Enterprise Navigator

Taming Change Excerpt -- Just Where Does All of Your Resource Capacity Really Go?

Doesn't it seem incredulous (especially to your customers) that despite all of the staff you have in your organization, there always seems to be a shortage of people for project work? Or worse yet, those that are given project tasks are often unavailable just when they are needed to keep critical path on track.

So, just how much capacity really is available to innovate, compared to keeping the wheels on the operational wagon? This excerpt from Taming Change with Portfolio Management (shipping to book stores in June) offers you an idea of what actual capacity utilization analysis typically reveals. It also helps explain why using common availability assumptions may have some of you working sixty hours a week.

Understanding Total Capacity Utilization -- Where Does It Go?

Analyzing true staff capacity can yield surprising results compared to common utilization perceptions and assumptions. As an example, a staff of 500 can be broken down as follows (all values listed are typical approximations): Typical Staff Head Count by Type Count Staff Position 10 Department heads and executives 15 Administrative support and other non-technical staff 10 Senior managers 30 Resource managers (average team size is 15 members) 435 Individual contributors (including project managers)

For the 435 individual contributors, work availability breaks down as follows (in hours): Number of Hours   Work Availability 904,800   Total possible working hours (435 staff @ 40 hrs/week x 52 weeks) -87,000   Absence (vacation, holidays, illness, etc.; avg. 25 days/year per head count) -81,780   Non-work activities (general staff meetings, training, etc.; avg. 1/2 day per week) -27,144   3% annual attrition rate (lost effort and time spent training new staff) -141,900   80% efficiency factor (actually doing work vs. breaks, personal phone calls, etc.) 567,100   Total available productive hours remaining

Given the 567,100 potential hours of effort remaining to accomplish deliverables, the following reflects typical effort utilization by general work type: Hours   Work Type 283,550 hrs:   (50%) Base services (routine ongoing operations, level-of-effort service delivery) 56,700 hrs:   (10%) Resolution of emergent (unplanned) issues 113,400 hrs:   (20%) Other planned work (informal projects and unique assignments) 113,400 hrs:   (20%) Available to plan and execute formal projects Thus, the typical net effective head count available for formal project work is only about 55 FTEs of the total 500-person workforce, or about 12 percent of the total staff effort available. In practical planning terms, this is enough effort to execute about a dozen medium-sized projects. While this analysis uses general assumptions, they are useful as working numbers until you can measure and analyze your own specific circumstances. You should be able to provide a reliable breakdown of net capacity by work type based on actual historical results to make accurate future forecasts and estimates.

A Happy Holidays! An Excerpt from 'Taming Change'

Come -- warm yourself by the fire, have a bite to eat and perhaps a glass of wine.

In most regions of the world, we are in a season of high celebration. Even though it may go by different names or be motivated by different reasons, we band together to try and find the best in ourselves and bring joy to others leading up to the new year.

Nice, huh?

One thing we can count on is that each new year will be accompanied by change in some shape, form or fashion. As our book winds its way through the publishing process, I want to share an excerpt from one of the early chapters with you. Sometimes in the excitement of creating something new, we lose sight of the fact that we are effecting change, and any change has human implications. The following is a page from Taming Change with Portfolio Management.

How Change Impacts People

Change, of course, has always existed. Historically, the most successful organizations have not only accommodated change -- they have used it to their advantage. But the amount of change being injected into our business lives is coming at a rate never before seen, and there is no apparent slowdown in sight.

But, how much change are we capable of absorbing at any given time? Just as there are limits that constrain change in the physical world, there are limitations to change in the business world. Examples of such constraints might include our ability to acquire and employ funding, analyze and act upon new data, access specialized competencies, redirect corporate strategy, or leverage scientific discoveries.

The most obvious and difficult constraint to organizational change lies with people themselves. A jet aircraft is an example from the physical world to illustrate the point. The newest generation fighter jets now have the ability to perform maneuvers that exceed the physical endurance of any pilot; the human component rather than the airframe has become the limiting factor. In the much same way, the ability of people to adapt to change may ultimately prove to be the limiting factor in the rate of business evolution.

