Making a difference? Evaluating an innovative approach to the project management Centre of...

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International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 556–565

www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

Making a difference? Evaluating an innovative approach to theproject management Centre of Excellence in a

UK government department

Tim O’Leary *, Terry Williams

School of Management, Southampton University, Hants SO17 1BJ, UK

Received 13 May 2008; accepted 20 May 2008

Abstract

The UK Government has introduced measures in recent years aimed at improving project delivery capability in government depart-ments, including the establishment of departmental Centres of Excellence (CoE) of Project and Programme Management (PPM) – ‘superprogramme offices’ charged with ‘embedding best practice’.

This paper presents a case study of an innovative approach to the introduction of a CoE for IT-enabled change projects that includesa central team of highly skilled, experienced managers to intervene directly as required in problematic projects. The positive impact ofthis approach is compared with that of a previous conventional CoE focused mainly on ‘best practice’ process implementation, where nodirect impact could be seen.

Taken together with research literature from a number of disciplines, the case study supports the view that the conventional CoEapproach of embedding ‘best practice’ control processes may have little success in improving project delivery. It highlights the impor-tance of direct intervention using experience-based, context-sensitive skills in improving project performance, and points to the essentialrole of organisational power, politics and rhetoric in ‘making a difference’.� 2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Project management; Centre of Excellence; Project success; Project intervention; Best practice

1. Project management Centres of Excellence

1.1. Background

A 2003 government report ‘Improving Project and Pro-

gramme Delivery: Increasing the Civil Service’s Capacity

and Capability to Deliver’ [1] highlighted the importanceof Project and Programme Management (PPM) in meetingthe Government’s objectives for improving public services.A ‘pivotal’ recommendation was the introduction of Cen-

0263-7863/$34.00 � 2008 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.05.013

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7770 471939.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Tim O’Leary), t.williams

@soton.ac.uk (Terry Williams).

tres of Excellence for PPM (CoEs), ‘super programme

offices’ combining the role of departmental programmemanagement office with responsibility for building PPMcapability and capacity.

CoEs were seen as supporting top management in imple-menting a programme management approach to deliverythroughout the organisation, and providing the informa-tion for pro-active strategic management of the projectportfolio. They would improve project success by ‘embed-

ding best practice’ and providing support to projectsthrough:

� Processes and toolkits – providing standardised pro-cesses, including the standard project lifecycle, tools,checklists and structured guidance so that departmentscan manage their projects ‘‘with greater consistency and

mailto:[email protected]



Tim O’Leary, Terry Williams / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 556–565 557

rigour”, drawing upon the central guidance of the Office ofGovernment Commerce (OGC), and the National AuditOffice (NAO)1;� Developing skills – providing frameworks, based on the

above toolkits, and supported by professional accredita-tion schemes, for the assessment, recruitment and devel-opment of staff with the PPM skills required for differentdelivery roles.

Detailed guidance issued by OGC in 2004 [2] makes itclear that a CoE is seen as having an advisory and guidingrole in establishing PPM, particularly at the outset of pro-jects. While monitoring progress and reporting issues tosenior management, it is not expected to actively intervenein projects. Delivery accountability rests with the SeniorResponsible Owner (SRO – senior manager with projectsponsorship responsibilities) and the project manager.

1.2. Would we expect Centres of Excellence to work?

The Centres of Excellence approach is widely acceptedin government and elsewhere.2 However, the success ofthe CoE3 approach in improving project and programmedelivery and building organisational delivery capabilityrelies on some problematic assumptions:

1. that the widespread and consistent adoption of ‘bestpractice’ structured methods to management of all pro-jects will lead to improvements in project outcomes;

2. that project teams will adopt ‘best practice’ structuredmethods through a combination of organisational dictatand improved knowledge and awareness of the tools andtechniques;

3. that the skills required for successful delivery will bedeveloped largely through training in ‘best practice’ pro-cesses, and from expert support in the application ofthose tools and techniques.

In examining these assumptions, we can turn to a bodyof recent work challenging the assumptions and efficacy offormal project management methods from a number of dif-ferent perspectives. Some work takes a critical perspectiveto challenge the philosophical assumptions and powerimplications underlying mainstream project management[3,4]. There are challenges to the use of structured method-ological approaches or work rationalisation in principle [5–

1 The OGC and NAO guidance and ‘best practice’ referred to here isclosely aligned with, and based on the same philosophical and conceptualassumptions as the various professional project management bodies’‘bodies of knowledge’.

