Innovate, Iterate, Integrate
Innovate, Iterate, Integrate
The Cyclic Nature of Modern Programme Management
Happy Tuesday, Transformation Friends. Another week, another opportunity to go Beyond the Status Quo.
Today, we’ll wrap up our mini-series on Programme Management and its applications to public sector transformation by looking deeper into the “how” by looking at the cyclic nature of a programme’s lifecycle and how it’s managed.
A quick plug for the two previous articles. If you’re interested in learning more about Programme Management and its differences from Project Management, look at this article:
For more about the principles that make programme management ideal in environments of high volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), have a look at this one:
In today’s post, we build on these topics.
Within the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) framework, seven processes guide a programme's lifecycle from start to finish. These processes shape the step-by-step progression in a cyclic manner that nurtures progressive and incremental progress. Built into these processes are some important notions that support the MSP principles. In general, the processes promote:
Continuous planning: The idea that we don’t need to plan everything in explicit detail at the start. Instead, we need a good understanding of the future we want to create and an idea of how to get there. We save the details for the next step (see next).
Breaking the “doing” down into smaller steps: Programmes break the journey into “tranches” that together provide a macro overview. We need to understand the next tranche in detail, but we allow flexibility and ambiguity in future tranches because we take in new information and adapt to it (see next).
Continuous learning and reevaluation of plans: Every iteration gives us more information. We use this information to update our plans to optimize future work. We use the information to examine if we should continue, or if it’s time to stop (see next).
Ensuring continuous justification for the investment: Built into the processes is the requirement to update the business case based on what we’ve learned and ask, “Should we stop or keep going?” If it’s time to stop (maybe we’ve achieved our outcomes, or based on the current environment, further investment is no longer justified), the processes offer a safe place to do so. If we decide to keep going, we start planning the next piece of work using our new information (go back to 1).
Grab your coffee, and look at a programme’s lifecycle and see how these processes work.
Introduction to the MSP Processes
I’ve outlined the seven processes of MSP below.
Identify the Programme: Recognize the need for the programme and establish its foundational elements.
Design the Outcomes: Shape the change that the programme aims to achieve.
Plan Progressive Delivery: Blueprint the programme's journey, emphasizing the business case and segmenting it into actionable tranches.
Deliver the Capabilities: Execute the plans for the current tranche and ensure its deliverables align with the designed outcomes.
Embed the Outcomes: Ensure the delivered results are firmly integrated into operations.
Evaluate New Information: Regularly assess the programme's environment, ensuring it adapts to fresh insights and changes.
Close the Programme: End the programme, ensuring that all objectives have been met and that it has delivered the desired benefits.
What’s important to note is that processes 2-6 are cyclic: they happen for each tranche). Processes 1 and 7 happen once: to start and to end the programme, respectively.
Here’s a visual that will help you to see how these processes come together:
The image above also shows two other important pieces of MSP: 1. The outer ring shows the seven principles we looked at earlier; 2. The middle rings show the seven “themes” of MSP.
Side note: We haven’t discussed these themes because there’s a lot to them. They are the core of the MSP framework. In a nutshell, they’re the essential aspects of governance required to ensure that the programme is aligned with the principles. These themes are “applied” during the processes that we’re discussing today.
Essentially, each processes has required elements (a deliverable, for example) from the 7 themes. By doing these elements, we’re ensuring the programme is following the 7 principles and we can use these elements as part of our programme’s governance.
Let’s look at each process's purpose, objectives, and context.
Identify the Programme
Purpose
“Identify the Programme" is the starting point where we examine whether our programme idea aligns with the organization's larger goals and decide if it’s a good investment. This process is relatively quick and should take only a few weeks. Its primary aim is to transform an initial idea into a solid business concept (not a formal business case yet). The idea is to help the organization decide to invest further in more detailed planning and justification.
Objectives
Business Justification: Making sure there's a strong reason behind the programme that warrants a deeper look.
Initial Vision and Benefits: Understanding the big picture – what are the top-level benefits we hope to achieve?
