ENTERPRISE WORK MANAGEMENT: How to Slay the Dragon of Enterprise Work CONTENTS

The Dragon of Enterprise Work 3 The Complete Enterprise Work Lifecycle 17

The Ugly Face of the Dragon 5 The Enterprise Work Management Approach 19

When the Dragon Breathes Fire 7 Now You’re Ready for Battle 21

Don’t Just Treat the Burn 9 Lifecycles Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All 22

The Problem is Bigger than You Think 11 The Rewards of Slaying the Dragon 23

“Pet” Dragons Cost You, Big Time 13 Your Ultimate Weapon 24

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THE DRAGON OF ENTERPRISE WORK

3 THIS MEANS WAR

If you’re reading this eBook, it’s probably because you’ve got a pest control problem. This isn’t just an irritating lizard infestation, though. This is larger and nastier than lizards; it’s a huge, nasty, fire-breathing, hard to ignore, dragon. The dragon of work chaos. And you need to know how to slay it.

Well, there’s no need to fear. This eBook will teach you the right—and necessary—weapons to help you extinguish the fire, examine your burn wounds, and exterminate the work chaos dragon for good.

4 THE UGLY FACE OF THE DRAGON Work chaos is the fiend that plagues enterprise teams. It emerges as a result of serious work mismanagement and it can take many forms, including:

Random Input Wasted time. Disconnected No Adoption. Poor visibility Poor resource Processes. Your team spends too activities. Project managers, into work. visibility. No one knows the much time on phone Your strategy direction team members, and Every person and team It’s difficult to know ‘correct’ way to make a calls, in email, making is disconnected from executives don’t engage is using different siloed how effectively or request, so requests desk visits, attending commitments, which in your tools because tools for work, like ineffectively resources come in at all times of status meetings, and are disconnected the tools aren’t relevant document sharing, are utilized to deliver the day, in all shapes trying to gather data from work, which is to their work, and PPM, spreadsheets, on your business and sizes—without the instead of actually disconnected from have terrible usability. email, whiteboards, commitments. key information you executing. performance tracking task management need. It’s insane trying and management, etc. tools, etc., which to keep up with them all. leads to scattered work data that takes hours to gather.

All you really need is to know who’s working on what, if people are working on the right work, do they have the resources they need, and will work be completed on time. But every time you try, you end up getting burned by the dragon.

5 WHEN THE DRAGON BREATHES FIRE...

Unfortunately, the effects of not exterminating the chaos dragon are that you and your team are:

Burned out. The chaos and frustration of disconnected work leads to unhealthy stress, long hours, too many caffeinated drinks, and eventually, extreme dissatisfaction with your job.

Running with your hair on fire. Work chaos and low visibility mean that you and your team members are always running around like your hair’s on fire trying to get the data that you need to appease executives and stakeholders.

Constantly facing fire drills. Without the information you need for process improvement or the right amount of resource visibility, you have no way to justify priorities or timelines, which results in constantly putting out fires instead of doing strategic work.

6 EVERYTHING YOU’VE TRIED More People. ONLY TREATS THE BURN “If we just had a few more headcount, that would solve all our problems.” Managers have tried all kinds of things to help slay the chaos dragon that plagues them. Unfortunately, these things merely treat their burn wounds instead of slaying the actual problem: the dragon.

Business Books. Methodology Merry-Go-Rounds. “Maybe if everybody reads this revolutionary new book, it will “Maybe going Lean this month will change everything.” help us function better...”

New Point Solutions. Industry Trends. “We’ll just use another free tool to “The blogosphere is saying that all we patch that hole in our process.” have to do is empower people more.”

Consultants. If you’ve ever tried any of those things, then you get the idea. Here’s the thing, every single one “All we have to do is get an expert in here of those “helps” costs money. And that’s an awful to teach us how to be more organized.” lot of money to spend on temporary fixes. Now, there’s a reason their effect isn’t permanent. It’s The average consultant charges $125 per hour. (That’s $1000 because we have a bigger problem on our hands per day!) 1 that they fail to address.

7 THE PROBLEM IS BIGGER THAN YOU THINK

The truth is, the dragon you’re facing isn’t actually the dragon is the creator of the chaos: a nasty thing called disconnectedness.

than five? Yeah, that’s nuts! And chances are, you use your own “favorite tools” to manage your work life while each individual on your team is using their own. No wonder it’s next to impossible to get updates on what’s really going on.

tools don’t play nicely with one another. That means getting project and work data has to happen manually, which wastes a ton of time.