2 The 2003 paper drew on the KPMG Programme Management Survey2002 of 134 private and public sector organisations to conclude that ‘‘thereis a strong correlation between Programme Office effectiveness/maturityand project success”.

3 Throughout this paper, we are referring only to the OGC Centre ofExcellence, though clearly it may be possible to draw wider conclusionsabout similar functions more generally.

7], as well as evidence of low rates of adoption in practice[8–10]. The ritualistic uses of methodologies has been high-lighted [11], and their role in providing psychological assur-ance and symbols of control [9,12].

A repeated theme in recent research is the invalidity ofthe underlying structured model in coping with the day-to-day reality of projects [13]. Projects are in reality muchmore complex and uncertain than is implied by the struc-tured planning and control models underpinning main-stream project management prescriptions, and flexibleapproaches are required to accommodate this reality [14–17]. Both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ aspects of projects need to bemanaged, the latter needing different approaches [18]. Allthis requires re-thinking the project management paradigmand developing underlying theory [19–21].

The need to manage different types of project in differentways has been recognised [22] and IT and business changeprojects (the main focus of this research) are intrinsicallycomplex and uncertain, largely because of the organisa-tional impacts. IT implementations are characterised by‘‘a continuous stream of intervention, bricolage, improvisa-

tion, opportunism, interruption and mutual negotiation asmuch as by regularity, progress milestones, planning and

management control” [9]. The importance of organisa-tional, political and behavioural issues in the implementa-tion of IT projects is a major theme of the IS researchliterature [23–26], and recent work on enterprise systems[27,28].

There is also much of relevance in the huge body ofresearch on intentional organisational change, which thereis not scope in this paper to comprehensively review. Sufficeto say that the limitations of highly rational managementmodels of organisational change based on systems theoryhave been long recognised [29–32]. Greater emphasis hastended to be placed on the ‘people’ aspects, eg leadership,team working, managing competing interests, and the emo-tional and psychological response to change [33–36]. Theinherent unpredictability of interactions between humanbeings in organisations is seen as limiting the usefulnessof the cybernetic control model of organisational changeat the heart of project management theory [37,38]. The gen-eralisations essential in a structured management method-ology, and the implications of predictability, areproblematic because outcomes of management actionsdepend upon particular circumstances, context and history[39], and may even be counter-productive where complexinteractions are not understood. Complexity theories haverecently been used to explore how complex organisationalchange can be better managed [37,40,41].

Given this background, the ability to manage complexprojects successfully requires intuitive understanding ofboth dynamic and behavioural complexity, including sens-ing patterns, improvising and dealing with events as theyarise, and applying principles in local context [42–46] Effec-tive management approaches in practice are ‘semi-struc-tured’, combining some centralised ‘command andcontrol’ with a degree of local autonomy and improvisa-

558 Tim O’Leary, Terry Williams / International Journal of Project Management 26 (2008) 556–565

tion. [42,47]. Effective project managers give priority tomanaging key stakeholders, and have the political skillsto ‘play the turf game’ [48,49].

These ‘craft’ or ‘practical wisdom’ skills of the projectpractitioner can only be built up through experience andreflective practice [50–53]. They are learned through ‘com-munities of practice’, developing an associated set of val-ues, norms and mind-set through social processes [5,54].Social processes of learning in local context also play akey role in transfer of ‘best practice’; new managementknowledge is not simply acquired by codifying new proce-dures [55,56].

We can see therefore that a considerable body ofresearch from different disciplines questions the threeassumptions set out above upon which the success of theCentre of Excellence is predicated. There are doubtswhether ‘best practice’ structured models and proceduresare a good basis for achieving successful outcomes in com-plex organisational change projects, not least because themodel is a poor fit to reality. Even if the model is theway projects ‘ought’ to be, adoption of formal methodolo-gies is often low in practice, and they usually need to bemodified extensively in the local context. The skillsrequired for success are built more through experience thanknowledge of techniques, are based on tacit knowledgedeveloped in context through practice, and are noteasily taught. Transfer of improved practice in organisa-tions is by no means a straightforward process of intro-ducing new procedures. All of this challenges theassumptions underpinning the notion of the PPM Centreof Excellence.

1.3. Measuring improvements in project performance

The aim of the CoE initiative is ‘increasing successful

delivery’ of projects in government, and OGC guidancesuggests that CoEs should seek to measure the ensuingimprovements in project and programme delivery. How-ever, this is by no means straightforward. The notion ofproject success is itself complex and ambiguous [57,58].The mainstream view of the ‘iron triangle’ of cost-time-quality has significant limitations, and many point to theneed for broader scorecards, particularly around stake-holder satisfaction and achievement of business outcomes[59–61]. Organisational perspectives can be strongly influ-enced by history and context, with different perspectivesof success becoming more dominant according to thepower of the groups promoting them [62–64]. Further-more, projects can be seen as moving from failure to suc-cess and back again over time [65].