Basic Financials: Considering the high-level costs, funding sources, and how cash might flow in and out.
Risk Assessment: Recognizing the main risks that might arise along the way.
Team Building: Identifying and bringing key individuals who drive the programme on board.
Next Steps: Laying out what resources, timelines, and expenses will be involved as we delve deeper into the programme's design.
Context
The spark that ignites this process is the programme mandate: a directive or an intent from the top management about why the programme is needed. This mandate outlines the main reasons and objectives behind the programme. Our job is to take this mandate, validate its content, and, with the guidance of the top management, expand it into a programme brief. Think of this as a first sketch of a business case. This brief will give a clearer picture of the programme's potential costs, benefits, and risks.
Remember, this process only happens once.
Design the Outcomes
Purpose
"Design the Outcomes" is about laying a strong foundation for our programme. It's dedicated to diving deep into our vision, understanding the benefits, assessing risks, and visualizing the organization's desired future (the "target operating model"). This includes identifying where we currently stand and where we aim to be. We revisit this process at the beginning of each tranche, ensuring that we either validate our initial findings or make necessary changes based on new insights.
Objectives
Vision Clarity: Establishing a clear and captivating vision for our programme, documented in a vision statement.
Benefit Analysis: Understanding the advantages (and potential downsides) the programme offers, ensuring they are well-documented.
Design Decision: Determining and documenting the specific approach we'll take for the programme design.
Risk Management: Identifying possible risks, prioritizing them, and capturing them in a comprehensive risk register.
Visualizing the Future State: Crafting the target operating model, which encompasses various aspects like processes, culture, technology, infrastructure, knowledge, learning, and data.
Gap Identification: Determining the gaps between our current state and our envisioned target operating model (future state).
Context
During this process, we refine our initial vision from the programme brief, detailing our desired future and the benefits we aim to realize. We use benefit maps to show the connections between our goals, project outcomes, and organizational strategy. Simultaneously, risks are pinpointed and prioritized. Our approach also incorporates lessons from past programmes and new information we’ve learned while executing our programme. We use this to update our programme strategy, plans, and business case.
Remember, this is the first of the cyclic processes.
Plan Progressive Delivery
Purpose
”Plan progressive delivery” creates the roadmap for our programme. It divides the work into manageable chunks, called tranches, ensuring we get the capabilities we need so that we can start to create outcomes and realize our benefits.
Objectives:
Programme Blueprint: Laying out plans for the programme’s projects and other work needed for successful delivery.
Delivery Stages: Defining the tranches and the major incremental changes people will see as the programme progresses.
Delivery Strategy: Determining our approach and how we'll accomplish the work.
Benefit Roadmap: Setting a clear pathway to achieve and recognize our benefits.
Resource Management: Figuring out how to get and manage our needed resources.
Balanced Pace: Making sure we move at a speed that aligns with our capacity to handle change.
Context
In planning progressive delivery, it's all about envisioning how our desired outcomes will materialize through our work. This process is our safeguard, ensuring we deliver in the right sequence with the right balance of pace, transition, and the realization of benefits, all while staying within our budget.
Deliver the Capabilities
Purpose
"Deliver the capabilities" is the start of delivering the tranche. It keeps an eye on how the work is going, ensuring everything's on track and aligned with our big-picture goals. If something's going off-course, this process steps in to get things back on the right path.
Objectives:
Strategy Implementation: Putting into action our pre-decided approaches for managing the programme.
Capability Check: Make sure projects deliver the capabilities we set out for.
Project Management: Starting and wrapping up projects in an orderly fashion.
Alignment: Ensuring our project outputs align with the capabilities we need to achieve incremental progress toward our target operating model.
Progress Report: Keeping tabs on how things are going and sharing updates.
Risk Watch: Monitoring potential challenges and problems to keep them in check.
Course Correction: Stepping in and making tweaks or changes when needed.
Context:
This process involves guiding each chunk (tranche) of our delivery while sticking to our overall game plan and ensuring every project we undertake is initiated, managed, and concluded in sync with our primary objectives.
