergenerational Report.

project MANAGER 5

• NEWS

The US defence agency that invented the internet has launched a four-year project to future-proof software for the next 100 years. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aims to build a flexible framework that adapts to changes in computer systems, meaning software will never have to be rewritten to cope with technological change.

The Building Resource Adaptive Software Systems (BRASS) program seeks new “linguistic abstractions, formal methods and resource-aware program analyses” to anticipate system changes, DARPA says. It expects BRASS to improve software resilience, reliability and maintainability.

“Technology inevitably evolves but very often corresponding changes in libraries, data formats, protocols, input characteristics and models of components in a software ecosystem undermine the behaviour of applications,” says DARPA program manager Suresh Jagannathan. “The inability to seamlessly adapt to new operating conditions undermines productivity, hampers the development of cyber-secure infrastructure and raises the longterm risk that access to important digital content will be lost as the software that generates and interprets content becomes outdated.”

Software today runs on a ‘stack’ of layers, from hardware on the bottom to application and web services on top, each one separate from the other and linked by application programming interfaces (APIs). This theoretically allows a change in one without affecting the others, a process called abstraction. It still introduces potential security vulnerabilities to IT systems.

DARPA hopes its ‘clean slate’ will speed and simplify software creation with lower ongoing costs.

CENTRELINK FAST STATS

40 different

types of payments processed

$12m

an hour in payments processed

105m

Centrelink letters and emails sent per year

1000

transactions a second

July 1

Project planning starts

End 2016

First stage competed

2022

Project completion

Below: BRASS in play; an artist’s concept of software system components adapting to resource changes within an IT ecosystem.

We expect BRASS to improve software resilience, reliability and maintainability.”

6 AIPM.COM.AU

COALITION HITS CTRL-ALT-DEL ON IT SYSTEMS The Australian Government aims to claw back billions of dollars of welfare payments a year through a seven-year project to update its ageing IT systems.

“This 30-year-old system consisting of 30 million lines of code and undertaking more than 50 million daily transactions is responsible for delivering around $100 billion in payments to 7.3 million people every year,” says Scott Morrison, Minister for Social Services.

Minister for Human Services, Marise Payne, says the upgrade, which she expected to be partly operational by the end of next year, would “stop the rorts by giving our welfare cops the tools they need to collar those who are stealing from taxpayers by seeking to defraud the system”.

“Work will begin immediately to mobilise the project team so that we can go to the market early in the new financial year,” Minister Payne says.

The Income Security Integrated System Model 204 IT database system tracks back to 1983 and now includes 350 bolt-on components. Updating to a real-time view will cut down on contact centre calls and deliver better services, the government says.

WHAT WE’RE READING: SOCIAL MEDIA, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG Are tumbleweeds blowing through your corporate anointed social media platform? Less than half of the enterprise collaboration tools installed have many employees using them regularly, reports the Harvard Business Review.

If conversation and collaboration have stalled in your organisation, if people spend more time on their personal Facebook and Twitter than Yammer, Connections and Jive, the blame rests at the top, says Charlene Li, Altimeter Group CEO and author of The Engaged Leader. For successful enterprise collaboration, Li recommends that you: Listen at scale: Leaders need to get on board, use the tools and be “eager and open to learn and listen”.

Share to shape: Employees shouldn’t have to guess what matters to you: “Tell them with stories and pictures on the digital channels they already use.”

Engage to transform: Within an hour of asking staff “What processes and technologies should we eliminate?”, former Telstra CEO David Thodey got 700 responses. “Thodey used the platform for discussion, signalling [he was] serious about a dialogue. Thodey demonstrated that employee participation made a difference.”

Image: iStock

COULD 2020 MARK THE END OF SOFTWARE UPDATES?

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• MEET THE MEMBER

Joint Strike Fighter is the largest program the Australian military has undertaken.

AIR VICE-MARSHAL CHRIS DEEBLE, CPPM PROGRAM MANAGER JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER

A

s program manager for Australia’s AU$15.4 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Air Vice-Marshal Chris Deeble, CPPM, has one of the most challenging project roles in Australia. Coming up through the ranks as an air combat officer, AVM Deeble undertook his first project as an F-111 squadron leader in 1990. In the 25 years since, he’s managed other fifth-generation weapons platforms such as the E-7A airborne early warning and control Wedgetail (a Boeing 737 variant) and multi-role tanker transport (KC-30). He is currently undergoing his CPPE. Why is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter important to the nation and its defence?

On every measure, it’s a complex program—it’s expensive and technically, politically and internationally challenging in how it needs to be executed. JSF is the largest defence program the Australian military has undertaken; it’s bigger in dollar terms than the Snowy Mountains scheme. It’s an international program that involves nine nations and the US Navy, US Air Force and US Marines. Its total value is US$1.4 trillion, of which about US$1 trillion covers acquisition to sustainment. And it has a nation-building dimension to it. Of the AU$15.4 billion Australia will spend on the program, $1.5 billion is public works at the Tindal and Williamtown RAAF bases, the most significant since WWII. And the industrial benefit to Australia could be up to AU$4 billion through the life of the program.

How do you wind down? I’m a woodworker; I have a lot of old woodworking planes and tools in my office.

Favourite light entertainment?

The movies. My partner and I go every few weeks. The film that struck home for me was American Sniper and I also enjoyed Fury. But you also have to show your softer side, so we watch romantic films as well.

Advice to aspiring PMs? I’ve been married and I know the effects on your family. I haven’t got that right in the past. Get your work-life balance right, don’t get too engrossed in work and don’t forget your family. I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way.

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How do you wrap your head around a program that is so complex?

The two things that are critical for running complex programs are systems thinking and understanding that relationships are fundamental. That’s the starting position I adopt.

And as a program manager you work in shades of grey. The systems-thinking skill is to break the project into digestible component parts that you can look at and plan around and then rebuild up into a program view.

What’s your approach to stakeholders?

The stakeholders are many and I touch just about every part of Defence, from the Defence Materiel Organisation to Capability Development Group and the intelligence community, noting the information they provide is critical to the JSF program. I also work with state and federal government stakeholders and in industry to leverage their production and sustainment support. The challenge is, what is the message for each stakeholder?

Each requires a nuanced message in language they understand. You always have to set stakeholder expectations and gain their trust and respect at the outset.

How do you handle changes in project scope or program boundaries?

Programs like this take 15 years, and in that time the goalposts move in terms of the nature of the threat or technology or political climate. For any complex program, it’s very hard to lock down the scope in the first place. It’s key to know the business you’re in, and that comes back to systems thinking. I have a best-practice model I apply, to understand where I have flexibility and can cater for ambiguity or refine scope, cost and schedule. That way, I can develop the business case and go back to defence or government if necessary, to address any changes in scope.

Words: Nate Cochrane

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• THOUGHT LEADER

THE NEW TRANSACTIONS OF

TRUST

WE RELY ON TRUST TO INFLUENCE DECISIONS, BUT WHAT IF IT IS MISPLACED, OR NO LONGER EVEN NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS? WORDS NATE COCHRANE

A

sk Shel Israel to define trust, and even on the long-distance Skype video call his expression lights up.

“I could write a book telling you the answer to that question,” says Isreal, a San Francisco-based author and commentator on technological trends and influence.

“The topic of trust has surprised me—it’s one of the most elusive things. It’s a word closely associated with integrity, honesty and credibility.

Those words were grunts when the concept of trust in business came into play and two tribes, if they trusted each other, would exchange pelts or rocks for food.”

Israel likens trust to an elastic membrane that poor behaviour distorts, sags or tears. This applies to project managers’ relationships with stakeholders, clients and sponsors, as much as to consumer marketing.

Israel is nearing completion of his latest book, Resurrecting Trust. It investigates how emergent technologies are changing the nature of trust between consumers and businesses.

“We discovered that humans and technology were intertwining in ways that a couple of years ago was really freaky [but] ‘millennials’ say, ‘So what?’

“With the emergence of this new generation and the constant companionship of inanimate objects that know us better than our spouses and best friends, what we’re trusting is changing.”

He points to US car-ride service Uber, which has a reputation for tearing up trust with its

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business decisions: “People don’t trust Uber but they’re happy to hop in a car.”

He rattles off brands that succeed in spite of— and sometimes because of—the trust they abused: Amazon (cruel work conditions), Snapchat (lied about its customer privacy), General Motors (the cover-up about parts that killed motorists).

“In a recent survey, only five per cent of the 1.4 billion people who use Facebook really trust it with [their] data and one in four consider the only thing to trust less than Facebook is the US [Government National Security Agency],” a spying agency linked to the Australian Signals Directorate.

“Trust is becoming irrelevant—experience is what trumps trust now. This has a watershed impact on strategy.”

A skepticism borne of frustration with how trust is manhandled has crept into everyday relationships: “People, who are not millennials, have come to discover everyone is messing with their personal data; every company breaches that trust.”

He says people connected by an always-on, digital device-led society are now more pragmatic about trust.

“Privacy is gone and isn’t coming back, so let’s negotiate where the playing field is now. We’d like to turn the damn things off, so if I’m wearing a Fitbit [digital activity tracker] and I’m making love, the Fitbit isn’t recording my personal best or who else is in the room.”

