Gantt to Glory: Evolving from Project Management to Successful Web Operations

By Kristina Podnar, Senior Consultant, Welchman Consulting

Several years ago, I had a front row seat and watched in horror as a federal agency spent $2.7 million on a web site redesign and web content management system (WCMS) implementation, only to scrap every image on the site and every WCMS template created, and start from anew. All before the site’s first anniversary.

At the beginning of the project, there were such high hopes for what was intended to be a cutting edge e-gov site. It ended an absolute failure, classified as a “pilot”, and spun into a lessons learned for the organization. You see, the Chief Information Officer placed an experienced Project Management Professional (PMP) in charge, and after the project plan was created and systems integrator selected, declared it a certain win for the department. Except that it didn’t quite work out that way.

So what made this web project, along with hundreds of others, fail? And is your web project destined to end the same way?

Today there are over 180,000 certified PMPs in 175 countries. The credential is certainly the most sought after in the project management arena, and many organizations either are requiring, preferring, or encouraging staff with PMP letters behind their names to run projects. Specifically, web site projects. This started me thinking… why are so many organizations rushing to ensure their staff is PMP certified, with the premise that automatic success will be achieved on web projects and beyond?

In a quest to understand this phenomena, I performed a quick search on monster.com for “web + project manager” on a very popular job board site, and it yielded over six thousand results. A refinement of the search by adding “PMP” to the search parameters resulted in a much smaller number of results, but with very curious job position tiles, and even more intriguing descriptions. This exercise prompted me to think back to the last time I saw a government statement of work (SOW) that did not request or at least suggest a PMP on the project would be useful. After a short struggle, I realized I couldn’t.

So, is the sheer possession of a PMP intended to be the Holy Grail of successful web projects, known to fail at a startling rate, or simply a way to divorce oneself from whatever outcome may result from the web project? After all, we got the best person to ensure success - a certified PMP. Right?

The problem with our web projects is just that - we have conditioned ourselves to think of the web as a Gannt chart, with plan, design, execute and launch, or re-launch, of the website. That is where most project plans end, perhaps a few of them adding on a period of maintenance and support. Contract Closeout is the Project Management Institute (PMI, issuer of the PMP) way of addressing this phase, and reflects fairly accurately the governing perception of the web. The reality rests between this mass rush to hire the ideal PMPs, and the need to treat our web initiative as an ongoing program, and look for individuals who can in fact deliver on that perpetual evolution mentality. So should organizations turn their backs on PMPs and the PMI?

The answer to this challenge lies not in turning away from the PMI, but in:

Recognizing the web as a key organizational program, or what we at Welchman Consulting call Web Operations Management
Embracing the need for a web program management mentality versus that of a project manager
Moving beyond the simplified experience and knowledge of the PMP and into the realm where individuals have knowledge and are responsible for executing the web strategy through advanced skills

Unlike a marketing brochure that tells the world about the organization’s core competencies, or the video cast that was recorded by the director for the annual conference last year, the web is a collection of items that continues to change and evolve (sometimes on a daily basis) to meet the exact needs of a site visitor at a point in time. As such, this highly dynamic delivery mode for information is less of a project and more of a program, where bits and pieces can be treated as a project. Changing the color of the header or the managing executive’s photo is a project, with a defined start and end, but the collective web components are part of the bigger whole that require not only changes, but a continual examination of alignment with the organization’s mission, goals, and objectives.

The sooner we can retrain ourselves to think about our web presence in this comprehensive and perpetually evolving fashion, the sooner we will realize that a project plan is useful for day-to-day management, but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t become the collateral we care about, nor is it the reason we hire a PMP. The project plan, no matter how excellent and beautiful, with 159 lines or more of detailed activities, will not ensure complete success. Only the recognition that a collective balancing act between the web managers and the organization’s leadership and staff members can ensure that the right web medium is delivered for the user’s need and benefit.

The real approach is not for organizations to stop hiring PMPs, but to start treating the web as a fundamental part of our strategic organizational plan and assigning to it the resources with experience and talent that it deserves. To succeed in operating the web as a true organizational asset, the project manager must hone the toolkit to include governance, with a focus on cross-cultural awareness, leadership, communication, influence, negotiation, and conflict resolution, as well as user community measurement, and tactical web skills such as information management and web technologies deployment.

Unfortunately, the PMI only requires a PMP have general experience in these areas, but there is no hard and fast prescription on how to approach the competencies nor a definition of what they truly are. Furthermore, we predispose ourselves to gaining experience on failed web implementations, ignoring the need to formalize and specialize project managers who are involved with the web. So, what should you do if your organization is in need of a web redesign and what type of individual should you hire to ensure you maximize your chances for success?

Your odds for success will highly increase if you can locate and staff an individual that has:

At least 3-4 years of experience implementing governance initiative(s), preferably within the web arena, but considering how new this area is, you may have to settle for IT governance experience. The intended lessons learned from this experience are the negotiating sticky points and competing priorities within the organizational environment, with a value proposition for both executives and the organization at large.
Battle scars of not only web implementations, but web operations and subsequent releases that have built upon each other in a greater capacity that goes beyond a web redesign.
A strong functional understanding and commitment to business user needs, and the ability to align them with the technology. This presupposes the actual involvement in several successful CMS or portal deployments, as well as large web sites that have evolved and morphed through continual user feedback and realignment to organizational strategy.
Either a PMP or non-PMP, who believes that the PMI has started a great initiative, and PMP certification is a potential platform for getting us to successful web operation management (but isn’t there yet)

If you are willing to move beyond the Gantt chart, you will learn that glory comes from taking risks and viewing the web through the lens of a new management world, your odds for success will highly increase.