Many of these complexities are evident in our casestudy. In particular, the dynamic nature of project successis relevant, as we observe the effect of a number of ‘in-flight’ interventions over time. The means of assessing pro-ject performance used in this case is the change in ‘trafficlight’ status assigned to projects.

1.4. Traffic light reporting

CoEs use the familiar traffic light reporting system tosummarise project status and to highlight problematic pro-jects. Typically projects are flagged as ‘Red’ when theyhave serious problems which require immediate remedialaction, ‘Amber’ projects are giving cause for concern,and ‘Green’ projects are running according to plan.Departmental reporting to OGC of the most significantprojects (called ‘mission-critical’ projects), further sepa-rates the Amber category into Amber/Red and Amber/Green.

Traffic lights provide a subjective assessment of perfor-mance, though that assessment may in part be based onmore quantitative measures of costs and timescales. Trafficlight status is usually arrived at through complex social andpolitical negotiations, which themselves merit closer exam-ination; these indicators cannot be seen as an unproblem-atic objective measure of performance. For instance, anincrease in projects at ‘Red’ status for a period, rather thanindicating a decline in performance may reflect a more hon-est assessment, or be a political move to focus attention.However, as a broad indicator of the perceived perfor-mance of the portfolio over many months, and subject toawareness of their limitations as an objective performancemeasure, the traffic lights have provided in this study a use-ful focus for analysis.

2. Case study

2.1. Background to the case study

The case study examines the development of two CoEinitiatives in a UK government department (‘the depart-ment’) over a 3-year period from February 2004. The firstinitiative (‘PPMCoE’) is a conventional implementation inline with the central guidance; the second (‘ITCoE’)focused on IT-enabled change projects only, takes a differ-ent, more interventionist, approach. The research was car-ried out during a period of direct involvement as aconsultant by one of the authors (‘the researcher’) fromSeptember 2005, when the alternative approach was firstintroduced, until March 2007. Events prior to that datehave been described on the basis of available documenta-tion, including intranet pages, plans, status reports, reviewreports and minutes of meetings, together with notes of dis-cussions with relevant managers. The approach to the casestudy from September 2005 onwards is a combination ofaction research and participant observation. The informa-tion analysed and interpreted is in much greater depth andincludes daily notes of meetings and conversations, internaldocuments and emails retained over the period, analysis ofproject status reports (summarised in the ‘traffic light’ sta-tus), a survey of project managers, and interviews withmanagers engaged in or directly affected by the initiative.The paper has also been discussed in detail with some of


the key managers involved to check for accuracy, plausibil-ity of the analysis, and interpretation.

2.2. The PPM Centre of Excellence – the conventional model

In response to the central guidance described earlier, inFebruary 2004 the department set up a central CoE (‘PPM-CoE’) which was conspicuously launched through a num-ber of communication events. These stressed that one ofthe three key aims of the new unit (along with guidanceand support to staff, and assurance of project progress)was ‘‘to enhance and support the use of appropriate PPM

techniques (largely through the provision of information

and training)”. A high-quality 200 page ring-bound docu-ment and accompanying CD-ROM (‘‘PPM Toolkit Guid-ance”) was issued to all senior managers and projectmanagers, providing a customized consolidation of OGCguidance. Following the central guidance, the new unitset up functions aimed at progress reporting, the develop-ment of standard documentation templates to supportthe processes, communications, advice and support onPPM to projects, and training for senior and projectmanagers.

By the end of 2004, the unit comprised some 24 bright,capable and enthusiastic staff, knowledgeable in PPM whotackled the task in a very professional fashion. They weresubject to a series of independent reviews by the OGC,all of which were positive about progress and approach.In February 2005, the OGC review said the unit was ‘‘well

placed to contribute to the effective delivery of the top strate-gic programmes and projects by providing varying levels of

help support and guidance as required on specific pro-

grammes”. This review lists 60 milestones on the set upplan, with good progress reported in most areas. A subse-quent report concluded in September 2005 that ‘‘The CoE

has reached maturity in the department”. In terms of imple-menting the elements of the CoE as envisaged in the origi-nal policy, it would seem that the department’simplementation was a model of how it should be done.