Shel Israel’s previous books include Age of Context, on the future of privacy in an increasingly digital world, co-authored with Robert Scoble.

Trust is becoming irrelevant—experience is what trumps trust now.

This has a watershed impact on strategy.”

But where earlier generations are freaked out by how technology has erased privacy, millennials or ‘digital natives’ see opportunity.

“They began by being collaborative by nature and thinking life would be easier by using these [mobile] tools. Their point is, you have my data—what have you got for me?”

Israel’s revelation in writing the book over the past year is that trust is less important than he thought. For project professionals who see trust as a currency to influence others, he advises a long‑term strategy.

“To take people on trust has a risk and you’ll have disappointments but, if you make a policy of it, over time you’ll benefit enormously. Most people in business are transaction-oriented; I think business in America ran better before quarterly reporting— companies could take some risks.

“Everyone thinks transactional all the time and strategy is just something we pay lip service to.”

Weary project managers will be encouraged to know that Israel believes technological disruption has plateaued: “Over the next several years, there isn’t going to be so many new things turning everything upside down; it will be the same technology refined and getting better.”

Machine automation is growing in importance as devices and networks report back in real-time about everything from consumer preferences to project progress. “Technology and humans are getting graded into the same fabric. That’s all well and good, so long as we remember that automation has its limitation.

“Patience is one of the things you have to have; trust isn’t a one-night stand, it’s more like a courtship or marriage. You can’t buy trust, you have to earn it, and that’s much harder.”

Shel Israel, author of Twitterville, Naked Conversations and Age of Context, will visit Australia in October to launch Resurrecting Trust with Telstra.

project MANAGER 11

• CENSUS DIGITAL TRANSITIONS

THE NATIONAL COUNT’S

DIGITAL

or the past six years, the census, one of Australia’s biggest nation-building projects, has been quietly moving towards delivery.

And unlike some projects, the date of the next census—August 11, 2016—is set in stone.

The numbers are huge: the Australian Bureau of Statistics invested $440 million at the last census in 2011 to employ 43,000 field staff to deliver 14.2 million questionnaires to 9.8 million houses.

The project is so big that it causes a blip in national employment data as collectors (‘enumerators’ in census parlance) hit the pavement gathering raw data that informs everything in society, from the placement of roads and schools to where to settle migrants or build the NBN. Project planners lean heavily on the demographic data for their decisionmaking, so billions of dollars ride on reliable, accurate numbers. And while the government ponders whether to limit the census’ frequency or efficacy or to scrap it altogether, ABS staff march towards their deadline.

This time around, the ABS has a digital census strategy as a force multiplier and to gather data faster (it can take years to get at all the data). Former Deputy Australian Statistician Richard Madden says the ABS has always been a technology leader.

“Since the 60s, they have been a major user of computers when mainframes were the big thing because they were churning lots of economic data,” says Professor Madden, who is now at the University of Sydney. “They are trying to minimise the respondent load to make it as easy as possible for people to give them the information.”

The 2013-14 ABS annual report says next year’s census “will position Australia’s national statistical agency well for the future”.

It is developing online reporting tools, including new census systems with an enhanced address register, a mobile application for collectors and an automated workload allocation service. The ABS is also building an online portal, upgraded eCensus online form and operations management tools. In 2013-14, it developed e-forms to streamline surveys that it says were well received by businesses, which adopted at 90 per cent, above the take-up target.

Although household adoption was lower, they exceed the introductory target of 20 per cent.

“These online forms provide greater convenience to businesses and individuals through increased interactions online, reduced paper costs and [they] are more efficient,’’ the ABS says. “Over the past year, many providers have been taking advantage of the opportunity to log on to a secure website to access and complete their survey obligations, rather than filling out paper forms and returning them through the post.”

As Australians go online, they’re increasingly consuming ABS data through social media, apps and the ABS’ website (including its fun interactive Spotlight microsite pictured page 14) that recorded 13.7 million visits last year, up 1.5 million visitors in a year and five million since 2010–11.

Madden says it is ABS policy to cut paper but there are exceptions, such as

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17,626

THE AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS IS GEARING UP FOR ITS FIRST DIGITAL CENSUS NEXT YEAR, BUT COULD THIS BE THE NATION’S LAST? WORDS LEON GETTLER

F

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TWITTER FOLLOWERS OF @ABSSTATS

ABS FACEBOOK LIKES

Illustration: Adam Quest

EVOLUTION

project MANAGER 13

• CENSUS DIGITAL TRANSITIONS

71,468 DOWNLOADS OF IOS APP RUN THAT TOWN (like SimCity with census data)

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analysis and especially important for industries such as engineering, construction and sectors including local government and planning.

“If you’re planning a shopping centre, you need to know where people live, what their income is in small areas. Do they have car? It’s in the census.

It’s very difficult to find otherwise.

“You wouldn’t want to force a whole lot of market research to happen when the census already does it.”

THE WEB FUTURE FOR THE CENSUS The ABS is moving its data collections online. In 2012, it introduced web reporting for its monthly population survey, the largest ongoing survey of households. It was done with a small sample so that the ABS could monitor its progress.

The two-year program wound up last year. Now it has added business surveys, covering areas such as capital investment, quarterly business indicators and its largest business collection, the annual agricultural survey, to the monthly population survey.

Adrian Bugg, Program Manager for Acquire@ABS data acquisition and collection program, says the ABS found many benefits from this approach.

“Collections have become more complex and more costly and providers want to complete that online,’’ says Bugg, who became RegPM certified in 2006.

“There are advantages in being able to do that, and one of those is convenience. There are only certain times when interviewers can conduct interviews, whereas

online participants can complete it at times more convenient for them.

“There are other benefits, including improved data quality as well as improved timeliness.

We’re getting returns earlier. Also, reducing errors you might get through paper scanning.”

He expects online form-filling to increase as people become comfortable with it.

“We are designing our collections so that there will be a preference for digital,’’ he says.

“Some people may still prefer a paper form and may still prefer an interview face-to-face or over the telephone, but my expectation is that acceptance and prevalence of people wanting to complete information over the web will increase.

“There is potential for other areas, like mobile, and they are areas that we need to be aware of and need to be part of our planning for the future. Whether it’s an app or a dynamic website, they are still some of the issues that need to be worked through.”

Social media stats correct at time of printing

dealing with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

“They have interviewers collecting [the] census,’’ he says. “People are not always literate. That’s a problem across the community but you don’t know where those people are. They actually have enumerators go out there and fill in the census forms.”

Technology is making the ABS’ project management much easier, Madden says.

“They’ve had a team dedicated to the census branch and it manages the five-year gap; you start to manage it before you finish the last one. They do that in a rolling way and they are not stuck on the technology of the past driving the future.

“The last two censuses, you have been able to fill it in electronically, and in 2016 they will make that the primary method of collection.”

He says the ABS is always looking at new technologies for the census but he is unsure of cloud computing. “Where you store the records, whether you store them in Australia under Australian law or you store them somewhere else, would be a major matter for them to think about.”

And people management is a big issue: “A lot of the people at the end of the census want to move on and do something else as their careers progress, so there is a turnover of staff.”

“But corporate knowledge of this is very strong.

The team goes on, even though people are coming and going from it.”

He scorns talk of scrapping the 2016 census—it is well advanced and enshrined in law. Speculation is being floated to see how the public reacts, he says.

“It’s done every five years and it needs a major process,” he says. “The idea that you would cancel the 2016 census now is absurd. The UN has a policy that all countries should run a census in the year ending in zero; we run it in the year ending in one (because Australia became a nation in 1901).

“The 2016 census is only months away. You would be throwing a lot of work away.”

He says the government would need to enact fresh laws to kill the census at this late stage. And given the government struggled to get its budget through the Senate, that looks remote.

Madden says the census is crucial for small-area

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• COVER STORY

WHETHER YOU’RE ASSESSING A MINE EXPANSION, DEVELOPING A TIME-SENSITIVE APP OR POWERING UP A STATEWIDE POWER GRID, SCOPE DICTATES EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR PROJECT. ARE YOU MAKING THE MOST OF THE CHOICES OPEN TO YOU? WORDS ADELINE TEOH

HOW TO GRAB

SCOPE

BY THE TAIL

16 AIPM.COM.AU

Image: iStock

project MANAGER 17

F

or artist Darren Gilbert, scope management is initially an exercise in feasibility—turning an idea into a sculpture, painting or drawing. Once he goes from the idea to the design stage, he considers whether the artwork is worth pursuing through to physical construction.

Time pressure, for example leading up to an exhibition, commercial pressure and inspiration affect prioritisation. But Gilbert admits that time and commercial pressures sometimes makes the final product better.

“Sometimes I overcomplicate things, so by putting myself under a deadline I pull back on some of the details I want to include. Most of the time it actually works,” says Gilbert, founder of Monkey Tail Design, an art consultancy in Central Victoria.