With disconnected tools and processes, not only are team members in the dark about what the rest of their team is doing and where dependencies are, but other departments in the organization are having the same problems, so trying to stay connected interdepartmentally is just…(you guessed it!) more chaos. "PET" DRAGONS COST YOU, BIG TIME What organizations fail to realize is how much all this disconnectedness is costing them, in dollars, efficiency, and productivity.

Silos. Lost data. Failure. Individuals working in different, Storing data in disconnected PMI reports that less than disconnected tools inevitably tools with disconnected two-thirds of projects actually results in team silos and little- processes is like playing meet their goals and business to-no work visibility. information hot potato. Work intent. In fact, it is estimated data gets tossed around that for every $1 billion spent “As systems fail to interact from tool to tool and person on a failed project, $135 million 3 wasted worker and data becomes trapped to person, making gathering is lost forever…unrecoverable.” 5 hours/day, at an and unavailable to deci- average salary of information and compiling $50k, costs you sion-makers outside the silo, reports a time-consuming, $128/day, $638/week, people are less likely to inter- error-ridden nightmare. Frustration. $2,550/month, and act…they avoid sharing data $7,650/quarter. and information outside of Disconnection causes individual team members massive amounts Multiply that by 6 their silos. It’s a vicious cycle, Wasted time. people on your team one that can cost an organi- of stress because of low visibility and you’re wasting Disconnectedness means more into work and dependencies, $91,800/year! 3 zation in agility, productivity, employee time is spent in status inefficient processes, and and responsiveness.” 2 meetings and emails while scattered work information. In —Evan Rosen everyone tries frantically to get fact, three-fourths of American on the same page. It also means workers describe their work that manual processes eat up a as stressful. 6 Lost work. ton of your average worker’s day. When you have work requests flying at you from all directions, sometimes they fall through Distractions.

the cracks and time is lost. This Businesses lose $650 billion Workplace stress costs U.S. employers an can hold back entire projects, a year related to the lack of estimated $200 billion per year in absen- tangle up your resources, dis- teeism, lower productivity, staff turnover, job performance and creativity worker compensation, medical insurance rupt strategies, and jeopardize due to distractions. 4 and other stress-related expenses. 7 your competitive advantage.

9 SLAYING THE DRAGON REQUIRES A DIFFERENT WEAPON

The best way to eliminate disconnectedness and chaos is to unify. Unifying, in the correct way, requires that you start to look at the way you do work in a different way. There are two crucial parts to unifying:

1. unify your tools. Using five or more tools scatters your work data, low- ers visibility, kills productivity, and increases chaos. It’s time to stop disconnectedness once and for all by implementing one unified, centralized tool for manag- ing all of your work.

2. Unify your processes. Disconnected tools inevitably leads to disconnected processes, especially when you’re using separate tools to manage different stages of the project life- cycle and additional tools to manage the rest of your work. The secret to unifying processes is to manage the end-to-end lifecycle of enterprise work, not just parts of the project lifecycle.

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MANAGING THE COMPLETE Most PPM tools fail to accommodate work other than ENTERPRISE WORK LIFECYCLE projects (i.e. unstructured work, everyday“lights on” work, ad hoc Unfortunately, most of the solutions available to help requests, etc.). And PPM tools manage work, fail to manage it through the end-to-end work may work fine for project planning and coordinating, lifecycle. At best, they only focus on one or two stages.. but they leave you with gaps to fill for the rest.

There are thousands of task management tools out there for you to choose from, but they are usually as simplistic as apps and they only help manage work execution; you’ll ENTERPRISE have to find other tools to help you plan, prioritize, collabo- WORK rate, and measure. LIFECYCLE

Most social tools are apps or add-ons that don’t even allow you to collaborate in the context of your work, meaning that collaboration is unconnected from the actual work it’s related to. With these social tools, collaboration doesn’t flow through the entire Your ultimate unification weapon is useless if it doesn’t unify the complete work lifecycle. enterprise work lifecycle. THE ENTERPRISE WORK MANAGEMENT APPROACH

12 NOW YOU’RE READY FOR BATTLE

The remainder of this eBook will walk you through each stage of the enterprise work lifecycle and highlight what needs to change, in conjunction with enterprise work management best practices, so you can slay your work chaos dragon for good.

13 1 IDENTIFY

Typical Situation: Requests for work happen in more places and more ways than ever before because of the structure of enterprise/matrix organizations. They come as emails, sticky notes, phone calls, conversations in the hallway, instant messages, desk drive-bys, etc., and sometimes they come so frequently that it’s chaotic trying to stay on top of them, let alone prioritize them. Best practice: standardize. Designate one place for inputs and requests, so regardless of whether requests come from within your team, clients, or other departments, they’ll arrive in the same way, to the same place, where they’ll never be overlooked or improperly prioritized.

