Increasing project success rates using project behavioral coaching

Drive Your Business
Increasing
Project Success
Rates Using
Project
Behavioral
Coaching™

2 ©2015 WGroup. ThinkWGroup.com
More and more companies are searching for ways to guarantee the success of their
high dollar, high risk projects and are not willing to introduce new methods for project
management into their company because of the great time, expense and risk that were put
into play to implement a project management methodology such as Agile, Spiral etc.
In contrast Project Behavioral Coaching™ is a technique based on the science
of human behavior that can be used with any methodology to drive up success
rates. How? By focusing on the engine of our projects – human beings.
This white paper will cover the high level steps used in performing the
Project Behavioral Coaching™ (PBC) technique as a guide for project
professionals that desire an introduction to learning the basics.
Introduction
People can be led with
method, but they perform with
their own technique.
Using the Project Behavioral Coaching™ technique may ensure
your projects’ success, regardless of methodology.

Organizations that seek to increase
performance must first make desired
results repeatable.
A technique can be used with any method.
“The strengthening of behavior which results
from reinforcement is appropriately called
‘conditioning’. In operant conditioning
we ‘strengthen’ an operant in the sense of
making a response more probable or, in
actual fact, more frequent.” – B.F. Skinner

Technique
• A way of carrying out a particular task, especially
the execution of an artistic work of scientific
procedure
• A skillful or efficient way of doing something
• Skill or ability in a particular field

PBC can be used with any project delivery methodology, at any time in a project
lifecycle and for any level of complexity (i.e. project, program, project portfolio). For
that matter, any organization can benefit (in which human behavior is present, and an
increase in success rates is desired) from PBC assuming the practitioner is experienced
with the technique and the delivery methodology used by the organization.
Human Behavior is the
engine of our projects.
1
2
3
Review Action
Participation Action
Testing/Monitor Action
PBC is organized into actions and not
phases or components. This may be
new or unusual to many professionals
as the standard approach for
methodology is to define procedures
that users have to learn to adapt
and perform on their own with little
guidance as to the actual specific
formulation of action taken by the user.
Since PBC is based on the
SCIENCE of human behavior, it
is activity based and only results
in success when human activity is
performed, tested, and tuned. Human
behavior is by definition – action.
Therefore, any reference to what a
user “thinks” or “feels” about how
work is done or performed is out
of scope of the technique, as it is
not controllable nor should it be.
PBC is organized into the following
“RPM” steps of action:

Triggering PBC
The technique can be triggered with a “significant environmental change” that is identified
by the project manager or user of the technique (we will cover this more below). The project
can be in any phase of the lifecycle of any methodology. However for the sake of this white
paper, we will review the PBC technique as if the project was performed in an organization
that uses a traditional waterfall methodology as defined by the Project Management Institute
(PMI) using the “Project Management
Body of Knowledge” (PMBOK)
documented by the same organization.
As all organizations conduct varying
activities during each phase of work as adapted to their needs, it is impossible to anticipate all
possible behaviors performed within a given project or project phase of work. However, learning
the PBC technique with objectives by action (steps
1 through 3 above) allows universal flexibility to
use the technique at any time. This is both helpful
and problematic; helpful because of the flexibility
to perform the technique at any time, problematic
because too much flexibility causes undo work
and effort to get the desired results. Therefore we
“trigger” the technique much like a technique (or
move) is triggered in any athletic competition. As
stated above the technique is triggered when the
practitioner experiences some kind of significant
change in their environment. Typically these
changes are expected such as a project phase
change from a core “development phase” to a core “testing phase” in a waterfall methodology.
Changes can also be team oriented changes where the project manager’s time is spent more
with developers at one point, and more with business users at another. The key to effective
triggering is user awareness of significant changes in people, process, and technology because
it is what will trigger the action of the technique. A sports analogy may be helpful in that a soccer
player may change a ball dribbling technique from high speed in one instance where there is no
opposition present, to protected dribbling where opposition is close by and forcing a move. The
environment changes and the technique is triggered. And techniques are made up of actions.
“Freedom to a dancer means
discipline. That is what technique
is for…liberation.” – Martha Graham


