Moving Toward a Digitally-Enabled and Professional Project Management Environment at SKILup Days 2024

Uh, welcome to University of Bergen and our talk about our transformative journey towards digitally enabled professional project management. The University of Bergen is located on the western coast of Norway, and we are an internationally recognized university in the areas of medicine, maths, law, humanities, fine art, music and design. And thanks to people that wanting us in, uh, this talk, we would like to, to guide you through our, what we call continuous redefined project and product delivery, which we have been doing for the past seven years.

We going to take reform portfolio management through our production to ownership and to operations. And to make things clear, we are in operation today. So this is our story.

So let's begin where door started. Please. Uh, tell us about what triggered the change, uh, back in 2017.

Okay, thank you, Tori. We, uh, back in 2017, we, um, uh, the first thing I did when I started talking to the university director and the IT director, the first thing they told me was that we have projects that are running out of scope, slipping away. Uh, well we had a forum for IT system owners, but we didn't have any shared portfolio overview of our projects.

We didn't have a common understanding and a shared prioritization of projects, and we had no common framework to use. And that meant project managers were trying to do the best. They were running in different directions, try to achieve their goals and add value, uh, but it was often quite random.

Uh, in 2017, our CIO initiated an organizational change, which resulted in a new business unit, the project division as a part of the IT department. And this was my starting point and my role as the head of this new division was to fix the projects running wild and out of scope. And just before I started in this position, it had been decided to use the Norwegian Governmental Project Guide as the project management framework and the new supporting project portal as the tool for project management.

So we've talked more about the tool in a bit uht, but can you just say a few words about, uh, governmental project guide we have here in Norway? Uh, absolutely. Uh, the governmental project guide, it's actually, it's based on Prince two.

And for me it's, I've had the opportunity to be a part of the team creating, uh, this project guide. Actually. The project guide is tailored Norwegian translation of Prince two, and it's being initiated from our ministry of Politicization and Public Governance.

The project guide is the recommended guide for the project and public sectors and especially digitalization projects. So at this point, we had a framework, we had a tool you want Embrace in 2017. Can you tell the audience about our next step forward part, especially about our academic nature administrative context, and what steps did you take you on for, for the next step of the journey?

Um, when I started, uh, I saw the need to, to do something more than just implementing a tool, um, a framework. So one of the first things I did was I went to the c-level executives and, uh, were able to establish a project management office, uh, that is in a broad sense of the word. So each of the executives, they nominated people from their own unit, and this brought together engaged people across the administrative departments.

And the mandate for the PMO, uh, was threefold and is threefold First, uh, this was the place to build competence in project management, and it was supposed to be a network for exchanging experiences. Second, uh, we had, uh, the ownership of the project methodology, so to manage the methodology. Uh, and a point here, a central point is that the ownership of the methodology is across departments.

It shouldn't just be owned by the IT department where this project division, uh, is placed. And third, uh, and also mostly important is that this, uh, PMO was support, uh, supporting the projects. And here we have made a great effort.

Uh, one thing we did, uh, is to decide, uh, and define some ops in and opt out activities for each project phase. An example, we have an initial conversation, uh, one-on-one between the project manager and a representative from the project portfolio management office. And this was to make sure that the project started in the right direction.

Second, we have, uh, define how to kick off your projects. Uh, we have also closing meetings when the projects are, uh, writing brand reports we're going through and making sure they end the projects in a, in a good way. Uh, second, uh, we also spent a lot of time building facilitators skills in the PMO.

So we had a pool of facilitators who could facilitate, for instance, kickoff for projects. We have, uh, facilitators for, uh, risk assessments, benefits analysis, stakeholder analysis, et cetera. So as part of the competence building, uh, the foundation, PRINCE two was put in place.

And how was this conducted? Yes, as we, we already had decided on the, the governance, uh, project guide, which was based on, uh, prince two, it was quite natural to build our digital digital change and, and journey on Prince two. And my background for taking on the training of the project manager is that I've been a part of the Excels people, that community now for 12 years back in 2010 and being an accredited trainer coaching and on the review team of Prince two in, in, uh, in 2017.

With that in mind, we were able to train and teach over youth and experienced project on all levels from no scales and up to expert level because our approach manager comes, let's say, in different shapes with different knowledge. So anyway, this requires time to learn. It is time to explore a time to mature and how to master your project, be patient and mature slowly.

