Bill's Notebook

I was going to post more about Process Intelligence and the Adaptive Project Framework last Monday but I was snowed under at work. Good thing because John Kamensky posted a great comment on President Obama’s Accountable Government Initiative. As I read the snapshots of the six initiatives, I was struck by how the success of each initiative depends on good project management and good business process management. There was a good discussion recently about the role technology plays in Gov 2.0 but I personally think the key to successful Gov 2.0 and OpenGov are the management methods. We need new methods for managing projects and for continuously improving Gov 2.0 processes.

Traditional project management is still useful. Thanks to TPM, the US Government built Trident submarines, nuclear aircraft carriers, and landed men on the Moon. Much of what made TPM so effective are the innovations pioneered by the Federal project managers such as Earned Value Management and Program Evaluation and Review Technique. But, for TPM to be effective, the goal and the solution must be known in advance and change must be minimized as much as possible.

In the Gov 2.0 reality, change is paramount and rapid while the goal may be well-defined but the solution to achieve the goal is often vague. Timelines are extremely short and so are resources and budgets. Using TPM to manage Gov 2.0 projects is just inviting failure (as the numerous examples in the IT Project Failures blog will attest). For Gov 2.0 and OpenGov to succeed we need new methods to manage these projects and their implementation. That is why I advocate the Adaptive Project Framework.

The APF was created by Dr. Robert Wysocki during his 40+ years as a project manager. He wanted a project management method that could better handle change and allowed for exploring a way to a solution while minimizing wasted time and resources. The best feature of APF is that the project scope is variable and that is what makes it perfect for Gov2.0 projects.

Scope in a project is what work needs to be done during the project (Project Scope) and what features the project product will have(Product Scope). In TPM, both Project Scope and Product Scope is fixed as early as possible. All planning, scheduling, and resource requirements are anchored to the scope and this is why change is so disruptive to the TPM project.

APF uses Cycle Plans and Cycle Builds to incorporate change into the project management process. In the initial planning, the project manager and project customer(s) create a high-level document that defines the project goal and conditions of satisfaction. Then a Requirements Breakdown Structure is built that captures the project product requirements at that time. A Cycle Plan is created that details what requirements will be created during the Cycle Build. The Cycle Build is time-boxed which means that it is a short duration (two weeks to a month).

During the Cycle Build you can have two streams of work. In one stream, some team members explore new features to include in the final project product while the other stream integrates proven features together into the product. As new ideas emerge they are added to the Scope Bank to be part of future Cycle Builds. Any features that are not completed within the Cycle Build are added to the next Cycle Plan. The Cycle Build can also be terminated early if the features are not working or if the current solution no longer fulfills the project goal.

To illustrate the difference, let’s use an example from recent events. Suppose you are working on a project to apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies to your agency website. You are halfway through the project when Google launches Google Instant. Then Twitter launches a redesigned search service. This requires a major change in your SEO strategies. Now what do you do?

Under TPM you could continue on with the project but your project product will be outdated and ineffective by the time you deliver it. Or you could cancel the TPM project and start all over again. You have wasted time and resources while incurring the additional costs of a new project. This will not look good on the IT Dashboard.

Under APF, the most you have to do is modify the Conditions of Satisfaction document and the Project Overview Statement. You can cancel the current Cycle Build and begin a new Cycle Plan to incorporate the new technologies and techniques into the final project product. Waste and loss of time are minimized while the current project can continue on toward the original goal but with an improved solution.

In my next posting, I will go into detail about Process Intelligence and how that can help address the issues raised by William Eggers and John O’Leary in If We Can Put a Man on the Moon… Getting Big Things Done in Government. I have also added two new pages devoted to collecting resources about Process Intelligence and Project Intelligence to my personal blog.

Doing a lot of research on process intelligence and project intelligence. I’ve started pages devoted to these subjects. Not many resources at the moment but I expect this to change once word starts to spread.

Been a while since I’ve blogged but it was quite fruitful absence.  I spent the time catching up on the latest developments in management including a fascinating book on Process Intelligence. What I like about process intelligence is that it is blending of business process management and business analytics that aids in designing an optimum process from the start.

At the same time I’ve also just finished Wysocki’s Adaptive Project Framework.  APF is used for projects where the goal is clear but the solution is uncertain.  Using iterative build cycles and treating scope as variable APF essentially explores a way to the best solution for the project.

It occurred to me that blending process intelligence with APF might lead to more effective change management efforts – Lean Change Management.  APF will be used to establish the process and then process intelligence will be used examine the process and feed in improvements to the next APF cycle.  Over the next month or so, I will work out the details of lean change management in periodic postings.

