increasing project success rates using project behavioral coaching

Drive Your Business

IncreasingProject Success Rates Using ProjectBehavioral Coaching™

2 ©2015 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com

More and more companies are searching for ways to guarantee the success of their

high dollar, high risk projects and are not willing to introduce new methods for project

management into their company because of the great time, expense and risk that were put

into play to implement a project management methodology such as Agile, Spiral etc.

In contrast Project Behavioral Coaching™ is a technique based on the science

of human behavior that can be used with any methodology to drive up success

rates. How? By focusing on the engine of our projects – human beings.

This white paper will cover the high level steps used in performing the

Project Behavioral Coaching™ (PBC) technique as a guide for project

professionals that desire an introduction to learning the basics.

Introduction

People can be led with method, but they perform with their own technique.

Using the Project Behavioral Coaching™ technique may ensure your projects’ success, regardless of methodology.

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Organizations that seek to increase performance must first make desired results repeatable.

A technique can be used with any method.

“The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called ‘conditioning’. In operant conditioning we ‘strengthen’ an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.” – B.F. Skinner

Technique

• A way of carrying out a particular task, especially

the execution of an artistic work of scientific

procedure

• A skillful or efficient way of doing something

• Skill or ability in a particular field

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PBC can be used with any project delivery methodology, at any time in a project

lifecycle and for any level of complexity (i.e. project, program, project portfolio). For

that matter, any organization can benefit (in which human behavior is present, and an

increase in success rates is desired) from PBC assuming the practitioner is experienced

with the technique and the delivery methodology used by the organization.

Human Behavior is the engine of our projects.

1

2

3

Review Action

Participation Action

Testing/Monitor Action

PBC is organized into actions and not

phases or components. This may be

new or unusual to many professionals

as the standard approach for

methodology is to define procedures

that users have to learn to adapt

and perform on their own with little

guidance as to the actual specific

formulation of action taken by the user.

Since PBC is based on the

SCIENCE of human behavior, it

is activity based and only results

in success when human activity is

performed, tested, and tuned. Human

behavior is by definition – action.

Therefore, any reference to what a

user “thinks” or “feels” about how

work is done or performed is out

of scope of the technique, as it is

not controllable nor should it be.

PBC is organized into the following

“RPM” steps of action:

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Triggering PBCThe technique can be triggered with a “significant environmental change” that is identified

by the project manager or user of the technique (we will cover this more below). The project

can be in any phase of the lifecycle of any methodology. However for the sake of this white

paper, we will review the PBC technique as if the project was performed in an organization

that uses a traditional waterfall methodology as defined by the Project Management Institute

(PMI) using the “Project Management

Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK)

documented by the same organization.

As all organizations conduct varying

activities during each phase of work as adapted to their needs, it is impossible to anticipate all

possible behaviors performed within a given project or project phase of work. However, learning

the PBC technique with objectives by action (steps

1 through 3 above) allows universal flexibility to

use the technique at any time. This is both helpful

and problematic; helpful because of the flexibility

to perform the technique at any time, problematic

because too much flexibility causes undo work

and effort to get the desired results. Therefore we

“trigger” the technique much like a technique (or

move) is triggered in any athletic competition. As

stated above the technique is triggered when the

practitioner experiences some kind of significant

change in their environment. Typically these

changes are expected such as a project phase

change from a core “development phase” to a core “testing phase” in a waterfall methodology.

Changes can also be team oriented changes where the project manager’s time is spent more

with developers at one point, and more with business users at another. The key to effective

triggering is user awareness of significant changes in people, process, and technology because

it is what will trigger the action of the technique. A sports analogy may be helpful in that a soccer

player may change a ball dribbling technique from high speed in one instance where there is no

opposition present, to protected dribbling where opposition is close by and forcing a move. The

environment changes and the technique is triggered. And techniques are made up of actions.

“Freedom to a dancer means discipline. That is what technique is for…liberation.” – Martha Graham

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PBC Technique Action 1: ReviewThe purpose of the review action is to determine the scope of your examination

in behavior on the project for this trigger point. This begins by reviewing the

core areas you are working with or are expecting to work with.

In an initiate phase of work, you may only be working with a project sponsor and a few key

stakeholders, yet anticipating working with other areas (based on

your knowledge of the scope of work). For example, you may know

in advance this will be a technology project and you

will be working with members of your technology team.