PBC Technique
Action 1: Review
The purpose of the review action is to determine the scope of your examination
in behavior on the project for this trigger point. This begins by reviewing the
core areas you are working with or are expecting to work with.
In an initiate phase of work, you may only be working with a project sponsor and a few key
stakeholders, yet anticipating working with other areas (based on
your knowledge of the scope of work). For example, you may know
in advance this will be a technology project and you
will be working with members of your technology team.
The “Review” piece of this action has the objective to
simply identify who you are (or will be) working with for
this trigger point; no more. However, the “Assess” piece
of the activity drives for another more valuable objective and that is
to instruct the PBC user as to what is known, in terms of behavior,
about the areas you will be working with. Your experience and involvement with the company
or team you are working with will dictate the amount of time you spend completing your own
assessment of behaviors for each area.
However, while it is assumed for purposes
of this white paper you already know the
basic science of defining and measuring a
human behavior for analysis, your objective
for this activity is to simply assess. So
you may simply know or have heard that
“Development does not play well with testing”
or “Marketing does not like to attend the
daily scrum” (a meeting type used in Agile
with specific objectives including critical
representation by the business); some may call these “pain points”. The outcome of
the assessment phase is to isolate areas and behaviors you believe you will have
to hone in on, to improve and “coach” for higher human performance levels.
“Ideas come from somewhere.
People don’t come up with
these ideas from nowhere.
Something triggers your
thoughts.” – Lazaro Hernandez


Making a note of what areas you are/will be working with and what you know about
how well they perform today will complete this action. This can be further elaborated if
you know for example that today a certain area is performing one way, and will need to
perform another way in the future (current state, future state, gap analysis). Examples
include mergers and acquisitions, business process changes and strategy alignment.
“If you don’t know where
you are headed, you’ll
probably end up someplace
else.” – Douglas J. Eder

Remember, performance can be judged with a myriad of tools (e.g. surveys,
questionnaires, interviews and methods), and it is up to you to use the assets you have
at hand to do so. But to be clear, you are not measuring performance in this action,
you are simply taking note of what you have learned about it in your efforts.

PBC Technique
Action 2: Participate
The purpose of the participate action is to ensure your assessment is valid; to gather
detail information about “core” team and team member behaviors, and to begin to
gather data that you will use later to further “pinpoint” targeted behaviors.
Knowing the basic science that a behavior is: 1) measurable, 2) observable, 3) repeatable,
4) controllable, and 5) activity-based, will help the practitioner identify legitimate behaviors
and eliminate any errors that may have been conducted in the first cction.
Continuing the example from the previous action – “marketing
team members don’t like to attend the daily scrum”, the
practitioner will attend the daily scrum to observe and document
actual behaviors. In this instance, the practitioner may use the
clue that “marketing does not like” (a perception, not a behavior)
to determine that indeed assigned Marketing team members
are not attending the daily scrum (a behavior that meets the 5
attributes, see above). At this point, the behavior is noted using
your choice of medium (MS Excel, notebook, the Exalt – Project
Behavioral Coaching Software etc.) for future reference. The last step of this action is to simply
identify what or who is reinforcing the behavior. This may require further interviews, questionnaires
etc. to identify potential sources of reinforcement and incentives such as supervisors, job descriptions,
incentive bonus programs, peer influence, customer influence, departmental goals and priorities and
more. For this example, we will act is if the main reinforcement identified was the supervisor who has
told direct reports that the daily scrum is not a priority and is IT work not Marketing work. As possible
reinforcers are identified, they must be documented for further examination in the following action.
“To acquire knowledge,
one must study; but to
acquire wisdom, one must
observe.” – Marilyn Vos Savant


PBC Technique
Action 3: Test and Monitor
The test and monitor action of the PBC technique focuses on validation of reinforcers
identified in the participation action. This is a critical step of the technique as reinforcers
are the most crucial element in shaping behaviors to desired outcomes.
In this instance, the marketing supervisor has shaped direct reports’ behavior in such a way
that they will not attend the daily scrum meeting, which is a critical miss, as a main objective
of scrum is to speed completed code to the business and this is enabled by business
representation in the meeting on a regular basis. For the
scrum team and the company, this is not a desired outcome.
However the marketing supervisor is not reinforcing the
required behavior that will lead to the desired result.
It is now the job of the practitioner to identify possible positive
reinforcers for the marketing supervisor. In order to bring the scrum
team to peak performance, team members must be positively
reinforced to attend the daily scrum and to do that, the marketing
supervisor must be positively reinforced to make it happen.
We know from the basics of human behavior science that a
positive reinforcer is ten times more likely to shape behavior and
that successful reinforcers must be 1) personal, 2) frequent, 3) immediate, 4) earned, and 5) social.
Testing possible reinforcers is primarily achieved by understanding what the individual employee
sees as reinforcing. For one employee, a gift card to Starbucks may be considered a reinforcer
whereas to another employee who hates coffee, a thank you card is reinforcing. Still, the frequency
of the reinforcer, the timing, and the legitimacy (was it earned?) must be worked out. Measuring
the frequency of the desired behavior is a sure way to determine the power of the reinforcer.
Following our example, the practitioner has discovered through interviews that the
marketing supervisor really enjoys movies and iTunes music. The practitioner and the IT
Vice President decide to meet with the Marketing supervisor and work to get the supervisor
to reinforce her direct reports to attend the daily scrum in joint management meetings.