Scope for a commercial artist balances creativity and workflow. Even when there appears to be no direction, Gilbert must make a start in defining the scope to clarify it. Gilbert treats his commercial work differently to his experiments. He might limit how long he spends on experimentation to ensure he has work to exhibit or sell, but this still furthers his creativity. “There’s stuff I do privately that has no commercial value but I still enjoy doing it. By doing it, I learn things I apply in the commercial side.”

For Gilbert, the true measure of scope is time.

“Some ideas take years, others just come out.

Nothing is ever abandoned, just reprioritised.”

Gilbert’s need for feasibility assessments (or proof of concept studies) prior to shaping scope is a concept that project managers can relate to, whether they are working on fairly straightforward individual projects or shaping a nation’s infrastructure portfolio.

TRANSLATING SCOPE FOR MODERN PMs Artist Darren Gilbert

1

Project management literature defines scope, in its crudest form, as the boundaries of a project that encompass the work required to deliver an output.

In the early days of project management, scope was simply one side of the iron triangle—everything that wasn’t ‘schedule’ and ‘budget’. In the decades since, scope has become the intersection of resources, outcomes and benefits—a reflection of what is achievable and a map of what is to be achieved.

Despite scope being one of the foundational elements of a project, it is still incredibly difficult to

You have differences in interpretations between one party and another, and the project manager is often the meat in the sandwich.”

– Michael Young, Transformed

18 AIPM.COM.AU

2

achieve consensus on what it is and how to handle it. There is a difference, for example, between how a client and a project manager define scope. Is it everything the client asks for, or is it everything the project manager considers part of the project?

“The challenge is the specificity,” says Michael Young, CPPD, Managing Director of Transformed.

“The difference in understanding comes from where the client is trying to commercially maximise bang for their buck, and what you’re trying to do is deliver as per the contract or minimise the effort required to deliver an outcome. You have contractual or legal interpretations, or even in differences in interpretations between one party and another, and the project manager is often the meat in the sandwich.”

Clients like to keep the scope broad, especially early on, whereas the project professional or organisation seeks to be as specific as possible so it can deliver. The ideal situation is “an informed buyer who can clearly articulate what it is they want”, says Young. “The scope conversation has to be had in context and you need the organisation you’re working for to know and understand what to ask for. I’ve worked in some organisations where they’ve responded to a tender and won the bid but hadn’t actually read the contract they’d signed.”

In these situations, Young finds a two-step process—a due diligence or investigation before undertaking the project—works best. “Get clear

There is always going to be more need than there is capability to deliver. No-one says ‘Here’s an unlimited bucket of money— try everything’.”

– David Hodes, Ensemble Consulting

3

specifications developed. The client then signs off on it and you move forward to the next phase.”

Images: Monkey Tail Design; ElectraNet

THE PROJECT TO SCOPE THE PROJECT

Feasibility and proof-of-concept studies are not new but, unless a project manager is present when the business case is written, there will be a question over scope when a sponsor or commercial manager hands over to them.

Aurelia Noran, Director at Norans Consulting, advocates bringing a project manager into the process as soon as possible. “Scope is the practical realisation of an idea. Project managers have experience with breaking it down to realisable components. If you involve a project manager, then you can look at the idea in terms of whether or not it is feasible.”

Her mining-industry experience taught her that feasibility projects inform what is possible (can we expand five hectares south of our existing site?) and suggest if a project is worth doing (are the deposits big enough to warrant the infrastructure we need to construct?) and to prioritise tasks (which of the four deposits should we mine first?)

If a feasibility study has not been written, risk is a major factor. “If the risk falls within the tolerance range of the sponsor, I go ahead. If the risk is beyond, we have to de-scope it. Once you understand which concerns are more important than others, you can prioritise the risk-mitigation strategies to make the project possible.”

1 Approaching his sculptures as projects enables Darren Gilbert to assess their feasibility and priority prior to allocating his time.

2 and 3 The diverse and unknown nature of upgrades for ElectraNet’s isolators required a fluid scope model.

This is easier said than done, Noran admits.

“Scope is easy enough to handle, change of scope is harder. It is an absolutely necessary skill for project managers to translate [new] outcomes into a scope variation. This is what differentiates experienced project managers.”

TACKLING THE UNKNOWN

But how do you shape scope when there are crucial unknowns? When South Australian power provider ElectraNet serviced 500 of its 1250 isolators (disconnectors that de-energise a circuit so maintenance can be done safely), it realised that what it didn’t know would have a big impact

project MANAGER 19

on scope and cost. The indeterminate condition of the isolators across the network—varying in type, age, condition and geography—meant there was no typical isolator to base the scope of the Substation Plant Isolator Refurbishment project.

“It was clear that ElectraNet’s usual lump-sum contract arrangement would not work, as the scope of works is not the same for each component,” says Elena Zagorenko, CPMM, Project Manager at ElectraNet. “This made things a bit trickier when negotiating with contractors.”

ElectraNet used a ‘fluid’ scope model where contractors had permission to do maintenance tasks with out-of-scope defects requiring discrete treatment. They could take advantage of outages, which lowered costs. “The contractor has the flexibility to address any additional scope identified on site while still being held to account by the rigorous recording process,” Zagorenko says.

Initially, ElectraNet thought to package this maintenance into its other refurbishment projects, but the project’s secondary goal was to collect data about the isolators to inform future asset management decisions so it won’t have to scope the unknown again.

THE ESSENTIAL SCOPE QUESTIONS

THE MYTH OF SCOPE CREEP 1. What are you trying to achieve?

This should prompt your client to give an outcomebased response. “If people can’t answer this simple question, fundamentally it’s all a waste of time,” says Michael Young, Managing Director of Transformed.

2. Why is that important?

Alexandra Chapman of Totally Optimized Projects believes this is the only question you need to ask.

Project managers can build a path-dependency map simply by following all the linked thought processes in a sponsor’s head. “You’ll know what they are actually trying to achieve rather than what they have asked you for.”

3. What is your highest priority?

The answer should tell you what the sponsor sees as important, says Anthony Farr of Rally Software. But

20 AIPM.COM.AU

priorities can change, so revisit this question as the project progresses.

4. What are the risks you see associated with these outcomes?

By ‘risks’ we mean both threats and opportunities.

The answer will give you a measure of the scope flexibility, says Aurelia Noran of Norans Consulting.

“Many clients will tell you the threats straight up.

It’s an uphill battle to get input from stakeholders on opportunities.”

Elena Zagorenko of ElectraNet says she addresses opportunities separately, often asking ‘Can we do anything additional?’ “You can get lots of efficiencies doing this!” she remarks.

5. How will scope be verified?

Mark Patch, CPPD, says the mode of verification proved critical in his former role as the Director General Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter

for Defence. “When the project team worked on upgrading the state-of-theart ARH Tiger helicopters (pictured above), the means by which a requirement was to be verified would shape the contractor’s performance in delivering the configuration change because what you were modifying was not yet in production. Do we want to test on a prototype or can we accept the findings from a computer modelling?”

The answer will change the approach.

6. What level of stakeholder support do we have?

If you have a high level of existing support, less effort needs to go into securing buy-in, which means it may be possible to be more ambitious with your scope.

Conversely, if stakeholder support is low, you may have exerted more effort to secure buy-in, which could affect what’s possible.

Of the scope-variation issues project managers hate, creep is probably the most maligned. If you correctly established your project, there is no such thing as scope creep, says Alexandra Chapman, Co-Founder of Totally Optimized Projects. The problem is that project managers think on which resource inputs are required to achieve scope, rather than how the scope will deliver a value output. “If you set your scope by what you have to do physically, rather than what you are trying to achieve, then you’ll always have a problem with scope.”

Part of this comes from the traditional observance where the project manager delivers an output and the organisation turns it into something workable.

Chapman has seen the focus shift to value firsthand, overhauling the business case process at Sensis’ project management office. The marketing services company, which runs a host of services including Yellow Pages, was facing a digital overhaul in 2011 and had to deliver a record number of projects.

“They wanted to make sure the projects they commissioned delivered the benefits they promised.

These scope decisions start to become really easy if you get the outcomes clear at the beginning.”

The revised processes forced the PMs and sponsors to ask key questions: What does the end product look like? What is the long-term value to the company? How does it align with the business objectives?

With detailed planning, the number of activities they had to deliver increased, but the business case documents were overall much shorter and clearer, meaning the stakeholders were better informed.

There were then fewer scope changes, because the projects started off on firmer ground.

4

Scope is easy enough to handle, change of scope is harder.

This is what differentiates experienced project managers.”

– Aurelia Noran, Norans Consulting

Images: Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defence; iStock

SCOPE APPROACHES

Different project management methodologies treat scope differently. Waterfall locks in requirements in its first phase, setting scope for the duration. Agile allows requirements to be re-prioritised.

“Agile is less vulnerable to scope creep because it has been designed to be adaptable to change,” says Anthony Farr, Regional Vice President at Rally Software. “Agile project managers expect things will change and they embrace it. Their goal is not to deliver a project but to delight the customer. As long as there is a proper process to understand what the changes are, they’re completely happy with that.”

Re-prioritisation can reshape scope entirely.

