Engagement Model - Resolving the "too many cooks in the kitchen" problem

Lately I am involved in mobile and social computing at work.  I am working with our agency's communication departments, and internal IT groups like: IT infrastructure operations, email, mobile device acquisition and provision group and IT solutions development group.  Understandably these organizational business entities need to be involved however there is no clear cut role on how these organizations need to operate.  It's a classic case of "too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth"; however in this case, "too many organizations destroy a IT business function".  I am not saying that a specific organization is at fault since the are not however this clearly shows that there is a lack of guidance in the engagement side of this effort.

I am sure there are multiple organizations which face this problem.  How do you deal with this type of problem?  The biggest complain I hear that there is no executive sponsorship or even if there is then there is no executive guidance.  In an agency where I work, which is an extremely large and bureaucratic government agency, no one is going to give strong sponsorship or guidance. Rather than complaining about it, I realize it is a reality and I have work with it.

In an ideal world, the organization or organizations, who are responsible for a specific effort, should have an engagement model (internal and external).  The internal model is called "organizational governance". The ideal world has a strong Program Management Office (PMO) which runs programs with an iron fist.  Unfortunately US civil servants who are grouped in IT departments usually don't have that luxury since government agencies view their IT departments as a support function.  The PMO paradigm may be implemented more now because of the current fiscal crisis with my employer.

As a program manager, how do you deal with this type of issue?  If you are not an enterprise architect (like myself) then you either hire a bright enterprise architect or work with your counterpart in enterprise architecture program.   Here are few steps that I can think of:

1. Ask the architects to decompose the business functions of the organizations and then map them to their role in your program.  
2. Present to the program stakeholders and see if they agree on it
3. Develop projects and appropriate RACI charts that map different organization roles to it
4. Develop program charter and plan
5. Present to the program stakeholders and see if they agree on it
6. Develop a communication plan which should be the basis for the engagement model

By going through a rigorous approach where stakeholders sign off on the plan and their responsibilities, you  can develop a concrete plan and manage your stakeholders.  Before I got into project management, I thought managers sit in numerous meetings and not do anything.  There are project and program managers who sit in meeting and like to strategize however their projects and programs don't have any valuable outcome.   I have learned that every work product being produced in a project or a program is a critical artifact to manage your team's and your stakeholders' expectations. After all most of project management is about managing and having a formal or informal engagement model.  

Future adwords will be Man-words

As the number of visits to this blog are dropping like today's SP 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), I figured that I better write a blog entry. I didn't write a blog entry lately because I wasn't furloughed like some of my 4000 co-workers nor was I super excited about Henry Cavill who is new the Man of Steel.  I just didn't have anything to write about.

Well here it.  I just spent twenty minutes going through Google news to see if there is anything interesting to write.  I saw articles about malware and cybersecurity.  If I blast about the perpetrators in this blog entry then my systems may compromised (typical mantra of security folks).  I saw an article about slim iPhone 5 and the fat iPhone 4.   This led me to write about something different.  I could go and spew about the common IT topics like:

• Google vs Microsoft vs Apple vs Facebook vs Cisco vs Yahoo vs Google (see the vicious cycle)
• Malware and Cyber-security (is it the chinese again)
• mobile devices (skinner, faster, lighter, cooler, etc)
• Oracle just bought out company X

Forget that man! Life is too short.  I am going to write about the next big thing after adwords.  Companies like Facebook, Google and Microsoft will market products directly to us because they are capturing our likes, dislikes and how we feel about certain situations.  The information tier in the world of IT is the more non-disruptive since information is constant.  A phone may smaller and faster, applications move into the cloud or networks are more secure but your data is your data.  Your height, weight, SSN, age, names, desires don't change as often.  There is disruption in this space as well but not as rapid in the hardware and software side of things.  Information can be combined to create new views however it doesn't disrupt the way you use a phone. 

So be warned, I first said it here.  Google is going to come out with Man-words or Woman-words where folks can bid on text ads which are specifically geared towards to you.  

Okay now I got to look at next week's article.