The “Review” piece of this action has the objective to

simply identify who you are (or will be) working with for

this trigger point; no more. However, the “Assess” piece

of the activity drives for another more valuable objective and that is

to instruct the PBC user as to what is known, in terms of behavior,

about the areas you will be working with. Your experience and involvement with the company

or team you are working with will dictate the amount of time you spend completing your own

assessment of behaviors for each area.

However, while it is assumed for purposes

of this white paper you already know the

basic science of defining and measuring a

human behavior for analysis, your objective

for this activity is to simply assess. So

you may simply know or have heard that

“Development does not play well with testing”

or “Marketing does not like to attend the

daily scrum” (a meeting type used in Agile

with specific objectives including critical

representation by the business); some may call these “pain points”. The outcome of

the assessment phase is to isolate areas and behaviors you believe you will have

to hone in on, to improve and “coach” for higher human performance levels.

“Ideas come from somewhere. People don’t come up with these ideas from nowhere. Something triggers your thoughts.” – Lazaro Hernandez

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Making a note of what areas you are/will be working with and what you know about

how well they perform today will complete this action. This can be further elaborated if

you know for example that today a certain area is performing one way, and will need to

perform another way in the future (current state, future state, gap analysis). Examples

include mergers and acquisitions, business process changes and strategy alignment.

“If you don’t know where you are headed, you’ll probably end up someplace else.” – Douglas J. Eder

Remember, performance can be judged with a myriad of tools (e.g. surveys,

questionnaires, interviews and methods), and it is up to you to use the assets you have

at hand to do so. But to be clear, you are not measuring performance in this action,

you are simply taking note of what you have learned about it in your efforts.

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PBC Technique Action 2: ParticipateThe purpose of the participate action is to ensure your assessment is valid; to gather

detail information about “core” team and team member behaviors, and to begin to

gather data that you will use later to further “pinpoint” targeted behaviors.

Knowing the basic science that a behavior is: 1) measurable, 2) observable, 3) repeatable,

4) controllable, and 5) activity-based, will help the practitioner identify legitimate behaviors

and eliminate any errors that may have been conducted in the first cction.

Continuing the example from the previous action – “marketing

team members don’t like to attend the daily scrum”, the

practitioner will attend the daily scrum to observe and document

actual behaviors. In this instance, the practitioner may use the

clue that “marketing does not like” (a perception, not a behavior)

to determine that indeed assigned Marketing team members

are not attending the daily scrum (a behavior that meets the 5

attributes, see above). At this point, the behavior is noted using

your choice of medium (MS Excel, notebook, the Exalt – Project

Behavioral Coaching Software etc.) for future reference. The last step of this action is to simply

identify what or who is reinforcing the behavior. This may require further interviews, questionnaires

etc. to identify potential sources of reinforcement and incentives such as supervisors, job descriptions,

incentive bonus programs, peer influence, customer influence, departmental goals and priorities and

more. For this example, we will act is if the main reinforcement identified was the supervisor who has

told direct reports that the daily scrum is not a priority and is IT work not Marketing work. As possible

reinforcers are identified, they must be documented for further examination in the following action.

“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” – Marilyn Vos Savant

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PBC Technique Action 3: Test and MonitorThe test and monitor action of the PBC technique focuses on validation of reinforcers

identified in the participation action. This is a critical step of the technique as reinforcers

are the most crucial element in shaping behaviors to desired outcomes.

In this instance, the marketing supervisor has shaped direct reports’ behavior in such a way

that they will not attend the daily scrum meeting, which is a critical miss, as a main objective

of scrum is to speed completed code to the business and this is enabled by business

representation in the meeting on a regular basis. For the

scrum team and the company, this is not a desired outcome.

However the marketing supervisor is not reinforcing the

required behavior that will lead to the desired result.

It is now the job of the practitioner to identify possible positive

reinforcers for the marketing supervisor. In order to bring the scrum

team to peak performance, team members must be positively

reinforced to attend the daily scrum and to do that, the marketing

supervisor must be positively reinforced to make it happen.

We know from the basics of human behavior science that a

positive reinforcer is ten times more likely to shape behavior and

that successful reinforcers must be 1) personal, 2) frequent, 3) immediate, 4) earned, and 5) social.