He recounts the experience of a client who was developing an application with ten features it considered key. The team reached the fourth feature when it heard that a competitor was about to go live. The organisation decided to go live with a less feature-rich product “because it was more important to their business that they were first to market”. The value proposition changed, so the client changed the scope and Agile allowed them to make the variation with very little disruption.

For David Hodes, CEO of Ensemble Consulting Group, prioritisation and change control are the two elements of scope that critical chain (a method focused on resource balance over task order) manages best.

“In the Agile community, they would look for the minimum viable product. We would say, ‘What are the implications for the business on revenue, on cost and on investment for the given set of requirements?’ There is always going to be more

4 Moving to a value-first mindset helped Sensis deliver a host of projects linked to a new digital strategy.

Alexandra Chapman

Anthony Farr

need than there is capability to deliver. No-one says ‘Here’s an unlimited bucket of money—try everything’. There’s going to be a decision: ‘This is in, this is out’.”

Some scope can be jettisoned upfront based on the organisation’s finite capacity, meaning project managers are confident of delivering what remains, Hodes says.

“The gift of critical chain is twofold: one is on finite capacity management that goes down to quantum packets of work, the other is how it addresses inherent uncertainty. A critical chain buffer can be used as a control mechanism to provide a visualisation and a lead indicator of how you’re travelling in time versus what your promise was.”

Scope changes go through the same rigorous procedures to ensure resources are used appropriately, so critical chain reduces the likelihood of scope creep.

“A scope change has implications in terms of resource management, schedule management and integration. A fundamental piece is to have in place a system of governance that manages change control that is quick, effective and able to determine whether something that has been called for is actually essential.”

Front and centre of any scope conversation should be what the client is trying to achieve, and what the project manager can do to make it happen. Best practice scope management is simply the “fine line between what was asked of you and what was delivered”, says Noran. If the client can assign value to what you’re delivered, that’s scope management success.

project MANAGER 21

• SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT

THE

GREEN PHASE TO COME

CAN WE HELP AUSTRALIA BECOME A GLOBAL LEADER OF SUSTAINABILITY BY AIDING DEVELOPMENT, NOT RESTRICTING IT? PROJECT CONSULTANT PETER NEWMAN EXPLAINS HOW 1 22 AIPM.COM.AU

WORDS NATE COCHRANE

Image: Dexus; City of Sydney: ASPECT Studios/John Gollings/Aquasure/Thiess Degrémont Joint Venture; iStock

3

4

2 1 Green walls, like the 40-metre wall at 1 Bligh Street Sydney, enhance air quality and help buildings to become more energy efficient.

2 The Victorian Desalination plant green roof is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere at 26,000 sqm, a collaboration between by ASPECT Studios, ARM Architecture and peckvonhartel.

3 The vertical gardens at Trio Apartments in Sydney are bringing biodiversity back into the city with more than 4528 native plants.

4 One in six Perth homes have solar panels, and uptake is forecast to increase further.

W

hen Peter Newman, AO, steps out to present at the AIPM conference in October, it will be a bittersweet moment for Hobart’s prodigal son. He is returning to his source a changed man.

For much of the past 40 years, Professor Newman has been on a journey progressing from 70s activist to 21st century enabler of sustainable development.

He is now Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Perth.

“I’ve been a person trying to help developers for some time,” Newman says. “It seems a bit strange for someone on the sustainability side, but I’m about change for sustainability and change means development.”

He says hippie beliefs that development had to be stopped were discarded on his realisation that being human meant development was desirable for sustainability. Standing in the way would cause economic and civic stagnation with an exodus of people such as himself from places like Tasmania and investments drying up in municipalities such as Western Australia’s port city of Fremantle, where he was a reformist councillor arguing for development.

“I’ve always been a very hopeful kind of person, and I found the dismal anti-growth movement very difficult to cope with. That’s to miss the point that

it’s all about the character of change, not whether you grow [as a population].”

Change has also come to the global carbondependent economy, he says. Wealth creation no longer tracks fossil-fuel burning. Car use has sputtered as people cluster around fast, cheap, efficient metro public-transit systems. Change is also in the air as renewables such as wind and solar rise in power output. Coal is on the rocks.

“GDP is decoupling from fossil fuels; it always used to be closely intertwined. If you wanted to get wealthy, you used more fossil fuels. And America and China are showing you can grow and develop but phase out fossil fuels,” he says.

“The next 20 to 30 years is going to be where the technology is moving inexorably into a greener phase; we have to phase out fossil fuels so we have to use clever technology that’s significantly cheaper than traditional forms.”

While the Australian government was an early leader in moving away from a carbonbased economy, Newman says the private sector and foreign governments have overtaken us.

For instance, in March the French government mandated roofs on new buildings in commercial zones must have plants or solar panels. The US, China and Europe have also shunned coal-fired

project MANAGER 23

• SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENT 5

BATTERY POWER BOOM Tesla Motors will release a version of the battery it uses in its high-performance electric sports cars for domestic solar -panel users. Analysts project the global market for such Li-ion batteries to boom from US$20 billion to US$80 billion by 2020, even as unit prices fall by twothirds from today as production ramps up. Tesla Motors is building a 1000-acre, US$5 billion ‘Gigafactory’ in the US state of Nevada to be fed by solar cells and wind turbines.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk estimates that by 2020, it will churn out 35GWh/year of cells and 50GWh/year of battery packs to supply 500,000 Tesla cars a year, as well as other devices such as drones and off-grid power storage.

6

7

5 The cost of Li-ion batteries has been steadily decreasing, making home use, coupled with solar, more likely in the near future.

6 Tesla predicts its new production facilities in Nevada will assist in reducing the cost of Li-ion batteries up to 30 per cent.

7

Tesla’s battery-powered cars recharge in about 30 minutes.

24 AIPM.COM.AU

“We have to phase out fossil fuels so we have to use clever technology that’s significantly cheaper than traditional forms. power stations, and since 2013 the World Bank won’t finance them in developing nations.

“What governments do is now largely irrelevant; the market is driving this force.”

But while coal declines, the rapid rise of renewables has caught out Australian power utilities. “Now 17 per cent of Perth homes—that’s one in six homes—have PVs [photovoltaic or solar cells], and that’s happened in three years. It’s equal to 540MW of power, which is a substantial coal‑fired power station. And none of the utilities saw it coming.”

Newman also points to a coming revolution in lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology that allows homeowners and businesses to store renewable energy more efficiently, which will further disrupt the carbon economy.

“It has halved in cost in the past two years and is going to become available to people so they can store up the sun and use it themselves instead of putting it back out to the grid, and there’s no way to stop that.”

The challenge for project leaders, as the Project Manager June–July 2014 sustainability issue noted, will be to marry a project’s economic viability with its long-term sustainability.

Project leaders must lift their gaze to consider unborn generations.

Newman says big construction projects will trend towards self-sufficiency and resiliency: green walls and roofs, renewable power generation and storage, localised water collection and reclamation, and denser urban living that is more walkable and less reliant on private car ownership.

“These ideas come together in a way that, if you have a large enough precinct or development, they essentially should be their own utility managing their own energy and water, and nowhere in Australia is this being facilitated. We could become a global leader.”

He predicts that central power and water utilities will have a diminished role.

“My question is, how do we enable it? It is the future. How do these utilities accept that their system is phasing out? We need some kind of grid but the massive head-works of water systems and big power lines and big substations probably won’t be needed; they’ll just need to be linked from one local system to the next. That will save massively on the cost of development.”

Peter Newman, AO, is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University and Director at the Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) institute in Perth, WA. He was a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has worked on infrastructure projects such as North Port Quay in Fremantle, WA.

WANT MORE? Listen to Peter Newman deliver his message about our carbon-free future at the AIPM National 2015 conference, October 11-14. For more information, visit www.aipm2015.com.au.

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By renewing your membership, you will also ensure that you continue to enjoy the benefits of being an AIPM member including: Member pricing at National and Regional events Maintaining eligibility for your RegPM certification Access to the new recorded events section of the website Access to our members-only LinkedIn group Members-only networking events Annual subscription to Project Manager magazine

BE AHEAD OF THE GAME AND HEAD TO AIPM.COM.AU TO FIND OUT MORE OR RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP TODAY

26 AIPM.COM.AU

VISUAL FIRST AID WORDS NATE COCHRANE

PUT AWAY YOUR TRUSTY GANTT CHARTS, SPREADSHEETS AND FLOW DIAGRAMS, BECAUSE TODAY’S TIME-POOR BUSINESS LEADER EXPECTS MORE FROM YOUR PRESENTATIONS AND REPORTS. THREE LEADING VISUAL STORYTELLERS REVEAL THEIR NARRATIVE SECRETS TO HELP YOU INFORM, INFLUENCE AND IMPRESS YOUR STAKEHOLDERS.

OUR VISUAL STORYTELLERS Sam Grimmer (SG)

Nathan Krisanski (NK)

Robert Black (RB)

Consulting Creative Director. He has led design for a wide range of magazines and newspapers.

Data Visualisation Expert. His clients have included CoreLogic RPData and the Ray White Group.