Testing Step
As the meetings occur, the practitioner immediately reinforces the marketing
supervisor for supporting attendance at the daily scrum and also has a plan
to reinforce the marketing employees when they do indeed attend.
As a result, the practitioner has been measuring the frequency of attendance by marketing
employees and notes a continuous increase in attendance. Not only does this achieve the
desired result, but it validated the reinforcers are working because the behavior is observable
and frequent. Had it not been, the practitioner would have to conclude that he had not identified a
reinforcer, because by definition a reinforcer is something that results in increasing the frequency
of a desired behavior that leads to the next step of this action. Once reinforcers are identified
and tested they should be tuned to optimize results. This may include trying different reinforcers
to see if a different reinforcer drives greater frequency of
the desired behavior. It also includes varying the timing
of the reinforcer, the frequency and the legitimacy.
This action should not be skipped because in many
instances the practitioner may find they can reduce
cost of the reinforcer, and even more importantly,
estimate when the need for reinforcement is satiated
so that it can be stopped and cost can be contained.
Satiation is the point at which the reinforcement is no longer needed because the employee
has been habituated to perform the behavior as required. Continuing to reinforce once satiation
is achieved is not cost effective and can accidentally shape behavior in unintended ways.
During this action the practitioner is tracking results including actual cost of reinforcers used
on the effort. In projectized organizations, the practitioner may have a project budget that
includes budget for reinforcers and tracking actual cost will therefore be very important.

Monitoring Step
Monitoring is an action step focused on measurement of results. These are both results
related to project performance and results of the practitioner’s efforts to shape behaviors.
Using standard tools and methods available in traditional project management to measure
results (examples: Agile burn down charts, budget actuals, earned value analysis) in
combination with PBC metrics (examples: desired behavior frequency, estimated and
actual reinforcement costs, antecedent availability) will contribute to increased rates
of project success assuming the practitioner has a command of the technique.
Critical to this step is the ability by the practitioner to use the analysis of behavior data with
other metrics from the project to create forward looking indicators that predict project success.
The Exalt Project Behavioral Coaching software contains hundreds of known successful
project behaviors that can be used in comparison to behaviors on your project to go beyond
traditional project management metrics to predict
obstacles that are chiefly created by human behavior.
For example, knowing that coding bugs (or defects) are
making their way into production code because you have a
metric that measures this, does nothing to manage a project
behavior where developers are not communicating with
testers and bringing them into the project lifecycle too late.
In contrast, monitoring the behaviors on the project allows
the practitioner to predict the likelihood of project success.
But knowing that there is a direct relationship
between the frequency of unit testing results
review between testers and developers and the frequency of defects rolling into
production code, enables project managers and practitioners to have an extra
level of influence in driving employees to better team together and perform.

Whereas previously it was a “pain point” that challenged the organization to respond
without fact based data, the practitioner is now able to associate a projected
cost with a proven undesired behavior and results (low project success rates)
and a cost savings with the reinforcement of a known desired behavior. Thus
bringing additional leverage to drive improved performance on the project.
Likewise on projects where desired behavior is already present, but an even
greater increase in project success rates is desired, the practitioner can monitor
core dependent behaviors (for success) and increase their frequency to even
further improve performance and success rates for the project.
Again, the flexibility of the technique is both helpful and problematic. Learning to trigger
and apply the PBC technique is instrumental to increasing project success rates and
should not be attempted without training from an accredited training organization.
Furthermore, use of the accompanying “Exalt Project Behavioral
Coaching” Software will aid in accelerated learning of the technique while
providing known successful project behaviors for comparison.
In closing, project management practitioners must find new ways to leverage the
engine of our projects – human beings. Knowing the basics of human behavior is a
start but we must transform our approach to be more “human centric” if we wish to see
improvements in project success rates. The focus of the last few decades on methodology
and project management tools, has not delivered the promised results, and will not,
until we learn to effectively coach the behaviors on our projects that are blocking us
from the success we want out of our projects and the supporting methodologies.
Summary

