Transformational Project Management 

The content of this article was given as a presentation at the Association for Project Management's annual conference on the 29th October 2008.

Transformation is one of those words that form a movement in Project Management, like quality, re-engineering, and the ubiquitous 'e' prefix before it, but despite the Transformational Government agenda issued by the Cabinet Office, the interpretations of Transformation are legion. It is perhaps easier to define the characteristics that do not define it.

Transformation is not:


The OED defines transformation as a 'fundamental change of state', to which we might add with a high-risk, high-reward profilefrom an organisational perspective. This last point is the key: the price for failure is high, in for example the Icelandic banking sector, which transformed from small internally-focused organisations to ambitious multi-nationals. In this instance the transformation was successful; it was the assumptions that underpinned it that were flawed.

Under the e-government agenda, all local authorities were required to manage all social care records electronically by late 2006, under the title ESCR. Many authorities achieved this by scanning case records, while social workers continued operating their voluminous paper folders, just to have the tick in the e-government box that helped to fund the endeavour. This was a double failure: it missed the opportunity that the government investment made possible, but more importantly it meant that instead of making the management of case records easier for social workers and ultimately improving service received by citizens, it increased the workload for social workers and their admin teams, while offering no improvement in service to citizens.

I managed the technology component of an ESCR project for a county council with a different vision: the aim was to transform the way that citizen records were handled to enable consistent and quick access to case histories. This was managed through a great deal of process modelling, policy changes, HR advice, communication, a lot of training and support, and an integration between the core social care system and an Electronic Document and Records Management System (EDRMS) that was shortlisted for British Computer Society and Computing magazine awards. The result was a transformed service, both in terms of the internal processes, and from the perspective of the citizens, many of whom were amazed at the speed at which their records could be accessed.

Bearing in mind the potential downside, and the potential benefits, it is an understatement to say that Transformation should not be undertaken lightly, especially when one considers what is necessary for success:



Reading this list, one might be forgiven for thinking 'that sounds like a lot of work - why should I bother?'

And the answer is that Transformation can deliver the competitive advantage that re-engineering, incremental improvements, and quick wins cannot.

Competitive advantage is defined simply for the corporate sector in terms of providing advantage over competitors that results in your organisation's improved (financial) performance. In the public sector it can be;


The public sector competes with the corporate sector for what is increasingly called 'talent', and more than any methodology or framework, people are the key to Transformation. If a public sector organisation can show that it has an appetite and a will for step change improvement, it will attract people with the ability to make it happen.

According to research conducted by the McKinsey Institute, it is not enough for a Chief Executive to outline his or her strategy for Transformation in order for it to be successful. This strategy must be translated into a story that illustrates that Transformation is the lesser of two evils, not only that Transformation must happen, but that it is inevitable.

In the early 1990s, IBM executives were convinced that their focus on mid-range and mainframe computer systems that had served the company so well was still the right one. It took a catastrophic loss to illustrate the flaw in this strategy - that it ignored the industry-wide move towards a client-server approach championed by Microsoft - and left IBM floundering. Suddenly the playing field had changed, and with the fear of Big Blue going under as the burning platform for change, Lou Gerstner implemented a radical transformation programme that reinvented IBM as a profitable software and professional services organisation.

Similar challenges faced the British motor industry when faced with cheap, reliable Japanese imports. The difference in outcome to IBM's situation can be attributed to the fact that the Japanese encroached on the motor industry incrementally, and when the seriousness of the situation became clear, there was neither the will, the appetite, or the capability (in the context of powerful and militant unions) to undertake transformational change, and a whole industry failed.

A similar incremental threat is now facing all western nations.

Ian Davis, Managing Director of McKinsey & Co, in a recent article in The Times entitled Government as a Businesspostulated that in every developed country, the ranks of retirees have been swelling faster than young people enter the workplace to replace them for some time, and in doing so are placing an unmanageable burden on governments, which will have to increase taxation by factors rather than percentages to continue to provide historically agreed upon benefits. This is what is often referred to as the demographic time bomb.

In developing countries the problem is reversed - China's economy needs to grow by 8% annually, just to absorb its school and university leavers.

Many of us are aware that our particular demographic challenges are coming in the west, but most governments aren't sure when the situation will become critical, or what to do about it when it does.
This uncertainty means that politicians can avoid taking difficult decisions until they are absolutely essential (by which time they may not be in Government), in the same way that company boards may wish to protect short-term interests rather than make sacrifices to stave off an undefined future threat.

It is for this reason that an organisation needs to find its burning platform in order to transform. In times of serious financial threat, as with IBM, the burning platform is clear -we have to make a fundamental change in order to continue to exist. In organisations that are not facing these issues, the future need can be established by techniques such as;


These techniques can help an organisation establish how demand for its services will grow in comparison with the projected cost of providing these services, based on different scenarios, and therefore predict with a level of confidence when identified risks will become critical. Only when armed with this information can organisations can move forward with the (usually) difficult action that is necessary.

If this is the general flow to get to the point at which Transformational change is a given, how then can Project Management as a discipline, and Project Managers as people support this the process of Transformational change?

The project management discipline, and the APM in particular, can underpin the effort by formalising the profession through the charter programme, an activity that is already underway. It can also help to educate decision makers through its work with the Instituteof Directorsand other communications efforts at Board level, but most importantly from a long-term perspective, it can support the aligning and simplification of methodologies.

From the basis of PRINCE2, MSP, and PMI, methodologies are splintering further into fields such as Earned Value, MoR, and Agile. From the perspective of the average organisational client, these different approaches are confusing, and largely irrelevant. The more confusing the methodologies and the relationship between them, the more organisations are likely to fall back on their confidence in the people involved. If a project sponsor or executive believes that a project manager will deliver a project, especially if that project manager has a track record of success, there is a high probability that they will not care by which methodology success will be delivered.

Project managers themselves can enable transformational change by:


Above all, we can show our clients and our organisations the way, through the ideas, energy, and mechanisms through which transformation can be achieved, and provide the ownership and commitment to ensure delivery.

Transformation as a term may be superceded by newer, more fashionable terms in time, but the requirement for fundamental change will remain, and we must be prepared to deliver it.