Feature Article

Friday, June 06, 2008

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:

1. Recognizing the web as a key organizational program, or what we at Welchman Consulting call Web Operations Management
2. Embracing the need for a web program management mentality versus that of a project manager
3. 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 ...

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Related article: Top 10 Tips for a Successful Content Management Proof-of-Concept

Filed under: Project Management : Web Operations Management

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