I’m leaving my project manager post at the end of this month and I’m sad. I think I was a reasonably good project manager, I got the job done within budget and deadlines and I believe I added extra value. I made sure I understood the end to end process and realised the benefits. I acted as intermediary to ensure good relationships between the software supplier and the authority, and I mediated between the customer and the ICT unit. Sometimes I was the bad cop, and I upset officers because they wanted to scope creep or they were not prepared to change their processes. But I was focused, this project must not be distracted or it will run the risk of drifting - new issues, new project.

I’m pragmatic, better to do something than nothing, but many officers are resistent to change and just not ready to take on the new challenges.

The way I see it is – any progress is better than no progress, just don’t lose sight of your end goal, keep moving towards that goal. The problem with organisations is that they are afraid to make mistakes – we live in a fear culture. But how can we push forward without experimentation? If we try out a new system and it’s not perfect straightaway – we tweak it, we evolve, until its so much better we want even more. Has anyone ever built anything from a blank sheet of paper and it’s been perfect? If they have I’d love to know about it. It’s an unlikely scenario, yet seems to be an expectation by so many people. 

Also, organisations like to amalgamate work – make a project big to solve all the problems. Isn’t that unrealistic? The bigger the project the harder it is to make it happen within budget and deadline. Why not break the project into bitesize bits – workstreams within a programme, with some quick wins so that customers can see little benefits quickly. Aren’t we far more likely to buy in to something if we can see some successes along the way, albeit minor ones? By breaking things into more manageable chunks wouldn’t it be easier to rectify mistakes (which would be smaller) quickly?

Sometimes I see life as a programme with multiple projects within it, maybe that sounds soul-less, but it doesn’t mean there is no emotion within it. It means that there are good times and bad times and you deal with life in bite size bits, you learn and you evolve.

If you want people to believe in a project they need to feel it. Show them why a project needs to happen.  The Heart of Change by John P Kotter talks about seeing, feeling and changing. It’s true, you can engage people if they can see why change needs to happen, because if they can see it, they will feel it and their emotion is a will to make change happen.

I am passionate about the work I do, I want to make things better for the customer, for staff and the organisation. I have been in local authority for 20years and I am still passionate about wanting to make things better, and the best way I think I can do that, is by being out there, making a difference, streamlining systems, providing more efficient processes so we are more responsive and proactive for our customers.

But secondments have to end and there is no money to keep me in the post. There is money to get contractors in to do the work at a higher cost, because that money comes from a different budget. Contractors who will not have the same understanding of the business, the customers or the organisation, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they will bring a different focus and other qualities to the projects. 

Maybe it will be good for me to take a break from this kind of work and to do something different, interact with different colleagues and see the business from a different perspective.

I just hope I don’t lose my business and customer focus.

I’ve been testing since 7.20am this morning.. it’s not even my job, but there is no one else to do it and I’ve become the “expert”… testing is boring, systems are rubbish and applications are pants… there is so much that can go wrong, and it does…

The sun is shining and has been for the last 3 days.. and I’ve spent approximately 5 hours in it… this year!  If I win the lottery, I don’t want to use a computer ever again!!

I have always been interested in streamlining systems from front to back office – stripping out unnecessary processes and transforming the business to provide truly efficient and effective services that provide real benefits to the customer. When I became Intranet Manager I was able to explore the web as the platform for realising business transformation that the staff and customers could relate to, because of its high visibility.

My current role has been a mix of Business Analyst, Business Architect, Project Manager and Change Manager. As Intranet Manager I’ve enjoyed considerable opportunities to talk to the business about what it needs and wants to do. I’ve seen working processes and the associated frustrations for staff trying to achieve efficient and good customer service.

I have used these opportunities to look for solutions for the business that enhance the service for the customer and provide smarter working for staff. In my role I’ve been able to marry solutions for several like services, avoiding duplication, extra costs, training, maintenance etc. It has also been important to me to look ahead and gear any business solution to meet the requirements of shared services and partnership working.

Does this make sense?

My work focus over the past 16months has been implementing booking systems, now I’m returning to the organisation’s intranet to “sex” it up.  When we got the new intranet up and running, the structure and navigation in place, we worked hard to communicate the full potential of this channel. Sadly, no matter how hard we tried, most of our authors just wanted to publish pages of paperwork. We went to great efforts to encourage the organisation to think about how different audiences find and use information, how we could help staff to do their jobs using the intranet as the platform, I even went out to care homes to show staff the functionality of the intranet and to find out how staff were accessing information, what they used the intranet for, what they needed. I ended up having to show them basic keyboard skills. The feedback was frightening, these staff definitely needed information from the intranet, yet none of the managers or web staff felt empassioned to do anything to help their staff. They were too busy, those staff only need to access information occasionally, what’s the point? Naively, I was saddened at the lack of interest by the staff who built the pages to consider their users needs, levels of ICT understanding, etc, particularly for staff that were based in satellite offices.

So now, after 16 months on other projects, I’m back to see if I can inspire the organisation to look at it’s intranet again and explore how it can become a dynamic and inclusive communication channel for all staff. I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has worked or is working on their organisation’s intranet and what have been the quick wins, what has engaged the staff, what has not worked, etc…

The ESD toolkit is a fine example of public sector stuff that concerns me http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/default.aspx
A colleague was guiding me around the site and there was a page for listing all the authority’s services, with it’s appropriate performance indicators, related projects, officers..etc..Although I can understand the merits of having this kind of information in one place… I have to ask the question why? It’s a massive amount of data to collect and maintain, but whose going to look at it other than a couple of corporate based officers? It’s not sexy or easy to use, so the service managers are not going to look at it, well they might when they first enter the info, but they will soon move on to other things. But more importantly – how does it help the customer? I realise we’ve got to collect PI’s, but isn’t it all about outcomes, shouldn’t we be concentrating our efforts on measuring what we’ve actually achieved for the customer, not our outputs?

Here goes…

Strangely, in my line of work, I’m rather cynical of certain technological advances and their social impact, but figure I’ve got to give this a go… Personally I’m not sure I will be able to sustain blogging. Is it just another fad, or will we all have moved on in a few year’s time? I’m also trying to get my head around facebook at the moment, the problem is that I, and most of my closest buddies, are not into using the web for anything other than shopping….which we embrace with all our hearts..

Instant messaging is good, I can see the value in that… and Carl gave me a fine example of where blogging would be really useful… Teachers blogging what they did in their class that day, so parents can find out what the children have been learning… I thought that was a cool idea… if anyone can give me any other “real” useful examples.. (not some “day in the life of MP” nonsense!) In my line of work I go out and talk to non-technical people and they need convincing that if they are going to change the way they work/communicate/live, it needs to be better than what they already do! i.e. tangible efficiencies -saves them time, saves their colleagues/customers time, easy to use… etc etc.. I know that the people who I engage with would see this as time consuming, and another thing they need to read…they’ve lived without it up until now.. so they can continue to live without it…