Lynda Bourne has an informative post on the connections between project and program management and change management. In this post there are some words that trigger a response from my experience in IT and government program management
- Output versus Outcome
- Benefits versus capabilities
These are not serious issue in the normal sense, but they have subtle impacts on the discussion of measuring progress.
- There are many outputs from the project. Items that appear from the work effort of the project team. But what are the Outcomes from the Outputs. Did the Outcome provide a capability that was not present before the project was chartered? Are the Outcomes meaningful to the project stakeholders. The production of Output is necessary. But it's the Outcomes that the customer bought.
- Benefits abound on all projects. But with these benefits in place from the project are there any new capabilities that the project sponsors now possess.
The subtlety here is the identify "WHY" we're doing the project as well as "WHAT, HOW, WHEN, WHERE, and WHO."
In the defense business this is called Capabilities Based Planning. When you answer WHY first it becomes much easier to connect the dots with the other 5 elements of the project. Many times IT projects fail to ask and answer why. During the project, when things start to go into the ditch, if we know WHY, we can regroup, pull our selves back together and refocus. The underlying reason for the project is always the touch stone to guide us back.
