Projects: The Glutton Syndrome

Let me say it without beating around the bush: the academic world of project management has a mistake baked into it - a serious, painful mistake: assuming every project should be executed as long as it’s strategic and the money is there. What a colossal mistake!

To make my point, let me use one of the examples I like to use in my classes. Suppose you’re someone with a big appetite, who enjoys good food and is, frankly, a glutton. One day, with a wallet full of money, you visit your favorite restaurant and realize you can’t decide between your five (5) favorite dishes. At that moment you think: “I have the money, and this is what I want. I’m going to buy them all and eat them all.”

You’ll say, what on earth is going through your head? All you’re going to end up with at the end of the day is indigestion, and probably a pile of wasted food.

This situation reminds me a lot of the portfolios of several companies I’ve supported. Portfolios with 15, 20, 30, 50 mega-projects - some with more than 1,500 components in the portfolio. It sounds interesting - it sounds like a real challenge. The reality is that most of them suffer from what I call “the glutton syndrome.”

Where the Problem Comes From

The problem almost always comes down to a mindset: “money buys everything.” It’s a view inherited from the neoliberal, capitalist model that tries, at all costs, to maximize return on investment. If a company has capital and plenty of challenges, the thinking goes, it should, without hesitation, run plenty of projects.

Sounds nice in theory, but it’s a real problem in a lot of contexts. One of them is the world of technology projects.

We’re All the Same

Although this isn’t a problem exclusive to the tech world, I’ll use it as my example. Implicitly, a lot of project managers, program managers, and even people in more strategic roles within PMOs and EPMOs cling to this paradigm: projects, subject to the famous iron triangle, follow an unquestionable logic:

1. Strategists define what they want to achieve.
2. Experts say how it can be achieved.
3. Someone - internal or external - structures a plan.
4. A price tag gets attached to it - in money, almost always.
5. If every party agrees, execution begins.

On the surface, that’s simple and correct. If it’s a capacity problem, we can outsource it (did I mention “in theory”?). This approach carries several flawed assumptions, each one worthy of its own full article. In this one, I’ll talk about the problem money poses as the means for getting every other resource.

In tech, we like to assume, just like in projects in general, that if there’s money, there are people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The global crisis around the lack of IT talent is beyond question. There isn’t enough talent for the tech field. I’ll say it again: there aren’t enough good people to work in our departments.

The truth is, projects can’t just go out and hire their way through it. In Colombia, for example, there are already companies cornering the market and snapping up the best people. And I don’t just mean good salaries - these companies bring in beautiful, cutting-edge office designs, great locations surrounded by shops, restaurants, and even bars. Some run simple activities like training sessions, or activities to prevent stress and fatigue, like yoga. Others go even further, with Friday closing celebrations, barbecues, and even vacation plans for their employees.

But most companies have no way to compete in this perks frenzy. If that’s true, then what are we doing accepting projects we don’t have the execution capacity for? Someone would say you can always outsource it. Are you even reading this? If companies are struggling to find qualified people to hire as employees, how likely do you think it is that an outsourcing shop, whose competitive model is almost always based on price, will get the resources your company couldn’t? Do they have some secret formula for attracting talent?

The answer is simple: they won’t get it either. They’ll go looking for underqualified staff who can, one way or another, “complete the assigned tasks.” In many cases, they’ll hire people in other parts of the world where working conditions aren’t comparable, and so the rate is much lower - India, and more recently Venezuela. Quite a testament to a great global economy.

In the end, projects end up competing for people’s time. The same people, almost always, who also support operations. Even if we don’t like admitting it, having the money to run projects doesn’t mean we have the capacity to execute them.

What Should We Do?

The first and most important thing is to be honest. A lot of the time, keeping project performance metrics separate from operational performance metrics is shooting yourself in the foot.

The growing workload tied to maintaining and operating IT infrastructure can’t keep being treated as a separate issue from the portfolio. Any impact on operational workload will affect project performance. Isolated indicators will only show that projects are suffering and falling behind. The reality might be that our operation requires more effort, and that limits our capacity to execute the portfolio. It’s worth finding and studying that impact.

A few recommendations:

• Techniques for measuring demand and planning installed capacity.
• Accepting that outsourcing shops don’t fully solve the problem, and that they’re subject to the same market rules around talent.
• A competitive salary is a good way to attract talent, but not to retain it. Evaluate alternatives for emotional compensation.
• Start projects that can act as future enablers for attracting talent. Legacy systems, for example, act like a scarecrow to young talent. Technology renewal projects, which are admittedly hard to justify as a business case, can end up being what keeps a company alive a few years down the line.
• Participate in the community. If there’s one thing talent likes, it’s companies actively taking part in the community and everyone’s growth. That culture of growth creates a “flow” that, in the end, benefits both employees and employers.
• If you’re part of the PMO, stop thinking of operations as “someone else’s problem.” Rather than intervening in operations, help round out overall performance indicators - not just project ones.

IT Management Models

The problem has grown and evolved to the point that the most innovative management models no longer talk about projects and operations separately. In many cases, these models eliminate mediating roles - like the “Transition Manager” role - and instead promote teams organized around value streams, a concept from enterprise architecture.

Models like ITIL (v4) and the Scaled Agile Framework, to name the two best-known ones, propose different ways of organizing ourselves and managing both operations and projects. As project and PMO leaders, it’s our job to orchestrate this integration and help work flow through teams, while the benefits - however many or few - actually materialize.

It’s not a simple task, but it’s not impossible either!

Managing Demand

Just like the glutton, organizations - and, in their most strategic form, (E)PMOs - need to constantly prioritize and decide, with agility, where to invest resources, and above all, people’s time. Money isn’t the same as people’s time, and someone assigned 100% to one team isn’t the same as someone assigned 100% across five projects.

Working hand in hand with operations and human talent departments is essential. It’s important to accept the problem that already exists, and to propose solutions that think about people, not just capital.