Corporate Cartoonist. His clients have included BHP Billiton, city councils and Origin Energy.

project MANAGER 27

• VISUAL STORYTELLING PRESENTATIONS

1

2

Size matters SG: Don’t shrink text to fit more words on the page. When you reduce a font, you’re saying something is less important. Only change font sizes when you want to make a point about relative importance.

Revise your palette SG: PowerPoint is bad software for presenting. Your Gantt charts are also too complicated for a layman; represent their key elements another way.

NK: Look beyond spreadsheets to new data-driven tools. Use infographics that engage people through data—giving them a bar chart doesn’t inform them.

Write less. Take pride in expressing something in as few words as possible.”

— Sam Grimmer

28 AIPM.COM.AU

Tackle the problem RB: In a strategy meeting, once the easy stuff is canvassed, what’s left is tricky and nebulous. Cartoons can safely address cultural differences.

SG: Design is a problem-solving exercise, not pretty pictures. Every choice should reinforce your points.

NK: Infographics can lie but they make the audience feel smarter because they’re easy to understand. Ensure that there’s truth behind whatever you present and it can be drilled into and defended.

3

Break it down SG: Write less. Take pride in expressing something in as few words as possible.

Typography, colour and scale convey an idea more meaningfully than a lot of words (but don’t use too many tricks). Break ideas onto new pages or discard them.

RB: You don’t have to record everything; consider powerful metaphors to provoke discussion.

NK: Make one point and make it well. If your stakeholder has to go to a meeting to understand what you presented in the last meeting, you know you helped no-one.

1 Robert Black’s cartoons tackle topical issues in a light‑hearted way.

2 A complex but digestible information map

by Nathan Krisanski.

3 Nathan Krisanski’s property value heat map for CoreLogic.

4 Krisanski’s HomePrezzo website makes real-estate data more interesting with customisable videos.

5 Black condensed a workshop into this memorable illustration for a large infrastructure engineering firm.

4

Look beyond spreadsheets to new datadriven tools that engage people.”

Presentations go in waves... What matters is how much thought you put into it.”

— Nathan Krisanski

— Robert Black

Images: iStock

Working with pros RB: When people hire me, they don’t just get a pretty picture—they’re paying me to put a lot of thought into what they’re saying and why. I often sit at the back of a room, drawing cartoons on what people are (or aren’t) saying. An agenda gives me time to ‘prime the pump’ and develop ideas in advance. Give me anything you think is relevant, it all percolates inside my mind.

SG: Don’t brief in haste; you wouldn’t put up a building without a blueprint.

Canvass all project stakeholders and write a full brief for the designer. Provide your designer with a single point of contact and consider embedding visual storytellers in project teams.

NK: Cleanse your data and unpivot any tables before importing into datavisualisation software.

5

Be rigorous and ruthless SG: Edit carefully. Design isn’t random painting. Create a style guide for font sizes, colour palettes, even how many lines on a slide, and break it only when making (or masking) a point. Your audience soaks up how you present something, and if you say it badly, they get the wrong information or wrong idea.

NK: I once left a data filter on and it skewed my visualisation. Think critically about the data and ask yourself if this makes sense. Software helps you get to the wrong answer quickly; you must still take responsibility for what you’re building.

And be prepared to show your working when challenged.

RB: Presentations go in waves: there was a time when PowerPoint blew people’s minds, now it’s stock photography and four words on a slide. What matters is how much thought you put into it. Pixar is famed for its animation, but if you ask them what matters, they say the effort they put into storytelling—they write and rewrite.

Respect your audience NK: What matters emotionally to your audience? Decisions are emotional for many people. You can play on the emotion of the project to educate them. Also, they likely won’t have your technical skill. Ask yourself, ‘What level of understanding does my audience have of this subject matter and what do I want to tell them?’ If you’re trying to tell them the project is on time, focus on that and not on the detail.

SG: Be modular. Sculpt a presentation for each audience. Certain executives might only be interested in the financials—give them a sentence on the creative side, and make the rest of your presentation about boring old money. Another audience might be more interested in the environmental aspects. Design your presentation as a single source of truth for all audiences but do it in such a way that you can delete irrelevant content.

RB: A computer spits out a drawing that tells you everything, but when clients come to me they say “this is what’s important”.

A mining company asked me to reimagine their long, complicated safety manual that was several binders thick as a 25-page booklet that captured the principles of working on a mine site. Now they can tick off their compliance and know their mine workers understand their obligations. Also, know what your audience will accept, and the setting (is it public or closed-door?).

project MANAGER 29

• COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

5 WAYS TO COLLABORATE FACE TO FACE WHEN YOU’RE FAR AWAY TECHNOLOGY ENABLES AMAZING FEATS OF TEAMWORK AT A DISTANCE. BUT FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION, DON’T FORGET THE HUMAN ELEMENT WORDS IAN GRAYSON

30 AIPM.COM.AU

Illustration: Tanya Cooper

W

hen your project covers more than a million square kilometres and your team spans the globe, it’s challenging to keep everything humming.

For Ergon Energy project manager Stuart Elkins, CPPM, guiding a virtual project team of 15 requires technology, planning and experience.

The team is creating an electricity distribution and management system to control Queensland’s massive power grid. Members are scattered from Chinchilla in the state’s south to Cairns in the north with a key technology partner in the US.

“We have been working on the project for around two years,” Elkins says. “It involves shifting from a system of using pinboards on control-room walls to a computerised system based on electronic maps.”

Elkins says this allows workloads to be more easily shared between control rooms in Townsville and Rockhampton and ensures a more granular view of the network.

“The challenges of having a virtual project team are outweighed by the benefits,” he says.

“Having dispersed staff members allows us to take advantage of local knowledge within a very broad project.”

Ensuring efficient teamwork in these circumstances is challenging, but proven strategies like the following can boost the chance of success.

1

INVEST IN AN EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION PLATFORM Efficient and regular communication is important for any team but becomes critical when it is dispersed. There are countless technological tools for audio and video collaboration, as well as for document and whiteboard sharing. But how do you choose between the many options?

“It’s important to select a platform that matches the way the team works,” says James Brennan, Director of Asia Pacific solutions at Polycom.

“There’s little point in investing in technology if people then don’t use it.”

Elkins says his team relies on Cisco WebEx for collaborating with US team members and Cisco Unified MeetingPlace and Microsoft Lync for domestic hook-ups. “We find MeetingPlace is best for scheduled calls and Lync for ad hoc communication.” He says presence indicators that alert team members to whether others are available are particularly useful. And if you are confused about when to set a meeting, try a website like World Time Buddy (www.worldtimebuddy.com), which helps you quickly identify times that can work across all of your selected time zones.

2

CREATE CONFIDENT TEAMS The success of a project team lies in the hands of its members, and careful selection is paramount. Someone who functions well in a central office may struggle when working virtually in a remote location.

“It’s important to select mature staff who can work independently,” Elkins says. “People need to be confident in what they are doing and don’t need to be spoon-fed or constantly monitored.”

Elkins says establishing virtual collaboration opens opportunities for remote workers.

“A dispersed working model can be a familyfriendly approach, with workers able to spend more time at home, especially in regional cities where commute times are a fraction of those in the city,” he says.

BREAKING DOWN THE TECH There are many platforms to bring teams together. Here are the highlights: Cisco WebEx Voice, video, virtual meeting rooms and whiteboards suitable for small groups through to thousands of users. It is accessible on mobile devices, Macs and PCs through the cloud.

Cisco Unified MeetingPlace Supports massive ‘town hall’-style hookups for up to 14,400 concurrent users.

It’s an on-premises installation that integrates with WebEx. Citrix GoToMeeting This straightforward system enables meetings with up to 100 people, and has handy features like easy screen sharing and recording.

Microsoft Lync An instant messaging (text chat), internet phone and video solution for businesses that can replace traditional PABX phones. To be replaced this year by Skype for Business.

Microsoft Skype A ‘freemium’ video conferencing and collaboration system with instant messaging that works across mobiles, PCs and Macs.

3

ENCOURAGE THE RIGHT CULTURE Although it’s difficult to quantify, culture can be the difference between a successful project and one that goes off the rails.

“The big issues are rarely about technology,” says Joe Sweeney, an adviser with analyst firm Intelligent Business Research Services. “It is more one of having a cultural understanding of what you are trying to achieve.

“It’s important to achieve a culture where people shift from planning and discussing a project to working on the project itself. You do this by removing as much of the administrative process as possible and smoothing communication flows so people can just get on with it.”

Sweeney says this cultural shift will become more prevalent as flexible and virtual working takes off. “The days of long-term employment are fast disappearing and we are moving quickly to a highly casualised, consulting workforce,” he says.

“What we are really talking about is the workplace of the future. Project teams are going to be increasingly dispersed. They’ll be quickly brought together when required and then disbanded once a project is completed. This needs a very different culture from more traditional work practises.”

4

DON’T IGNORE VIDEO Many collaboration platforms enable group video, a boon to a virtual team because it enhances interactions and minimises misunderstandings.

“It is powerful when you can see the face of the person you’re talking to,” says Polycom’s Brennan.

