The business matrix reloaded

By MARK STORY

A self-confessed workaholic, project management guru Ian Reynolds spends what little leisure time he has when he's not supporting clients on both sides of the Tasman working on his book or preparing for the next seminar, building a chicken coop on the lifestyle block he and his wife own in the Adelaide Hills, Australia.

But with work never far from his mind, Reynolds admits to compulsively turning even a simple chook-house into yet another project. Reynolds sees unique events or any activity resulting in change, whether it's a family holiday or training for the Olympics, as a continuum of projects.

An "army brat", the son of an army captain, Reynolds called many places home growing up, including Singapore where he cultivated a passion for flying.

Ironically, his evolution into project manager extraordinaire came from a failed stint as a Royal Australian Air Force pilot. It was a lack of confidence rather than limited flying ability that saw Reynolds walk out of RAAF pilot school into a mechanical engineering degree in the early 1980s.

Having never fallen in love with engineering, Reynolds quickly gravitated to the project end of the business and cultivated a keen interest into why they fail.

"I've seen so many broken marriages, and a swag of other problems caused because of the impossible things people were asked to do on projects," says Reynolds.

After 10 years running projects for mining companies, including a two-year stint upgrading a goldmine in Ghana, Reynolds established his own project management consultancy earlier this year.

Currently in New Zealand to complete feasibility studies for mining clients, Reynolds is also preparing to lead a June 11 seminar which aims to show people how projects really work, and give them tools for stopping them from going wrong.

From Reynolds' experience, most mistakes made on projects stem from either confusion over how projects differ from daily operations, or an inability to manage expectations over who's charged with doing what, by when, and why.

"It's more common sense than rocket science," he says. "But developing the right systems and procedures can help shave 10 per cent off the time and 5 per cent off project costs."

He describes projects as business undertakings with a beginning and an end, that meet predefined goals within certain constraints like cost and time.

One of the worst examples of misunderstanding the nature of a project, recounts Reynolds, was an order by a former boss to go to Turkey, hire some people and simply turn on a previously mothballed goldmine.

Having concluded that the real project was to get the plant up to full production, Reynolds eventually managed to convince his boss he needed three months and "12 expats" to complete the job.

With mice having eaten through cables, and much other damage, he says the first person to have turned on the power - probably himself - would have been electrocuted. "So we actually saved lives, while minimising further damage," recalls Reynolds.

He says misunderstanding purpose is by no means limited to small, inexpensive projects. For example, when auditing an outback mining project some years ago, Reynolds revealed that neither the project manager nor anyone else knew why a $2 million piece of equipment that would never be used needed to be installed.

From his observations, new information, insufficient resources and lack of commitment from management can be the death-knell for many projects.

"A South Island mining project I helped audit went from costing $3.2 million over six months, to $5 million over nine months.

"What those managing it didn't realise was that the nature of the project was driven by new knowledge, not cost constraints."

He also recalls when installation of back-office software, initially expected to take six weeks, was finally brought in by a rookie project manager 18 months later.

"The job was held up because programmers were allocated elsewhere. Management had also created constant new hurdles for the project to meet. Access to computer systems was also denied through an internal IT brawl," says Reynolds.

Reynolds believes same old mistakes continue to undermine most projects, including:

* Misunderstanding of the project's true purpose.

* Confusing project deliverables with the purpose.

* Not knowing who's really managing the project.

* Not measuring performance against constraints.

* Insufficient people skills.

* Hiring relationship-driven managers to run business-critical projects.

* Insufficient mechanisms for controlling costs.

Projects that experience these mistakes, adds Reynolds, are more vulnerable to blunders on a personal level. "They're more likely to be negatively impacted by dominating personalities. There will be greater reluctance to deliver bad news. Fearing no one else can do it, project managers will also try and do too much."

So how can these pitfalls be prevented? To ensure projects don't crash and burn, Reynolds has designed a set of systems around the nature of projects and their unique constraints.

His inspiration to develop what he calls the task/constraint matrix - an integral part of the planning process - came while watching his wife use training techniques to get horses to react in a certain way.

"While watching one of these sessions, I realised I was trying to force my projects into a corner, without understanding the way they reacted to me," says Reynolds.

"The realisation that some factors need to be administered instead of controlled - for example, stakeholder expectations - has significantly reduced the stress levels and increased the success of my projects."

Covering everything from project inter-relationships through to customising systems, procedures and measurement tools, Reynolds' project management systems teach innovative ways to evaluate, develop and monitor projects without investing huge amounts of time.

"People need to understand the nature of their projects before they can control them. If you don't understand its character, it will lead you a merry chase and leave you exhausted and unsatisfied."

Ian Reynolds' CV:


* Born: Melbourne

* Age: 42

* Title: Director, True North Project Services

* Education: Bachelor of mechanical engineering, Institute of Technology, Western Australia

* Major titles and companies: Group engineering manager Normandy Mining; group engineering manager Newmont Australia; manager projects Kiam Corp; project manager GRD Minproc; senior engineer WMC Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter; project engineer Alcan Australia

* Family: Married, two children

* Interests: Flying, cattle farming


* Ian Roberts runs a seminar, "The nature and control of projects", at the Sheraton, Auckland, on Wednesday June 11. The cost for the full-day event is $990. Register on (0800) 238-467 or Email karyn.paukkunen@tnps.com.au