23%

Only 23% of companies use standard- 77ized project management practices +23+R throughout their organizations. 8

14 2 PRIORITIZE

Typical Situation: request this quarter because we are already maxed to capacity on projects more aligned with our business There are two ways people typically prioritize their work: goals,” and be able to show within your tool that what you’re saying is true. The 1-2-3 Approach.

People work on requests from their boss first, requests 3. Stay aligned. from other people second, and everything else last. Work is pointless if it doesn’t benefit the business. That’s why prioritizing work based on what will bring the most The pants on fire approach. ROI or benefit to your organization is vital. People work on whatever is going to bite them in the “Without direct links to the strategic plan, butt next—usually whatever is due tomorrow. selecting the right projects at the right times Best practice: is more political than strategic.” 10 There are three important best practices for prioritizing work: —Margo Visitacion, Forrester 1. Know when to say “No.” It’s important to be able to say “no” to requests when: ∞∞ You don’t have time ∞∞ You don’t have resources ∞∞ They aren’t aligned with your organization’s strategic objectives ∞∞ They won’t turn out acceptable ROI

2. Explain yourself. Whenever you say “no” or “not right now” to a work “Saying no in business—to customers, request, it’s imperative that you be able to explain and/ employees, vendors, colleagues, etc.— or show the requester why you’re saying no. For this, is not only acceptable, it can even be contextual visibility is needed. You need to be able an action that saves your business.” 9 to say, “I’m sorry, we won't be able to fulfill your work —George Roberts

15 3 PLAN

Typical Situation: Without the visibility that comes from unified tools and processes, work planning often includes overly optimistic deadlines and a failure to account for all the necessary requirements. With unstructured and ad-hoc work, sufficient planning may not even happen. Best practice: include the team early. Getting input from those on the front lines will help you forecast a more realistic timeline and scope, as well as catch requirements you may have missed otherwise. Additionally, this practice helps keep everyone on the same page about process, expectations, and dependencies, helping eliminate disconnectedness.

“If members are assigned tasks without their input or agreement, it can cause dissension or poor work performance within the group.” 11 —Rhonda Carlson

16 4 COORDINATE

Typical Situation: Trying to coordinate work usually means disconnected communication due to inefficient collaboration methods such as time-sucking meetings, long email chains, and social tool add-ons.

Best practice: 1. Get out of the way of work. Give people the ability to accept work assignments, make visible commitments, and make important deci- sions. You will find that doing so increases their com- mitment to the work, which will help unify your people to your processes. Gartner Analyst, Robert Handler, advises, “Experiment with self-selection, essentially allowing resources to have some autonomy deciding which projects they work on.” 12

2. Real collaboration. First and foremost, status meetings and emails are “A sense of autonomy not “collaboration.” Second, unification comes largely from learning how to collaborate on the right things at has a powerful effect on the right times. However, don’t collaborate just for the sake of collaborating. Too much collaboration can bog down processes and create the dreaded “too many individual performance cooks in the kitchen” syndrome. Collaborate in such 13 a way that information is collected in the context of and attitude.” specific work items, including only those relevant to the work, and no more. —Daniel Pink

17 5 EXECUTE

Typical Situation: and like they’re contributing to a higher cause. It’s an innate need of each individual to feel Disconnected processes often lead to wasteful that they’ve done things right and like their redundancies; your team may have done a certain contribution matters. type of work several times before, but they always have to start from scratch because little standardization exists. “Employee recognition has a huge communication component! Recognizing people for their good work Instead of focusing on making work better and sends an extremely powerful message to the recipient, more efficient, team members waste time trying to their work team and other employees through the remember the best ways to execute. This type of 14 frustration, without improvement, inevitably leads to grapevine and formal communication channels.” disengaged employees —Kim Harrison

Best practice: 1. Embrace process improvement. Work templates (and a single place to keep and use them) will save your life. Assignments, processes, and dependencies are built in, so your team always knows the correct steps for execution. In addition, templates help streamline repeatable, improvable workflows and allow you and your team to constantly learn from mistakes or inefficiencies and apply those learnings for next time.

2. Employee recognition. Recognizing employees in the context of their work, helps keep people engaged in their work by making them feel valued, important,

18 6 DELIVER

Typical Situation: you’ve accomplished. Make sure that the work you deliver is seen and acknowledged by the right people, and then For structured work, the typical “constraints” for final delivery are: saved, with context, in a central location where you can ∞∞ On time frequently refer back to it. ∞∞ On budget ∞∞ Within scope A common adage heard regarding this approach is,“Pick any two,” implying that the odds of achieving all three constraints are slim-to-none. With disconnectedness plaguing your department, that mentality is probably an unfortunate truth.

