Getting Down to the Business of Delivering Value

Monday, January 6, 2020

“Every person, team, and organization is unique in their own way. Prescriptive, “one size fits all” strategies don’t work well in practice. There is no silver bullet method applicable to all enterprises and all solutions…" PMI, 2019

Anyone who has worked with me or attended one of the Project Management lectures I have delivered has likely heard me say, “let’s focus on the ‘what,’ not the ‘how.’”

It has been an unpopular position to hold over my 20+ year career, especially since the early 2010’s when traditional PM frameworks came under scrutiny and Agile came into vogue as the “new” way of delivering projects, particularly in the IT and technology sector.

Organizations jumped at the chance to get products and improved UX tools to market faster and demanded new credentials, new rituals, and new “Agile” methods be employed across the board, lest they fall behind.

While I too have integrated some of these new Agile and hybrid “methods” to satisfy client and corporate direction, I have observed a tendency towards vigorous debate within our teams, companies, and on social media about the “best” way of delivering value.

It seems as though advocating for (insert current buzzworthy “method” of the day) has become exponentially more important than the product, project or service we need to deliver. It’s no wonder our strategic initiatives are still failing to deliver their anticipated value!

So why do we continue to spend so much of our time and energy focusing on how we are going to get work done instead of focusing on the work needing to be done for our companies and customers?

It’s time to reflect on the impact this fixation with approach is having on our productivity, our rates of success, and our bottom line so we can enable our delivery teams to get back to what they do best—Delivering valuable products and services!

Posted By:

Dale Van Looyen at 12:29 PM

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