The new unit was widely supported at senior manage-ment level, with frequent reinforcement of its role and ofthe value of ‘‘PPM” evident in senior management commu-nications and submissions to ministers. The initiative pro-voked much interest from staff who saw the developmentof project skills and experience as an important contribu-tion to their career development. Training courses andcommunication events were well attended, as was initialtraining for SROs.

2.3. Assessing the performance of PPMCoE

PPMCoE undoubtedly raised levels of awareness ofPPM across the organisation, drew attention to problemsand issues, and was a powerful symbol of the increasedconcern with project delivery. However, despite the profes-sional way in which the unit was established, and its dem-onstration of successful introduction of the required

processes and activities, there is little to suggest that projectperformance, or at least the perception of that perfor-mance, improved over the period in which the CoE wasestablished. For example, a senior management report inJuly 2004 indicated:

‘‘The department has a number of mission-critical pro-

grammes that have high-visibility at OGC and Cabinet

Office. There is growing concern at the continued report-

ing of RED status against these programmes.”

It is exactly these kinds of problems that the Centre ofExcellence was seen as addressing. However, a year laterthe July 2005 quarterly report to the Management Boardpaints a very similar picture, indicating that 8 of the 9 mostmajor ‘‘Mission Critical” projects within the departmentwere flagged at Red or Amber/Red. This was when thePPMCoE had been in operation for 18 months and,according to the independent progress reviews, close tomaturity.

In the period over which the PPMCoE had been estab-lished, therefore, while awareness and visibility of the prob-lems may have improved, there appeared to have been noimprovement in the department’s ability to deliver projectsand programmes successfully.

Nonetheless, by early 2006, the PPM rhetoric was aspowerful as ever. The Minister gave the keynote speechat a PPMCoE event for departmental staff, and seniormanagement made frequent reference to the importanceof better project and programme management, associatingthat implicitly with PPM. Establishment of PPMCoE was akey action referred to in the report to the Minister to dem-onstrate a credible improvement plan. Continuing prob-lems in departmental project delivery, rather thanproviding a challenge to the CoE approach, served to rein-force its perceived importance.

But doubts were growing on the ground. Numerousinformal conversations (from September 2005 onwards)with project managers and teams indicated concerns aboutthe real value added by PPMCoE. Projects repeatedly com-plained about the reporting demands from the unit. Theyclaimed that little apparent use was made of the extensiveinformation required from them, and some (particularlythe larger projects) saw PPMCoE as a bureaucratic over-head rather than a source of assistance in delivery. In Jan2006, PPMCoE training workshops for SROs had to becancelled because of lack of attendance. However, thePPM orthodoxy itself as represented by PPMCoE waswidely accepted as something that was not easily chal-lenged. A senior programme director, on being asked theimpact of PPMCoE on the business, replied ‘‘Business

impact? (laughs) Well, I’ll have to be careful here. . .”.In discussions some 2½ years after the unit was set up,

senior managers in PPMCoE saw the department’s contin-uing project delivery problems as resulting from a failure toadopt the PPM processes properly. They were exasperatedby a perceived lack of support from senior business manag-


ers and SROs, many of whom they saw as paying lip-ser-vice to PPM, pointing to a culture of ‘robber barons’ andgeneral resistance to corporate standards. In looking atcontinuing project delivery issues, they felt that they haddone what they could in repeatedly highlighting issuesand risks to the Board. It was clearly not their role to inter-vene in projects, and they felt they did not have the remit,the credibility or the resources to do so. It was the right tointervene directly in projects that distinguished the subse-quent CoE implementation for IT projects which isdescribed in what follows.

It is interesting to note in corroboration of what wasobserved here that the National Audit Office [66] observed(while recognising that the data were ‘‘difficult to interpret”p. 47–48) that over the period of the introduction of CoEs,the percentage of ‘mission-critical’ programmes and pro-jects rated ‘Green’ had shown no improvement. This isconsistent with the conclusions from the research referredto above and the findings of this case study.

2.4. The IT Centre of Excellence (ITCoE) – an alternative

approach

2.4.1. IT in the department

The department’s IT provision had been outsourced,leaving the IT department playing the role of an internal‘intelligent customer’ function to manage the contractualand commercial processes with the supplier, and providea service management and delivery assurance function.Within the ‘intelligent customer’ model, the expectationwas that delivery accountability for IT projects, as for allof the department’s projects, would rest with the businessdirectors commissioning projects from the supplier ratherthan the IT department.

From mid-2004 until September 2005, a small pro-gramme office function within the IT department wasresponsible for exercising the CoE function with respectto IT projects, working as a ‘‘satellite” of PPMCoE.

