-Effective Project Portfolio Management Strategies
-Challenges and Opportunities in PPM Tools
-Implementing Technology in Organizational Processes
-Effective Deployment of PPM Tools
IDC White Paper: The Power of Next-Gen Project and Portfolio Management
https://www.smartsheet.com/inside-smartsheet/research/IDC-project-portfolio-management-whitepaper
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Oscar Gonzalez (00:01):
Welcome back to another episode of Lean by
Design Podcast.
Today we have a few thingswe're going to talk about in the
world of project and portfoliomanagement.
There was a white paper thatwas recently sponsored by
Smartsheet.
A disclaimer we are users ofSmartsheet.
I have been using it for rightabout eight years.
(00:25):
I've seen the evolution of thesoftware of the company that
just reached $1 billion inrevenue.
Congratulations to them.
They recently released a whitepaper that they sponsored with
IDC.
We'll link that into the shownotes.
Really, the question that theywere looking to get answers to
(00:48):
was, in this ever-changing world, in this industry biopharma
industry where projects andadvancements are becoming ever
more complex, the work continuesto increase and these
developments continue toincrease and at times are viewed
as disruptions.
They can shift a flexible modelthat has been necessary after
(01:11):
COVID, that these organizationsnow need to start really have
clear and direct messaging onhow to manage the work across
these hybrid teams, theseprojects, these teams and time
zones.
One of the questions that theyhad were that there are
organizations out there that arejust they're crushing it.
(01:34):
What is contributing to theirsuccess, to their thriving
organizations, with teams thateffectively communicate, that
effectively align, that it justseems like everybody is on the
same page all the time.
What are they doing?
This was focused on the projectprogram portfolio management
(02:00):
tools.
If you take a look at the whitepaper, you can see the
questions that they had there.
The white paper had a total of629 respondents from business IT
.
It was a global survey in fivesectors yes, healthcare, life
(02:24):
sciences, it, education andgovernment.
What they did was they askedfor business priorities over the
next 12 months to understandwhere these organizations were
and what they were going toprioritize over the next few
years, over the next few monthsthe actions to drive the results
, the priorities to drive thosestrategic results.
(02:45):
What does all that mean?
How are these organizationsrunning this?
That's what we're going to talkabout today.
Very interesting stuff,lawrence.
I took a look at this report andit didn't really feel shocking
to me, but I think that in somecases it would, because there
(03:08):
does seem to be this big move toinvest in project tools that
allow you to be very flexibleacross the organization.
We've already talked aboutAI-driven processes that are.
It seemed to be the topic ofconversation In the conferences
(03:30):
past week at Scope in Orlando.
Ai was probably every otherconversation.
We even had conversations withmembers of the FDA, with
representatives from the FDA onAI, which a guidance is going to
be coming out on clinicaltrials and AI in the coming
weeks, a draft guidance that FDAhas been asking for us to
(03:54):
provide feedback from, becausewe're the ones that are going to
be running trials.
We, as in organizations, pharma, et cetera they're looking for
us to understand more of howpeople are using AI.
Just a couple of top hits fromthe white paper 93% of the
(04:19):
respondents believe that theworkflow automation is a
priority, but less than 79% arereporting less than half of
their project portfolioworkflows are automated.
I know it's in sense.
(04:43):
Even so, when they look atorganizations of higher maturity
, they're finding that they'resix times more likely With
higher project portfoliomanagement maturity, are six
times more likely to see astrong or unlimited scalability.
Isn't that what everybody wants?
Lawrence Wong (05:02):
Yeah, I think from the finding that you said
about.
Obviously, I think it's aconsensus that the workflow
automation is a priority, butironically, only half of their
workflows are automated.
Why is it that they?
Why is it the case?
I think, about some of theprocesses that we've worked with
(05:23):
from our clients and thereality is that it's messy.
It's often hard to automatesomething if it is not clean and
that you don't have a definedprocess for it that aligns with
the strategy and the goals ofthe company.
To me, it sounds like theactions of companies are not
matching the priority they have.
They're saying one thing butthey're doing something else.
(05:45):
I think, as I glance throughthe study, the thing right above
it and the key findings wassome of the challenges that they
think it says here 47% ofrespondents cited the expense of
(06:05):
these tools, 44% citedmicromanagration with other
systems of records and then 41%cited postmanagement concerns In
the realm of project management.
How accurate is this assessmentas it relates to the work that
(06:26):
you do in managing some of thesedrug development projects?
Oscar Gonzalez (06:31):
You know, I think if I tackle the first one,
which is sort of expense, Idon't see that so much.
I think there are differentsoftware that's available that
has varying levels of licensing.
Now, when you're looking atenterprise solutions, which
typically you're going to wantyour PPM tool to be
(06:54):
enterprise-wide.
Why?
Because everyone's runningprojects, whether or not it's a
R&D or a clinical project.
There's probably some projecton the finance team to create a
little bit more efficiency.
The legal team probably has aproject where they're trying to
initiate a new system.
There's some level ofmanagement, even executive
(07:15):
leadership.
They have these leadershipcommittees that they need to be
able to log in.
Who's talking, what's theconversation, what are the
decisions from this?
What are the actionableoutcomes from the four hours
that we just spent with the topleaders of our organization?
These things need to be loggedin somewhere.
They need to be availablesomewhere so that you can have
(07:36):
it as a reference tool.
You can use it to sort of powerthe next steps.
So I haven't seen too much ofthe expense side Now, in terms
of how much that expands, Ithink it's very common for folks
to have you know fororganizations to maybe focus
(07:59):
those tools in their project andportfolio management space
initially.
And then what I find is thatover time, as adoption, as usage
begins to grow, that sort ofaccessibility becomes more
organic and folks begin to askfor more access.
(08:22):
They ask for licensing becausethey saw that this group did
something that was reallyhelpful and had a great way of
organizing it and it sent outalerts without having to do that
.
It decreased the amount ofmanual emails they had to do.
So organically it starts togrow a little bit.
I think it is difficult tocreate an enterprise-wide
(08:44):
solution right off the bat andjust say, hey, everybody's going
to be doing this because youknow, as you mentioned before,
those are some of the challenges.
What was that second one?
Can you remind me one more time?
Lawrence Wong (08:56):
The second one was lack of integration.
But I want to go back to thepoint that you made about
expense.
I think, depending on how youdeploy, obviously, there's just
a general rule.
You're not committing fully tothe enterprise tool that I have
to do in a pilot Understanding.
Okay, does this actual solutionwork for this project that I'm
(09:17):
trying to thrive?
And then once you kind of workout the kinks, then you can go
okay, let's scale this thing andlet's get some more users on it
Obviously, nobody's looking ata cool and smart thing or yeah,
let's just get 5,000 people toget on the platform and start
using it, because they're notgoing to use it.
And when you do that, that'swhere the expense comes in.
(09:37):
I think the other part of it isunderstanding how expensive is
it now for you to run yourprojects without this BPM tool,
right?
I don't think people oftenthink about how much that
operates in cost versus.
Hey, if we use this thing tospeed up the project, what does
(09:59):
that look like?
What is the cost savings fromusing this tool?
Oscar Gonzalez (10:04):
What is this costing?
But what is it costing yourorganization to not have a
solution?
What is it costing your team tobe in a struggle to locate
information, to identifyinformation?
And what's really neat aboutthese PPM tools?
(10:25):
In many cases they are supercustomizable.
So what I mean by that is youcan create a level of
customization for your ownorganization.
Now, to learn and to understandhow these systems work is pretty
simple.
There's usually some type oftag and you start to find the
(10:48):
similarities between activities,between initiatives, and you
are sort of connecting all ofthese things via specific
categories, project numbers,people, et cetera, so that you
can build these robust reportsthat give you specific views
that you're looking for.
The idea here is that theseproject portfolio management
(11:11):
tools they're looking into youroperations and you are asking it
to give you back somethingspecific.
You're not going back in thereto look at every line by line
item but, as I mentioned to mostpeople, you're collecting that
information somewhere, whetheryou're writing it in a notebook.
That really doesn't give youmuch leverage with that piece of
(11:32):
data, because now that piece ofdata is a handwritten piece of
data on a piece of paper andit's not digital, it's not
digitized.
So when you start to use thesePPM tools for sort of your
day-to-day activities, you startto find that most of what
you're doing in the day-to-dayis now has a digital footprint.
(11:53):
And what can you do with that?
Well, you can get numbers, youcan get metrics, you can connect
it to somebody else.
So I think that there's a lotof value there.
And again to your point whatdoes this cost look like now if
you don't act on bringing thatunity into that project, into
(12:14):
those operational tasks?
Lawrence Wong (12:18):
Yeah, so that touches on the lack of
integration with other systemsand records, and I think the
last point here is about 41%study of things management
concerns.
So, again, not all PPM toolsare creating a tool, right.
