As the business matures, it stretches forward towards greater professionalism. Professionalism demands that project delivery processes are comprehensive and robust.
That builds the firm foundation for delivery jazz — situational agility, creativity, and innovation.
Professionalism #
As the business matures, it stretches forward towards greater professionalism.
Every business wants to exude a professional air, but what constitutes professionalism is often taken on assumed knowledge rather than stated explicitly.
The point of professionalism #
There's three intentions when professionalising what the business does, from the perspective of project delivery leadership.
1. Calmness #
Things often become frenetic in organisations. Signing lots of new contracts one on top of another; sudden growth arising from a round of funding; a buyout or merger; challenging client relationships; unexpected churn or staff turnover — all can create chaotic conditions for delivering customer outcomes.
The CDO's role is to usher in calmness when things would otherwise be frenzied. Professionalism is the means of achieving that, with mature and methodical systems or actions to handle these turbulent situations.
In these situations, the Chief Delivery Officer's own calmness is contagious and will spread quickly to clients, to the team, and to the wider business.
2. Confidence #
A capable CDO is a master builder who has seen most things before. That means that even novel situations or events will have a ring of familiarity — aah, it's one of those!
Recognising the shape and characteristics of things breeds a confidence in tackling those challenges with tried and tested practices built on long experience.
3. Consistency #
These practices and ways of working, smoothed and hardened across a broad set of contexts, allows the business to achieve successful outcomes consistently.
Delivery consistency requires that knowledge, insight, and progress is shared internally also, captured and passed on across the whole delivery unit within the business.
That means thoroughgoing documentation, as the baseline. It also means demonstrations — of client project work and any technical or practical innovations, or other discrete areas of progress in the delivery team. And it means a commitment to standards, and a serious maintenance of those standards too.
The essence of professionalism #
So what are we talking about when we talk of professionalism?
1. Ways of working #
The processes that you adopt are an encapsulation of how you do you work as an organisation.
That's probably based on a bunch of industry standards, like Agile project management principles, or standards that relate to your company's specialism, discipline, sector, or tech stack.
But it's more than that — it's also a way of formalising the distinct practices that your organisation has adopted and found to be the healthiest and happiest ways for you to organise yourselves and achieve your goals.
2. Interactions #
Professionalism also determines how you interact together, both internally as a delivery team and as a business, and also how you interact with your clients.
We'll come back to the importance of excellent communication in the next section.
3. Value delivered #
- value created by the sum of the parts
- value for clients
- the agency’s standing
4. Efficiency #
- reducing unnecessary overheads
- managing risks
- forecasts, burndown
- well-run meetings
- the right information at the right time
5. Clarity #
- everyone understands things at each stage
- easy to inspect
- analyse, adapt, improve
6. Tone of voice #
We have to make this the best client experience possible
Beware of hyper-growth #
Lots of businesses have moments when they grow quickly.
- sometimes planned (e.g. funding round, merger, etc.)
- sometimes not (e.g. multiple project wins in quick succession)
Can lead to seismic growth, but that also has very significant risks:
- chaotic
- jumping from one thing to another
- poor governance
- poorly resourced
- long hours
- struggle to satisfy customers, achieve outcomes, etc.
- uncontrolled
- unclear if the growth will hold, will it revert
- organisational structures that don’t fit
- assigning people to roles without adequate experience
- because they’re familiar colleagues
- because a quick fix is assumed to be better than no fix
- lacking professionalism and structure
- e.g. using practices, processes, tools, etc. that are applicable in smaller businesses or earlier stages
Process #
Professionalism covers many things, but a large part of that is comprehensive, robust, replicable processes that are clear for customers and staff, reflect the organisation’s persona, and are in tight alignment with business objectives. That is true for client delivery just as it is for any other part of the business.
Professional processes #
That means that delivery processes must become like a product for the business, with all the traits of a product:
- clear and easy to use
- usable/adaptable in multiple contexts
- designed to fit clear user needs
- feedback and review baked in
- adaptation and improvement as a feature
Importantly, the delivery principal should build themselves out of the systems and processes they design. If a customer or project needs to switch delivery personnel for whatever reason, it should not feel like a totally different experience.
However, it’s easy to confuse the focus between processes vs. outcomes. Customers want something done to achieve something specific. The delivery processes are only the means of enabling that.
The delivery principal must hold the tension in a fundamental balancing act between:
- systematic and thoroughgoing processes on the one hand, and
- space for creativity, innovation and situational agility on the other.
Achieving outcomes for customers is a ‘one team’ collaboration between all the experts — in the business and the customer — enabled by the delivery lead.
Beware of process over-boil #
A particular challenge when an organisation is growing fast:
- how to give leadership when there's more things happening than you can be involved in directly.
One response can be to throw a net of processes over the thing:
- a comprehensive suite of systems and practices to follow that covers all eventualities.
Processes are a vital foundation to achieving consistent outcomes. But!
- Project management is probably not the reason for the reputation the business has built.
And jazz! #
It’s easy to confuse the focus between processes vs. outcomes.
Consistency becomes more important the longer a business lives and larger it becomes.
Customers want something done to achieve something specific. The delivery processes are only the means of enabling that.
What is the relationship between process and outcomes? How does one enable the other?
The delivery principal must hold the tension in a fundamental balancing act between:
- systematic and thoroughgoing processes on the one hand, and
- space for creativity, innovation and situational agility/improvisation on the other.
Achieving outcomes for customers is a ‘one team’ collaboration between all the experts — in the business and the customer — enabled by the delivery lead.
So we have another C:
- Calmness
- Confidence
- Consistency
- Creativity
and we're guarding against
- Chaos
The trouble with jazz artists #
Can you have a delivery leader growing with the business? Yes, it is possible to have someone grow into the position, of course.
That said, often it’s hard:
- Some characters thrive on a lack of structure
- Brings order to chaos in the way their mind works
- See themselves as solo jazz artists
- Adapting on the fly
- Processes and practices flexed to suit business and client’s needs/expectation
- Thriving in chaos
- BUT
- Bristles when the company grows
Most importantly:
- Free-for-all is not ok
As the business matures, develops in professionalism, then consistency becomes more important
- Systematic
- A flow
- A rhythm