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It is ALL about Alignment

When I put “Project Alignment” in a Google search the AI Overview comes back with the high level benefits of alignment as follows:

These benefits can be true if the project is well aligned… AND the environment in which the project is run is also aligned. It really is a question of degrees and how much of a benefit is important to your organization with willing and authorized people to make that alignment happen.

Let’s say you are charged with delivering project scope, in a timely manner, within budget, and dealing with varied stakeholder’s requirements, and organizational mandates…that don’t match. It may be nothing new for you. This is a time to consider perspectives. On the one hand if there wasn’t this mismatch the organization may not need you in the first place. On the other hand, if you don’t have the education, experience, and mindset to tackle these mismatches this may be your last project at this organization. For one job I was the fourth PM that they had hired to tackle a set of problems. The three before me went away… I was able to align the project work and expectations and effectively see the three resulting projects succeed.

Some organizations will be established enough, and have management engaged and knowledgeable enough to make your job as a project practitioner a bit easier, where you can focus on project work. You may want to look at my other post on reading between the lines on job descriptions to know what you are getting into. Even in good project environments there can be some projects, like major change initiatives in tech and/or human behavior, where you will find mismatches that you need to resolve to get the job done.

While there are many important elements to project management, in whatever methodology you are using I don’t find it hard to say that “Alignment” is the most important. Whether this terminology is used or not, in the project realm I have always been hired to organize, coordinate, and get the job done. To do this well, alignment is required between all, or at least the majority of many variables, stakeholder needs, hard requirements, risks, finances, benefits, etc.

In this article we will dive into and possibly extend your thinking about how to align the elements that are likely within your “project.” We will also cover some big impact elements that are likely outside of your project scope that can affect yours and your project’s success. 

There will be many alignment topics that I cover in this and other articles. This one should give you some initial insights into how I organize and align. Then we can dive into more specifics in other posts.

Alignment Inside Your Project

Rule #1: Find and align to the real primary purpose of the project. Agendas and sales abilities are factors you should learn how to assess and discern real, sometimes hidden, purposes. It can sometimes take patience and skill to tease out the core project priorities from stakeholders. Here are a few tips on finding that core purpose.

    • Understand what this project’s benefits really are, or at least what they are intended to be.

    • Determine what you think and believe are realistic benefits (do your own research and assess). 

NOTE: If you don’t agree with management/stakeholders you might be wrong, OR you might be exactly right. Don’t make it a disagreement. You may not be an expert on the topic. BUT, you should find a way to represent the range of possibilities, communicate it well and build benefit management into your communication, risk, and change plans.

This should go without saying, but the sooner you find the “real” purpose, the sooner you can start aligning the many other project elements to this purpose. 

Rule #2: Discover and use a viable methodology for the purpose. Your group or organization may have standards, norms, rules on what project method you use. Be open minded about the possibilities of what you could do. If you don’t see a way to accomplish the project benefits using this methodology have a heart to heart talk with your manager with options you think are viable, as well as impacts of doing the project in ways that may cause extra work, capped off with a recommendation. I have done projects in agile, waterfall, and varied shades of hybrid that work within the environment’s framework. Not all of these were the norm or standard for the group that I was able to negotiate. And others I did not enjoy that were not a good methodology match to the project that made more work, lengthened the timeline, and caused excessive stress. 

There are multiple ways to deal with a mismatch between the methodology, the environment, and the project needs. Find a route that you can make work and keep that alignment with your management… if you want to keep the job.

Alignment Outside Your Project

You may not have control over elements outside your project scope. However, you should work to find if your project has the potential of getting delayed, re-directed, or canceled if at all possible. After all, as a project practitioner your charge is to organize, manage, and deliver the project and its deliverables in a timely manner, within budget, and with the scope. I have seen a couple of PMs get canned when their projects were affected from factors outside of their control, because they didn’t see the impacts coming and didn’t even have them on their risk plan. 

You might ask, how do I become aware of and influence these elements outside my project? 

Let’s start with some leverage points that are within your control to first become aware of risks outside of your project.

