Business ownership makes or breaks projects
Change managers have a decisive role in establishing business owners.
The longer I work in the fields of change management and project management, the more I am certain that the number one foundation to a successful project is business ownership.
What’s more, if a project team doesn’t take heed of strong business ownership, then the likelihood the project will fail — that is, critical stakeholders will view the project as a failure — is, I believe, almost 100%.
Why do I feel so strongly about business ownership? And what is business ownership, anyway?
Let’s start with the second question. Business ownership means, in the context of PM and change management, the project’s customers in the business own the project — not the project delivery team or broader program delivery area.
Effectively, this means that the customers in the business (whose job it is to service the business’ customers, either directly or indirectly) are clear in their own minds that the project is for them and, as such, they have a big say in the direction the project takes — albeit, in negotiation with the project delivery area who may be funding the project and / or provides specialist project delivery services — and they will take full responsibility for sustaining the project’s benefits once the project is closed out.
If I had to put this concept into one easy, bite-sized phrase I would say that having a strong business ownership culture means the customers feel that the project is being done with them, not to them.
Now back to the first question: why am I so passionate about business ownership of projects?
Because without business ownership, the project team runs the huge risk of making decisions that are not in the best interests of the project’s customers — in effect, the customer is left ‘out of the loop’ when it comes to customer-critical decisions, such as:
What work should be in- and out-of-project scope?
What will be the project’s budget so the job gets done and the results are realised?
What business process improvements should be included as part of the project?
Agreement to, and ownership of, project benefits
Agreement to, and ownership of, project risks
Review and approval of stakeholder requirements for system implementations or improvements.
Now, don’t get me wrong — the customer can’t always have carte blanche with these above decisions; negotiations need to be had with the project team, because the project team are specialists in project delivery, but the project’s customers need to be ‘in the tent’, and they certainly need to be heard and know they are taking ownership.
The drawback to going without business owners in any project is two-fold. First, if the customer feels unable to control the project in any way, they relinquish ownership of it, which means the project team carries all project risks single-handedly, including the risk that the project isn’t accepted by a broad base of customers.
Second, if there are no business owners established, once the project closes out, the lack of business owners means the expected benefits aren’t ‘owned’ and realised over time within the business. Again, this has a habit of negating any project’s stated goals.
What about the steering committee?
What about the project governance, you ask? Isn’t it the role of the project’s steering committee to make the above bulleted decisions? Well, yes and no. Yes, they must be making these decisions — but, no, they shouldn’t make them without these decisions also being taken by the business owners.
The project’s steering committee may well prove effective in providing this business ownership, but in my experience, they don’t always. Often times, steering committees can be stacked with project-delivery people and / or senior business people, but under-represented by customers who actually do the work, who know the business processes and are the ultimate beneficiaries (or otherwise) of the project. These are your business owners.
(Side note: Just to clarify — because I often get asked this question — business owners are NOT the same as working groups. Project working groups consist of subject matter experts (SMEs) that the project calls on to help guide delivery of the project’s outcomes. You will need to keep your business owners abreast of the work of your working group and, at times, you may need your business owners to approve outputs from your working group, but business owners and working groups are not the same thing.)
Identifying and establishing business owners
As you can clearly see, I am a champion of business ownership of projects. But how do you establish business owners in the first place?
This is where the change manager on the project team comes into play. (Or, if you don’t have a change manager, then the project manager will have to take on this role.)
The way I go about establishing business owners is to take a look at the end-to-end process that will be improved and / or impacted by a project. What are the business areas and who are the business leaders in those areas?
Once that’s established, I then work with the project manager to agree on a process to bring these business leaders into the fold and, in so doing, convert them into business owners for the duration of the project (and beyond).
I’ve found that the most effective way to ‘lock in’ business leaders as project business owners is to:
Go to the top — approach senior leaders (the managers of your target business leaders), explain the importance of the project and ask if they would be business owners or delegate to their respective managers to become business owners for the project. It’s important that all your business owners are in senior positions and that they represent the senior leaders.
Be sure to explain what the role involves — it’s important that your prospective business owners know what the role will involve (e.g. one meeting per month) as well as the definition of a business owner in the context of your project (i.e. to represent the business in their business area and take ownership of the project from the perspective of customer delivery, including after project close-out).
Accept that business ownership might change — unlike your project’s steering committee, your network of business owners is informal and, as such, some of your business owners might find they don’t have the time to continue in that role, or they change roles so it doesn’t make sense for them to remain a business owner. If that’s the case, that’s to be accepted — the only critical thing is that another senior person be delegated to take on the role and that no business owner role is vacant.
Once your business owners are in place, then the CM’s work is about maintaining that engagement and communication with them (maintaining monthly meetings, for instance), and ensuring they make customer-critical decisions as per the bullet points above.
Lastly, while you may have a network of business owners, it won’t always make sense to meet them as a group — it might be better to meet them as individuals and then communicate updates to them as a group. Of course, that’s a decision you will need to make based on the specific context at-hand.
Ultimately, this is more work for the project team, but, to me, it’s one of the most valuable activities any project team can do.
Image by 0fjd125gk87 from Pixabay.