“You know your point is getting through and you can gauge reaction and interest levels.”

Options range from low-cost (or even free) services such as Microsoft’s Skype through to purpose-built room systems such as Cisco’s TelePresence. Many also offer the option of participants joining a videoconference through a mobile device, ideal for those in transit.

5

RETAIN SOME FACE-TO-FACE TIME Through the right technology, people and culture, a virtual project team is well placed to deliver the goods. But it’s important not to forget the value of face-to-face meetings.

“People embrace working virtually to different extents but you will need face-to-face meetings from time to time,” says Sweeney. “How often they are needed will depend on the individuals in the team.”

Elkins agrees, saying meetings are most useful when they coincide with project milestones. These might be the beginning and end of the project and when specific deliverables are achieved.

“It’s not so much about getting together for a group hug, but some intense face-to-face time can add real value at particular points in the project,” he says. “It’s an important part of managing a virtual team.”

project MANAGER 31

• CAREER CENTRE

MOCK THE CLOCK TIME IS OUR MOST PRECIOUS COMMODITY. GAIN IN THE RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK WITH THESE TIME-MANAGEMENT TIPS WORDS LEON GETTLER

G

32 AIPM.COM.AU

Most people don’t delegate with enough thought, so it goes wrong from the outset.”

WANT MORE? These handy apps might claw back time in your day.

Rescue Time reveals your wasted minutes at www.rescuetime.com.

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Track your web work and forget about time sheets using www. focusboosterapp.com or www.toggl.com.

Never type in another business card with www.fullcontact.com/ cardreader.

flick-passed,’’ he says. “It’s not a conscious, important learning opportunity, it’s a desperate callout from the box to keep people out of trouble.”

Nix says the “the boss should book a 10-minute meeting and then brief them on the task”.

If a subordinate comes back with questions, the manager has fallen down. “It’s incumbent on the manager to say, ‘What do they need to do know to do this well’ and, ‘How can I give them that information at the beginning?’”

Psychologist Susan Nicholson, a coach and partner at Mentors Psychology for Business, says a lot of wasted time comes down to procrastination.

But it’s important to ask why we are letting ourselves get distracted.

“Procrastination can be driven by a thinking pattern of needing to get it all perfect, and if we go a layer beyond that, it’s often a fear of failure. If you don’t complete, you don’t stand to be tested,’’ Nicholson says.

Nicholson says understanding inherited behavioural patterns leads to better time management.

“We encourage managers to look at the origins of [their] family, those patterns in childhood, to make a choice for themselves whether they feel it’s working for them now.”

She says thinking patterns that could have evolved from childhood might keep managers locked into the old ways of doing things and procrastinating. Maybe that suited them during a certain period of their lives when they had less responsibility, but now those patterns need to be analysed.

Image: iStock

eoff Nix has simple advice for project managers struggling with their time commitments: get the right software.

Nix, CEO of small business advisory group Real Time Minds, says software such as the cloudbased Evernote can help project managers wring time from their day. Evernote emails a daily summary of tasks: “That’s a good tool for capturing [and] scheduling, then being reminded of it; not for every task but one per day. It’s your to-do list.”

He says project managers should delegate a specific time for each task, which is different from planning to do it at some stage in the day.

“You can cut and paste each task into a block on your calendar and you have an ordered idea of how your day is going to play out and you can schedule it around any meetings or travel.”

He says most of us are at our best in the mornings, but that’s when people check their emails. He recommends people prioritise emails to save time and to focus on what’s important. “If it needs a fair amount of time and is urgent, take it out of email and assign time in your calendar.”

Project managers can multitask during dead time, such as commuting or housework, by listening to podcasts and audio books, both a terrific way of keeping up with what’s going on.

Delegation can also be handled in a much better way than it is now.

“Most people don’t delegate tasks initially with enough conscious thought and preparation, and so it goes wrong almost from the outset,” he says.

Delegating can also help the person handed the task.

“People don’t think who the right person might be to delegate a task to. Do they have the capacity? Will it be a learning experience for them?

“If delegation is done well, it’s an opportunity for someone less senior to do something they don’t do every day.”

“A lot of delegation happens on the fly and the person to whom it’s being delegated feels it’s being

• HEAD TO HEAD

ACTION OR ASSESS? Determining the scope of a project is either part of a framework for business and operations or the critical end‑point.

Are you driven by problems to solve, questioning traditional solutions, or do you lock in criteria before the project starts to cut out surprises? We ask two experts from different industries how they define what is required of a project, their timetables for decision-making and the factors that influence their respective approaches.

INTERVIEWS DEBORAH SINGERMAN

DAVID MOORE

DAVID SEACY

INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER, WA, APP

MANAGING DIRECTOR INTEGLOBAL

The scope stems from the project drivers and the business case. There is no project without the scope. You ask, “What is the problem to address and how will it be resolved?” You need to meet functionality and safety outcomes that address the project needs and requirements.

The scope works hand in hand with procurement. While there are gateway [reviews] where you want to lock everything in, the solution [might] not always meet all stakeholder needs.

You have to take a step back and change where you want to go before [locking everything in and moving to] procurement and then building the project.

For example, with a car park, who will maintain it? Who provides security? Is it for public or private use and how will the public pay? If an IT team is involved, will they influence the requirements?

Will the IT still be current when it’s built? You are working with stakeholders and the client to decide deliverables, timelines, details to meet their objectives (including budget) and taking it through the design process.

You want to be as specific and clear with the scope as possible because any greyness is risk. We are hopefully limiting the number of surprises to the client. Where clients have not locked in the scope, change after budgeting is the biggest risk, and that becomes a lot more expensive.

• WANT MORE?

People get caught up on the term ‘Lean Six Sigma’, but a fair descriptor for the skills needed for this approach to defining project scope is productivity project management.

Before committing to a particular solution, investigate the data and test what is happening to ensure the right choice is made. It demands rigour in understanding the current state and testing what is a high priority. In some respects you have to consider yourself as a super-sleuth, like Sherlock Holmes.

For example, rather than [looking for] a good piece of new equipment to buy and install, look at the current market and ask, “Are we putting in the right solution or piece of machinery and have we truly analysed innovative alternatives?”

The perception of what is required for the modern scoping of projects is broadening. Although we are good at maintaining process status quo in Australian business culture, we’re less exposed to the demands of an innovations mindset. Start by forgetting the proposed solutions and research the root cause of the problem, especially if the project scope is not initially obvious. What is the opportunity? What impact is the problem having on the business? Due diligence in this type of scoping will help in completing the project on time and on budget.

Productivity project management demands fact‑based decision-making. You [need to] discover if it is the right solution to achieve the project goal, [rather than] just picking up the work at hand.

Attend the industry sector-specific presentations at the AIPM National Conference in October to hear some examples of best practice in scope, time, cost and quality management. Visit www.aipm2015.com.au for more information.

project MANAGER 33

• AIPM NEWS

THE AIPM

UPDATE

IPMA PRESIDENT TO PRESENT AT AIPM CONFERENCE The 2015 AIPM National Conference recently secured somewhat of a coup, with the announcement that International Project Management Association (IPMA) President Reinhard Wagner will be making an afternoon keynote presentation. Reinhard (pictured) was voted to the role of president in September 2014, and his presentation on “the next level in project management, from individual to organisational competence” is sure to spark debate.

The 2015 conference will be held at Wrest Point Convention Centre in Hobart from October 11 to 14. The discounted early bird booking rate expires on July 15, so there is no better time to confirm your place!

For more information, including about the other influential speakers, visit www.aipm2015.com.au.

Reflecting on the past builds a platform for future innovation, and the team has delivered a valuable resource for current and future project managers.”

Project Director, Chivonne Algeo

LESSONS FROM THE PAST AIPM members now have a unique opportunity to hear the wisdom and past experiences of their colleagues, with the launch of the history of project management feature on the AIPM website (pictured right).

The history project, that launched on the website in April, features interviews, documents and photographs that exhibit the growth of project management in Australia from the 1960s to today.

The AIPM’s history project team have spent more than two years collating and documenting the history of project management. The interviews are with members of the AIPM, IPMA, the West Australian Project Management Association (WAPMA) and the AIPM’s predecessor—the Project Management Forum. Many of the 43 project managers interviewed have made significant contributions to the progress of project management in this country.

“Reflecting on the past builds a platform for future innovation, and the team has delivered a valuable resource for current and future project managers,” says Project Director Chivonne Algeo.

The project was made possible by a dedicated volunteer project team and sponsors Pavlov Group, Mosaic Projects and WAPMA.

34 AIPM.COM.AU

THE PM JOB MARKET’S NEW HOME

AUSTRALIA’S LATEST ACCREDITED PMO The AIPM have announced Telstra’s Project Services Practices division as the latest project management office-accredited organisation.

Telstra joins an established list of organisations as an accredited PMO, and are now enjoying the fruits of their labours after a rigorous assessment. In 2011, the company decided to benchmark their project management service delivery, and a comprehensive review outlined a number of key development initiatives that were completed in 2014.

The Chair of the AIPM Professional Development Council, Leh Simonelli, was extremely pleased with the process.