So you can have a PPM tool,let's say, like a Microsoft
project, where you have aproject file, but that file
(12:39):
doesn't allow you to collaboratewith other people, and so, even
if you have something to do, itdoesn't mean that you can
necessarily share it with verylimited visibility, unless it
relies on some SharePoint, whichthen you'd have to download,
update and there's all these, Iwould say, areas of friction
that just make you not want toupdate it constantly and you're
(13:01):
having to download things,upload, and it's much less
flexible than, let's say, asolution like SmartSuite, where
you have some, uh, theseessentially nodes that you can
create, right, that connectinformation from all different
sorts of speech reports thatfeed up into a dashboard.
So that was kind of my opinionon you know, I think these
(13:26):
challenges are well articulatedin that, yes, they are some top
challenges.
I think something that I've seen, just from larger companies,
maybe not committing fully toSmartSuite or some other PPM
tool, is they're just creatingtheir own tools internally right
.
So, whether you're using somesort of like coding or maybe you
(13:50):
are leveraging some of theseMicrosoft tools, you're building
essentially something for yourown organization and then trying
to scale it to your team, butagain, that's that's like a
grassroots thing and it's verylong for you to do that and
you're essentially designing aproduct for your company.
It used to be a lot harder,maybe a decade ago, but now with
(14:13):
all these new AI tools andanother, uh, essentially
software building tools, you canleverage those to create the
solution that you are.
But again, it's still not asfluid and dynamic as some of
these fast products like theSmartSuite.
Oscar Gonzalez (14:30):
You know, I think one thing that I give a
smart team and some of theseother project management tools
credo to is that when I try todesign a solution, I'm not going
to look directly with a finemicroscope, super fine focus on
our industry.
I'm a firm believer that thereare solutions outside of our
(14:54):
industry that influence us.
And so when we do create whenwe got, I think one of the risks
when we do go down the the theroute of creating our own
software, you're sort of limitedby what your knowledge is of
the space that you work in.
And it's very interesting to mewhen you start to see you know,
(15:15):
for example, smartsuite has alot of templates that are in
finance, in HR, and I play in mywedding on SmartSuite and had a
dashboard actually to show howmany people and the timing and
etc.
You start to see there areevent planning on there.
You know all these things that,okay, well, that's event
(15:37):
planning.
Well, guess what?
That offsite meeting thatyou're having, that's event
planning.
It doesn't mean that you'replanning a wedding, it doesn't
mean that you're planning adebutant ball or what have you,
but it is still in concept, inprinciple your offsite, your
team offsite, is an event thatyou're planning, so you can
(15:57):
leverage those types of tools,and it sort of gives you a
different perspective.
Rather than this is science,this is so different than
anything else, this is so uniquein many ways it is, but in many
ways it is also standard workthat is happening in other
places, just with a differenthat.
So what I like about these PPMtools is that they sort of give
(16:20):
you a different perspective forhow to use something, because,
you know, I love Biopharma, but,holy cow, we love to make
things very complex and itdoesn't always need to be that
way.
So you know, I think that'salso part of what that change
management you know looks like,and I was actually surprised
that the change managementwasn't higher.
(16:41):
I was expecting that to be oneof the top ones, because you
hear about failures of adoption.
You hear about well, we createdthis, we designed this and no
one has really adopted it.
But as soon as you start askingleading questions, you know how
many, how many trainings haveyou guys done since then?
Oh well, we did one when welaunched, all right.
(17:04):
So you know this.
This is something that you'renow trying to create habit
within your organization, withinyour team.
You're now trying to build thesefoundations, and the only way
that you're going to do that isby creating new habits within
that team, for this is how we'regoing to work through these
(17:24):
items here.
You can do everything else theway that you decide that you
want to do it, but right now,these are the core things that
we need to be able to work with,report from and train in.
And when you start to establishthat and you create this level
of visibility, this consistencyin hearing about the dashboard
(17:48):
that was built or hearing aboutthe reports that are being
automated, it sort of permeatesthrough the teams, through the
organization, and that reallylends into that change
management, because then youstart getting a lot of curious
people, and that's what you want.
You want the curious people tocome in and say, hey, this was
(18:08):
really cool, that this came tome, like, this is exactly what I
needed and I didn't even haveto email anybody.
How does this work and can youtell me about it?
And that's when you start tosort of cultivate this layer of
adoption and it's continuing.
It's a continuation as thingsevolve.
Lawrence Wong (18:28):
Yeah, I mean, these tools are essentially
creating opportunities forpeople to do better work, right?
I think you had a point aboutjust making sure that the tools
that you know, the key formtools, are maintained over time,
whether it's training or havingspecific, I would say,
advocates in your organizationthat are maybe comprehensive
(18:53):
essentially right, knowing theinternet, of using the tool
itself.
And it's very similar to, Ithink of, when you buy a car and
you've been, you know, walkingsomewhere for the entire time
and you take the car, you driveit to wherever you're supposed
to go and you know, maybe you'redriving local traffic, but the
car can also go on the highwayand you can go a lot faster and
(19:14):
go to those places.
But if you do not know what thecar was capable of, you
wouldn't know to use it right.
So I think that my point isjust making sure that people are
aware that this thing was usedfor.
You know one particular projector you know one particular
process and they're going tostart piquing their curiosity
and go okay, well, what otherthings can I use this for?
(19:36):
right, and that goes back toyour point about drawing people
in and making sure that you knowthis thing that you've heavily
invested in, not just in termsof dollars, but time and people
and putting up some of yourhighly strategic initiatives in
this vehicle.
Oscar Gonzalez (19:57):
Absolutely.
I mean, you brought up a reallygood example.
You know, if I were to ask youright now, have you pressed
every button that exists in yourvehicle right now?
Do you know what every buttondoes?
Absolutely not.
You heard that there, ladiesand gentlemen, absolutely not,
and that's very common.
And that's also very commonwith some of the software that
(20:17):
we have.
You know that we work with everyday because you know, what we
look for is how quickly can Iget my job done?
We don't really look at how doI expand the spaces or the
technology that I'm using, howdo I understand that more to
even further optimize the workthat I'm doing?
(20:39):
You know, even from theperspective of going into we'll
even take a simple example ofgoing into Excel I go to Excel,
I click here, I filter, I createa pivot table, I get this, I
create a chart, etc.
You can develop a macros thatliterally records each of your
(20:59):
steps and anytime you decidethat you need to execute that
series of steps, you can clickon the macros and it will
actually do that entire thing.
Now you have to do a little bitof setup in the beginning and
there's going to be a little bitof trial in there in the
beginning, but I would ratherspend that two hours up front so
that every time I do this, thisprocess, within something as
(21:20):
simple as Excel, that that'sgoing to take me no more than
five minutes and previouslywould take me an hour.
So these are some of the thingsthat you have to sort of invest
in, not only in yourself, butalso understand the technology
that you have and really digdeeper and ask a lot more
questions of what can I do withit?
How can I do this?
I am doing these levels ofactivities.
(21:41):
This is the level ofinformation that's in here.
How else can I leverage thissystem to empower the work that
I'm doing, to create thoseefficiencies and really drive
down the amount of time that I'mspending recording and taking
more time to review and reflecton the work that we're doing?
Lawrence Wong (22:07):
And aside from some of the, I think for us it's
very obvious some of thebenefits of using the PCN tool.
As you went through the paper,was there anything that you were
very surprised about in termsof how some of the polling was
for the epic intent of like 600plus respondents for this?
(22:29):
And I think for me, the biggestsurprise that I saw was, I
think, somewhere along thebeginning of this white paper it
said that most legacy PPM toolsdon't offer strategic alignment
across stakeholders and teams.
So I think that we're going tohave four user variants in
(22:51):
significant adoption of barriers.
That leads to sporadic uses, inpoor data and requiring a
strong organizational mandateand high expenditure for
deployment and adoption.
So when I read this, I didn't,you know.
I think there's some proof tothis, but I also don't think
that the tools alone offerstrategic alignment.
I think people leadership doright.
(23:14):
You really have to get whoeveris, you know, deciding to commit
to this tool.
They have to be very clear andupfront about why are we using
this and what do you.
What exactly are you trying todo with this right?
Otherwise you go and then peoplejust start complaining about
things, and then they don't useit, and you know how it goes.
Oscar Gonzalez (23:36):
And not just that having the foresight of
where can this take us, wherecan this take us and where can
you know what is the future here?
Because if you look online youknow, oh, this is a work
management tool that you know,takes care of you, know your
task and you can put it here andyou can communicate back and
forth.
Awesome, it's the combinationof all of those features that
(23:59):
are really showing you okay,this is how you can connect all
these pieces.
You need to dictate which onesmatter most to your organization
, which ones matter most.
You know there's tons offeatures within Smartsheet that
I've never touched.
Why?
Well, it's not really for R&Ddevelopment, it's not really for
clinical trials.
(24:19):
It's not built for that, it'sbuilt to manage work.
So we sort of leveraged some ofthose standardized things that
we do to sort of focus ourefforts while, you know, taking
in any additional changes.
I mean, it didn't reallysurprise me when I read that,
(24:42):
because there's sort of this toyour point if it's not really,
if it's not really championedand we're not considering the
strategic direction of theorganization, where would this
even fit for people to actuallydo any kind of work into it?
(25:04):
You know, the idea is that well, we want to scale, or we have
this many projects that we haveto manage.
