Do you suffer from PM Bloat?

A colleague of mine is currently doing some consulting for a major local company. He's noticing an interesting phenomenon. His client is suffering from "PM bloat".

PM bloat is a condition whereby the management portion of an I.T. project becomes a disproportionately large piece of the overall project. His example? They're currently evaluating a project that will take about 50 hours of "actual work" (configuration, testing, training) to complete. The overall project time frame is 300+ hours! That's right - the paperwork, forms checking, collation and rechecking, approvals, pre-SOX audit, reviewing of each deliverable, will take 5 times longer than the actual work.

The project management is getting in the way. And no one within I.T. is noticing!

Here's some reasons why this may be happening.

1. No one has looked at the overall process with an eye towards making it "lean" (eliminating waste in the form of time, checking, rechecking, workflow, approvals etc). I suspect that the PM process grew organically over time or previous processes were modified for better SOX compliance and no one has looked at it since.

2. The process is not automated. If your I.T. processes involve paper, they will be MANY times slower (read: expensive) than if document storage and workflow are electronic. They're also more time consuming to move, file, store, check, retrieve and audit.

3. Each person within the process must be held accountable for the completion of each step. Processes that include excessive double checking aren't designed very well.

4. Make sure that each steps adds value. Question every box on every form. Why is this necessary? Where does this add value? What would happen if we got rid of this piece of information? Why does this need to be verified?

5. Set up appropriate documentation specific to the project. If your IT project is implementing a service with an ASP, it's a different project than developing a customized application from scratch. But I bet your project documentation requirements are the same.

6. Don't accept the excuse "We have to do that because of Sarbanes-Oxley". Certainly you need adequate SDLC processes, but in most cases, if your SOX Control Document is well written (i.e. not so detailed as to cause you compliance fits), your processes can be simplified and still be effective.

So take the PM bloat test. If you're suffering from PM bloat, make your very next I.T. project a review of your project management and documentation processes! Spend more time DOING and less time MANAGING!