CITI value and provide clarity, expertise, and a positive difference to clients. We work at all levels within an organisation and are known and trusted as experts, who share expertise, while remaining clearly focused on delivery.

In this one day event, we invite members of the Best Practice User Group™* (BPUG) to experience how they can apply change techniques and good judgment in complex situations.

Through the day, we explore key techniques that support the creation of real, lasting change through delivery vehicles that include projects and programmes. We will discuss reasons why approximately 80% of change initiatives are seen as unsuccessful.

Delegates will be invited to identify potential barriers to change and then understand how to overcome them. With our primary focus on what makes change successful, delegates will discuss:

• the roles and responsibilities, and necessary competencies, of those involved in change management
• the complexity and challenges of affecting real business and organisational change, and
• change management as a discrete discipline and how it relates to projects and programmes.

Strategy and Change – Implementing an Effective Business Strategy

This free of charge event is an opportunity for you to join fellow IT leaders to discuss and debate ways to develop and implement business strategy designed to improve operating models and keep up with the constantly evolving needs of your organisation.

The event will cover the linking of business strategy through portfolios and projects to deliver outcomes that are aligned to your organisation’s objectives. This will include techniques which contributed to Eurostar (2008) and Remploy (2009) winning the Association for Project Management Programme of the Year Award. We will also deal with change theory and the practical steps that can be taken to implement a successful change process, using the response of the legal sector of the Legal Services Act as a case study.

Speakers
Dr Thomas Docker is an expert in change management and the development of change manager capability. He has worked in or managed civil engineering, engineering, IT and business projects. He has been in change management for thirty years, specialising in the change vehicles or portfolio, project and programme management. As a founding partner of CITI, Thomas has helped many blue chip and government organisations improve their change management capability through successfully run projects and programmes. He has served on the Association for Project Management’s Executive Board and BCS’s Management Forum Strategy Panel.

Nigel Stott has 16 years’ experience working across a number of industry sectors within a technology role including time at the NHS and BT. During his time at the NHS, Nigel was involved in a major project to swap out systems across the north of England in readiness for Y2K. Nigel is currently Director of IT at Clarion, an innovative Leeds based law firm. He has responsibility for implementing strategic change at operational level and has 10 years’ experience of practical change management techniques. Nigel is a Prince 2 project manager and holds ISEB Business Analysis and ITIL qualifications.

To book Email Sam Devonshire on sam.devonshire@4itrecruitment.co.uk or call 0113 234 8111

Dr Thomas Docker, Director CITI, will moderate two Birds of a Feather sessions at this year’s event. Book now (by following the link above) to register and attend either of the sessions below:

Session 1: Making change happen ‘Change is the only constant.’ ‘It’s not change, but the rate of change that organisations must adapt to.’ ‘Today’s corporate elephants must learn how to dance as nimbly and speedily as mice.’ These three paraphrases of Rosabeth Moss Kanter date from the 1980s and have an increased resonance in today’s challenging world. What are the key factors that ensure an organisation has the capability to change, time after time, without imploding? At this BoF session we will identify and address a number of these factors, including assessing an organisation’s readiness to change and the challenge of making the change stick.

Session 2: Benefits realisation Stating benefits for projects and programmes is relatively easy. Claiming benefits may be a little bit harder, but is still done with gusto. The biggest challenge is realising benefits – demonstrating that the benefits stated or claimed really materialised. In this BoF session the focus will be on planning and monitoring the realisation of both financial and strategic benefits. The second group is typically described as non-tangible benefits, meaning they cannot be measured. This premise will be shown to be wrong as we demonstrate how benefits can be measured and linked through to an organisation’s value system and strategy.

Project Managers in Pharma and Biotech – are we qualified for the job?

For many, the traditional route into project management in Pharma has been that an expert – scientific, clinical or commercial – is identified as possessing natural people and project working skills, and is encouraged to assume a cross-functional PM role. The situation in smaller Biotech has been even more diffuse, with staff often being asked to take on PM roles for which they may not have been prepared.

However the situation is changing, with Pharma and Biotech taking a more formal approach to the development of PM competence often in parallel with development of a Project Office and the integrated management of Projects, Programmes, Portfolios and Alliances.

In other industries such as Oil & Gas, IT, and Construction, it has long been the norm to have a formalised approach to PM competence development – with strategic intent to establish standards, recognised qualifications and, more recently, accreditation of PM professionals.

Should this progression to qualification and accreditation apply to Pharma and Biotech?

Dr Thomas Docker, Director CITI, was delighted to share his insights on this subject to the PIPMG – ‘Pharmaceutical Industry Project Management Group’ at their annual Autumn meeting.

In his session ‘How to spot a good one for you’ he discussed:

The initiative by the Association for Project Management (APM) to become a chartered institute reinforces the desire to professionalise project management.

APM is not the only organisation that sees projects and their management as an area of focus. There are increasing numbers of accreditations and qualifications available and the pace of introduction seems to be accelerating so discrimination between them is essential. Using KASE – knowledge, attitudes, skills and experience – as one organiser, the presentation explores options available so you can answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”

For over 20 years CITI has researched, practised and taught success in projects, portfolios and programmes to world class organisations. Our approach to learning takes participants ‘beyond method’ to experience complex project issues in real business environments.

In this one day event, we invite members of the Best Practice User Group™* (BPUG) to experience how they can apply new techniques and good judgment in complex situations. Through the day, we explore how project assurance can deliver real value to project managers and the organisation.

