Evolutionary Project Management - An unappreciated jewel?

Wouldn't it be good to construct change and projects where the biggest benefits are delivered early and that is you are forced to divert investment/stop a project you are still left with a sustainable product that will continue to deliver business benefit ie you have the opportunity to make real business decisions rather than the stark write-off vs good money after bad option?

There is a way. It is not easy and will require courage, but the approach exists today and is being used by some leading companies. Citigroup, NATO and HP are cited as organisations looking at this approach.

Many years ago a colleague shared a book called "Principles of Software Engineering Management" by Tom Gilb. I can and have programmed, but do not claim that as a key competence, but what struck me from that book was the articulation that ANYTHING can be measured with a little imagination so all the soft or so-called intangible benefits can be quantified and tracked if one approaches things pragmatically.

The piece that stuck was that "usability" in terms of new systems could be measured. This was and remains a common requirement without being clearly articulated. The suggestion was something like

"a new user can, without any external intervention or assitance, set up a new account ( or whatever ) correctly in less than x minutes"

This sort of thinking really helped drive out requirements and influence solution design. It was relatively unusual thinking at the time and stuck with me.

Through this initial contact I became aware of one of Tom's other developments "Evolutionary Project Management". The principle driving this is the early delivery of real sustainable benefits from a project/change. This may sound obvious, but in my experience is rarely achieved in more "traditional" approaches such as the waterfall approach.

Typically significant benefits are only delivered towards the end or after the completion of the project ie the investment of time and money is all but spent before any value is seen. This is often manifested in a situation such as this ; 60% of the time and money have been spent, with no realisable benefit and it looks like it requires the rest of the money plus another 10% plus an additional three months if one is to have any chance of seeing a positive outcome. If one decides to stop the project "now" then the investment is a complete write off.

This is not a good place to be, but is one I suspect you will recognise. The argument is usually that what has happened is in the past and cannot be undone. Therefore the decision rests on solely making remaining investment, thereby riding over the disappointment to date.

This is so common and why projects get a bad name and the majority are considered to have failed to deliver what was promised.

I won't go into Earned Value Analysis (the attempt to measure the level of value created against the investment spent) which attempts, in my opinion to justify the investment at each stage. In practice it seems to tell you that you have spent 70% of something to create 60% of nothing; I say nothing because unless you complete the work you will not realise any benefit at all.

There are many attempts to address these failings in the form of AGILE, SCRUM, etc which essentially try and break the project into smaller parts, trying to create momentum and confidence through a series of small deliveries. The key question that drives these approaches is simply "What can we do in the following (short) time?" It is more about "do-ability" than benefits and should you need to stop the project part way there is a real risk that you will have an incomplete set of "complete" components, that do not deliver anywhere near the benefits to justify the investment.

I won't attempt to explain the whole of EVO Project Management. I am neither licenced nor the best to do so, but one can look at the Gilb website as linked above. What I will do here is draw out what I understand to be the key principles and challenges.

The key principle is what I would call "time optimised benefit chunking". There is a time value to benefits that needs to be recognised. The delivery of  50% of the benefits for 40% of the time and investment with subsequent incremental benefits is usually better than hanging on for 100% at a later stage.

That is once one has understood the overall objective the challenge is "How can I deliver the best real benefit in the minimum time?" The benefit will not be all the objective, but should be the largest discretely achievable element. It must be able to stand alone ie one would not be spending 200 to realise 100 and must at the end be a whole sustainable solution in itself.

One key thing this accepts is that components of this "next" delivery, may be sub-optimal ie they may need reworking in subsequent deliveries to meet the strategic, long-term goal. This acceptance of future rework seems wasteful to many is frequently a stumbling block. It offends the strategists, but the key is the early delivery of benefit that outweighs the future additional cost. Indeed the reworking itself will only happen if it is justified in the benefit case for the next delivery project. This ensures that any incremental cost created by this approach is more than compensated for by realised benefit.

The other issue here is that in delivering this timely element it may that not all stakeholders see a benefit. In fact some may see a dis-benefit ie it is more troublesome. This needs to be managed if the overall benefit is good enough.

One then works in cycles. What is the next biggest benefit that can be achieved and sustained, taking the cost of any rework, etc into this next investment case. The cycles can continue on teh basis of diminishing returns until a) the next one is not justified or b) there is a better investment opportunity elsewhere. The key is that at the end of each phase one could make the decision to invest no more, yet still have sustained benefits already being realised and contributing to the business' performance. This would seem to be a good place to be.

This approach is driven by realisable sustainable benefits rather than just do-ability.

As I said it is not easy and it will face opposition in many organisations.

• The strategists will fear that their full vision will never be delivered. This may be the case, but I would argue that when well executed the early delivery of benefits is more valuable.
• Some stakeholders may be disadvantaged in the shorter term, but this is justified by the overall benefit. It may need an alignment of stakeholder objectives.
• Project people may not like the uncertainty they perceive in that the whole may never be delivered, but I would argue that the business will be more appreciative and complimentary about optimising the timing of benefits.
• It focusses achievement on benefits rather than activity or simple product - this may not suit everyone.

I would be very interested to know if others have looked at this? Even better if they have tried to use it? I wonder what the experiences have been. In truth mine have been less than successful to date, with the disciples of waterfall and activity tending to with over my arguments around benefits and evolution, but I will continue as, despite all this I believe that there and indeed must be a place for the evolutionary approach to the way we deliver change going forward.