Finally let me reflect on some of the approaches we are taking to program and project management across the Tax Office.
We categorise our projects into policy, compliance and administrative projects – and we have literally hundreds of them.
A part of the challenge is the sheer number and variety of projects that exist at any one time. At any one time, we have 100 or so policy projects at various stage of maturity. We also have a large number of compliance projects, not all of which are managed formally as projects at the moment, and we have a number of administrative projects. The Change Program is easily the biggest of these and, in fact, through the Change Program we have closed down a number of other projects to keep the focus on the main game.
Apart from the Change Program, the main corporate project management focus to date has been on policy and on IT projects. There has been hesitancy in some other areas to apply project management approaches. This might be because of behaviour, attitude or cultural issues or just unfamiliarity. But there are also some more direct barriers. These include:
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poor understanding of how to differentiate between project and business as usual work;
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a perception, often justified, that full project management methods are too complicated for many situations, so that ‘one size fits all’ is not appropriate; and/or
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limited integration with other governance and management processes e.g. business planning in the annual planning cycle and regular governance reporting.
To address these and other issues, and with the Commissioners’ endorsement, we commenced a Project Management Improvement project about 18 months ago.
Some initiatives at the governance level include:
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integration of project management into existing business processes such as business planning, to achieve an equivalent standard of governance and reduce duplication;
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clearer project sponsor and manager accountabilities;
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introduction of formal review points (stage gates) for major programs and projects; and
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review of the relevant corporate policies, including a new Practice Statement for project management and a formal assurance process – particularly important in the complex and decentralised environment in which most of our projects necessarily live.
At the methodology level we are developing:
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clearer ‘program’ as opposed to individual ‘project’ approaches, recognising that it is very common for projects to be part of a larger program;
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uniform approaches to project identification and profiling;
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methodologies that can be more readily tailored to suit project characteristics, including a 3 Tiered Approach, with more rigour required for larger high impact projects (Tier 1) and less for smaller low impact projects (Tier 3);
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alignment of related methodologies and disciplines (e.g. change management, design, systems development) within the overarching project management approaches; and
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appropriate technology support to assist managers and staff in project governance and management.
These initiatives are, in some cases, building on the learnings from the Change Program. However, they also recognise that such approaches would be ‘overkill’ for many of our projects. The work is showing promising signs of bringing a practical approach to achieving the undoubted benefits of project management approaches, without burdening managers out of all proportion to the value.