You know, if you have oneproject, maybe you don't need a
PPM tool.
But if you have six or sevenprojects, nine, 10 functions and
teams that are all involved inthe project, they're not all
looking for the same thing, butthey all need to know where the
(25:28):
project is at all times, just ina different perspective.
So you start to look at whatare each of these teams
contributing to the project?
How do we get that data to alsotalk to what we're trying to
put in together and create thisnetwork of information specific
to that project, and then thatrolls up to your portfolio,
(25:49):
rolls up to your leadership andso on.
And so I think that thosechallenges with adopting the PPM
tools is not only just in thatproject management space, but
it's also going to be in thoseadjacent functions that are also
(26:15):
a part of the team.
You know when I read this.
So when I took this paper, Itook all the data and I started
to ask myself, like, what are weactually talking about here
from an organizationalperspective?
What is the key to providingsuccess here?
And there's three things, andyou hear a lot about it People,
(26:39):
your process and your technology.
And some people are liking thatto sort of your tech stack.
Well, technology isn't going tostop.
Ai is here.
We have to recognize that, butwe also need to prepare for what
that means for an organization.
So, with people, process andtechnology, I actually sort of
(27:00):
created this triangle where itgoes from people to tech and
then, looking at your process,your people and your tech are
going to determine what kind ofprocess you can build out with
the technology that you have.
Your tech is there notnecessarily to augment person,
it's more of to expedite thework that you're already doing.
(27:24):
Okay.
And once you have the peopleand you have to develop that
support too, you cannot say thisyear, everybody needs to have a
goal where you're going to havepersonal development, okay.
Well, how are we cultivatingthat in the organization?
Oh, in your free time, get outof town.
(27:46):
You want me to land one of thecorporate goals that exist, for
my bonus in many cases, on myfree time.
Have you worked here before?
There's not really a lot offree time and this is also, you
know, a challenge for folks tosee the value of spending the
time to look for theseefficiencies, to look for these
(28:10):
tools so that they do have thetime for personal development,
etc.
So I look at that, but then Ialso look at different arrows
going in different directions,for example, from the technology
to the people.
You have this level oftechnology.
You need people to champion it.
(28:32):
You need people to root for thesuccess of that technology and
have a level of curiosity,because these technologies are
built not just to stay withinthis small bubble of work or
effort.
Those organizations are goingto continue to adapt and to
adapt their technology thatthey're selling to attract more
(28:52):
clients.
So it is your responsibilitythat when you get a new piece of
technology, when you find theownership, they should know more
about that tool than anyoneelse in the organization, more
than IT, and it is only to theirbenefit.
It gives you visibility as aperson, it gives you ownership,
(29:14):
it gives you a lot ofcredibility when you understand
a system from top to bottom.
But you really have to dig andunderstand what are the
capabilities of this technologythat we're using in all these
different spaces?
And then how do we connect itin as few steps as possible to
give us what we need, and that'syou know, it's just, it's this
(29:36):
little piece here and makingsure that we're developing that
culture of transparency andalignment.
So you know, I think for methere's some key components
there between the people, thetechnology and what processes
you decide to put into therethat you can't really just focus
(29:58):
into one space.
You have to sort of take themall together.
You know what does this meanfor the process?
Is it going to affect anotherstakeholder?
Don't launch the technologythat will affect a process that
is also attached to somebodyelse in a different department
or function.
You need to bring them along aswell, because the expectations
change, the process changes.
(30:18):
So I think, with this, beingable to have those, you know,
and what can leadership do?
I mean support process skills,you know, creating those skills,
creating those resources forpeople to you know, to have
additional training, bringingsomebody in, creating a champion
, cultivating that this stuffbecomes, it becomes habit.
(30:41):
You need to create a habit andyou can only do that with
practice, with focus.
It's an investment in your ownimprovement, your own personal
development, professionaldevelopment.
I mean that's what we'retalking about here.
Lawrence Wong (31:02):
Yeah, I think so to your point about this.
You know three components thatare part of this.
I guess the strategy ofdeploying the TPM school people
talking in process, I think youknow we talked about right
before we were recording justmaking sure that these business
goals are clear.
So that really defines, like,why you even need this in the
(31:25):
first place, right.
And so people are saying, hey,this is, we know where we need
to go, and so now we need tounderstand what blend of the
tech and our skills can weleverage for this particular
process?
Right, and you're right, it'snot a static event, right,
Because business goals change.
People come in and out of yourorganization, the technology you
(31:47):
may learn has more capabilities, and so now all of those things
are influencing that what yourend process is going to look
like.
So, again, what makes thesetools so powerful is that it's
not.
They're flexible and they'readapted to how your business is
scaling, how it's changing, butit requires sponsorship from the
(32:08):
leadership, right, they have torecognize that yes, things are
going to change like.
This is not Pennstone and youhave to really invest in the
people being able to spend time.
A lot of people are playingwith the tool itself, right,
Like you said.
Right, I don't know all thebuttons in my car, but if I have
some time, I'll sit in thereand go, oh, what's this?
And, like you, try to playaround with some of these things
(32:31):
, obviously driving.
But if you're pulled over onthe side of the road and you
have some time to kill, then youlook around and you say, oh wow
, I didn't know my car couldlock, with me just touching the
handle, Like that's something Ifound with my super that I had
no idea about.
So, yeah, I think leadership,giving the time and investing
(32:51):
and allowing people to play withthe tool and develop new
capabilities will make theoverall process more efficient,
but it allows them to thinkabout new innovations that they
could make in some of theseother adjacent areas that you
may have not thought about usingbefore.
But now that you know it'scapable, now you can deploy it
(33:12):
elsewhere.
Oscar Gonzalez (33:14):
Right and regardless if you're going to do
off the shelf or createyourself, there is a time of
adoption.
I mean you're.
We talked about it at the verybeginning.
This is seen as a disruption.
It is being seen as adisruption for the way that
(33:35):
people work.
Why?
Because we've been using, youknow, the same standard tools
that are not connected and wedeposit them into folder
structures that are online in aserver.
Well, none of that data isconnected.
The data that you add inPowerPoint slides, the data that
you add in Word documents andExcel and a notepad and a dry
(33:58):
race board none of that isconnected to any other piece of
data.
And that is critical databecause it captures our thoughts
, it captures our motives, itcaptures our feelings at that
time.
It captures discussion pointsand actions and risks and
decisions.
And until you find a space tosort of combine all of the work
(34:20):
that we're doing.
And this sort of came out in myearly days as a project manager,
because I noticed that no onewas really looking at anything
that I was producing and Ithought to myself what really is
the role of a project managerNow?
(34:42):
I knew everything inside andout because I was constantly the
one that was entering theinformation, but if it doesn't
help anybody else, you know, amI really using my time wisely?
So it was really in that momentof just like I need to make
people.
How do I say this?
(35:03):
I need to make people invested.
I need to get people investedin what I'm doing.
And as soon as we startedputting action items with names
and started flashing those upbecause you need to build again
that visibility and people startseeing their names on there oh,
I didn't realize this.
Well, there's an automation.
You received an email two daysbefore this was due.
From this due date, youreceived another email Like
(35:26):
there's no, like we discussedthis, and then you just conduct
additional training andeventually it becomes that habit
.
It becomes the way you workwithin that organization.
So adoption is a key thing, butyou can't especially in the
initial stages of launching, youcan't just do a one hour lunch
(35:48):
and learn and call it a day,because people need a little bit
more than that.
If you ask me, yeah, if yougave me one hour to be with my
vehicle, I'm not going to knownearly as much stuff as I would
if I get to go into that vehicleevery single day and start to
touch things and figure out howthings move around.
So it's super critical for thatto be cultivated within
(36:12):
organizations and it comes fromleadership, whether it's a chief
of operations at some point orthe CEO themselves.
It's critical to have.
All we want is transparency.
We want everything to.
What's the biggest question youget from leadership?
We don't know what's happening,we don't know when it's
happening, we don't know, wedon't know enough.
(36:34):
And guess what?
Everything that they're sayingis captured digitally somewhere,
but we're putting it in slides,we're tucking it away, we're
putting it in different foldersthat exist in other places, so
we're not connecting all thepieces, we're not connecting all
the discussions.
And that's where one of thecomments from the white paper
(36:57):
and I love the way that theyframe this integrating PPM tools
into the fabric of your work.
So you're weaving in these toolsinto the work that you're doing
every day, so that you don'thave to repeat it, you don't
have to rebuild it, you don'thave to rewrite it, because it's
there.
It's there and now, of course,there's a method to the madness,
(37:20):
to the structure, but that'swhat experience gives you.
I didn't build things the sameway I did when I first started
doing smartsheet.
Now, eight years in, I'm goingto think about eight or nine
steps ahead and say, well, ifwe're going to run and do these
activities here and we're notprepared to make that next step,
we're going to build this in away that leaves that door open
(37:41):
for that next step and we'llcontinue to do that because, in
principle, when you innovate,it's not just one time.
When your people change, whenyour tech changes, when your
process is changed, all of thatneeds to go in unison.
When your process change, youneed to train your people.