About the Author
Kristina Podnar is a Senior Consultant for Welchman Consulting with over ten years experience helping organizations achieve their content management and portal solution goals. Her experience spans the government, private, and non-profit sectors, as a government employee, management consultant, and entrepreneur.

Prior to entering the consulting world, Kristina spent time in the intelligence community as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency and a team member of BDM International, specializing in classified projects. Since then, Kristina has expanded her skills to serve government clients including the F.B.I., U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. General Services Administration, private sector clients BEA, WorldCom, and Fannie Mae, as well as non-profit organizations St. Jude’s Hospital, CARE International, and PBS.

Kristina holds a BA in International Studies and an MBA in International Business, Pacific Rim from Dominican University of California. She is a certified Project Management Professional and an active volunteer member of the Project Management Institute.

Filed under: Project Management : Web Operations Management

Comments

By Jurriaan Souer on June 9, 2008 -- 5:25am

I agree that solely focusing on project management will not guarantee any success. However, project management is of course a necessary part of a Web Content Management implementation. Moreover, we found that after implementing a WCMS, organizations lack the organizational processes and structure to effectively maintain WCMS systems. We therefore presented a framework at the International Conference on Digital Information Management:

http://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?isnumber=4444190&arnumber=4444261&count=83&index=70

Project Management is an integral part of our framework but, as you stated clearly, commitment from business and alignment with strategic goals on a strategic level – and a more operational perspective of content management should be taken into account.

By Joseph Bachana on June 16, 2008 -- 2:10pm

Kristina,

Thank you for writing this article! I can’t tell you the number of CMS implementations that go on with ‘by-the-book’ project management protocols that still run into failure on the usual dimensions.

I wanted to add a few other points if I may. First, certification as a PMP just demonstrates a minimum level of competency with the concepts and best practices as defined in the PMBOK (Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge). It also presupposes a certain number of hours of field time as a project manager (I think when I was certified it was 4500 hours but it may be more today).

If you think about it, if we go to a doctor (MD), they’re licensed to practice medicine but they may or may not have subject matter expertise. If we consider the PMP as just a prerequisite for success—not THE determinant—then customer would next want to look at subject matter expertise (SME) as well as technology expertise. re: SME, I have seen PMP’s on content management projects that had plenty of CMS experience, but came from a pharmaceutical background, yet were project managing an implementation for a publisher, or any other vertical market. This could work out, but if the person does not have the technical expertise (the battle scars) of content management implementations, it is a recipe for disaster.

In any event, I’d hate to think that people who read this great article then deprecate the PMP credential since I don’t think that was your intent to suggest. Personally I hire certified developers, or masters degreed computer science professionals, but that doesn’t mean they will be successful—just one checkmark on a list of credentials I look for when putting together my WebCMS deployment teams.

I think there’s one more area that could help the project manager. You mention that the PMP credential could be a way for the resource to “divorce oneself from whatever outcome may result from the web project?” I have seen that happen so I understand why you put it in there, but I think that may be more the function of the resources than the certification. Also, with or without the PMP certification, people tend to not buy-in to the outcomes if they have not had a chance to be involved in project initiation or planning. What is the usual case in there projects is that much of the initiation and planning work has happened before a project manager has even been brought on board. I think a best practice is to have the PM as a highly respected part of the initial planning phases—including the critically-important CMS platform procurement phase.

Finally, I still don’t believe that PM’s do a good enough job with the other tripod of project management, namely change management, communication plan management, and risk management. The Web content management implementation is as much about these things as the technology itself, and while these tend to be the first disciplines to be cut from tasks on a project, I would argue they may be even more critical than the technology that is selected itself.

By Mike Brown on June 16, 2008 -- 3:13pm

I would concur with not only the author’s insight to effective project management, but also views expressed by the others who have already commented.

As someone who has been a PMP for many years in both Enterprise PMO and Consulting environments, project management is fundamental to success of any project— regardless of its size.

Unfortunately, PMPs have the stigma attached to them that they always carry gantt charts at the hip. All gantt charts provide is a tool for communicating project progress—on paper anyway. They by far do not portray the success of the project. Regardless of the project, “generic” PMPs should not always be sought. In fact, SMEs who are not PMPs often prove to make projects more successful than PMPs not familiar with the particular industry seeking an assumed “project professional”.

Whether or not it’s a web-based technology project, sought after PMPs should bring a type of mindset with them that will make the project successful. In other words, a PMP is not going to be successful without being an effective communicator.

PMI does provide a good knowledge base in many key fundamental areas, but it’s up to the PM to make sure the key stakeholders ally themselves to supporting and upholding the direction of the project and the organization. If a PM can’t manage resources (or have a working relationship with functional managers who can), identify key risk areas and work to define mitigation strategies, managing time, cost and change, manage scope, define quality metrics and ensure quality assurance, of what good is a gantt chart that outlines that all of these tasks that need to be done? Leadership is essentially gone, and you might as well use your gantt charts as wallpaper.

So the value of the PMP certification should not be in any way devalued, but the value truly comes into play when you have someone behind the credential that is willing to commit to making sure he will put forth his best effort to making the organization and its objectives a success.

By Joseph Bachana on June 16, 2008 -- 10:45pm

Music to my ears, Mike! -JB