In September 2005, a new IT director was appointed,with a successful track record in operational management,change management and IT project delivery. Forceful,charismatic, and highly skilled politically, he was passion-ate about public service, getting things done and ‘makinga difference’. From the outset he took an intense personalinterest in addressing the department’s project deliveryproblems. As one of his early initiatives, he commissionedthe researcher as a consultant to set up with him new man-agement arrangements to improve the department’s ITproject delivery capability.

2.4.2. ITCoE – design and rationale

One of the IT director’s first actions was to create ineffect a new Centre of Excellence for IT projects (‘ITCoE’).The organisation design included a standard ProgrammeOffice along the conventional CoE lines, responsible formonitoring and reporting, and implementation of a struc-tured IT project lifecycle methodology. As such, the unit

was set up with a full commitment to implement ‘best prac-tice’ PPM processes, in effect ‘taking over’ the work ofPPMCoE with respect to IT projects. The significantdeparture from the conventional model, however, was theintroduction of a central ‘hit team’ of around 12 ‘deliverymanagers’ working directly with projects, brokering resolu-tion of issues, and putting troubled projects back on track.Team members were almost all external contractors, eachwith 10–20 years successful project and programmemanagement experience, and essentially ‘hand-picked’from personal experience of the IT director and researcheron previous large projects. They were highly credibleindividuals with impressive CVs and good interpersonalskills.

2.4.3. ITCoE programme of work

The ITCoE was operational in early 2006 and engagedon an improvement plan, in three main areas:

� Project reporting – building properly informed views ofthe state of projects within the portfolio. In some cases,this relied on delivery manager direct involvement ratherthan on standard project reports, leading to some ten-sion with projects about the correct status traffic light.� Project recovery – developing, with agreement secured

from the Board following the political moves describedin Section 2.4.6, a support plan for recovery of red-lightprojects, and assigning delivery managers as required.This was a substantial departure from the IT depart-ment’s previous role, and indeed the conventional roleof a CoE. This work began in late 2005, and was mostintense in the first quarter of 2006 leading up to a majorre-prioritisation of the whole IT portfolio as escalatingcosts were identified in project reviews.� Project standards – developing and implementing the ‘IT

project lifecycle’, providing a stage-gate frameworkaround which assurance and approval processes couldbe built. It is important to note that this conventionalCoE activity was seen initially as at least as importantas the intervention activity. The Lifecycle remained the‘flagship’ of the new function’s mission, and featuredprominently in management communications. Projectstandards and the Lifecycle were the central theme ofa launch conference held by ITCoE in March 2006,attended by around 60 of the department’s project man-agers. A pilot was initiated, and a target set for all pro-jects to be using the IT project lifecycle by September2006.

2.4.4. Progress with the IT project lifecycle

According to internal management communications,progress with introduction of the IT project lifecycle wasgood. A Board paper in April 2006 reported:

‘‘The design of the lifecycle is now complete. . . It will be

adopted for new projects immediately, in full alignment with

the new Approvals process for IT projects.”


A review of the function by internal audit as late as Feb-ruary 2007 concluded ‘‘we recognise that significant pro-gress has already been made, specifically with theintroduction of the project lifecycle”.

However, the situation on the ground was rather differ-ent. In February 2007, when a second conference was heldfor project managers, ITCoE was still presenting plans forthe imminent roll-out of the lifecycle almost a year after itwas declared as in use for all new projects (and 2½ yearsafter first being agreed to be necessary). Privately, ITCoEmanagers accepted that the lifecycle was not being usedin any substantive sense, and it was clear from detailedreviews of project documentation that it had little impacton actual project work.

Nevertheless, a survey of the 35 project managersattending the conference showed high levels of positiveawareness of the lifecycle, with a surprising 48% claimingthat they were already using it, although this was evidentlynot the case from reviews of project documentation. Com-mitment to ‘best practice’ processes appeared to have asymbolic value and rhetorical force not just for senior man-agement but for the project managers also.

2.4.5. Delivery management intervention

Involving delivery managers in troubled projectsrequired considerable political skill and sensitivity. Theyneeded to be introduced with the full support of the busi-ness area’s senior management, usually following discus-sions involving the IT director, and their precise activitysubsequently negotiated with the project team. This pro-cess was significantly expedited by control of the IT budget,and the IT director’s readiness to carry the costs initially.The delivery managers’ role and accountability was oftenseen as unclear, which was sometimes raised as an objec-tion at the outset (and highlighted by an internal auditreport in February 2007). However, they were (in all butone case) able to establish themselves as making a positivecontribution on the basis of their personal experience andhad the interpersonal skills to gain acceptance.