When your tech change, you needto change your process and
train your people.
(38:01):
When your people change, youneed to train the tech.
You need to show the process.
They may become a process owner.
So this whole triangle.
They go back and forth becausethey're constantly going to
change.
The only thing that we canpredict is that change is going
to happen.
So we need to know that changedoesn't just happen and then we
(38:22):
just let that sit.
It's going to affect all theother processes and our
technology in that space.
Lawrence Wong (38:31):
Yeah.
So the only I would say proofis that change is coming and
maybe what happens all the timeand there's no way to stop that
from happening, because people,technology and the process
changes as the business changes.
I think you made an earlierpoint about some of the work
(38:53):
that you were doing as a projectmanager sometimes get lost in
the board and maybe not visibleor transparent to some people.
Leadership I think you've onlyPPM tools allows you to have
very concrete data and evidenceto support some of the decisions
that end up thriving, some ofthe progress of the project
(39:15):
Right.
Yes, if you're not using a PPMtool and you're working on a
project where people areconstantly complaining about
something, just becausesomething is being talked about
often doesn't actually mean thatthat's the problem, and
sometimes you need these toolsto be able to measure and use
data to say well, you said thisis a problem but it's actually
(39:35):
not because here in this step,this is where nobody is
recording information and thisis where the gap is Right.
So it just reminds me thatavailability bias that you have,
just because something is inthe space all the time, doesn't
actually mean that that's theissue, but when you have a tool.
(39:56):
That is new for that mindset,and it's just clear.
This is the data, this is theprogress that we've made.
Now your leadership isn'tasking you hey, what's the
status on this?
What's the status on that?
It's very clear.
This is where the holdup is.
Or, hey, we're making progresson this timeline, whereas before
it was?
Oh, I think so, and so is whathappened.
(40:17):
It's like that's not effective.
Like how much time are wewasting here playing a guessing
game on how far we've come orhow much we still have left to
do?
Oscar Gonzalez (40:26):
The conversations change.
The conversations change fromstatus updates to strategy
alignment, transparency,curiosity.
You actually have the time tofocus on that.
You can burn a whole projectteam meeting just throwing
things to the wall to see whatsticks.
(40:48):
What do we know?
What do we not know?
Rather than, hey, what's thestatus?
Things that we can regurgitatefrom the work that we've done
day to day.
That's the whole idea here isthat you create these reports,
you create these dashboards forthose questions.
Leadership, as much asleadership, wants to have unique
(41:09):
questions, etc.
They're probably going to askyou roughly the same types of
questions, so you build out yourspace to allow for those
questions to be answered throughmetrics, reports etc.
So that the question thatactually does come is hey, I've
noticed this over the pastcouple of weeks.
(41:30):
Is this something that we haveconcern about?
How do you think that we shouldapproach this?
Are we doing additionaltraining to ensure that this
doesn't become an issue in thefuture?
Those are the kind ofconversations we need to have,
not hey, what's going on?
Hey, I saw this.
Can you update me on that?
(41:50):
Can you update me on that?
Allow those data sets and thoseoperational data frequencies,
durations, dates, what have yousort of drive.
What is really a topic ofconcern that leadership can
address?
Show them we're at a point.
(42:11):
Oftentimes we wait for top down.
Let's wait for leadership toask us you have all the data,
you do.
Your team, your PPM tool hasthe data in this space.
Start pushing that up.
This is part of that managingup.
Start pushing that up Insteadof getting these ad hoc requests
.
They're driving you crazy.
(42:33):
Now you're going to startpushing all those things to
leadership, the ones thatthey're consistently asking for,
and that's just being driven byday to day work.
Lawrence Wong (42:46):
Yeah.
So you know, beautifully said,and I think we've spent, you
know, much of this episodetalking about the benefits of
the PPM tool, how to deploy it,strategies around managing up
and doing more, I would say, theprocess of the capabilities of
the tools themselves, and also,how do you manage tools
(43:08):
throughout the lifecycle of thetool.
If somebody's listening rightnow and they are in a position
where, let's say, they do have aPPM tool, what one thing they
can do to determine howeffective they are deploying it?
Oscar Gonzalez (43:28):
All right.
So how effective is thedeployment of the PPM tool?
So these things take time.
Now they should take a littlebit less time for the group that
is directly managing it.
So the first things first.
I think where we get a littlebit stuck is that and I've seen
(43:49):
this before we just wanteverybody to use it right away,
right now.
And what happens?
You get a bounce back.
I don't know what's going on.
What is this?
I didn't get a training.
Who's going to train me now?
And the person who has the mostknowledge about that space does
not have the capacity to trainevery single individual person
(44:10):
in the organization.
A one-hour training of thewhole company is not going to
help either.
There's this constant feedingand refeeing.
Could you imagine if youlearned one lesson in calculus
and was like okay, go on and docalculus.
You probably understood alittle bit about that, but
there's no way that you're goingto just continue to take on
(44:32):
this complex mathematicalequations, etc.
This is the same thing.
You're going to learn a littlebit within that one hour, and it
depends on whose training it is.
Some people may train you onthe theories behind it, how it
works, and other people may justwant to see how do I do what I
need to do.
I'm going to teach you how thisactually works, because you
(44:54):
need to understand how to thinkthrough when you want to create
something or when you want tomodify something.
The question is to start askingyourself I think it's very
important rather than you lookat some of these PPM tools and
they mimic tools that we've usedin the past Excel, word, etc.
So it's important for us tocreate this team of champions.
(45:18):
You have this one internalchampion and then you get a
couple of more people and youhave this one team of champions
that are within your department.
Understanding that level ofdeployment there, I think, is
critical.
Then, when you look at youradoption, are you hearing it in
the hallways?
Are you hearing people say, ohyeah, I have a smart sheet for
that.
It's really cool, I'll share itto you.
(45:40):
What does that look like?
What does it sound like?
Are you seeing people usingsmart sheet dashboards to
represent current statuses, live, live data, live statuses?
How is that PPM toolmanifesting within the
(46:03):
organization?
You start to see what peopleare doing.
I mean, I go down the hallwaysof clients and just see numerous
people on PowerPoint slides.
So, at the same token, I wouldexpect to see in numerous people
using a PPM tool becausethey're logging information,
reviewing, etc.
So I would say you have to makesure that you build that core so
(46:25):
strong and in there you allowand in discussing with these
projects teams, you let themknow that you guys are
influencers.
You guys are influencers whenyou start showing other people
the work that you're doing andhow fast and efficient it is.
(46:47):
That is where that sort ofcuriosity starts to come in.
I got a secret for you,lawrence, and for everybody else
that's listening.
People do not like to work hard.
The work that you do can bechallenging, but how you perform
the work through PPM tools, itshould not be your challenge.
(47:12):
Your challenge should not becommunicating what happened.
Your challenge should not berecording things.
Your challenge should not befinding a metric, locating a
document, the work itself.
The industry can have itschallenges Biopharma, the
(47:33):
science so much we don't know,so much we think we know we're
wrong and we haven't figuredthat out yet.
That stuff is hard Should notbe just how we do our day-to-day
work Should not be thechallenge here, and
unfortunately in a lot of placesit is.
Lawrence Wong (47:54):
I think.
To sum it up, I think the finalmessage is, like you said,
creating this support network sothat you can foster these
network effects.
The more people that are usingit, the more they're playing
with it, the more things thatthey'll come up with and
innovate in all sorts of waysfor the way that they work.
But you've got to have thatleadership push from up above
(48:18):
and say, hey, I'm going toinvest and make this easier for
people to use and not harder.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:24):
Right, because you're right, the work that we
do should not be more difficult.
Yeah, make a little competition.
Hey, whoever has the best thinggets a dinner, gets a lunch at
Cheesecake Factory on thecompany for the whole team,
something like that, where itjust really rallies people like,
OK, guys, I think we could dothis and it's going to improve
(48:45):
our output by this.
We have to figure out some kindof competition or something like
that Incentives exactly If wewant that to happen.
It's not going to happen byjust saying make a goal to
innovate the work that you'redoing that, just because we want
(49:06):
that, we have to cultivate that.
We have to be responsible.
Leaders have to be responsibleto create the right environment
for that to excel.
If it really is a priority, ifit's not, don't put it in a goal
All right.
So, again, I love integrating itinto the fabric of your work,
and it's something that we dowith Sigma Lab Consulting every
(49:28):
day integrating this into thefabric of our work.
So, like we said, your people,your tech, your process are key
to navigating the change that isinevitable in the organization.
Lawrence, thank you for yourtime.
I hope our guests got somethingout of this.
(49:50):
I enjoyed this time as wellwith you and we'll catch you
next time.
Lawrence Wong (49:57):
Yeah, so good.
And where can people find thewhite paper?
Oscar Gonzalez (50:03):
We'll put that right now it is a free white
paper that is on SmartSheets'website, so we'll put the link
in our show notes.
The title of the white paperyou might actually be able to
Google it.
It's IDC White Paper the Powerof NextGen Project and Portfolio
Management.
So we'll put the link in theshow notes and then you can
(50:25):
download the white paper simplywith just entering your name and
email information.