Best practice: Think outside the triangle.

It’s time to think about work delivery in a different way. Instead of confining work to the constraint triangle, define what “done” and “winning” should look like during the planning phase of work. Delivery, then, is successful when you’ve met the standards set at the beginning of the work lifecycle, which may be more, less, or different than scope, budget, and time. The key is to deliver what you committed to deliver.

Make Outcomes Accessible.

When you’ve delivered your finished work, don’t let your hard work go to waste. So often, it’s easy to send off your data, insights, and documents and that’s the end of it. When that happens, work gets lost or forgotten about and nobody else has any visibility into what

19 7 MEASURE

Typical Situation: “When systems interact, people are likely to interact. Measurement is a commonly overlooked stage of Establish common platforms and systems across the work lifecycle. When you’re using separate/ the organization and give people access to the disparate tools to manage your work, “measuring” same data and information.” 15 looks more like hours of manual data entry that you —Evan Rosen don’t entirely trust. Disconnectedness means that when it’s time to measure success, it’s hard to say what worked or who deserves a promotion because you couldn’t track team member activities and your data lives in too many different places.

Best practice:

1. Keep everything in one place. Keep your work, your collaboration, and your documents in one place, or at least in as few tools as possible (strategic integrations are a huge plus). This helps keep all of your important data in one place, which will save you time in the long run.

2. Lessons learned. Keeping all your performance data in a central location is an improvement goldmine. Equally as important is team analysis of the data in a formalized Lessons Learned activity. Teams should discuss together what worked, what didn’t, and how they can be more efficient and successful next time. When you’re done, you can incorporate feedback into your templates to make sure next time runs more smoothly.

20 LIFECYCLES ARE NEVER ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL

It’s important to remember that work processes and lifecycles vary depending on the different types of work being done and what is best for the organization.

The Key? All work is different. Never try to force work into a lifecycle that wasn’t made for it. Unstructured work will be unsuccessful in a lifecycle for structured projects and vice versa. The key is to take the work lifecycle laid out for you here and customize it based on the specific types of work you do and what will work best for your organization, department, and team.

21 ONCE YOU’VE CONQUERED THE DRAGON, YOU WILL BE REWARDED The benefits that come from unifying (eliminating disconnectedness) are more specific than just “killing chaos.”

Unifying your tools and processes means no more Time-sucking status meetings and navigating long switching back and forth between disparate tools or email chains for data become a thing of the past. badgering team members for status updates. When tools and processes are unified, you get contextual collaboration that saves everyone time.

Team members are connected to their work and to each other because everyone is on the same page, able to collaborate within the context of their work, and consultants, and bad processes that waste team using the same processes. member’s time cost you in the long run. Unification eliminates all of those extra costs.

Everyone has the visibility they need in order to do their When you’re unified, everyone is happy. People are and timelines, managers can see statuses, progress, engaged in their work, feel like their contribution and proper resource allocation, and executives have matters, and no longer feel frustration from being what they need in order to justify costs. over allocated or left in the dark. YOUR ULTIMATE WEAPON: ENTERPRISE WORK MANAGEMENT

Enterprise Work Management is your ultimate weapon Manage the end-to- Increase adoption. for unifying your tools and your processes and slaying end work lifecycle. It’s one system that people will work disconnectedness once and for all. It’s one system that manages actually use because it’s easy, the entire lifecycle of all types relevant, and works the way of work—both structured and people naturally work so it isn’t unstructured—from initial request just another step in an already to delivery and measurement. complicated process. Unify collaboration. Gain work visibility. It’s one system that reduces the It’s one system that provides all information overload you feel levels of an organization with by cutting out excess tools and visibility and insights into the connecting collaboration with truth about workloads, depen- work. This means more context, dencies, and when things will less meetings. really be done. Improve your work. Gain people visibility. It’s one system that streamlines It’s one system that gives your repeatable work processes managers and senior managers using custom built templates visibility into who is working on and process improvement to what, who has bandwidth, and improve your team’s productivity how to justify the resources you and efficiency. have, and the ones you still need. Unify your tools. It’s one system that combines everyone’s individual work management needs and processes into a single tool, eliminating silos and frustration.

23 WORKFRONT ENTERPRISE WORK CL OUD: TRUSTED DRAGON SLAYER, WORLDWIDE

Workfront is the only provider of cloud-based Enterprise Work Manageme nt solutions for enterprise teams.

Workfront can help you slay the dragon of work chaos in your organization. Contact us today to learn more.

www.workfront.com + 1.866.441.0001 + 44 (0)845 5083771 WORKS CITED

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10. Margo Visitacion. Forrester. It’s 3PM; Do You Know Where Your Portfolio Is?