“The Telstra Project Services team, under the stewardship of John Dinneen, were very keen to reflect on the way they approached and managed their projects. They should be congratulated on the way they approached this exercise over the past three years.

“It was a thorough and revealing process, and despite a number of challenges, they have worked extremely hard and remained focused on implementing a number of critical organisational and strategic developmental recommendations,” he says.

Visit www.aipm.com.au/certification for more information on AIPM PMO accreditation.

Above, left to right: Victorian Chapter President Michael Radcliffe, Telstra Director of Project Services Lynn Harrison, Telstra PMO General Manager John Dinneen and Chair of the AIPM Professional Development Council, Leh Simonelli.

The new AIPM online Jobs Centre will enable project managers from all over Australia to connect with employers.

The soon-to-be launched Jobs Centre at www.aipm.com.au/ resources/jobs-centre has been designed to be an industryleading employment hub for project management jobs across all industries.

Job seekers will be able to upload their résumé to be searched for by prospective employers. When employers post roles they will be able to immediately search the résumé bank for the perfect candidate.

The AIPM’s RegPMs will be able to make their résumés stand out by adding RegPM insignia to their profile.

“The AIPM is looking to offer a specialist project management jobs board where all project management jobs in Australia are available,” says David Bryant, Chair of the AIPM Communications Council. “This is an important step as we seek to provide more value to both individual and corporate members.”

Check the AIPM’s LinkedIn page for updates on this exciting launch.

AIPM CONTACTS BOARD MEMBERS National President Ian Sharpe, MAIPM, CPPD national_president@ aipm.com.au

National Director Trevor Alex, FAIPM, CPPD ND2@aipm.com.au

National Director Gary Yorke, MAIPM, ND3@aipm.com.au

ACT Chapter President David Bryant, MAIPM, CPPD act_president@aipm.com.au NSW Chapter President Chris Mansfield, FAIPM, CPPD nsw_president@aipm.com.au Acting NT Chapter President Mark Dodt, MAIPM, CPPD nt_president@aipm.com.au QLD Chapter President Mark Patch, MAIPM, CPPD qld_president@aipm.com.au SA Chapter President Sami Abou-Hamdan, MAIPM, CPPM sa_president@aipm.com.au Tas Chapter President Michael King, MAIPM, CPPD tas_president@aipm.com.au Vic Chapter President Michael Ratcliffe, FAIPM vic_president@aipm.com.au WA Chapter President Chris Carman, MAIPM chris@benchmarkprojects.com.au

NATIONAL OFFICE Chief Executive Officer Yvonne Butler (02) 8288 8750 ybutler@aipm.com.au

National Events Manager Linda Chiarella (02) 8288 8758 lchiarella@aipm.com.au

Membership Administrator Brianna Edwards (02) 8288 8752 bedwards@aipm.com.au

National Manager Marketing and Communications Michael Martin (02) 8288 8751 mmartin@aipm.com.au

Certification Coordinator Ivana Lozancic (02) 8288 8760 ilozancic@aipm.com.au

Financial Controller Andrew Cooke (02) 8288 8753 acooke@aipm.com.au

CHAPTERS ACT Coordinator Narelle Muller 0418 243 418. act_chapter@aipm.com.au

SA Coordinator Michelle Pearson (08) 8223 6349 sa_chapter@aipm.com.au

NSW Coordinator Robyn Tuladhar 0431 065 212 nsw_chapter@aipm.com.au

Tas Coordinator Louise Grimmer 0402 705 608 tas_chapter@aipm.com.au

NT Coordinator Catriona Silverstone 0415 690 182 nt_chapter@aipm.com.au

Vic Coordinator Olimpia Watkins (03) 9369 2160 vic_chapter@aipm.com.au

Qld Coordinator Andrea Shipp 0448 033 413 qld_chapter@aipm.com.au

WA Coordinator Martine Peasley (08) 9447 5663 wa_chapter@aipm.com.au

FOR ALL AIPM CONTACTS visit www.aipm.com.au

project MANAGER 35

• THE OFFICE

THE

PMO CHECK UP NO MATTER HOW EFFICIENT YOUR PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE IS, IT COULD BE TIME TO STEP BACK AND DIAGNOSE SOME HIDDEN PROBLEMS, AND RECOMMEND A CURE WORDS GARY YORKE

36 AIPM.COM.AU

“

W

hat makes them think they know my business better than me?”

All the other GMs looked up.

Doug’s now familiar rant at the quarterly business planning off site had taken a new direction.

“I never had problems getting my projects going before the portfolio office came along. I’ve been running this division for over 15 years and always decided the project scope,” he says.

The introduction of portfolio management has challenged senior management views on scope, and often the blame is placed on the portfolio office, or enterprise project management office (EPMO).

THE TRYING SYMPTOMS

At the portfolio level, management is all about understanding the strategy and how it will be implemented by making sure the right projects are being done, taking into account the availability of resources. This requires EPMOs to oversee scope by taking a broad view of the enterprise and the environment it operates in, as well as keeping an eye on the future, so they can provide execs with analysis to inform the tweaking and balancing of the portfolio.

For example, a change in direction of loan rates can quickly kill project returns and benefits (search for ‘ghostscrapers’ online for sad examples) or bring those projects waiting in the wings to the fore as emergent technology becomes cheaper (anyone remember the dot-com boom/bust around the year 2000?). More recently, new technology, in particular the rapid advances in smartphones, tablets, wi-fi and cloud capabilities, has driven a scalpel though many ICT strategies and technology architecture roadmaps.

Illustration: Andrew Joyner

THE TRIAL TREATMENT

A strategy is not a clearly defined set of activities or steps—it sets the direction. It is portfolio development that determines the programs and projects that deliver the strategy. EPMOs need the skills to support executives in decision-making and provide oversight of scope to identify duplicates or gaps, which may not be noticed for months or years when run as discrete programs and projects.

An example was the organisation where eight strategic initiatives were funded to provide the foundation for transforming the business. Nine months later, none had been started. Managers were uncertain of how to scope the initiatives and focused on delivering other projects—the small, easy-to-scope business-as-usual maintenance activities that kept the lights on but weren’t going to take the business into the future.

Once we get down to the program level, the scope is a mixture of known and unknown. For example, when merging enterprises or government

departments, the emphasis tends to be on how technologies and processes can be integrated and rationalised. But how to integrate two workforces with different cultures is not so clear and presents a bigger risk.

At the project level, many managers still have the view that scope is either easily defined through detailed requirements (usually thinking they know the answer without even understanding the problem), or it can be left vague because the experts will already know what needs to be done and who needs to do it. The reality is that certainty of scope is constantly changing and it sits somewhere inbetween the two extremes.

PMOs at this level often get caught in a trap of satisfying these opposites by expending much energy on pinning down scope when they should be educating sponsors on the value of keeping some flexibility in scope where the risks inherent in this can be managed.

While projects usually deliver more scope certainty, this is not always true, for example with Agile projects where the time and cost is fixed and scope variable. Carrying out feasibility studies and developing a business case can narrow down the options, but decisions will still need to be made as the project progresses. This is why it is important for PMOs to conduct regular reviews of the project scope to ensure it is still aligned to the organsiation, the strategy and the changing environment.

WHAT’S UP, DOC?

In the changing world of scope management, PMOs need to take on the role of the GP rather than the specialist. Take time to understand the history, listen more to construct a picture of the portfolio, program or project as a whole, and help communicate a view of an achievable future.

WANT MORE? If you’d like to debate or discuss issues like these, join the AIPM PMO special interest group. For more details, visit www.aipm.com.au or contact your local state convener: ACT: Paul Toomey, Paul.Toomey@ au.fujitsu.com Vic: Gary Yorke, gary.yorke@gmail.com NSW: Joe Bond, nsw_pmo@aipm. com.au NT: Mark Dodt, NT_president@aipm. com.au SA: Tony Wood, tony.wood@accent. on.net Tas: Nerida Plumpton, neridaplump@ hotmail.com WA: Mirella Luketich, Mirella.

Luketich@iluka.com

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF

And finally, while they may be great at overseeing projects, many PMOs are uncertain of their own scope. They operate without a charter and try to get by without understanding the functions and services that add the most value to the organisation.

Even when they do have an agreed charter, just like a portfolio’s scope, PMO scope will change over time. So make sure your EPMO or PMO has the capability to scrutinise scope across the portfolio of programs and projects, and is clear on its own scope, or at least has a plan to get clarity.

Gary Yorke is a Principal Consultant with MetaPM, providing advice and assurance on strategy implementation and capability development. He is also an AIPM National Director and Chair of the National and Victorian PMO groups.

project MANAGER 37

• CHAPTER PRESIDENT CHAT SCOPE

TAS MICHAEL KING

NT MARK DODT

Setting scope is one of the hardest parts of a project. Rarely do client briefs meet scope requirements. If you’re lucky, they’ll ask you to set scope, which you can do in a reverse brief. You shouldn’t just accept what a client has written—I’ve seen error-riddled briefs cut and pasted from templates.