So we'll make that available tofolks so they can download that
.
Lawrence Wong (50:34):
All right.
Oscar Gonzalez (50:35):
Don't mind.
Thanks, lawrence, take care.
Welcome back to another episode of Lean by
Design Podcast.
Today we have a few thingswe're going to talk about in the
world of project and portfoliomanagement.
There was a white paper thatwas recently sponsored by
Smartsheet.
A disclaimer we are users ofSmartsheet.
I have been using it for rightabout eight years.
(00:25):
I've seen the evolution of thesoftware of the company that
just reached $1 billion inrevenue.
Congratulations to them.
They recently released a whitepaper that they sponsored with
IDC.
We'll link that into the shownotes.
Really, the question that theywere looking to get answers to
(00:48):
was, in this ever-changing world, in this industry biopharma
industry where projects andadvancements are becoming ever
more complex, the work continuesto increase and these
developments continue toincrease and at times are viewed
as disruptions.
They can shift a flexible modelthat has been necessary after
(01:11):
COVID, that these organizationsnow need to start really have
clear and direct messaging onhow to manage the work across
these hybrid teams, theseprojects, these teams and time
zones.
One of the questions that theyhad were that there are
organizations out there that arejust they're crushing it.
(01:34):
What is contributing to theirsuccess, to their thriving
organizations, with teams thateffectively communicate, that
effectively align, that it justseems like everybody is on the
same page all the time.
What are they doing?
This was focused on the projectprogram portfolio management
(02:00):
tools.
If you take a look at the whitepaper, you can see the
questions that they had there.
The white paper had a total of629 respondents from business IT
.
It was a global survey in fivesectors yes, healthcare, life
(02:24):
sciences, it, education andgovernment.
What they did was they askedfor business priorities over the
next 12 months to understandwhere these organizations were
and what they were going toprioritize over the next few
years, over the next few monthsthe actions to drive the results
, the priorities to drive thosestrategic results.
(02:45):
What does all that mean?
How are these organizationsrunning this?
That's what we're going to talkabout today.
Very interesting stuff,lawrence.
I took a look at this report andit didn't really feel shocking
to me, but I think that in somecases it would, because there
(03:08):
does seem to be this big move toinvest in project tools that
allow you to be very flexibleacross the organization.
We've already talked aboutAI-driven processes that are.
It seemed to be the topic ofconversation In the conferences
(03:30):
past week at Scope in Orlando.
Ai was probably every otherconversation.
We even had conversations withmembers of the FDA, with
representatives from the FDA onAI, which a guidance is going to
be coming out on clinicaltrials and AI in the coming
weeks, a draft guidance that FDAhas been asking for us to
(03:54):
provide feedback from, becausewe're the ones that are going to
be running trials.
We, as in organizations, pharma, et cetera they're looking for
us to understand more of howpeople are using AI.
Just a couple of top hits fromthe white paper 93% of the
(04:19):
respondents believe that theworkflow automation is a
priority, but less than 79% arereporting less than half of
their project portfolioworkflows are automated.
I know it's in sense.
(04:43):
Even so, when they look atorganizations of higher maturity
, they're finding that they'resix times more likely With
higher project portfoliomanagement maturity, are six
times more likely to see astrong or unlimited scalability.
Isn't that what everybody wants?
Lawrence Wong (05:02):
Yeah, I think from the finding that you said
about.
Obviously, I think it's aconsensus that the workflow
automation is a priority, butironically, only half of their
workflows are automated.
Why is it that they?
Why is it the case?
I think, about some of theprocesses that we've worked with
(05:23):
from our clients and thereality is that it's messy.
It's often hard to automatesomething if it is not clean and
that you don't have a definedprocess for it that aligns with
the strategy and the goals ofthe company.
To me, it sounds like theactions of companies are not
matching the priority they have.
They're saying one thing butthey're doing something else.
(05:45):
I think, as I glance throughthe study, the thing right above
it and the key findings wassome of the challenges that they
think it says here 47% ofrespondents cited the expense of
(06:05):
these tools, 44% citedmicromanagration with other
systems of records and then 41%cited postmanagement concerns In
the realm of project management.
How accurate is this assessmentas it relates to the work that
(06:26):
you do in managing some of thesedrug development projects?
Oscar Gonzalez (06:31):
You know, I think if I tackle the first one,
which is sort of expense, Idon't see that so much.
I think there are differentsoftware that's available that
has varying levels of licensing.
Now, when you're looking atenterprise solutions, which
typically you're going to wantyour PPM tool to be
(06:54):
enterprise-wide.
Why?
Because everyone's runningprojects, whether or not it's a
R&D or a clinical project.
There's probably some projecton the finance team to create a
little bit more efficiency.
The legal team probably has aproject where they're trying to
initiate a new system.
There's some level ofmanagement, even executive
(07:15):
leadership.
They have these leadershipcommittees that they need to be
able to log in.
Who's talking, what's theconversation, what are the
decisions from this?
What are the actionableoutcomes from the four hours
that we just spent with the topleaders of our organization?
These things need to be loggedin somewhere.
They need to be availablesomewhere so that you can have
(07:36):
it as a reference tool.
You can use it to sort of powerthe next steps.
So I haven't seen too much ofthe expense side Now, in terms
of how much that expands, Ithink it's very common for folks
to have you know fororganizations to maybe focus
(07:59):
those tools in their project andportfolio management space
initially.
And then what I find is thatover time, as adoption, as usage
begins to grow, that sort ofaccessibility becomes more
organic and folks begin to askfor more access.
(08:22):
They ask for licensing becausethey saw that this group did
something that was reallyhelpful and had a great way of
organizing it and it sent outalerts without having to do that
.
It decreased the amount ofmanual emails they had to do.
So organically it starts togrow a little bit.
I think it is difficult tocreate an enterprise-wide
(08:44):
solution right off the bat andjust say, hey, everybody's going
to be doing this because youknow, as you mentioned before,
those are some of the challenges.
What was that second one?
Can you remind me one more time?
Lawrence Wong (08:56):
The second one was lack of integration.
But I want to go back to thepoint that you made about
expense.
I think, depending on how youdeploy, obviously, there's just
a general rule.
You're not committing fully tothe enterprise tool that I have
to do in a pilot Understanding.
Okay, does this actual solutionwork for this project that I'm
(09:17):
trying to thrive?
And then once you kind of workout the kinks, then you can go
okay, let's scale this thing andlet's get some more users on it
Obviously, nobody's looking ata cool and smart thing or yeah,
let's just get 5,000 people toget on the platform and start
using it, because they're notgoing to use it.
And when you do that, that'swhere the expense comes in.
(09:37):
I think the other part of it isunderstanding how expensive is
it now for you to run yourprojects without this BPM tool,
right?
I don't think people oftenthink about how much that
operates in cost versus.
Hey, if we use this thing tospeed up the project, what does
(09:59):
that look like?
What is the cost savings fromusing this tool?
Oscar Gonzalez (10:04):
What is this costing?
But what is it costing yourorganization to not have a
solution?
What is it costing your team tobe in a struggle to locate
information, to identifyinformation?
And what's really neat aboutthese PPM tools?
(10:25):
In many cases they are supercustomizable.
So what I mean by that is youcan create a level of
customization for your ownorganization.
Now, to learn and to understandhow these systems work is pretty
simple.
There's usually some type oftag and you start to find the
(10:48):
similarities between activities,between initiatives, and you
are sort of connecting all ofthese things via specific
categories, project numbers,people, et cetera, so that you
can build these robust reportsthat give you specific views
that you're looking for.
The idea here is that theseproject portfolio management
(11:11):
tools they're looking into youroperations and you are asking it
to give you back somethingspecific.
You're not going back in thereto look at every line by line
item but, as I mentioned to mostpeople, you're collecting that
information somewhere, whetheryou're writing it in a notebook.
That really doesn't give youmuch leverage with that piece of
(11:32):
data, because now that piece ofdata is a handwritten piece of
data on a piece of paper andit's not digital, it's not
digitized.
So when you start to use thesePPM tools for sort of your
day-to-day activities, you startto find that most of what
you're doing in the day-to-dayis now has a digital footprint.
(11:53):
And what can you do with that?
Well, you can get numbers, youcan get metrics, you can connect
it to somebody else.
So I think that there's a lotof value there.
And again to your point whatdoes this cost look like now if
you don't act on bringing thatunity into that project, into
(12:14):
those operational tasks?
Lawrence Wong (12:18):
Yeah, so that touches on the lack of
integration with other systemsand records, and I think the
last point here is about 41%study of things management
concerns.
So, again, not all PPM toolsare creating a tool, right.
So you can have a PPM tool,let's say, like a Microsoft
project, where you have aproject file, but that file
(12:39):
doesn't allow you to collaboratewith other people, and so, even
if you have something to do, itdoesn't mean that you can
necessarily share it with verylimited visibility, unless it
relies on some SharePoint, whichthen you'd have to download,
update and there's all these, Iwould say, areas of friction
that just make you not want toupdate it constantly and you're
(13:01):
having to download things,upload, and it's much less
flexible than, let's say, asolution like SmartSuite, where
you have some, uh, theseessentially nodes that you can
create, right, that connectinformation from all different
sorts of speech reports thatfeed up into a dashboard.