Embed the Outcomes
Purpose:
"Embed the outcomes" is about transitioning the new capabilities we’ve delivered into operations. In this process, we switch from old to new and work to make sure these changes stick.
Objectives:
Smooth Transition: Seamlessly moving the capabilities delivered by the tranch into operations.
Embrace Change: Helping everyone involved adapt to and accept these transitions and their changes.
Start Benefiting: Beginning to see and measure the positive results of our changes.
Maintain Benefits: Setting up controls to ensure that we keep realizing these benefits.
Context:
This process is led by a role called the Business Change Manager (BCM). The process builds on earlier efforts to prepare for business adjustments. It focuses on transitioning, supporting our people as they adjust to these changes, and observing and measuring the benefits of our hard work.
Evaluate New Information
Purpose
"Evaluate new information" looks to keep information reliable and recent to aid decision-making throughout the programme. By carefully analyzing new insights, we ensure that every big decision is well-informed and timely. It is structured to keep decision-makers in the loop with the latest, most accurate information.
Objectives:
Efficient Collection: Gathering new information quickly and effectively.
Quality Assurance: Checking the gathered data to guarantee its reliability and accuracy.
Insightful Analysis: Studying the new information to enhance understanding of the current programme state and foresee upcoming opportunities or challenges.
Appropriate Presentation: Offering the analyzed data to decision-makers in a straightforward, action-driven manner, and timely manner.
Inform Future Steps: Utilizing the fresh insights to shape the programme design and plan future tranches.
Context
The high VUCA environment means information is imperfect and emergent. This necessitates that new information is continuously evaluated in a way that directly supports decision-makers to improve their understanding and speed up action-taking. This ensures that everyone, directly or indirectly involved with the programme, has a clear picture of what’s next.
Remember, this is the last of the cyclic process. From here, we either continue by returning to “Design the Outcomes” for the next Tranche of work, or stop the programme and move to the last process.
Close the Programme
Purpose
"Close the programme" is about ending things the right way, ensuring we've gotten the most out of our efforts. We also want to ensure that any benefits from the programme keep being realized even after we've closed things down.
Objectives
Final Review: Taking a close look at what we achieved versus what we aimed for and noting any differences.
Shift of Duties: Ensuring other teams take over responsibilities like realizing leftover benefits, managing risks, and developing further.
Stakeholder Care: Recognizing and managing how the closure affects our stakeholders.
Smooth Transition: Seamlessly incorporating the new capabilities into our day-to-day operations.
Tidy Up: Shutting down the programme office, ending any supporting processes, and wrapping up resources.
Record Keeping: Holding onto valuable evidence and information that could be useful in future reviews or checks.
Sharing Knowledge: Making sure we remember what we learned and use that knowledge for our next adventures.
Context
Programmes wrap up for several reasons. Ideally, we've finished what we set out to do or achieved enough of our goals. Also, we might decide to close a programme before early. This might happen because another team or organization is better suited to finish the job, resources are more needed elsewhere, our overall organization goals have changed, there are other funding priorities, our business case is no longer justified, or the programme isn't meeting its objectives.
Remember, this process only happens once.
Wrap up
I hope today’s post gave you a little more insight into what a programme’s lifecycle looks like, how programme management offers an iterative and incremental framework for creating large-scale change in high VUCA environments, and an overview of how MSP manages this lifecycle.
I believe programme management can offer insights we can apply to transformation more broadly. For example,
Adaptability in Action: What insights can we pull from these processes that might help to make your projects more flexible and responsive to change, while still meeting their main goals?
Balancing Immediate and Future Needs: These processes encourage incremental planning and regular updates to our plans as we learn new information. How might you use this to balance the constant demand for immediate results with the desire to achieve long-term goals?
Stakeholder Engagement: Our large transformations involve many diverse stakeholders. How can we leverage these processes to facilitate better engagement, communication, and, ultimately, outcomes that resonate with everyone?
What other insights can you glean from the programme lifecycle and these processes?
Until next time, stay curious, and I’ll see you Beyond the Status Quo.