To start, bring the client and project team into an initiation meeting. This is your best and possibly only chance to ask questions to inform scope. You must go in with a plan that includes at least the deliverables, budget, client expectations and discovering what background work was done. This is daunting for emerging project managers, so senior managers should provide guidance and support. If you’re on a young team, make sure everyone contributes (and not just the loudest person). A young fellow who once worked for me would ask me the same questions repeatedly. I asked him, “Why are you asking me again?” He said he had to ensure he understood me. You need to be that annoying to ensure you get scope right.

And with the conference just around the corner, I encourage visitors to check out the website (www.aipm2015.com.au) for the program and ideas for what else to do in Tasmania while you’re here.

How many times have you heard project managers, consultants and contractors use project contingency for scope change risk mitigation? All project delivery methodologies have some form of hold point, where the project sponsor signs off the approved scope. That includes the budget, the timeframe and the expected outcome

or deliverable. Far too often, that approved scope is up for some form of interpretation.

It should be clearly and continuously communicated and reinforced to the project team and the project sponsor.

There are many factors that justify a change in scope, and the proper management of these changes is critical to the success of the project. Do you as the project manager know the whole story, or is it just a good idea with no consideration of the effects to the rest of the project? Have the ramifications of the change been clearly communicated to the sponsor? A sure sign of an ill-conceived change is ‘It’s okay, we can just cover it with the contingency’.

Scope management starts at the project initiation all the way through to project close, and any proposed changes should be treated with the same method. The recording and communicating of purpose, cost and advantage should be in a format that all can fully understand.

ACT DAVID BRYANT

NSW CHRIS MANSFIELD

I have found three techniques particularly useful for scope management. The first technique is a rigorous ‘request for change’ process. Any request that looks likely to affect scope must go through this process. The second technique involves regular reference to version two of your deliverable. Rather than rejecting a request for a scope change, you can flag the request for consideration in version two of the deliverable. The third technique is to agree on a small number of benefits that will guide your project. When your project is benefits-led, you can use these benefits to evaluate the requests for scope change. This is very effective in recognising the ‘nice to have’ requests.

As sponsor for the recent AIPM website replacement, we used these techniques, which allowed us to keep the scope under control. Many of the requests for change are now being implemented as we begin to address the ‘version two’ list, including the automated receipting of membership renewals.

Project scope is the most important element to understand about any project; the scope provides us with essential information on which the schedule, budget and resource plans are built, as well as the foundation for managing project change and risk. A wellwritten scope clearly defines the boundaries of a project—what’s in and what’s out!

As PMs, we’re responsible for ensuring effective scope management throughout the life of the project. Our scope management plan describes how the scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled and verified.

Our scope statement outlines the deliverables and identifies the constraints, assumptions and key success factors.

My tips: take the time to workshop the scope with stakeholders to ensure there is a shared understanding. Once the project scope is signed off, communicate it as often as possible. Plan for the inevitable scope creep; communicate the change process, get sign-off and document any approved changes.

And finally, share your lessons learned!

You shouldn’t just accept what a client has written— I’ve seen briefs cut and pasted from templates.”

38 AIPM.COM.AU

Scope is a fundamental reason why you need a project manager involved at the start.

Sponsors embark on a project with no plan because they’re caught up in their dream or to save money. But they get partway and see it’s too hard—that’s when they call us in.

A shopping centre project I was brought into was improperly scoped and the developer

didn’t realise he had to underground 500 metres of power lines. He left that to the civil engineer and only brought me on after the tender was let, by which time it was almost too late. I activated my professional network and even brought in government ministers to smooth it out. We got the project done but it cost far more than it should have.

Elsewhere in this edition, I’m pleased to see that Peter Newman from WA’s Curtin University (page 22) is presenting at the AIPM conference in October. Professor Newman and I worked on the North Port

Quay concept, a world-first sustainable metropolis of 20,000 people on the coastal fringe of Fremantle (pictured). Peter proved it would deliver 2.5 times the amount of energy it used through harnessing wave, wind and solar power providing free electricity to the rest of the port city of ‘Freo’. Project firsts included storing excess power in electric cars, a solar-powered light rail to Fremantle and sewer mining. Ironically, while Fremantle ponders this development, cities in the Middle East, like Masdar, are pushing ahead with similar ideas.

QLD MARK PATCH

SA SAMI ABOU-HAMDAN

VIC MICHAEL RATCLIFFE

Scope is what the client wants, allowing for the constraints that must apply. It must be reviewed throughout the project to ensure it remains valid, or even still required by the organisation. In IT, for example, the scoped hardware or software may be superseded in the time taken by a protracted planning and approvals process.

Project managers must be able to recognise the difference between the scope as defined by the documented product requirements and the client’s expectations, which are focused on how the product will be used. It is possible to meet all requirements of a poorly defined scope and yet fail to meet the client’s expectations (the only true measure of success).

Where the defined scope is not clear, the project manager’s role is to work with the client to derive a mutually agreed scope definition. Success can only be achieved if the project manager delivers the stated requirements in a manner that meets the client’s expectations.

Great projects start with a clear scope. Scope creep that may happen in development is a risk mitigated by open communication with the sponsor and governance. In SA, a project manager reined in scope creep that emerged in the concept phase of a $200 million project. With great communication skills and a keen eye for governance, the PM arrested the project that risked spinning out of control.

When defining scope, you might query why the sponsor is doing something—is there a better way to achieve the outcome? If you need to vary scope, it’s important to step back and clarify desired outcomes with the sponsor.

And ensure that approval gates are in place.

The project manager who shows the senior management team how their earlier involvement is a benefit can shape scope.

And in a big project, link up with other departments, agencies or business units to see if you affect each other. Perhaps you can tap into other infrastructure already being delivered to save money.

A huge consideration for selecting the best approach for managing scope is project complexity (as opposed to just being big or multifaceted but with proven solutions).

Complex projects aren’t an excuse to jump straight in without thinking; indeed, even more work must be done upfront. Design thinking can inform problem definitions and solutions.

A more staged approach also helps. And although this may mean more latitude in change control processes, a robust benefitsmanagement framework should ensure the project hits desired outcomes.

On the theme of sustainability, there is an obvious connection with scope.

The way requirements are defined and solutions posed can significantly alter the sustainability outcomes of a project. For instance, in one project I was involved with, an environmentally enhanced and pedestrianfriendly watercourse was the final solution to what was initially intended as a large urban drainpipe. That definitely exceeded stakeholder expectations!

Image: courtesy of North Port Quay

WA CHRIS CARMAN

project MANAGER 39

• TALKING POINT

BREAKING THE MOULD INTERVIEW SOPHIE HULL

ELENA ZAGORENKO, CPPM PROJECT MANAGER ELECTRANET

E

lena Zagorenko has learnt the hard way that being a perfectionist can be unpopular.

But over her wide-ranging project career, she’s found that not compromising has led to success. As a Project Manager for ElectraNet, Elena runs a portfolio of operational maintenance projects in the high-voltage substations, lines and communications space across South Australia. Joining AIPM ten days after she moved from the Ukraine to South Australia, Elena is now an AIPM SA Chapter Councillor and Chair of the state’s Women in Project Management community.

What is your current professional approach?

When I joined ElectraNet, it was my goal to make my projects work as a portfolio rather than as separate jobs and to apply project management principles to guide improvement.

I believe that there is no one way to do projects, no recipe. You have to be flexible.

How does your Ukranian background influence your approach?

I come from a very competitive world where only those who do it perfectly survive in the workplace. If you don’t deliver on time, there are lots of others to take your place. When I do something, it has to be to my personal high standards.

How has your hard line played out in the workplace?

At the beginning I was harsh in challenging the status quo, and people were upset.

Now I’ve learnt to soften up a bit and the people around me have learnt that I have very high standards.

WANT MORE? Elena is inspired by: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t by James C. Collins Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Seth Godin’s blog at sethgodin. typepad.com Edgy Conversations by Dan Waldschmidt

40 AIPM.COM.AU

How do you cultivate high standards in colleagues and contractors?

In my culture, your team is everything. When work is successful, I think it’s important the project manager shares the glory. But when things go wrong, you should take the heat and not pass it down. People here have different drivers; I’ve had to learn new ways to motivate people and it pushes me to become a more inspirational leader. It’s easy to say, “I’ll just find someone else to do it my way”. But if you share your values and goals, people want to go the extra mile.

For example, project estimators may only work on one part of a project. But if you show them photos of the end result and say, “Look, this is what you have done. It looks great on site, and that was your idea”, they’ll feel a sense of having achieved something as a team.

Has being a woman presented challenges in your role?

Some people get upset to see how strong minded I am, but the only way to be successful is to be what you really are and apply your abilities to what you are doing. Project management suits my abilities and that is why I love it so much.

What advice would you give other project managers who don’t fit the mould?

You don’t want to be scared to be yourself. Explain what you are doing and you are likely to get support. Project management has a creative side to it. Any two project managers would not deliver a project in the same way. Otherwise we are just reading the menu and not being project managers.

RegPM NOT JUST

your average

PROJECT MANAGER

I wish I had done AIPM’s RegPM certification

INTERVIEWS IN PROGRESS

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