What delivery managers actually did varied from projectto project. In some cases, they effectively replaced the pro-ject manager. In others they carried out a brief review, andidentified a series of actions for the project to put in hand.In others, they focused on a particular problematic issue,such as agreeing the scope between stakeholders, develop-ing a revised plan, or challenging supplier costs. It is evi-dent from their regular reports that they were notconcerned with the introduction of ‘best practice’ pro-cesses, focusing far more on resolution of the immediatelypressing issues. There is not scope in this paper to examinethis in detail, but an in-depth review of one of the projectssuggested that progress was achieved not so much by tak-ing different kinds of actions from those already taken(reviews, escalation, renegotiation, etc.) but by the persis-tence and intensity with which the action was taken.

The intention of the organisational model described inITCoE plans was that delivery managers would work with

projects for a short period to address particular issues andthen move on to other projects, thereby sustaining a centralintervention capability. In practice, this did not happen:once they had become involved, most delivery managerswere not subsequently released by the projects, rather beingdrawn into ongoing roles within projects. Furthermore,budget pressures from April 2006 onwards meant thatITCoE found it difficult to retain the budget cover forthe pool of resources, which were increasingly coveredout of projects’ own budgets. This in effect led to a gradualattrition of ITCoE’s intervention capability, so that byOctober 2006, ITCoE had a much-reduced capability toassign highly skilled resources to projects in the way ithad done in late 2005 and early 2006.

2.4.6. The politics of intervention

The IT director’s role with respect to IT project delivery,and the role of the delivery managers were both problem-atic with respect to existing governance and accountabilityarrangements. While the IT director did have some kind ofoverarching responsibility for IT delivery (includingaccounting to Ministers for problems and progress), thiswas hitherto exercised indirectly through reporting, adviceand guidance, and through management of the outsourcedsupplier. Delivery responsibility for projects lay with thebusiness sponsors, not with the IT director, who thereforehad no remit to intervene except on invitation. The effectiveset up and functioning of the ITCoE therefore requiredintense political maneuvering. Key factors in the successof this political activity were:

� administrative control of the department’s IT budget (aspart of responsibility for commercial management of theoutsourced IT supplier);� the personal charismatic leadership and delivery skills of

the IT director;� exploitation of the dominant rhetoric of PPM, and the

department’s history of delivery failure, to overcomeobjections;� the quality, experience and political skills of the delivery

managers.

One example of political tactics was the way in whichthe IT director moved quickly to intervene personally insome problematic projects, commissioning a review ofone, and, after intensive lobbying with senior stakeholders,announcing that it was to be cancelled. Another importantsignal was the introduction of a weekly project issuesgroup, chaired personally by the IT director, replacingthe previous far more junior monthly project progressmeeting. In this way, the IT director and his newly acquiredteam injected very visible pace and urgency, highlightingproject issues, initiating and driving through correctiveactions.

The IT director also offered his personal support directlyat the most senior levels, e.g. dealing forcefully with under-performing suppliers with an aggressive style untypical of

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Jan-06

Mar-06

Jun-06

Aug-06

Sep-06

Oct-06

Nov-06

Dec-06

Jan-07

Feb-07

0

5

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35

%R-A/R

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Fig. 1. Trends in project performance during period of intervention.


civil service managers. He also freely provided expertDelivery Management resource to the business managers,initially paid for from the IT budget.

A powerful weapon in the political maneuvering wasexploitation of the PPM rhetoric, already promoted byPPMCoE. While progress on the IT Lifecycle methodologyon the ground was minimal as we have seen, its alignmentwith PPM was important in legitimising the overall role ofITCoE, including the novel right of intervention. Forexample, objections to the ITCoE proposals raised by aBoard member were responded to as follows:

‘‘What is proposed here is accepted good practice in

project management, in line with central government and

[PPMCoE] guidance, and formed the core of our

response last September to [Minister] on improving deliv-

ery of IT in [department]. I judged that [Board] would

not wish to have detailed chapter and verse on exactlyhow these principles are to be applied in [department]

before supporting them.”

Through a number of these opportunistic and politicallyskillful organisational tactics, the IT director was widelyseen as ‘beginning to make a difference’. Objections in prin-ciple to central interference and unclear accountability con-tinued but had little impact. Through a combination ofpersonal charisma and effectiveness, conviction and deter-mination, a compelling story, use of the PPM rhetoric,and lack of concerted opposition, the IT director gainedlegitimacy for a new interventionist remit for the ITCoE.This created the opportunity for skilled and experiencedproject and programme managers to directly influenceactions in projects, rather than relying on the promotionof ‘best practice’ processes.