Leverage your work in rule #1 above as well as other discovery work. As you are in your initiation/discovery/story development phase take the chance to interview and understand the purpose and how the pieces fit together with dependencies that you will need to deal with in any event. Do not stop asking relevant questions when a stakeholder says something like, “But you shouldn’t have to worry about that since it is out of the scope of your project.” If it is relevant or you get a sense that it may be a risk, simply ask them to go on, and/or start using the “5 why” method to ask questions of why is that the case? to drill to the detail so that you can better understand context and the bigger picture.

A quick example from my experience relates to my being the fourth and only successful PM, mentioned earlier in this post. I was only able to find success in one project by first understanding an operational problem in a group that was clearly outside of my project scope. I made a recommendation to my boss and got approval to help them resolve their operational issue. Then the group manager turned very positive from the help and my project had no further significant challenges. 

Leverage your work around rule #2 above on methodology. At the root of methodology is process. You should make yourself aware of the processes within your organization. Especially the ones that affect projects normally. And I would encourage you to always expand your knowledge and ongoing awareness of processes elsewhere in your organization and those that your organization does business with (clients, suppliers, government, etc.) that you might not understand or be aware of and that may have impacts in direct or indirect ways on you and your project.

Process is what people and machines do… likely with money attached to these roles and tasks. Understanding who conducts these processes and their agendas, as well as what is being done… or in some cases what is supposed to be done can provide insight for you in regard to how or if the benefits of your project can be achieved. Again, keep asking until you get a good understanding sufficient for you to apply risk measures into your project plan if needed.

Put your awareness of outside risks into your project plans, risk plans, communication plans, and benefits management plan. They may or may not be relevant and sizable risks. But your awareness and understanding of them hopefully should at least make them visible to manage appropriately.

Considerations

Benefit Management:  I have been in multiple organizations that claim they do or want to do benefit tracking. This is the heart managing the real priority and value of project outcomes. This is a topic sometimes discussed at many organizations. Unfortunately, in some cases the up front optimistic promise of the project outcomes doesn’t match the reality after the project is complete… even if the project did meet scope, timeline, and budget. This puts a damper on management’s desire to support or in some cases even allow benefit tracking. This is an alignment topic to be worked out with management. If there is a drive to measure, align, and improve, this is a worthwhile effort. You may consider tracking this within your group if not widely accepted. It can help with better benefit estimations, resource planning, and project portfolio planning… and better overall alignment.

Continuous Improvement:  Having a true continuous improvement mindset puts people in a setting of wanting to improve and better align and streamline. This is where you capture input from retrospectives and lessons learned, AND then actively make improvements to become more aligned.

Individual Skill Sets:  Consider expanding your skill set and relevant topic awareness. I have entered brand new industries and new organizations where some of the everyday language from subject matter experts was initially foreign to me. I determined years ago that as a project practitioner I needed to  understand what my projects were to deliver and how. While I have worked with PhD’s, engineers, and industry experts I did not have the time to get all the degrees and extensive experience in each realm. But, I found a way to improve my knowledge through certifications and study to get to a more useful state in the realms in which I work. So, some of my certifications I’ve tagged as BS meters. I earned these so that others couldn’t talk over or around me on project work and push things on a project that didn’t belong there.

My Take

Alignment is what we do in the project realm, you and me.

You may note from the explanations that alignment requires some investigation, discovery, and action. Alignment is only accomplished through proactive efforts to get people, processes, and tools/technology working well together.

Some may claim that alignment, especially outside of your project scope, is not your job. If someone hires me I see it as my job to improve the organization in primarily my role, but also in any way that I can. If others don’t agree with you taking on alignment in the form of being more aware for potential project risks and making recommendations for better alignment you may want to dig a bit deeper into manager and/or organization purpose.

Next Steps

Consider and document how you can become more aware of and effectively manage alignment for your projects in the above realms.

Make an action plan on how you can connect factors and possible impacts inside and outside of projects within the organization. This may be in the form of collaborative risk management planning.

Stay tuned for other alignment articles with other specific approaches and examples.