Graetz and Smith’s (2010) article starts off well enough:

“Traditional approaches to organizational change generally follow a linear, rational model in which the focus is on controllability under the stewardship of a strong leader or ‘guiding coalition’.  The underlying assumption of this classical approach, ever popular among change consultants, is that organizational change involves a series of predictable, reducible steps that can be planned and managed (Collins, 1998).  The evidence from case studies of failed change implementations indicates, however, that this uni-dimensional, rational focus is limited because it treats change as a single, momentary disturbance that must be stabilized and controlled.  Such a view fails not only to appreciate that change is a natural phenomenon which is intimately entwined with continuity but, also, that the change-continuity continuum is what defines organizations and their ability both to exploit and explore.  Change and continuity represent competing but complementary narratives, bring in ambiguity and novelty to destabilize as well as validate existing organizational routines.” (pp. 135-136).

But the rest of the article doesn’t live up to the promise of introducing a new method for bringing about organizational change.  The authors catalog ten change philosophies* by describing each philosophy’s methods for change and associated shortcomings.  They then discuss the continuity-change continuum and argue that change agents must use a “multi-philosophic” approach even though the authors don’t specify what they mean by multi-philosophic. That is unfortunate because I believe that they have pinpointed the fundamental problem with change management in modern organizations.

Organizations are in a constant state of change as an inherent part of its interactions within and without.  Organizations are also constantly resisting change because the members are trying to maintain continuity.  Most of the time, change is a constant background hum in the organization that periodically causes minor changes in processes (switching from voice mail to email to communicate requests or distributing information via the web versus the previous method of printed reports).

Change agents need to realize that change already exists in the organization and that to bring about deep change is to dial up the change part of the continuum while realizing that people in the organization are conditioned to respond by dialing up the continuity part.  If the organizational change is meant to destroy the existing continuity part of the continuum in favor of a new continuity, there will be a period of chaos until the new continuity is established in the continuum.  Change produces feedback and this has to be handled carefully or the increasing disruption can upset the continuum balance.

Graetz and Smith (2010) have the beginnings of a successful change method.  Harness the change inherent in the organization and realize how the continuity portion of the continuum will resist the change.  Convince a critical mass of the organization’s members to drop the continuity in favor of the change in order to shift the balance.

The big question is just how do you handle these tasks in the change-continuity continuum?

Note:

* Biological, Rational, Institutional, Resource, Contingency, Psychological, Political, Cultural, Systems, and Postmodern.

Reference:

Graetz, F., & Smith, A.C.T. (2010). Managing organizational change: A philosophies of change approach. Journal of Change Management, 10:2. 135-154.

I’ve launched a new wiki based on my dissertation research. The purpose of the research was to examine a possible link between mental models, change visions, and organizational alignment.

As of 2006, there were over 1 million articles on organizational change and a multitude of change models in the literature. But, surprisingly, these change models were prescriptive rather than descriptive of actual change processes. I knew from my project management experience that most organizational change efforts fail or are only partly successful. What I wanted to do was develop a research method to collect empirical data on change efforts.

The entire dissertation is available on Scribd any you are welcome to download a copy. With the wiki, I have summarized the dissertation chapters and will update the research as new articles are published and I review other organizational change efforts.

I appreciate any comments or suggestions that any readers have and I am also looking for any agencies that are interested in being research subjects. Thank you.

Two interesting articles about organizational culture in the latest issue of the “Journal of Organizational Change Management.”  The first article is a cultural analysis of organizational memory and its role in organizational change while the second article describes how organizational memory can hinder learning a new technology.

In the first article, McCabe gives a more detailed description of organizational culture as a collection of shared memories.  These memories can contradict each other or just be ambiguous about past organizational events but, woven together, these memories form a dynamic and conflicting culture for the organization.  McCabe disputes the common belief of many management theorists that the past can be erased in favor of the new reality because the past always blocks change.  Organizational memory is more complex than that because some memories can help facilitate change while other aspects resist change.  McCabe concludes by stating that organizational memory cannot be managed as part of the change process but must be accounted for.

McCabe’s article illuminates the findings in the second article by Becker.  The second article deals with the process of acquiring new technology in an organization.  As Becker explains, for employees to adopt a new technology they must unlearn the old technology.  They do this through releasing mental models of the workings of the old technology and create mental models of how the new technology works.  Memories of past change efforts can hinder the process of unlearning if it promotes fear and anxiety among the employees.  Becker does not have any specific remedies for dealing with organizational memory and unlearning but she does argue that further research is necessary to fully understand the unlearning process.

The relevance to Gov 2.0 is clear.  Many agencies have long and painful memories of past change efforts that have been woven into the current culture.  Gov 2.0 advocates must understand and acknowledge the past while developing strategies to alleviate the fear that will prevent government employees from unlearning the current way things are done in favor of making government transparent, open, and engaging.  Gov 2.0 advocates must take the positive aspects of the past and use those events to counter the negative past events while realizing that culture cannot be fully controlled.

References:

Becker, K. (2010). Facilitating unlearning during implementation of new technology. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 251-268.

McCabe, D. (2010). Taking the long view: A cultural analysis of memory as resisting and facilitating organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 23:3. 230-250.

Been spending a lot of time on GovLoop last week in preparation for this Wednesday’s OpenGov Workshop.  The theme of this workshop is about cultural change and OpenGov which intersects beautifully with my dissertation.  I posted this in response to one of the conference questions:

Q: How do we facilitate a change from existing behavior and culture to open government?

