Moderator: So, we're gonna talk about delivering the programme and bringing it home. So, let's start with, how do you monitor and control the project?

Speaker 1: Okay, so I-, when we think about the projects in a programme, I always think the, the first thing we wanna do is make sure that each project team has a clear brief, yeah? So, they understand exactly what we want them to create for us. We want perhaps to manage by exception, by setting boundaries around-, within which they're allowed to work. And those boundaries might be around cost, time, quality, scope, things like that. So, we can set tolerances for, for the project teams. We then need to think about how we're going to monitor those projects, so that they stay on track. And we might want to think about regular progress reports from each of those projects, and of course we'd want to define what we wanted to see in those reports. Meetings, well, I, I guess some people just love to have meetings, but if we are managing by exception and we are getting regular progress reports, maybe we don't need them, yeah? Maybe we don't need them so much. Depending on how the projects are being run, a waterfall project, there will perhaps be gate reviews during the project. We might have projects broken down in stages, and at the end of those stages we can just check that they're still on track, and make any adjustments that we need to. Agile projects are all about adjustments of course, but then even with those, at the end of each sprint there are retrospectives, yeah, where again, they can check whether they're on track and of course in both cases we can capture any lessons to take forward.

Moderator: Absolutely. I think manage by exception is, is a really important part of programme management. Part of the skill of being a programme manager is learning to step back and trust people to get on with stuff. And I always found, like, for example when I worked in construction, I'd have, you know, a couple of thousand people on a four, five square mile site, and I couldn't see them every day. I couldn't go round everyone going, 'Everything alright? Everything alright?' You know, so I would give set people work for the week and then say to them, 'Come and see me if you've got a problem,' and it even got to the point really where I'd have a, kind of, natural fear reflex if I got a bang on the door of my Portakabin 'cause it usually meant something had gone horribly wrong. You know, I'd open the door and find somebody covered head to foot in water or something like, 'Oh, we've hit a main,' you know. But if you didn't hear from them, it was fine. So, I always summarise manage by exception as no news is good news, you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Moderator: If you don't talk to me, means everything's okay, within certain parameters as you said and with, with your tolerances. And that, of course, echoes the three lines of defence that we've got in the assurance theme.

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

Moderator: So, we talked about the projects and how you get those delivered. How does then the programme take those and then deliver the outcomes and the benefits?

Speaker 1: Okay. So, if we're thinking about the-, at, at the end of a project, they're going to deliver their outputs in, into, into business as usual. I guess the work in business as usual needs to be done way before that though, yeah, in making sure that people are ready, they're prepared, any training that's been required is being or has been already done, so that their business as usual teams are ready to accept the new products. So, we need to make sure the projects and business as usual, we're, we're, we're delivering at the right pace for business as usual, so we don't want to be delivering, I don't know, a new stock ordering system into Tesco just before Christmas, you know, if we're going to replace all their tills, yeah, things like that. So, we want to make sure the pace is right. We will need to, sort of, warm up our business as usual, get them ready as I was saying. Perhaps thinking about, you know, increasing the communications as we, we go up to, to the, the launch date. We need to do a bit of hand-holding as we do that, and this is of course where, where our business change managers come in. We might need to provide emotional support to, to our, our staff as they are changing their jobs, yeah, or, you know, the, the-, changing the nature of their jobs. Perhaps changing the way that they've worked in the past, yeah, perhaps going from being office-based to virtual, for example, or vice versa.

Moderator: But it's actually-, in my experience, it's not fear of change, it's fear of the unknown world after the change.

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

Moderator: So, that transition can be really useful for that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Moderator: Because what it can be about is the business, you know, you maybe get, like-, when I was doing that merger, the three companies that I've mentioned before, we had a week-, a bi-weekly, sorry, newsletter that went out that warned people about what was coming. So, it had a, kind of, 'Coming Soon' and telling them what was gonna happen. But also, we'd get people who'd been involved in those changes beforehand having discussions in the newsletter about, 'Oh, you know, this has happened to us and it was actually okay and it worked.'

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Moderator: So, you know, 'We, we managed to get it all sorted out relatively easily. So, I know you're nervous, but don't worry.' And also we'd create feedback loops to give people the ability to, to come back and just say, 'I'm a bit worried about this,' or, you know, 'How is this gonna work for me?' And we encouraged an environment where it was okay for people to just come along and go, 'I'm worried.'

Speaker 1: Yes.

Moderator: They didn't have to have a specific reason, and then we'd support them.

Speaker 1: That, that, that's really important in change, you know, that you cannot communicate too much when organisations are going through change, where people are going through change. They really will, will be very much more secure if they know what's happening. Even if what's happening isn't going to be particularly comfortable.

Moderator: Yeah, I mean, I lost count of the amount of times somebody would say to me, 'I know you don't know but can you tell me when you will know?'

Speaker 1: Yes, yeah.

Moderator: You know, so they, they could go away. So, then, so we've got the-, we've got the outputs and the outcomes and the benefits, obviously the capabilities fit in there as well. But something else to consider is that the programme itself is a mechanism for delivering all of that.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Moderator: So, as well as making sure we deliver the projects and everything, we need to make sure the programme's doing its job properly. So, how does the programme monitor itself to make sure that it's staying on track?

Speaker 1: Okay. So, we, we've talked already about tranches, dividing a programme down into tranches. And at the end of each tranche, we have a landing point, and at that landing point, we can look at what happened so far in the programme, what has been delivered, how the transition's actually working, yeah? So, are we actually beginning to see changes, the outcomes, are we beginning to see benefits? Is the programme actually working before we move on and do the next tranche of delivery? So, that's an important way of, of monitoring that our, our programme's going well. As far as the management of the programme is concerned and making sure that that's going well, we've of course got things like health checks and assurance reviews, yeah, that we talk about in the assurance theme. And also benefit reviews, of course, as we begin to see those benefits, are we actually achieving what we expected?

Moderator: Absolutely, and that, that reinforces the bring pace and value principle.

Speaker 1: Absolutely.

Moderator: Because we need to show the value. And we've talked about in some of our other videos about closing the programme and the idea that you close it when it no longer has value.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Moderator: So, part of reviewing it is also saying, 'Hey, we don't need the programme management structure anymore.' But it is very important that we monitor it.

Expert discussion: Delivering the programme

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