BUS605: Strategic Project Management

People, processes, and tools play an important role in projects. People provide value to projects because of their creativity. A person's ability to create is not something easily replaced by a machine even though the dream of artificial intelligence has been around for decades. Projects start with a goal or need and creativity allows us to make conceptual leaps that allow us to come up with new ideas to solve a problem or overcome a challenge. In addition, creativity often is prompted by another inherently human trait called vision, or our ability to see what is not yet there - that is, to imagine. Projects often start out as someone's vision that becomes a guide for the project work to be done and motivation for creative energy. Lastly, the combination of creativity and vision provides a unique outlet for our intellect. We carry around a number of facts in our heads, but intellect is more than what we know. Intellect is our ability to use those facts to uncover relationships and is the enabler of creativity.

Unfortunately, people are not perfect. Although people are essential to projects, people are also a main reason why projects experience problems and even fail. Another human trait is our ability to make mistakes. For example, we would most likely trust a compiler because we expect it to compile a program correctly, but we may not have the same degree of trust in a program that someone wrote that wasn't properly tested, reviewed, examined, and retested. People can make errors that impact a project significantly. Time, effort, and money must be spent fixing those errors. Moreover, people can also forget things. While we can all forget facts and information, we can also forget to do things. An activity may require a number of steps, and a person may omit one or more steps if they aren't familiar with the activity or when their attention is diverted. Regardless, omissions often result in someone having to go back and filling in the missing work or redoing what was already done. Another human shortfall is that people can be imprecise. A systems analyst, for example, may fail to document fully the requirements of a system. The programmer may make assumptions to fill in the blanks, resulting in a system that may not satisfy the user's needs.

Since people bring unique abilities to a project, it is important that we seek opportunities to enhance their value while mitigating their shortcomings. This is the basic reason for processes and tools. Recently, the topic of processes has been a controversial issue. Many people believe that processes get in the way or stifle creativity. The truth is that we follow processes in many of our day-to-day routines. These routines that we repeat regularly help us get through the day without having to stop and think through every step each time we do something. This frees up our minds so that we can focus on things that require our conscious attention; for example, each of us has a morning routine (i.e., process) for getting up and getting to work or school.

Processes fail when they do not meet the needs of the people who must follow them. A process becomes unconscious when it meets our needs and doesn't get in the way. People complain about ineffective processes when they fail to meet our needs or when they become a waste of our time and effort.

Processes provide value when they compensate for our human shortcomings in terms of helping us compensate for errors, omissions, or imprecision. They get in the way when they impede creativity, vision, or intellect. For example, a morning routine that includes checking the weather and traffic reports can help us choose the best time to leave or the best route for our commute. Therefore, a process should help us do all the things we're supposed to do and do them in the right order and with the right amount of detail or precision required. Since not every error, omission, or imprecision can be avoided, processes also provide necessary checks and balances to detect and correct mistakes before they become problems. Moreover, a process that is followed inconsistently will produce inconsistent results, while a process followed consistently will provide consistent results. Often processes are undocumented, but the need for documentation increases as more people become involved in a process. This helps new staff learn the rules and what is expected of them.

Tools, on the other hand, can improve efficiency by magnifying or leveraging a person's efforts or by replacing the human effort. For example, a long time ago programmers wrote code that ran by stringing together the 1s and 0s or bits so the computer's processor could directly execute the program. Compliers replaced the task of programmers having to write code directly to the processor while magnifying their work by allowing them to write higher level abstractions using a programming language. A human could therefore spend time analyzing a problem and applying creativity and intellect to solve it, while the compiler translates each line of this source code into the language the computer could understand.

Tools are appropriate when people spend a great deal of time working on processes that do not involve a great deal of creativity. A tool should help them spend less time on mundane activities and more time on the challenging aspects of their work. This can improve the quality of their work-life as they spend more time on interesting and challenging work.

However, adoption of a tool often necessitates a process change. For example, a code repository tool may require a process change that now requires programmers to check code out to work on it and then check it back in when they are done. While this may be a small change, one should consider whether a tool should be adopted if it changes the process so significantly that it then becomes a hindrance or waste of time and effort. Tools should make people and processes more efficient and effective. Tools and processes that reduce efficiency and effectiveness are not worth adopting.

1. Discuss the relationship between people, processes, and tools. When is this relationship most effective? When is it least effective?
2. Can good people make up for poor processes? Can good processes make up for incompetent people?
3. We've all encountered a process that we felt wasted our time and/or money. This could be in our job, waiting in line trying to renew our driver's license, or at a fast food restaurant. Describe an inefficient process that you may have performed as part of a job (past or present) or a process you encountered in your day-to-day life. How did this process stifle a person's intellect or ability to be creative? Could the process be improved? Could a tool be used to free a person from the mundane tasks and improve the quality of their work life?