Testing possible reinforcers is primarily achieved by understanding what the individual employee

sees as reinforcing. For one employee, a gift card to Starbucks may be considered a reinforcer

whereas to another employee who hates coffee, a thank you card is reinforcing. Still, the frequency

of the reinforcer, the timing, and the legitimacy (was it earned?) must be worked out. Measuring

the frequency of the desired behavior is a sure way to determine the power of the reinforcer.

Following our example, the practitioner has discovered through interviews that the

marketing supervisor really enjoys movies and iTunes music. The practitioner and the IT

Vice President decide to meet with the Marketing supervisor and work to get the supervisor

to reinforce her direct reports to attend the daily scrum in joint management meetings.

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Testing Step

As the meetings occur, the practitioner immediately reinforces the marketing

supervisor for supporting attendance at the daily scrum and also has a plan

to reinforce the marketing employees when they do indeed attend.

As a result, the practitioner has been measuring the frequency of attendance by marketing

employees and notes a continuous increase in attendance. Not only does this achieve the

desired result, but it validated the reinforcers are working because the behavior is observable

and frequent. Had it not been, the practitioner would have to conclude that he had not identified a

reinforcer, because by definition a reinforcer is something that results in increasing the frequency

of a desired behavior that leads to the next step of this action. Once reinforcers are identified

and tested they should be tuned to optimize results. This may include trying different reinforcers

to see if a different reinforcer drives greater frequency of

the desired behavior. It also includes varying the timing

of the reinforcer, the frequency and the legitimacy.

This action should not be skipped because in many

instances the practitioner may find they can reduce

cost of the reinforcer, and even more importantly,

estimate when the need for reinforcement is satiated

so that it can be stopped and cost can be contained.

Satiation is the point at which the reinforcement is no longer needed because the employee

has been habituated to perform the behavior as required. Continuing to reinforce once satiation

is achieved is not cost effective and can accidentally shape behavior in unintended ways.

During this action the practitioner is tracking results including actual cost of reinforcers used

on the effort. In projectized organizations, the practitioner may have a project budget that

includes budget for reinforcers and tracking actual cost will therefore be very important.

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Monitoring Step

Monitoring is an action step focused on measurement of results. These are both results

related to project performance and results of the practitioner’s efforts to shape behaviors.

Using standard tools and methods available in traditional project management to measure

results (examples: Agile burn down charts, budget actuals, earned value analysis) in

combination with PBC metrics (examples: desired behavior frequency, estimated and

actual reinforcement costs, antecedent availability) will contribute to increased rates

of project success assuming the practitioner has a command of the technique.

Critical to this step is the ability by the practitioner to use the analysis of behavior data with

other metrics from the project to create forward looking indicators that predict project success.

The Exalt Project Behavioral Coaching software contains hundreds of known successful

project behaviors that can be used in comparison to behaviors on your project to go beyond

traditional project management metrics to predict

obstacles that are chiefly created by human behavior.

For example, knowing that coding bugs (or defects) are

making their way into production code because you have a

metric that measures this, does nothing to manage a project

behavior where developers are not communicating with

testers and bringing them into the project lifecycle too late.

In contrast, monitoring the behaviors on the project allows

the practitioner to predict the likelihood of project success.

But knowing that there is a direct relationship

between the frequency of unit testing results

review between testers and developers and the frequency of defects rolling into

production code, enables project managers and practitioners to have an extra

level of influence in driving employees to better team together and perform.

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Whereas previously it was a “pain point” that challenged the organization to respond

without fact based data, the practitioner is now able to associate a projected

cost with a proven undesired behavior and results (low project success rates)

and a cost savings with the reinforcement of a known desired behavior. Thus

bringing additional leverage to drive improved performance on the project.

Likewise on projects where desired behavior is already present, but an even

greater increase in project success rates is desired, the practitioner can monitor

core dependent behaviors (for success) and increase their frequency to even

further improve performance and success rates for the project.

Again, the flexibility of the technique is both helpful and problematic. Learning to trigger

and apply the PBC technique is instrumental to increasing project success rates and

should not be attempted without training from an accredited training organization.

Furthermore, use of the accompanying “Exalt Project Behavioral

Coaching” Software will aid in accelerated learning of the technique while

providing known successful project behaviors for comparison.