2.4.7. Assessing the impact of ITCoE

As a means of assessing the impact of the ITCoE’s work,traffic light status for more significant projects (‘Tier 1’) ofthe project portfolio were tracked. Fig. 1 shows the trend intraffic light reporting for January 2006–February 2007.4

This clearly shows that the proportion of projects flaggedas Red or Amber/Red (%R–A/R) declined from Aprilonwards, coinciding with the period of intervention, andthen began slowly to increase again, coinciding as discussedwith a decline in the intensity of the intervention. The chartalso illustrates the reduction in the number of Tier 1 pro-jects. This resulted from a prioritisation process to main-tain the programme within the available departmentalbudget once the true costs of completion of projects hadbeen identified through more direct intervention.

This trend was reinforced by observations of organisa-tional perceptions of impact at the time. Private conversa-

4 The first four data points are from quarterly reports, subsequent dataare monthly.

tions, reinforced by comments in the IT department’scustomer survey in April 2006, indicated that senior man-agers felt the IT director and ITCoE was ‘making a differ-ence’, comparing it favourably with PPMCoE (focusednow on non-IT projects). At a senior management plan-ning workshop in June 2006, one Board member remarkedthat PPMCoE should look to what ITCoE were doing as‘‘ITCoE seem to be doing the right sorts of things”.

2.4.8. Interpreting the trend in traffic light status

Judged on the basis of the traffic light reports, the intro-duction of ITCoE with its drive to improve project deliverycan be seen as ‘making a difference’ over the periodobserved. This contrasts with the earlier implementationof the conventional CoE model, where despite high-qualityimplementation and expressed top management support,no improvement in project performance was evident overa 2-year period or more.

Both implementations included the introduction of ‘bestpractice’ PPM processes. The substantive differencebetween the two implementations was the central provisionof highly skilled, experienced managers to intervene introubled projects ie to contribute directly to the actionstaken to manage the projects. The impact observed in thecase of ITCoE would seem most plausibly to come fromthis direct intervention rather than from the introductionof ‘best practice’ processes in the form of the IT project life-cycle. Even if the Lifecycle methodology was beginning tobe used as claimed by October 2006 (and we have seen thatthis was not substantively the case) the improvement trendin traffic light status had already flattened out. It can alsobe noted that the greatest impact was observed followinga period in late 2005/early 2006 which involved the mostintensive intervention activity led personally by the ITdirector. As the distinctive ITCoE intervention capabilitywas gradually eroded for a variety of reasons, the trendin improvement declined and even began to reverse. Thisalso coincided with (a) a reduction in the attention directedto projects by the IT director personally once he was satis-fied that the situation was under better control, and (b)withdrawal of key consultancy resources from ITCoE.


The above interpretation of the story is reinforced byinterviews in May 2007 with several business stakeholderson their perceptions of the impact of ITCoE throughout2006. These all saw the function as having an impact earlyon but saw little direct benefit on their projects from the ITproject lifecycle methodology. Each identified the mostdirect impact they had felt from the set up of ITCoE asbeing the IT director’s personal assistance, and the provi-sion of high-quality resource (the delivery managers) insupport.

2.4.9. Some cautionary reflections

The case study demonstrates that this is a highly com-plex environment where conclusions about cause and effectmust be tentative and subject to a number of differentinterpretations.

The measure of outcome used (traffic light status) is itselfsubjective and determined through a complex social negoti-ation process between the projects and ITCoE, and wastherefore not an independent measure of ITCoE impacton project performance. The improvement trend wasbroadly confirmed by the views of business stakeholdersreferred to above – but it may be that we observed a changein organisational perceptions of ‘making a difference’ ratherthan actual improvement, based on interpretations of somesymbolic gestures, and demonstration of ‘doing the rightkinds of things’. Here the researcher’s own stake as a con-sultant in demonstrating a successful outcome for theorganisational change needs to be acknowledged.

It may also be that changes in perceived performancewere generated by independent changes in the contextand were partly coincidental. The funding shortfall, whichprovided the imperative opportunity to make the projectportfolio more manageable, was very significant. This fac-tor arguably may have been enough on its own to generatethe observed improvement in project performance (thoughit is worth noting that the scale of the shortfall was influ-enced by a clearer view gained through more active inter-vention). Funding issues can also plausibly be seen as thecause of the increase in the proportion of ‘Red’ lightstowards the end of the 2006 financial year, as projectsbecame concerned about funding availability and moreready to accept ‘Red’ status.

