Keep it simple... or disaster

The final report by Kieran Poynter, chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers, into the loss last year of child benefit records at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) made me think about projects and their complexity.

Clearly the loss happened because of a lack of due process and control procedures. The blame for this should be argued elsewhere, but my thoughts turned back to the creation of HMRC in 2005, through the merger of the Inland Revenue with HM Customs and Excise. This was, and still is a colossal project, arguably one that is primarily focused on change management.

There is no denying the complexity and intense demands involved in a merger of this magnitude, but finance directors may be faced with similar, if not as large scale projects as HMRC, at any time. Mergers and acquisitions are a fact of life in business: which brings me to the theme of simplicity.

Complexity through human nature

When running projects or indeed any business activity, I have always tried to adopt the KISS principle, Keep it Simple Stupid. All too often people over-complicate things, generally not by intent but because that's human nature. This leads to confusion, higher costs and much wasted effort.

A chief executive appointed to revitalise a failing retailer was amazed at the levels of complexity he found when he arrived. He kept saying 'look, retailing is simple, we buy a shirt for £5, sell it for £10 and put it into a customer-friendly shop. That's it!' I may have got some of the figures wrong but you get the picture. The beauty of this simple but very powerful message was that it was then picked up by the more enlightened managers to challenge complexity.

With tough times now and undoubtedly ahead, we are all looking to be more efficient and reduce costs that are within our control. There is not much we can do about the price of oil and utilities, but there is a lot that we can control. There are many tried and tested cost-reduction methodologies that consultancies have been peddling for years and have been proven to take cost out of an organisation.

Sticking to the KISS principle is another way to reduce cost and be more efficient at the same time. In our field of project and programme management, I am beginning to see the methodologies and tools becoming increasingly complicated. Not only are these tools expensive, but you also have to add the 'on-cost' of training and mentoring to enable everyone to use the tools, so the cost rockets skywards.

However, due partly to the competitive climate we live in and the desire to do things faster, I have noticed a subtle change in some of our clients' attitude. We market a strategic portfolio and programme management tool and it is already at the 'simple' end of the scale, i.e. easy to use (we designed it that way). Visiting a client recently who expressed interest, he said, "yes, I like it but I don't want any training, so I can see how intuitive the tool really is" (and to test our claim).

Testing our claims of simple software

After spluttering into my coffee my initial reaction was to say alright, it's a fair challenge (to which we have responded). His comment was really a symptom of the underlying desire in the media company concerned to do things faster and not make everything so complex.

"There are many tried and tested, cost-reduction methodologies that consultancies have been peddling for years and have been proved to take cost out of an organisation."

In terms of project management and planning, the standard tool chosen tends to be MS Project, but it is complex, with a hefty if not excessive amount of functionality. That's fine for the individual project manager, whose head is under the bonnet, making sure everything is in the right place and working as it should be, but the director at the top, the driver, only wants to see the dashboard – is everything 'normal', or is anything running into the 'red'? - pure and simple.

One of the issues is that many project management tools are designed and developed by software 'techies'. They say, 'that's a great idea, let's do it', but does the market want or need it? What's more, will the tool provide strategic indicators, or instead overwhelm the user with operational data?

Another and more fundamental issue (back to simplicity again) is this: what really matters about investing in a project or programme is the real outcome – benefits realisation - the reason why the investment was made in the first place. Many people seem to forget that, including software developers.

In a circular way I come back to IT and, of course, HMRC. True, the lost discs have little to do with project management tools, but somewhere along the way, in the complexity and confusion of bringing together two major organisations, some simple but essential requirements were overlooked.

David Walton is managing director of project management experts Bestoutcome. His programme management assignments include ecommerce, IT transformational change, customer relationship management (CRM) and large-scale infrastructure implementations. Before founding the company six years ago, he spent 11 years as a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and held IT management positions at the International Stock Exchange and Max Factor. He can be contacted at david.walton@bestoutcome.com