More consistent benefits delivery at lower cost and reduced risk; sounds like nirvana but this was the outcome sought by London Heathrow’s (LHR) Development Projects division. With determination and a keen eye on the outcomes they have already made significant steps in achieving it.
Not long after the completion of Terminal 5, Development Projects launched a business transformation programme. They were seeking quicker, lower risk and more beneficial implementation of their projects. Whilst they were shrewd enough to recognise that altering procedures alone would not achieve the necessary behavioural changes; they also recognised that trying to achieve the changes off the back of inconsistent methods and processes would not be sensible.
One set of processes in need of updating existed around the project lifecycle and it’s supporting assurance functions. With LHR’s overarching transformation to a benefits led programme organisation, aligned to recognisable industry standards, this lifecycle refresh was a critical undertaking requiring buy-in from all levels of the organisation and also needed to be done with pace, a challenging undertaking but one LHR took head-on.
Because of this and especially the need to move at pace it was decided to conduct a ‘Blitz’ week; key stakeholders from the delivery and operational interface communities were invited to participate in an intensive five day exercise. This would culminate with a live presentation at the end of week, to the senior leadership team of the Development Projects division, of the proposed lifecycle. The presentations objective was to gain their endorsement for developing the detailed view and supporting sub-processes of lifecycle management and project assurance.
CITI was engaged to guide and facilitate the ‘blitz’ week for several reasons; our acknowledged expertise in industry standards (Cabinet Office, APM etc), a proven track record in assisting other large organisations with similar challenges and expertise in delivery of change management initiatives and their governance. This would all prove valuable and is also coupled to a strong ethos of practical application. This meant they could quickly translate external best practice and fundamental principles into LHR’s language and existing processes. Working from first principles the team started by matching existing practice to a stage gated process; the client quickly came to re-discover the value of some fundamental ‘rules’ that had been lost in the development of their current processes. Three particularly valuable points were:
- The primacy of the business case in steering projects to a successful conclusion
- Differentiating approvals from authorisations, and
- Early and consistent involvement of the users to achieve benefit.
They also discovered some new techniques; how to effectively tailor the processes to individual circumstances and the necessity for partnership between the project manager, sponsor and the affected lines of business to agree appropriate courses of action within the framework. This included identifying ways of shortening the project durations through tailoring the assurance processes that supported the project lifecycle. This was achieved by tailoring the level of assurance through a semi-automated approach, dependent on the risk and complexity of the project; this would ultimately break the dependence on ‘heavy-duty’ formalised board reviews of all projects.
Of course, process alone wouldn’t deliver the benefits. These would depend on the project management and sponsoring community adjusting their behaviour to a more cost and risk balanced approach to the establishment of governance for each piece of work. Further development was needed to start making this change but the lifecycle and processes started to act as pull-through for this to take place. Foremost amongst these additional changes were the development and delivery, by CITI, of sponsor and senior management capability in leading change initiatives from a benefits and outcomes based perspective. Of similar importance was the work, on developing and delivering, for both the programme/project management and also the sponsor and business functions, the material to understand and craft effective business cases – a significant and ongoing initiative.
The far-sightedness and wisdom of Heathrow’s investment is paying off. During a recent best-practice seminar the sponsor of the work was able to publicly identify several critical changes in the organisation’s behaviour. Foremost amongst these was the ability to take a forward looking view of why a piece of work should or shouldn’t proceed. The convention still operated by many organisations is that proceeding is based on approval of what has gone before rather than authorisation of what is to come. To get to this point different questions, different areas of expertise and different mind-sets need to be applied – if they are, benefit delivery becomes much less challenging.