Delivery Methodologies | Procept Associates

How an organization goes about executing its projects will make a significant difference on whether it achieves its desired results. For decades, the Project Management Institute (PMI) has been saying that a very important activity for project success is choosing the right "Project Delivery System", which dictates the high-level organization (phasing) of project work, whether work will be done in a predictive and sequential (a.k.a. "waterfall"), iterative, incremental, or hybrid (a.k.a. "agile") manner.

As experts in various approaches to project execution, Procept is well-positioned to assist clients in selecting, adopting, tailoring or developing new project delivery methodologies. Our consultants were involved in the development of several industry-standard methodologies and have helped organizations improve their existing project delivery process and create new alternatives for projects that don't fit the norm.

Methodology Development

Procept advises organizations on methodology selection, and implementation based on the varying business demands in different areas of the organization. For areas where predictability and stability are valued, Procept has created predictive (a.k.a. "waterfall") based methodologies including process descriptions, roles and responsibilities, governance mechanisms, templates, job aids, and associated training. Clients for this service include Bruce Power, Ontario Power Generation, and the Government of Nunavut.

In other situations, organizations require projects that are adaptable to emerging feedback while emphasizing speed to market. For these clients, Procept has developed custom (or adapted existing) agile methodologies (including all of the same elements described above) for clients as diverse as Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, TD Insurance, Government of Ontario, Toyota, two U.S. intelligence agencies, a service division of the Canadian Medical Association, Teranet, and a manufacturer of custom pressure vessels used in the petrochemical industry. Procept has deep expertise in many agile methods including Scrum, Extreme Programming, Agile PM, OpenUP, PMI's Disciplined Agile, SAFe, Feature-Driven Development, DSDM, and LeSS.

Procept has a deep library of proprietary or licensed process assets that it can bring to the table when helping organizations create or update their project delivery methodologies including our turnkey Methodology-in-a-Box offering for both predictive (waterfall) and agile approaches.

EXAMPLE

CIBC wanted to implement an agile management approach within the bank that still complied with regulatory guidelines from The Office of the Supervisor of Financial Institutions (OSFI) and other government-mandated controls and regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley. CIBC had started a process which was incomplete, and not compliant with some of these processes, and they needed assistance. CIBC engaged Procept to work with the process team at CIBC and help them develop their own agile process framework (called “IID”) including extensive consultations with the governing groups within the bank (enterprise architecture, information security, IT operations, risk management, gating, auditing, etc.) to make sure the new agile process framework would align with the bank’s governance processes. Where necessary, small adjustments were made to various processes and policies (such as the business case policy) to create an environment in which agile operations could not only co-exist with waterfall workstreams, but also thrive. Procept worked with governance stakeholders within the bank to get to gain buy in, with extensive knowledge transfer and consensus building. As a result, Procept set up a change management office which included working with the Technology Strategy Committee, made up of all the divisional CIOs across the bank. To plan the rollout, Procept carefully chose pilot teams and mentored them through their initial executions. Procept also created a training program open to all bank employees who wanted to use agile and delivered the program for over 18 months.

Methodology Selection

In today's dynamic environment, a one-size-fits-all approach to selecting a project delivery approach will not maximize success, as each project faces different challenges that would benefit from an optimized strategy. The Project Management Institute (PMI) suggests that one should "Design the project development approach based on the context of the project, its objectives, stakeholders, governance, and the environment using 'just enough' process to achieve the desired outcome while maximizing value, managing cost, and enhancing speed." (12 Principles of Project Management, 2021) Developing an approach from scratch for each project is wasteful, as best practices to deal with specific challenges have been captured over time and which can be reused on future projects. Organizations tend to configure these best practices into methodologies.

Generally, methodologies can fall into four main classifications: defined (a.k.a. "sequential" or "waterfall"), incremental, iterative, or agile (which combines both iterative and incremental approaches). Within each of these general classifications reside many different methodolgies, each with its own strengths and weaknesses that may be optimized for specific types of project (e.g. software development, new building construction, or pharmaceutical industry R&D).

Procept will assess an organization's project governance structures and procedures, regulatory environment, corporate culture, and common project types and challenges to help select the right methodology (or combination of methodologies) to use as a standard for the organization. Then, we help tailor the base methodologies to meet the organization's specific circumstances, producing methodology guidance and deliverable templates as required. Finally, we develop tools to help the organization's staff choose the right methodology for an individual project, ensuring they make optimial selections.

Procept has several examples of these pre-configured methodologies available as baselines in our Methodology-In-A-Box (MIAB) offerings. These MIAB offerings have beeb used as a starting point for customization by organizations such as Canadian Medical Protective Association and eHealth Ontario.