History and timing were also important. The organisa-tional narrative of a long history of project failure madecertain actions more acceptable in 2006 than they were in2004. And while the PPMCoE did not appear to driveimprovements in project performance directly, it was animportant agent in the promotion of the PPM rhetoric,and thereby supported the eventual more direct interven-tions. Another crucial factor was access to resources. Thecentralisation of IT budgets that was agreed in 2005 foran entirely different purpose as part of the IT supply agree-ment, provided the IT director almost accidentally with alever and symbol of legitimate authority, and with the abil-ity, at least for a while, to buy in the skills required for thedelivery manager role.

These are only some of the specific contextual and his-torical factors which may affect our interpretation of whathas been observed in this case, and consideration of theextent to which this experience is relevant to other organi-sations, or indeed this organisation at a different time.

3. Conclusion

What we have been able to observe in this case study isthe marked difference in impact between two differentimplementations of a project and programme management(PPM) Centre of Excellence in the same organisation. Thefirst implementation (PPMCoE) was well-implemented inline with central government guidance, and its design reliedpredominantly on the introduction of, and training in, ‘bestpractice’ structured PPM processes to achieve improve-ments in project delivery. The second implementation(ITCoE), while sharing similar objectives of introducing‘best practice’ processes (the IT project lifecycle), involvedalso the introduction of a central team of highly skilled,experienced project managers (‘delivery managers’) toassess status and to intervene directly as required in prob-lematic projects.

On the basis of traffic light reports of the project portfo-lio, it seems that the first implementation, with no remit orcapability to intervene directly in projects, had no observa-ble impact on project delivery performance over a 2-yearperiod. The later intervention-oriented approach showeda clear impact on project performance within a fewmonths, which reduced as the intervention activity reduced.In both cases, it appeared that the apparent organisationalcommitment to, and promotion of, ‘best practice’ PPMprocesses led to few substantive changes in the way projectactivity was actually conducted or to any improvement inthe capability of project teams.

Our interpretation is that the observed improvement inperformance was achieved through the active involvementof experienced project managers directly influencing day-to-day project activities, under the direct leadership of apersonally powerful and highly committed individual (theIT director), skillfully exploiting a specific organisationalcontext. We see the attempts in each case to introduce ‘bestpractice’ processes having no observable impact on projectoutcomes. However, we observe that the PPM rhetoric wasvery dominant, and maintained even when those promot-ing it were evidently not following PPM in practice. Thistends to obscure the lack of impact of the introduction ofPPM processes on project outcomes. For instance, the rhet-oric was used in the ITCoE case as a powerful lever in gain-ing legitimacy for effective interventions that mightotherwise not have been possible.

We see our findings as consistent with the findings fromprevious research across a range of different disciplines. Asdiscussed in Section 1.2 of this paper, this research chal-lenges the assumptions upon which the conventional Cen-tre of Excellence approach is based; in particular, theuniversal validity of the ‘best practice’ process control


model of projects, and the development of improved prac-tice through structured process methodologies based onthat model. The relative success of the ITCoE intervention-ist approach in this case, and the obvious importance oforganisational power, history and context in achievingthe improved project performance, emphasise the widelyacknowledged importance of interpersonal, experience-based skills and tacit knowledge applied in the specific con-text, rather than the introduction of standardised controlprocesses.

Recognising the limits of generalisability from this casestudy, this research, taken with the findings from the liter-ature, nonetheless seems to us to point to a number ofconclusions:

� the widespread introduction of PPM Centres of Excel-lence with their current remit, one of the central planksof the UK Government’s drive to improve project deliv-ery, may well have little direct impact on outcomes;� improvement in an organisation’s project delivery per-

formance is possible, but more likely to be achievedthrough focused intervention by experienced and skilledproject managers, than through the promotion of ‘bestpractice’ processes and techniques;� such an approach is at odds with the current orthodoxy

and is likely to meet political resistance; its success islikely to be highly dependent on the local situation,and require strong leadership and adequate resources.

Looking to future research, it is clear that if we are todevelop effective approaches to improve organisationalproject performance we need to understand better (a) whatsuccessful project managers and teams actually do in theday-to-day organisational interactions that resolve issuesand drive projects to successful outcomes and (b) howthose experience-based skills can be most effectively devel-oped and transferred, by means other than processcodification.

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