In closing, project management practitioners must find new ways to leverage the

engine of our projects – human beings. Knowing the basics of human behavior is a

start but we must transform our approach to be more “human centric” if we wish to see

improvements in project success rates. The focus of the last few decades on methodology

and project management tools, has not delivered the promised results, and will not,

until we learn to effectively coach the behaviors on our projects that are blocking us

from the success we want out of our projects and the supporting methodologies.

Summary

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Scot Hanley is a senior technology executive

with an exceptional record of success in

the development and crisp execution of IT

strategy with over 25 years of experience.

He has the proven ability to facilitate revenue

growth and market penetration by delivering

business and technology solutions to meet

business and market needs. The foundation

blocks of his career include innovation,

relationship building, and focus in strategy

& execution, including excellence in Project

& Program Management. His passion

lies in orchestrating the transformation of

companies into market share leaders &

innovators and he has 15 years of leadership

experience specifically in strategies related

to IT Transformation and Modernization.

Scot is an innovative entrepreneur and

consultant with a demonstrated ability to

influence the C-Suite, launch new ventures

and transform organizations. He is skilled at

building and leading top performing teams

and producing enterprise level strategies

that transform capabilities, improve efficiency

and drive down costs. Named “Kerzner

International Project Manager of the Year by

PMI & IIL in 2008” he has special expertise

in PMO startups, Project Management,

leading divestitures and technology and

business process implementations. He is

a trusted consultant that harmonizes the

business and IT strategy into a winning

composition via business alignment.

He is a champion in helping companies

pioneer new ways to harness technology and

execute strategic plans to drive differentiation

in the market via delivery excellence.

He has held a wide variety of leadership

roles including start-up experience

with Hamilton-Ryker Consulting, VP

level roles with BCBS and Synovus

Author: Scot Hanley, PMP, CSM, ITIL, MCP

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Financial and Executive level consulting roles with Ernst & Young as well as CapGemini.

He has experience across the Finance, Healthcare, Telecommunications, and Travel industries

with special expertise in Data Warehousing, Big Data, and Analytics including hands-on

technology experience. His patent-pending technique in project management, “Project Behavioral

Coaching” TM, has been widely acclaimed as an innovative and disruptive force in project

management that recognizes the assessment of human behavior as critical to the success of all

projects and his article on same have been featured in LinkedIn’s online “Pulse” magazine.

Scot’s market analysis of consulting firms in the southeastern US, pro-forma for a differentiated

management consultancy and plans for revenue streams, social/digital media marketing presence and

presentations convinced Hamilton-Ryker, the largest privately held staffing firm in the southeast, to

invest in his concept to launch a consulting firm with strong competencies in improving IT delivery.

He led the strategy for startup of the consulting organization and managed operations of the

company. He was responsible for ensuring the firm delivered superior results to the client,

which included everything from staffing & recruiting coordination for turn-key client projects,

to research and development for our methods, techniques, and supporting technology.

Scot’s work at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama as VP of Technology, was primarily focused

on delivering strategy for the modernization of IT, development of COEs, as well as shared

responsibility with App Dev & Infrastructure to successfully deliver on systems and application

delivery projects across a $120M (annual) project portfolio. As Vice President Technology at

Synovus, Scot led the effort for the “TSYS Spin Off” – divestiture. With TSYS (largest credit

card processor world-wide) he acted as the Executive Program Manager while leading the IT

Professional Services Office at Synovus (TSYS holding company) reporting to the CIO. Additionally,

Scot has held senior positions at CapGemini and Ernst & Young where he drove success for

corporations through alignment of technology and business to achieve strategic goals.

Scot graduated with a BA in English Language and Literature from Columbus State University

as well as a Commission as a US Army Officer. He is a Desert Storm veteran and holds

certifications PMP, ITIL, and CSM. He has spoken at numerous conferences on the topics of project

management and human behavior, innovation, and successful change management in IT.

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Founded in 1995, WGroup is a boutique management consulting firm that provides Strategy,

Management and Execution Services to optimize business performance, minimize cost and create

value. Our consultants have years of experience both as industry executives and trusted advisors

to help clients think through complicated and pressing challenges to drive their business forward.

Visit us at www.thinkwgroup.com or give us a call at (610) 854-2700 to learn how we can help you.

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