So that was kind of my opinionon you know, I think these
(13:26):
challenges are well articulatedin that, yes, they are some top
challenges.
I think something that I've seen, just from larger companies,
maybe not committing fully toSmartSuite or some other PPM
tool, is they're just creatingtheir own tools internally right
.
So, whether you're using somesort of like coding or maybe you
(13:50):
are leveraging some of theseMicrosoft tools, you're building
essentially something for yourown organization and then trying
to scale it to your team, butagain, that's that's like a
grassroots thing and it's verylong for you to do that and
you're essentially designing aproduct for your company.
It used to be a lot harder,maybe a decade ago, but now with
(14:13):
all these new AI tools andanother, uh, essentially
software building tools, you canleverage those to create the
solution that you are.
But again, it's still not asfluid and dynamic as some of
these fast products like theSmartSuite.
Oscar Gonzalez (14:30):
You know, I think one thing that I give a
smart team and some of theseother project management tools
credo to is that when I try todesign a solution, I'm not going
to look directly with a finemicroscope, super fine focus on
our industry.
I'm a firm believer that thereare solutions outside of our
(14:54):
industry that influence us.
And so when we do create whenwe got, I think one of the risks
when we do go down the the theroute of creating our own
software, you're sort of limitedby what your knowledge is of
the space that you work in.
And it's very interesting to mewhen you start to see you know,
(15:15):
for example, smartsuite has alot of templates that are in
finance, in HR, and I play in mywedding on SmartSuite and had a
dashboard actually to show howmany people and the timing and
etc.
You start to see there areevent planning on there.
You know all these things that,okay, well, that's event
(15:37):
planning.
Well, guess what?
That offsite meeting thatyou're having, that's event
planning.
It doesn't mean that you'replanning a wedding, it doesn't
mean that you're planning adebutant ball or what have you,
but it is still in concept, inprinciple your offsite, your
team offsite, is an event thatyou're planning, so you can
(15:57):
leverage those types of tools,and it sort of gives you a
different perspective.
Rather than this is science,this is so different than
anything else, this is so uniquein many ways it is, but in many
ways it is also standard workthat is happening in other
places, just with a differenthat.
So what I like about these PPMtools is that they sort of give
(16:20):
you a different perspective forhow to use something, because,
you know, I love Biopharma, but,holy cow, we love to make
things very complex and itdoesn't always need to be that
way.
So you know, I think that'salso part of what that change
management you know looks like,and I was actually surprised
that the change managementwasn't higher.
(16:41):
I was expecting that to be oneof the top ones, because you
hear about failures of adoption.
You hear about well, we createdthis, we designed this and no
one has really adopted it.
But as soon as you start askingleading questions, you know how
many, how many trainings haveyou guys done since then?
Oh well, we did one when welaunched, all right.
(17:04):
So you know this.
This is something that you'renow trying to create habit
within your organization, withinyour team.
You're now trying to build thesefoundations, and the only way
that you're going to do that isby creating new habits within
that team, for this is how we'regoing to work through these
(17:24):
items here.
You can do everything else theway that you decide that you
want to do it, but right now,these are the core things that
we need to be able to work with,report from and train in.
And when you start to establishthat and you create this level
of visibility, this consistencyin hearing about the dashboard
(17:48):
that was built or hearing aboutthe reports that are being
automated, it sort of permeatesthrough the teams, through the
organization, and that reallylends into that change
management, because then youstart getting a lot of curious
people, and that's what you want.
You want the curious people tocome in and say, hey, this was
(18:08):
really cool, that this came tome, like, this is exactly what I
needed and I didn't even haveto email anybody.
How does this work and can youtell me about it?
And that's when you start tosort of cultivate this layer of
adoption and it's continuing.
It's a continuation as thingsevolve.
Lawrence Wong (18:28):
Yeah, I mean, these tools are essentially
creating opportunities forpeople to do better work, right?
I think you had a point aboutjust making sure that the tools
that you know, the key formtools, are maintained over time,
whether it's training or havingspecific, I would say,
advocates in your organizationthat are maybe comprehensive
(18:53):
essentially right, knowing theinternet, of using the tool
itself.
And it's very similar to, Ithink of, when you buy a car and
you've been, you know, walkingsomewhere for the entire time
and you take the car, you driveit to wherever you're supposed
to go and you know, maybe you'redriving local traffic, but the
car can also go on the highwayand you can go a lot faster and
(19:14):
go to those places.
But if you do not know what thecar was capable of, you
wouldn't know to use it right.
So I think that my point isjust making sure that people are
aware that this thing was usedfor.
You know one particular projector you know one particular
process and they're going tostart piquing their curiosity
and go okay, well, what otherthings can I use this for?
(19:36):
right, and that goes back toyour point about drawing people
in and making sure that you knowthis thing that you've heavily
invested in, not just in termsof dollars, but time and people
and putting up some of yourhighly strategic initiatives in
this vehicle.
Oscar Gonzalez (19:57):
Absolutely.
I mean, you brought up a reallygood example.
You know, if I were to ask youright now, have you pressed
every button that exists in yourvehicle right now?
Do you know what every buttondoes?
Absolutely not.
You heard that there, ladiesand gentlemen, absolutely not,
and that's very common.
And that's also very commonwith some of the software that
(20:17):
we have.
You know that we work with everyday because you know, what we
look for is how quickly can Iget my job done?
We don't really look at how doI expand the spaces or the
technology that I'm using, howdo I understand that more to
even further optimize the workthat I'm doing?
(20:39):
You know, even from theperspective of going into we'll
even take a simple example ofgoing into Excel I go to Excel,
I click here, I filter, I createa pivot table, I get this, I
create a chart, etc.
You can develop a macros thatliterally records each of your
(20:59):
steps and anytime you decidethat you need to execute that
series of steps, you can clickon the macros and it will
actually do that entire thing.
Now you have to do a little bitof setup in the beginning and
there's going to be a little bitof trial in there in the
beginning, but I would ratherspend that two hours up front so
that every time I do this, thisprocess, within something as
(21:20):
simple as Excel, that that'sgoing to take me no more than
five minutes and previouslywould take me an hour.
So these are some of the thingsthat you have to sort of invest
in, not only in yourself, butalso understand the technology
that you have and really digdeeper and ask a lot more
questions of what can I do withit?
How can I do this?
I am doing these levels ofactivities.
(21:41):
This is the level ofinformation that's in here.
How else can I leverage thissystem to empower the work that
I'm doing, to create thoseefficiencies and really drive
down the amount of time that I'mspending recording and taking
more time to review and reflecton the work that we're doing?
Lawrence Wong (22:07):
And aside from some of the, I think for us it's
very obvious some of thebenefits of using the PCN tool.
As you went through the paper,was there anything that you were
very surprised about in termsof how some of the polling was
for the epic intent of like 600plus respondents for this?
(22:29):
And I think for me, the biggestsurprise that I saw was, I
think, somewhere along thebeginning of this white paper it
said that most legacy PPM toolsdon't offer strategic alignment
across stakeholders and teams.
So I think that we're going tohave four user variants in
(22:51):
significant adoption of barriers.
That leads to sporadic uses, inpoor data and requiring a
strong organizational mandateand high expenditure for
deployment and adoption.
So when I read this, I didn't,you know.
I think there's some proof tothis, but I also don't think
that the tools alone offerstrategic alignment.
I think people leadership doright.
(23:14):
You really have to get whoeveris, you know, deciding to commit
to this tool.
They have to be very clear andupfront about why are we using
this and what do you.
What exactly are you trying todo with this right?
Otherwise you go and then peoplejust start complaining about
things, and then they don't useit, and you know how it goes.
Oscar Gonzalez (23:36):
And not just that having the foresight of
where can this take us, wherecan this take us and where can
you know what is the future here?
Because if you look online youknow, oh, this is a work
management tool that you know,takes care of you, know your
task and you can put it here andyou can communicate back and
forth.
Awesome, it's the combinationof all of those features that
(23:59):
are really showing you okay,this is how you can connect all
these pieces.
You need to dictate which onesmatter most to your organization
, which ones matter most.
You know there's tons offeatures within Smartsheet that
I've never touched.
Why?
Well, it's not really for R&Ddevelopment, it's not really for
clinical trials.
(24:19):
It's not built for that, it'sbuilt to manage work.
So we sort of leveraged some ofthose standardized things that
we do to sort of focus ourefforts while, you know, taking
in any additional changes.
I mean, it didn't reallysurprise me when I read that,
(24:42):
because there's sort of this toyour point if it's not really,
if it's not really championedand we're not considering the
strategic direction of theorganization, where would this
even fit for people to actuallydo any kind of work into it?
(25:04):
You know, the idea is that well, we want to scale, or we have
this many projects that we haveto manage.
You know, if you have oneproject, maybe you don't need a
PPM tool.
But if you have six or sevenprojects, nine, 10 functions and
teams that are all involved inthe project, they're not all
looking for the same thing, butthey all need to know where the
(25:28):
project is at all times, just ina different perspective.