Session 1:

There is a case for a PMO to act as a guide for projects, to the extent of reviewing each project and providing a constructive action plan to the project manager. Having a structured approach, that is focused on supporting the project manager, adds value to the review function and ensures that the review is consistent and effective. CITI’s health check approach provides a consistent process for project reviews, whether the output is focused on guiding the project manager or monitoring the status of the project. This session outlines the process and approach of health checks and what is required for the delivery of successful health checks.

Session 2:

This session provides a more detailed view of the core key techniques, including a detailed explanation of the critical models and hints on their application. The outputs of the health check process are discussed with how to provoke effective action as a result of the report/feedback. Participation in group activities will allow you to relate the principles to your own organisation.

At the meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Dr Thomas Docker, Chairman of CITI shared his insights on the topic of ‘Forensic Project Management’.

Projects do fail, but when the problem was avoidable because it was a repetitive error (one made before and the signs were known but ignored) the impact is worse. A forensic service identifies causes, may apportion blame if appropriate, but essentially identifies policies and practices to adopt to prevent a re-occurrence. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of the approach is allowing an organisation to move on – with a new maturity and awareness about the factors in the project environment that trigger project failure.

Forensic project management is the process of revealing the sources of poor project performance. It identifies both the immediate cause and the predisposing causes of failure, with a view to eliminating the source. Repetition is the most wasteful and corrosive type of failure. The forensic approach dissects the project in a manner that analyses the factors that led to morbidity and, where rescue is possible, recommends direct actions to rectify or avoid the problem manifesting itself again.

A quick search on the internet will produce many lists of what good behaviour looks like for project managers. Traditionally, a project manager’s performance is measured in terms of hitting deadlines, meeting budgets and delivering quality products.

In this presentation, Hilary Small presented CITI’s research on high performance project managers. The initial research was undertaken in the 1990s and has been further developed since then with the results of thousands of project managers who have completed on-line questionnaires and participated in interviews.

He looked at the characteristics of successful project managers and discussed the behaviours and attitudes that underpin their approach and their success. The analysis looked at:

• a ranked list of nine project manager behaviours
• the responsibilities undertaken in a project manager role
• how time is spent on key activities when acting as a project manager
• how a number of project manager competences are ranked.

Hilary illustrated his talk using examples and stories from his own experience and from the public domain. A copy of his slides can be downloaded via the above link.

Hilary has been a principal consultant at CITI since 2005. This followed a period of working on projects and programmes in the USA, Canada and South America. Clients included the Lexus dealership in Hawaii, the Ministry of Justice in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the Diavik diamond mine in the Northern Territories of Canada, and a winery not too far from Santiago, Chile. There were some slightly less exotic locations (but nevertheless challenging programmes and projects) in between.

Since his return from the USA, Hilary has had a focus on assessment and development of project, programme and portfolio capability. He assisted in the extension of CITI’s profiling ‘toolkit’ to include programme management and PPSO staff, and contributed to the development of a career path and development framework for a Government department. Hilary has been a bell ringer for over forty years, and is developing an interest in gardening, having recently acquired a small part of Buckinghamshire.

Project Challenge Spring Show 2010 took place on 28-29 April at the NEC Birmingham

At the Spring show Dr Christopher Worsley, CITI’s CEO, provided some insightful tips on how to master project politics, in his session ‘turning to the dark side’ he looked at some sensitive projects and showed how by the adroit use of the project manager’s specific skill sets, social and political activity becomes a valued weapon.

For more information about Christopher’s session call us on 01908 283 600.

But in the real world …’ David MacLeod, CITI Principal Consultant, presented at the APM Thames Valley Chapter on best practice project planning and how it can work in a deadline driven business world.

The APM has made great strides in recent years in professionalising project management across all sectors. The APM BoK represents ‘best practice’ thinking in 52 different knowledge areas. If we all followed its advice and employed the techniques, our projects would run … perfectly!

However, it may be ‘best practice’, but in ‘common practice’, business project managers run into significant difficulties, particularly when it comes to managing projects to tight (infeasible) deadlines and trimmed (impossible) budgets. On my project management education courses, delegates will agree that the planning techniques they learn are ‘really good, sensible stuff’ but their questions are always prefaced by, ‘But, in the real world …’ as they then go on to bemoan the lack of appreciation among senior managers and sponsors of the challenges of managing a project.

Why do business sponsors and senior managers feel that it is necessary to place infeasible constraints on project managers? Has a regular flow of project failure stories so worried senior executives that they feel obliged to set ‘stretch’ targets for projects and revert to an ‘all stick’ and ‘no carrot’ approach?

David’s talk looked at how project managers can, and must, continue to do the job properly and still remain in employment.

This year in view of the generous support received by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) the International Project Management (IPM) Day was free of charge to UK members.

The theme for this year’s event was project failure and recovery. Amongst the leading experts presenting on this subject, Geoff Vincent, CITI Principal Consultant, discussed ‘Finding out what went wrong: the forensic approach’.

Finding out what went wrong: the forensic approach
Geoff Vincent, Principal Consultant

When things go wrong, the search immediately begins for the guilty. The simplest solution is always to blame the project manager. Sometimes this is right, but often the situation is more complex, and a number of factors – from governance and poor initiation to problems with underlying processes – may have contributed to the problem.

Forensic pathology, popularised by TV shows such as CSI and Silent Witness, uses scientific tests to determine key facts about what happened. Are there any similar ‘scientific’ tests that can be applied to a project (‘alive’ or ‘dead’)? What recommendations can be made to rescue a project, or to prevent the same problems from occurring again?

Geoff’s session also looked at how forensic analysis can help to create not just a healthy project, but a healthy project environment, where projects are set up and managed in ways that are most likely to lead to success.