So we have realized that please do what we need to deliver successful projects. And in a way the rest is silver about bullet out there. You must tailor your project to suit the deliveries and using project that are using Prince two as a common language.

With that in mind, we are trained and certified close to a hundred employees for project boards, project owners, project managers, project members, and some stakeholders. Well, and all in all emphasize on learning by doing. And that approach must be adapted to each and every specific project.

We can't rely only on knowledge without speaking about supporting tools. So June, and it tells about all the tools? Yes, I can tell that.

So the core elements of our digital project management platform are Microsoft 365 and a tailored open source SharePoint application from a Norwegian vendor in Oslo. So this gave us, uh, snapshots of the projects. So our approach was to start with a light tailored framework and methodology, which demanded less of the project managers.

So our philosophy has only been to be pragmatic. Similarly, the functionality and complexity of the digital platform was stripped to a minimum, making the onboarding of new and inexperienced or critically minded project managers and participants easier, so more experienced project managers, they knew where and what was missing and how to find it, how to activate the advanced functionality if required. And over time we've added more functionality to the main version as well, uh, and demand them more from the project managers in line with our organizational maturity.

But, uh, we saw that it was not being used extensively by the project teams. Uh, more or less only the project managers were checking in and updating status once a month in the two, the project portal. So, uh, by that time in around 20, uh, 20, the pandemic struck so tired.

What's happened then? What happened? Okay, we had to change more or less overnight and which required a shift towards digital project management.

Everything was closed down, but we were still able to build upon the work that we have been doing for the past two, three years. So the change in a way came with our project portal, which we could use integrated with teams around the time, time as the pandemic struck and chat documents were available, we, we were more or less digital when the Covid hits us. So Prince two was fully integrated.

Our digital project platform was in place, make it possible to run Prince two projects from an initiation to delivery program portfolio management bigger than gives us a more holistic view of all, all of our, our, yeah. So the frustration now, uh, until now has been that the activity in the project was not visible. It happened anywhere else in their own teams, in their own project managers, uh, personal, uh, storage, space source, some place.

But now we had all in the same place. So as a new digital project management platform and project portal is based on SharePoint, this means that it's all available in one location. We are avoiding duplication of documental information and the use of teams and planner for both collaboration and building product teams gives us an extra dimension to the digital project work.

So to use the software implementation project as an example, we carried out a process of assessing alternatives and writing a project brief entirely through teams. And this was done over a period of just eight days from start to finish without holding a single physical meeting in the group. So all activity happened in teams by that on it.

And this was with real code time monitoring, active use of group or person tagging when input was needed. So by now we had a tool and framework more up and running than in 2017. But a contradiction we often hear mentioned is that PRINCE two and the project guide, the Norwegian project guide is limiting you from choosing different project approaches.

Is this something you can elaborate on tighter? Uh, I try, uh, our work framework, it's used like an overarching framework for all our projects. So, but that, that, that's a situation that, that's important.

Every project has its approach. So when you have approach, you have to make some decisions. And we are using Prince two as the overarching, or let's say agile procurement order for anyway, regardless of the approaches that you are doing with your projects, you need to ask the questions, why are we doing it?

Who is in on the team? What are we going to deliver? What is, and so on.

So one approach that we have been taking is we, we are setting tolerances because we like the project manager to, in a way working separately within tolerances without what, what, what shall we say, interfering with the project boards and, and the project owners. And, and primarily we, we also try to, let's say in in PRINCE two in tailoring, we like to move the accountability responsibility down in a project organization, which makes it easier to maintain an agile way of doing projects. So, and executive directors, they, they are quite important in this boat in the management, but the project manager have to manage that project.

So now we mentioned executive directors. What roles has directors played now you and how we are making this transformation? Well, they're still making decisions, but a key success factor for us has been their support all the way, their active contribution.

So all the directors have contributed personnel to the PMO. As I mentioned, the university director and the assistant director. They commissioned a competence enhancement for the entire directors group, which consisted of, uh, nine half day sessions, so over a year where we went through relevant topics related to portfolio and project management.

So thus they also gained basic familiarity with Prince two and the governmental project guide as a framework among other subjects. So rather than just focusing on training projects managers, which I think a lot of people do in organizations do, we also spent a lot of time building and understanding of the project owner role and the function of a project board with the c-level executives. Subsequently, we have run some refill sessions with the director group on this, which they have encouraged.