So you start to look at whatare each of these teams
contributing to the project?
How do we get that data to alsotalk to what we're trying to
put in together and create thisnetwork of information specific
to that project, and then thatrolls up to your portfolio,
(25:49):
rolls up to your leadership andso on.
And so I think that thosechallenges with adopting the PPM
tools is not only just in thatproject management space, but
it's also going to be in thoseadjacent functions that are also
(26:15):
a part of the team.
You know when I read this.
So when I took this paper, Itook all the data and I started
to ask myself, like, what are weactually talking about here
from an organizationalperspective?
What is the key to providingsuccess here?
And there's three things, andyou hear a lot about it People,
(26:39):
your process and your technology.
And some people are liking thatto sort of your tech stack.
Well, technology isn't going tostop.
Ai is here.
We have to recognize that, butwe also need to prepare for what
that means for an organization.
So, with people, process andtechnology, I actually sort of
(27:00):
created this triangle where itgoes from people to tech and
then, looking at your process,your people and your tech are
going to determine what kind ofprocess you can build out with
the technology that you have.
Your tech is there notnecessarily to augment person,
it's more of to expedite thework that you're already doing.
(27:24):
Okay.
And once you have the peopleand you have to develop that
support too, you cannot say thisyear, everybody needs to have a
goal where you're going to havepersonal development, okay.
Well, how are we cultivatingthat in the organization?
Oh, in your free time, get outof town.
(27:46):
You want me to land one of thecorporate goals that exist, for
my bonus in many cases, on myfree time.
Have you worked here before?
There's not really a lot offree time and this is also, you
know, a challenge for folks tosee the value of spending the
time to look for theseefficiencies, to look for these
(28:10):
tools so that they do have thetime for personal development,
etc.
So I look at that, but then Ialso look at different arrows
going in different directions,for example, from the technology
to the people.
You have this level oftechnology.
You need people to champion it.
(28:32):
You need people to root for thesuccess of that technology and
have a level of curiosity,because these technologies are
built not just to stay withinthis small bubble of work or
effort.
Those organizations are goingto continue to adapt and to
adapt their technology thatthey're selling to attract more
(28:52):
clients.
So it is your responsibilitythat when you get a new piece of
technology, when you find theownership, they should know more
about that tool than anyoneelse in the organization, more
than IT, and it is only to theirbenefit.
It gives you visibility as aperson, it gives you ownership,
(29:14):
it gives you a lot ofcredibility when you understand
a system from top to bottom.
But you really have to dig andunderstand what are the
capabilities of this technologythat we're using in all these
different spaces?
And then how do we connect itin as few steps as possible to
give us what we need, and that'syou know, it's just, it's this
(29:36):
little piece here and makingsure that we're developing that
culture of transparency andalignment.
So you know, I think for methere's some key components
there between the people, thetechnology and what processes
you decide to put into therethat you can't really just focus
(29:58):
into one space.
You have to sort of take themall together.
You know what does this meanfor the process?
Is it going to affect anotherstakeholder?
Don't launch the technologythat will affect a process that
is also attached to somebodyelse in a different department
or function.
You need to bring them along aswell, because the expectations
change, the process changes.
(30:18):
So I think, with this, beingable to have those, you know,
and what can leadership do?
I mean support process skills,you know, creating those skills,
creating those resources forpeople to you know, to have
additional training, bringingsomebody in, creating a champion
, cultivating that this stuffbecomes, it becomes habit.
(30:41):
You need to create a habit andyou can only do that with
practice, with focus.
It's an investment in your ownimprovement, your own personal
development, professionaldevelopment.
I mean that's what we'retalking about here.
Lawrence Wong (31:02):
Yeah, I think so to your point about this.
You know three components thatare part of this.
I guess the strategy ofdeploying the TPM school people
talking in process, I think youknow we talked about right
before we were recording justmaking sure that these business
goals are clear.
So that really defines, like,why you even need this in the
(31:25):
first place, right.
And so people are saying, hey,this is, we know where we need
to go, and so now we need tounderstand what blend of the
tech and our skills can weleverage for this particular
process?
Right, and you're right, it'snot a static event, right,
Because business goals change.
People come in and out of yourorganization, the technology you
(31:47):
may learn has more capabilities, and so now all of those things
are influencing that what yourend process is going to look
like.
So, again, what makes thesetools so powerful is that it's
not.
They're flexible and they'readapted to how your business is
scaling, how it's changing, butit requires sponsorship from the
(32:08):
leadership, right, they have torecognize that yes, things are
going to change like.
This is not Pennstone and youhave to really invest in the
people being able to spend time.
A lot of people are playingwith the tool itself, right,
Like you said.
Right, I don't know all thebuttons in my car, but if I have
some time, I'll sit in thereand go, oh, what's this?
And, like you, try to playaround with some of these things
(32:31):
, obviously driving.
But if you're pulled over onthe side of the road and you
have some time to kill, then youlook around and you say, oh wow
, I didn't know my car couldlock, with me just touching the
handle, Like that's something Ifound with my super that I had
no idea about.
So, yeah, I think leadership,giving the time and investing
(32:51):
and allowing people to play withthe tool and develop new
capabilities will make theoverall process more efficient,
but it allows them to thinkabout new innovations that they
could make in some of theseother adjacent areas that you
may have not thought about usingbefore.
But now that you know it'scapable, now you can deploy it
(33:12):
elsewhere.
Oscar Gonzalez (33:14):
Right and regardless if you're going to do
off the shelf or createyourself, there is a time of
adoption.
I mean you're.
We talked about it at the verybeginning.
This is seen as a disruption.
It is being seen as adisruption for the way that
(33:35):
people work.
Why?
Because we've been using, youknow, the same standard tools
that are not connected and wedeposit them into folder
structures that are online in aserver.
Well, none of that data isconnected.
The data that you add inPowerPoint slides, the data that
you add in Word documents andExcel and a notepad and a dry
(33:58):
race board none of that isconnected to any other piece of
data.
And that is critical databecause it captures our thoughts
, it captures our motives, itcaptures our feelings at that
time.
It captures discussion pointsand actions and risks and
decisions.
And until you find a space tosort of combine all of the work
(34:20):
that we're doing.
And this sort of came out in myearly days as a project manager,
because I noticed that no onewas really looking at anything
that I was producing and Ithought to myself what really is
the role of a project managerNow?
(34:42):
I knew everything inside andout because I was constantly the
one that was entering theinformation, but if it doesn't
help anybody else, you know, amI really using my time wisely?
So it was really in that momentof just like I need to make
people.
How do I say this?
(35:03):
I need to make people invested.
I need to get people investedin what I'm doing.
And as soon as we startedputting action items with names
and started flashing those upbecause you need to build again
that visibility and people startseeing their names on there oh,
I didn't realize this.
Well, there's an automation.
You received an email two daysbefore this was due.
From this due date, youreceived another email Like
(35:26):
there's no, like we discussedthis, and then you just conduct
additional training andeventually it becomes that habit
.
It becomes the way you workwithin that organization.
So adoption is a key thing, butyou can't especially in the
initial stages of launching, youcan't just do a one hour lunch
(35:48):
and learn and call it a day,because people need a little bit
more than that.
If you ask me, yeah, if yougave me one hour to be with my
vehicle, I'm not going to knownearly as much stuff as I would
if I get to go into that vehicleevery single day and start to
touch things and figure out howthings move around.
So it's super critical for thatto be cultivated within
(36:12):
organizations and it comes fromleadership, whether it's a chief
of operations at some point orthe CEO themselves.
It's critical to have.
All we want is transparency.
We want everything to.
What's the biggest question youget from leadership?
We don't know what's happening,we don't know when it's
happening, we don't know, wedon't know enough.
(36:34):
And guess what?
Everything that they're sayingis captured digitally somewhere,
but we're putting it in slides,we're tucking it away, we're
putting it in different foldersthat exist in other places, so
we're not connecting all thepieces, we're not connecting all
the discussions.
And that's where one of thecomments from the white paper
(36:57):
and I love the way that theyframe this integrating PPM tools
into the fabric of your work.
So you're weaving in these toolsinto the work that you're doing
every day, so that you don'thave to repeat it, you don't
have to rebuild it, you don'thave to rewrite it, because it's
there.
It's there and now, of course,there's a method to the madness,
(37:20):
to the structure, but that'swhat experience gives you.
I didn't build things the sameway I did when I first started
doing smartsheet.
Now, eight years in, I'm goingto think about eight or nine
steps ahead and say, well, ifwe're going to run and do these
activities here and we're notprepared to make that next step,
we're going to build this in away that leaves that door open
(37:41):
for that next step and we'llcontinue to do that because, in
principle, when you innovate,it's not just one time.
When your people change, whenyour tech changes, when your
process is changed, all of thatneeds to go in unison.
When your process change, youneed to train your people.
When your tech change, you needto change your process and
train your people.
(38:01):
When your people change, youneed to train the tech.
You need to show the process.
They may become a process owner.
So this whole triangle.
They go back and forth becausethey're constantly going to
change.