As individuals, people routinely demonstrate great ability to change. Certainly as individuals we are remarkably resilient, adaptable and flexible -- extreme G-forces notwithstanding. When facing personal adversity, given a promotion, changing employers or embarking on new careers, individuals routinely adapt to new situations in a matter of days or a few weeks, sometimes overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges.

However, when grouped as an organization, people respond to change in a more complex way. Change in a socialized context takes on a whole new set of dynamics. Why can't an organization collectively change as nimbly as the individuals within it? The short answer is that change applied in an organizational setting often forces the people affected to simultaneously adapt and adopt new methods for how they deal with each other, representing the greatest challenge to the organization. When a single individual is faced with changes in a new situation, there is usually an existing foundation of operational norms and support from others around them. Such is not the case when change impacts the entire organization.

Thus, the ability of an organization to evolve is limited in large part by how well its workforce can adapt by retooling itself to work differently. Portfolio management offers the process framework to communicate changes and re-establish the rules of the new future state. It can offer the workforce the assurance that there is a plan and it is being executed for a purpose.

Have a wonderful holiday season and a very festive New Year, and I look forward to sharing an exciting 2010 with you -- full of positive changes.

Did You Miss Me? The Enterprise Navigator is Sailing Again

Wow, has it really been almost three months since my last post? Please, no more get-well notes; I am perfectly fine and have a good excuse. There is a lot to catch up on, but first, here is what happened.

Remember that insect-shaped drone that flew out of my USB port in the July 20th post about the federal IT dashboard? Apparently, that little fella captured footage of me vigorously interrogating sentences for hours at a time until they divulged their meaning.  Then came the helicopters, with men in black balaclavas rappelling to my rooftop, yada, yada, yada. To make a long story short (worthy of Bond or Bourne, I might add), I was apprehended, detained, arraigned and eventually found guilty of conspiracy to commit literary pandemonium. A three-judge panel of librarians threw the book at me (specifically, a thesaurus), and then I was released.

Then we finished our book.

Yep. Pat Durbin (our founder and CEO) and I recently handed over a sizable manuscript to our editors, titled, Taming Change with Portfolio Management. It is still four or five months away from hitting the bookstores, but after over a year of effort, it felt good to look at twenty-two completed chapters. For those customers who attended our very successful 2009 Horizons event a few weeks ago, perhaps you caught Pat's keynote at Horizons Live or stopped by our booth and downloaded a sample.  For others, you can learn more about the book at our Taming Change Web site. That site will grow into the mothership as we get closer to publication.

Taming Change is a project with a moderately audacious goal; take what is sometimes considered a complex and ambiguous subject and distill it into a clearly defined set of straightforward and practical concepts and practices. Pat and I have worked to articulate our environment of continuous change, the effects this has on organizations, and how you can apply the discipline of portfolio management to proactively control it. Taming Change is an extensive body of work that we hope will transform the way you think about portfolio management. It is time to go beyond considering the technique as a series of fractured point solutions, and recognize it as a unified, comprehensive method for managing change through its lifecycle, from recognition to solution.

Like most endeavors that appear glamorous from the outside (i.e., the excitement of business travel), writing a book such as this is just plain old work once you get down to it. In addition to the long hours of research and writing, there were countless discussions to rationalize our approach and re-write chapters until we felt we had satisfied our objective. Ultimately, you will be the judge of whether or not we succeeded.

So, that's why there have been no posts lately; it got to the point that at the end of each day, I was just flat out of words. There will be much more to come about the book over the next several months.

OK, so what else can you look forward to now that I am back in the saddle? Some big subjects are on my list, including the formation of a new professional association for business leaders that I am very anxious to tell you about, a recent study from Margo Visitacion at Forrester on the Next Generation PMO, hot topics from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, and the upcoming PMI 2009 PMO Symposium in Atlanta. We will be there as a sponsor, so please stop by and see us if you are attending. I will be doing a presentation on Sunday just before the reception about 'Transforming the PMO at the Speed of Business' -- don't be surprised if a few of the core Taming Change concepts show up in that session. See you there!