So they have thus contributed themselves to lifting UABs maturity here at the university in both portfolio and product management by both supporting the work and enhancing their own expertise in the area. So how this affected, we are speaking about directors, we are speaking about project, we're speaking about project manager, but has this structure change affected portfolio management? Yes, we've done some changes on, uh, the structural level as well.

So a classic challenge is that projects are prioritized without considering the capacity required to execute the projects in addition to all the work you do in, in the regular line, in your own units. So we've changed the mandates of the portfolio board from only evaluating projects to having a comprehensive responsibility for activities at such, so whether defined as projects or not. So it requires considering what resources are needed to carry out the projects and all the other activities we are doing.

So therefore, a much sharper prioritization are now made in the portfolio board than before. Because if something new is to be added, which is much easier to do, if you only are prioritizing projects, they now have to be clear on what is the prioritized or possibly discontinued. So with that in mind, we are realizing that digital transformation, it's about you and a, it's about technology, it's about business opportunities, it's about people, organization, environment.

And we did a quite big change in how we are organized, affected culture, how we work. So have you elaborate on that? Yeah.

And now we're in 2021. Uh, and at the time the IT department underwent a pretty comprehensive reorganization from a more classic hierarchical structure and division, which was reflecting the way work was carried out internally. And we organized us over to a product based organization.

But a additional structure with product teams that have a more comprehensive end-to-end responsibility for their products and with more closely affects how the products are consumed not produced. And speaking of that, will project teams be replaced by product teams? Uh, where we are now, no, uh, we still see the need, uh, for products and, uh, we have landed on a hybrid approach where projects and product teams live side by side.

So product teams as a way to organize resources, have many similarities with product teams, setting up cross-functional teams that have autonomy and the capacity and competence to solve the tasks defined. This is similar between products and project teams, but when major changes secure in our experience, product teams will need extra capacity at times. So here is where the projects still come in.

So in addition, there are, let's say elements in Prince two that we should consider regardless, rather, if you are defining a project or a product or what you, what you're going to call the deliberate. So what we need and what we want to achieve, what is the risk for any activ activities like we are speaking about? We ask the questions, the why, the who, the what, and the what if.

So this has been a major change for us and the university and how we deliver and did we get anyone to help us with this change? Yeah, we didn't do it all by ourselves. So we had a large international consulting firm to support us in this transition.

And I must say they did an excellent job. Uh, but one thing that, uh, I think they missed the target was that first thing they mentioned to us was that now you should stop doing projects and start with products. And this has been a mantra, which I see a lot of places now, uh, moving from projects to products.

So I think the missing are critical dimension here. It's the mindset from projects, the setting up of interdisciplinary teams with the best capabilities to solve the challenges at hand, that must be carried over to product teams. And in many ways the mindset from Prince two that should be continued.

So what you should stop with is if you should stop with anything, is the silos within the functional lines, the old organizational units. That's what we need to move away from, not the projects as a form of organization. So if you go on in for a product organization and stop with projects, you still need to bring with you the mindset from projects and two as such.

So in a way, there's a lot more to do. So the bottom line here is that we are still have projects as far as we can see projects started up back in the pyramids of time, and we guess it going to be the but lots of your Yes. More so, so, so thanks on.

And now it's time to wrap it all up and summarize our talk. So we are trying now to giving you a glimpse into our transformative journey and over the genesises that has made ahead of us seven years, let's go by and we are still a long way to go. So what have we learned?

What are the takeaways here? We are speaking about cultural change. It takes time.

We are speaking about adapting digital project management, speaking about organizational cultures, cultures, we speaking about think takes time, and the need of course for the continuous ongoing commitment that is critical. And one key, key takeaways is that Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams has provided us with the tools that which Y Yun was speaking about, become running a completely project only in teams, mostly without physical meetings. But of course there will be a hybrid there as well and a combination.

Uh, we still need meetings, still need meetings, but the meetings could be online meetings. Mm-Hmm. It doesn't have to be physical meetings.

So yeah, it's a, it's, it is possible to, to, to run the Prince two project totally online. So possibly we are heading towards being an agile organization. So this completes our brief tour, so thanking for listening and have a good day.

Thank you.