Have We Been Chasing The Wrong Marker Of PM Success All This Time?

 

At a presentation I attended as a newly-minted staff member of a now-defunct major beltway bandit, the Vice President on the stage put up a chart I will never forget. It was a line graph, with the line starting high on the Y axis with a slight downward slope, until it got to about midway on the X axis, where it fell to below dramatically. This line, he explained, was the time-phased budget across all active projects, with the fall-off point at around the six month point on the X axis. What it was showing was a rather unsettling truth: if the corporation were to stop bringing in new projects tomorrow, most of us would be getting laid off in around six months.

With a brand-new wife and first mortgage, I was highly disinclined to be laid off for want of new work, so this VP had my full attention. In order to avoid this fate, he continued, it was incumbent on every single member of the staff to put considerable effort into proposing and winning new projects. Oh, and since I was now salaried, this extra effort was expected to be offered freely, nights and weekends. This last part wasn’t articulated aloud – it didn’t have to be. The corporate culture was so focused on winning new project work that technical or administrative excellence became almost an afterthought. In my view, there were essentially two classes of personnel in this organization: Group A were adept at writing winning proposals, and were golden; Group B were second-class citizens, whose employment could come to an end at any time, depending on how they were perceived by members of Group A.

Predictably enough, the corporation thrived, but its employees (especially those in Group B) were rather anxious, generally speaking. But this dichotomy did present an interesting take on the optimal business model in a heavily Project-driven organization. Consider the following payoff grid:

Let’s deal with Scenarios A2 and B1 right away. If the Project comes in on-time, on-budget (or even early and under-budget), AND attracts more work, either from the existing customer in terms of add-on tasks to the existing contract, or even a new contract, then there’s no question such a PM would be considered a success. Similarly, if the PM crashes and burns in actual contract performance, and the customer doesn’t want anything more to do with them, then that PM would be largely considered a failure. Where this payoff grid gets interesting is in the other two Scenarios.

I have often maintained that the whole point of developing a more robust PM capability is to increase the chances that the Project comes in on-time, on-budget, but the above payoff grid challenges that notion. For if, as in Scenario A1, the Project is actually completed successfully, but there’s no follow-on work, either from that specific customer or another within the same industry, what happens then? Well, the members of the Project Team would have to move to other work within the organization, charge their time to an overhead account for a (presumably) limited amount of time, or … get laid off.

Now consider Scenario B2, where the Project comes in late, overrun (maybe both), but, somehow, the PM secures more work in the same or an adjacent field. If the new work has a similar Budget at Completion (BAC) to the just-failed Project, then nobody has to be let go, the Project Team has a shot at getting it right this time, and the corporate higher-ups are happy. My previous definition of a “successful” PM notwithstanding, how could the PM in Scenario B2 be considered a failure? I had a friend and associate who was an exceptional PM, but rarely brought his Projects in on-time, on-budget. How could such a one be considered exceptional, GTIM Nation may ask? It’s because he would be brought in to Projects that were already in deep trouble in cost/schedule space, and would find a way to complete them with only mild negative variances. Essentially, he had a real talent for turning portfolio-cratering disasters into annoyances, and, for this, I consider him one of the best PMs I’ve ever known.

While performing well in cost/schedule space certainly makes it easier to bring in more work over the long term (particularly from the same customer), the key takeaway from the above payoff grid appears to be that the ultimate metric of PM success is keeping the Project work coming in the company’s front door, essentially handing the Strategic Managers (who chase market share) the tools they need for success. Ah, but if that’s the case, I’m happy to let the Strategic Managers have at it, and the answer to the question in the title would be “no.” We PMs did our part by coming in on-time, on-budget. And, if I’m needed to help the Strategic Managers win more work, well, I don’t work for free, evenings and weekends.

Any more.