A Guiding Principle defines the key criteria for making decisions about the application of a project's Practices and Processes. The Principles provide the project with the foundation to test the practices and processes in pursuit of the project's goals in the most timely and cost-effective way while still meeting essential requirements of business outcomes or mission accomplishment.
In the absence of Principles, the Practices and Processes - while possible the rights one - have no way of being tested to assure they are producing actionable information for the management of the project.
The common lament of we could be spending time and effort doing something more useful, ignores the fact that those useful things need to be guided by a higher structure - a holistic structure - of exchanging cost for value. The questions should be are the practices and processes we are applying to this project the proper ones to maximize the efficacy of our funding?
These five principles are the foundation of project success. Success means - in the simplist terms - On Time, On Cost, On Value. Time and Cost are easily defined, Value needs another layer for it to be connected with Time and Budget.
What is Strategy
One approach for Value to to connect the outcomes of the project with the Strategy for the business or the mission. Strategy is creating fit among a company’s activities. The success of a strategy depends on doing many things well – not just a few. The things that are done well must operate within a close nit system. If there is no fit among the activities - in this post, the project management activities - there is no distinctive strategy and little to sustain the project management practices and processes. Project Management then reverts to the simpler task of overseeing independent functions. When this occurs operational effectiveness determines the relative performance of the project management activities and the results of the project itself.
Improving operational effectiveness is a necessary part of management, but it is not strategy. In confusing the two, managers will be unintentionally backed into a way of thinking about competition that drives the business support processes (IT) away from the strategic support and toward the tactical improvement of operational effectiveness.
The concept of fit among functions is one of the oldest ideas in strategy. Gradually, it has been supplanted with new concepts of core competencies, critical resources and key success factors. Fit is far more critical to the success of the project management System. Strategic fit among the project management Practices and Processes and the business processes in which the project is deployed is fundamental not only to competitive advantage but also to the sustainability of that advantage.
This is the fundation of success for Project Based Organizations
The mechnism for creating this Fit is the Programmatic Architecture of the project. This architecture is the same term used for technical architecture. It is the form of the project, in the same way it is the form of the product or service.
The Five Principles That Establish Programmatic Architecture
These Five Principles and their Practices are...