Scot Hanley is a senior technology executive
with an exceptional record of success in
the development and crisp execution of IT
strategy with over 25 years of experience.
He has the proven ability to facilitate revenue
growth and market penetration by delivering
business and technology solutions to meet
business and market needs. The foundation
blocks of his career include innovation,
relationship building, and focus in strategy
& execution, including excellence in Project
& Program Management. His passion
lies in orchestrating the transformation of
companies into market share leaders &
innovators and he has 15 years of leadership
experience specifically in strategies related
to IT Transformation and Modernization.
Scot is an innovative entrepreneur and
consultant with a demonstrated ability to
influence the C-Suite, launch new ventures
and transform organizations. He is skilled at
building and leading top performing teams
and producing enterprise level strategies
that transform capabilities, improve efficiency
and drive down costs. Named “Kerzner
International Project Manager of the Year by
PMI & IIL in 2008” he has special expertise
in PMO startups, Project Management,
leading divestitures and technology and
business process implementations. He is
a trusted consultant that harmonizes the
business and IT strategy into a winning
composition via business alignment.
He is a champion in helping companies
pioneer new ways to harness technology and
execute strategic plans to drive differentiation
in the market via delivery excellence.
He has held a wide variety of leadership
roles including start-up experience
with Hamilton-Ryker Consulting, VP
level roles with BCBS and Synovus
Author:
Scot Hanley, PMP, CSM, ITIL, MCP

Financial and Executive level consulting roles with Ernst & Young as well as CapGemini.
He has experience across the Finance, Healthcare, Telecommunications, and Travel industries
with special expertise in Data Warehousing, Big Data, and Analytics including hands-on
technology experience. His patent-pending technique in project management, “Project Behavioral
Coaching” TM
, has been widely acclaimed as an innovative and disruptive force in project
management that recognizes the assessment of human behavior as critical to the success of all
projects and his article on same have been featured in LinkedIn’s online “Pulse” magazine.
Scot’s market analysis of consulting firms in the southeastern US, pro-forma for a differentiated
management consultancy and plans for revenue streams, social/digital media marketing presence and
presentations convinced Hamilton-Ryker, the largest privately held staffing firm in the southeast, to
invest in his concept to launch a consulting firm with strong competencies in improving IT delivery.
He led the strategy for startup of the consulting organization and managed operations of the
company. He was responsible for ensuring the firm delivered superior results to the client,
which included everything from staffing & recruiting coordination for turn-key client projects,
to research and development for our methods, techniques, and supporting technology.
Scot’s work at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama as VP of Technology, was primarily focused
on delivering strategy for the modernization of IT, development of COEs, as well as shared
responsibility with App Dev & Infrastructure to successfully deliver on systems and application
delivery projects across a $120M (annual) project portfolio. As Vice President Technology at
Synovus, Scot led the effort for the “TSYS Spin Off” – divestiture. With TSYS (largest credit
card processor world-wide) he acted as the Executive Program Manager while leading the IT
Professional Services Office at Synovus (TSYS holding company) reporting to the CIO. Additionally,
Scot has held senior positions at CapGemini and Ernst & Young where he drove success for
corporations through alignment of technology and business to achieve strategic goals.
Scot graduated with a BA in English Language and Literature from Columbus State University
as well as a Commission as a US Army Officer. He is a Desert Storm veteran and holds
certifications PMP, ITIL, and CSM. He has spoken at numerous conferences on the topics of project
management and human behavior, innovation, and successful change management in IT.

Drive Your Business
Founded in 1995, WGroup is a boutique management consulting firm that provides Strategy,
Management and Execution Services to optimize business performance, minimize cost and create
value. Our consultants have years of experience both as industry executives and trusted advisors
to help clients think through complicated and pressing challenges to drive their business forward.
Visit us at www.thinkwgroup.com or give us a call at (610) 854-2700 to learn how we can help you.
150 N Radnor Chester Road
Radnor, PA 19087
610-854-2700
ThinkWGroup.com

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