The only thing that we canpredict is that change is going
to happen.
So we need to know that changedoesn't just happen and then we
(38:22):
just let that sit.
It's going to affect all theother processes and our
technology in that space.
Lawrence Wong (38:31):
Yeah.
So the only I would say proofis that change is coming and
maybe what happens all the timeand there's no way to stop that
from happening, because people,technology and the process
changes as the business changes.
I think you made an earlierpoint about some of the work
(38:53):
that you were doing as a projectmanager sometimes get lost in
the board and maybe not visibleor transparent to some people.
Leadership I think you've onlyPPM tools allows you to have
very concrete data and evidenceto support some of the decisions
that end up thriving, some ofthe progress of the project
(39:15):
Right.
Yes, if you're not using a PPMtool and you're working on a
project where people areconstantly complaining about
something, just becausesomething is being talked about
often doesn't actually mean thatthat's the problem, and
sometimes you need these toolsto be able to measure and use
data to say well, you said thisis a problem but it's actually
(39:35):
not because here in this step,this is where nobody is
recording information and thisis where the gap is Right.
So it just reminds me thatavailability bias that you have,
just because something is inthe space all the time, doesn't
actually mean that that's theissue, but when you have a tool.
(39:56):
That is new for that mindset,and it's just clear.
This is the data, this is theprogress that we've made.
Now your leadership isn'tasking you hey, what's the
status on this?
What's the status on that?
It's very clear.
This is where the holdup is.
Or, hey, we're making progresson this timeline, whereas before
it was?
Oh, I think so, and so is whathappened.
(40:17):
It's like that's not effective.
Like how much time are wewasting here playing a guessing
game on how far we've come orhow much we still have left to
do?
Oscar Gonzalez (40:26):
The conversations change.
The conversations change fromstatus updates to strategy
alignment, transparency,curiosity.
You actually have the time tofocus on that.
You can burn a whole projectteam meeting just throwing
things to the wall to see whatsticks.
(40:48):
What do we know?
What do we not know?
Rather than, hey, what's thestatus?
Things that we can regurgitatefrom the work that we've done
day to day.
That's the whole idea here isthat you create these reports,
you create these dashboards forthose questions.
Leadership, as much asleadership, wants to have unique
(41:09):
questions, etc.
They're probably going to askyou roughly the same types of
questions, so you build out yourspace to allow for those
questions to be answered throughmetrics, reports etc.
So that the question thatactually does come is hey, I've
noticed this over the pastcouple of weeks.
(41:30):
Is this something that we haveconcern about?
How do you think that we shouldapproach this?
Are we doing additionaltraining to ensure that this
doesn't become an issue in thefuture?
Those are the kind ofconversations we need to have,
not hey, what's going on?
Hey, I saw this.
Can you update me on that?
(41:50):
Can you update me on that?
Allow those data sets and thoseoperational data frequencies,
durations, dates, what have yousort of drive.
What is really a topic ofconcern that leadership can
address?
Show them we're at a point.
(42:11):
Oftentimes we wait for top down.
Let's wait for leadership toask us you have all the data,
you do.
Your team, your PPM tool hasthe data in this space.
Start pushing that up.
This is part of that managingup.
Start pushing that up Insteadof getting these ad hoc requests
.
They're driving you crazy.
(42:33):
Now you're going to startpushing all those things to
leadership, the ones thatthey're consistently asking for,
and that's just being driven byday to day work.
Lawrence Wong (42:46):
Yeah.
So you know, beautifully said,and I think we've spent, you
know, much of this episodetalking about the benefits of
the PPM tool, how to deploy it,strategies around managing up
and doing more, I would say, theprocess of the capabilities of
the tools themselves, and also,how do you manage tools
(43:08):
throughout the lifecycle of thetool.
If somebody's listening rightnow and they are in a position
where, let's say, they do have aPPM tool, what one thing they
can do to determine howeffective they are deploying it?
Oscar Gonzalez (43:28):
All right.
So how effective is thedeployment of the PPM tool?
So these things take time.
Now they should take a littlebit less time for the group that
is directly managing it.
So the first things first.
I think where we get a littlebit stuck is that and I've seen
(43:49):
this before we just wanteverybody to use it right away,
right now.
And what happens?
You get a bounce back.
I don't know what's going on.
What is this?
I didn't get a training.
Who's going to train me now?
And the person who has the mostknowledge about that space does
not have the capacity to trainevery single individual person
(44:10):
in the organization.
A one-hour training of thewhole company is not going to
help either.
There's this constant feedingand refeeing.
Could you imagine if youlearned one lesson in calculus
and was like okay, go on and docalculus.
You probably understood alittle bit about that, but
there's no way that you're goingto just continue to take on
(44:32):
this complex mathematicalequations, etc.
This is the same thing.
You're going to learn a littlebit within that one hour, and it
depends on whose training it is.
Some people may train you onthe theories behind it, how it
works, and other people may justwant to see how do I do what I
need to do.
I'm going to teach you how thisactually works, because you
(44:54):
need to understand how to thinkthrough when you want to create
something or when you want tomodify something.
The question is to start askingyourself I think it's very
important rather than you lookat some of these PPM tools and
they mimic tools that we've usedin the past Excel, word, etc.
So it's important for us tocreate this team of champions.
(45:18):
You have this one internalchampion and then you get a
couple of more people and youhave this one team of champions
that are within your department.
Understanding that level ofdeployment there, I think, is
critical.
Then, when you look at youradoption, are you hearing it in
the hallways?
Are you hearing people say, ohyeah, I have a smart sheet for
that.
It's really cool, I'll share itto you.
(45:40):
What does that look like?
What does it sound like?
Are you seeing people usingsmart sheet dashboards to
represent current statuses, live, live data, live statuses?
How is that PPM toolmanifesting within the
(46:03):
organization?
You start to see what peopleare doing.
I mean, I go down the hallwaysof clients and just see numerous
people on PowerPoint slides.
So, at the same token, I wouldexpect to see in numerous people
using a PPM tool becausethey're logging information,
reviewing, etc.
So I would say you have to makesure that you build that core so
(46:25):
strong and in there you allowand in discussing with these
projects teams, you let themknow that you guys are
influencers.
You guys are influencers whenyou start showing other people
the work that you're doing andhow fast and efficient it is.
(46:47):
That is where that sort ofcuriosity starts to come in.
I got a secret for you,lawrence, and for everybody else
that's listening.
People do not like to work hard.
The work that you do can bechallenging, but how you perform
the work through PPM tools, itshould not be your challenge.
(47:12):
Your challenge should not becommunicating what happened.
Your challenge should not berecording things.
Your challenge should not befinding a metric, locating a
document, the work itself.
The industry can have itschallenges Biopharma, the
(47:33):
science so much we don't know,so much we think we know we're
wrong and we haven't figuredthat out yet.
That stuff is hard Should notbe just how we do our day-to-day
work Should not be thechallenge here, and
unfortunately in a lot of placesit is.
Lawrence Wong (47:54):
I think.
To sum it up, I think the finalmessage is, like you said,
creating this support network sothat you can foster these
network effects.
The more people that are usingit, the more they're playing
with it, the more things thatthey'll come up with and
innovate in all sorts of waysfor the way that they work.
But you've got to have thatleadership push from up above
(48:18):
and say, hey, I'm going toinvest and make this easier for
people to use and not harder.
Oscar Gonzalez (48:24):
Right, because you're right, the work that we
do should not be more difficult.
Yeah, make a little competition.
Hey, whoever has the best thinggets a dinner, gets a lunch at
Cheesecake Factory on thecompany for the whole team,
something like that, where itjust really rallies people like,
OK, guys, I think we could dothis and it's going to improve
(48:45):
our output by this.
We have to figure out some kindof competition or something like
that Incentives exactly If wewant that to happen.
It's not going to happen byjust saying make a goal to
innovate the work that you'redoing that, just because we want
(49:06):
that, we have to cultivate that.
We have to be responsible.
Leaders have to be responsibleto create the right environment
for that to excel.
If it really is a priority, ifit's not, don't put it in a goal
All right.
So, again, I love integrating itinto the fabric of your work,
and it's something that we dowith Sigma Lab Consulting every
(49:28):
day integrating this into thefabric of our work.
So, like we said, your people,your tech, your process are key
to navigating the change that isinevitable in the organization.
Lawrence, thank you for yourtime.
I hope our guests got somethingout of this.
(49:50):
I enjoyed this time as wellwith you and we'll catch you
next time.
Lawrence Wong (49:57):
Yeah, so good.
And where can people find thewhite paper?
Oscar Gonzalez (50:03):
We'll put that right now it is a free white
paper that is on SmartSheets'website, so we'll put the link
in our show notes.
The title of the white paperyou might actually be able to
Google it.
It's IDC White Paper the Powerof NextGen Project and Portfolio
Management.
So we'll put the link in theshow notes and then you can
(50:25):
download the white paper simplywith just entering your name and
email information.
So we'll make that available tofolks so they can download that
.
Lawrence Wong (50:34):
All right.
Oscar Gonzalez (50:35):
Don't mind.
Thanks, lawrence, take care.
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