1.2 The Conception of Projects
There are many reasons why projects start without formal approval, for example:
- The bright idea – someone has a “lightbulb” moment and decides that a new service or product is needed now, so decides to tackle this as business as usual, begging, stealing and borrowing resources to move it forward.
- Grant chasing – an opportunity for funding appears which demands results in a short period of time. The grant is grabbed and then a project is thought up in order to use the grant within the specified timescale.
- Organisations working in silos see their operating budget as theirs to spend as they see fit, without any need for outside interference and without thought to the overall strategic objectives and priorities.
This can lead to a number of problems:
- Projects running without an understanding of the reason, benefits, costs and risks (ie without a valid business case).
- Projects running with no agreed funding or committed resources.
- Projects running that do not add value and do not meet the organisation_s corporate strategy or priorities.
- Projects failing to deliver leading to waste, lost business and reputational harm. Implementing a formal project gateway process can address these problems by:
- Setting and mandating a standard for approving and monitoring a project throughout its lifecycle.
- Ensuring that a valid business case exists and that the project meets one or more of the corporate objectives and priorities.
- Ensuring that limited resources are expended on those projects that deliver the most capability.
- Stopping “non-value added” projects before they burn resource.
- Ensuring that projects are formally reviewed at key decision points in order to revalidate the project and commit to further expenditure (or not).
2. Cultural Considerations
Introducing a project gateway process can result in huge benefits but can also encounter much resistance, particularly in organisations operating in functional silos. These obstacles need to be identified and managed early and the business case for the gateway process must prove, to the doubters in particular, that the benefits outweigh the costs and change effort.
Whilst there are many areas to consider, and recognising that any process needs to be tailored to the organisation, there are a number of cultural considerations that need to be addressed prior to starting development:
2.1 Senior Management Buy In
The senior management team will, in some cases, make up the board of “gatekeepers” for some or all of the gates. In other cases this will be delegated to the project board. Whichever model is used, it is vital that senior management “buy-in” to the concept of the project gateway process. They must be committed to the process and acknowledge that difficult decisions will need to be made. Without senior management championship as a guiding coalition, the implementation of the change process will be much more difficult to manage. Some time needs to be spent, therefore, socialising the concept with them and highlighting the benefits in order to win their support and commitment.
2.2 People
Involving the right people can be the biggest factor to the success of the gateway process. It is therefore vital to build the right team to help develop and implement the process. There are essentially 3 types of people that will need to dealt with:
- Champions – these are current or potential allies and will be keen to assist with the development and implementation as they can already see the desired benefits.
- Fence Sitters – they are not really bothered either way, but it is important to win them over as they will normally be users of the process and bringing them onboard now will increase the change momentum.
- Blockers – they will either overtly or covertly resist the change for all sorts of reasons. Again, it is important to try and win them over but this must be weighed against the effort needed to achieve this; finding a way to negotiate around them might be the only way to progress.
3. Project Gateway Process Development
It makes sense to develop and implement the process in incremental steps and therefore lends itself to being managed as a project in its own right, with each step broken down into stages and with tasks within each stage.