A: I did my doctoral research on questions similar to this question. In my research, I examined the link between the communication of a change vision (a special form of mental model) and organizational alignment to determine what constitutes effective communication in bringing about organizational change. I developed a case study of the merger of a city archives and a county archives into a single metropolitan agency.

Listed below are findings that might prove especially relevant to the questions:

1) There are two change visions: an internal change vision and an external change vision. The external change vision in this case is the one that is promoted from the Obama administration to the general public. This external change vision explains the benefits of open government and attempts to build support with the external stakeholders of the government agencies. The external change vision is detailed and extensively communicated through a wide range of communication methods.

In contrast, the internal change vision is the vision that is communicated to the employees of the affected agencies. This vision is often lacking in detail and is not as well-communicated as the external change vision. In many cases, there is little or no effort to gain support of the internal change vision. The internal change vision is imposed from the top-down with no input from the rank-and-file employees. There may be some discussion of the benefits from adopting the internal change vision but the main message is that resisting the internal change vision will harm or terminate the employee’s job.

2) Examples of poorly communicating organizational change to employees is to give little opportunity for feedback and abundant use of clichés. In the case that I studied, the employees attended mass meetings with the government merger team but did not receive specific answers to their questions. There was an intranet but none of the communications encouraged feedback to the announcements from the change team.

Clichés and “management speak” are especially pernicious because employees – already concerned about the organizational change – will interpret clichés and management speak in the most negative ways. In my case study, the change team talked about addressing the “lowest hanging fruit” first. The archives employees took this to mean that the less-essential, non-revenue producing agencies will be either shut down or drastically downsized. This was never said by the change team but the adverse perception was widely communicated among many of the employees.

3) The organizational change was still successful despite the poor communication of the vague internal change vision. I believe that this was the result of two factors. First, the professionals of the archives agencies have a mental model of how a professional archive should work and they used this mental model to fill in the gaps of the internal change vision. Second, there was a “change vanguard” or a group of employees who perceived the need for organizational change and took advantage of the vacuum created by the vague internal change vision to implement changes they wanted.

Kelman (2005) believes that it is a myth that people are resistant to change. Front-line employees are most familiar with the shortcomings of the organization and would like to change processes and operations but feel they don’t have the power to initiate the change. Once a leader signals their support for the change, the vanguard is emboldened enough to sustain the change effort. The change vanguard can be a great source of innovative ideas and help to motivate the rest of the organizational members in support of the change vision.

Thus, for OpenGov to be successful, government change agents should become aware that there is more than one change vision and that they need to spend just as much effort on the internal change vision as they do on the external change vision. Change agents should also realize the existence of change vanguards and work to recruit them into the change effort to help increase the possibility of success of change efforts. Collaboration, openness, and transparency in affecting organizational change in the government agencies will bring about the organizational alignment needed for OpenGov.

References:
Brantley, W.A. (2009). The effect of mental models on creating organizational alignment around a change vision (Doctoral Dissertation). Available from Dissertations and Theses Database (UMI).

Kelman, S. (2005). Unleashing change: A study of organizational renewal in government. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

I’m still pondering its uses in project management – from Net-Map ToolBox.

Along the same lines of my own research – simulation of cultural change.  Computational social science is going to revolutionize the social sciences as simulation revolutionized the hard sciences.

Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra, describes the inefficient use of technology of federal government at a recent speech.  Inefficiencies such as forms that are entered online, printed out, passed around in manila folders, and then rekeyed into another computer system.  This is nothing new and federal employees are quite aware of these inefficiencies.   So, why don’t the agencies just adopt new technologies?

It can be summed up as the agencies are more comfortable with the devil they know then a possible devil they don’t know.  A fascinating study on why rural hospitals don’t readily adopt new technologies describes six barriers to adoption.  Understanding and confronting these barriers can help overcome inefficiencies.

The first barrier, cost, is an obvious one and quite relevant to current state of the federal budget.  Legality, the second barrier is also a well-understood cause.  President Obama’s policy of Open Government addresses and overcomes these barriers.  But the remaining four barriers may be more difficult because they are tied into the culture of government.

Time is a barrier because implementing and learning a new technology may take longer to realize than an impatient public is willing to give.  Political appointees also like to see immediate results and may not have the patience for a new technology.  Allied with time are the barriers of inefficiency and complexity.  Poorly implemented new technology solutions will provide “proof” that the old system may be ineffective but not as bad as the new “ineffeciency.”

The above barriers all feed into the fundamental barrier – the fear of change.  Technologies and processes are embedded in the culture of the organization.  Technology adoption is not plug-n-play where you can easily swap one process for another.  Adopting new technologies takes time, trust, and the willingness to tolerate failure as the employees learn to use the new technologies.  Again, change is not about technology but about people.

UPDATE: Firoze Lafeer makes an insightful comment that government should require contractors to set aside funds for developing Plan B innovations while creating the Plan A innovation.