The first phase in the WAG process involves detailed consultation with your customer to identify the key processes in their organization and to understand the relationships between the processes. You are likely to engage in detailed workshops with your customer and to study process documentation received from your customer to help you to understand and map the workplace processes – to develop a detailed picture of how the organization works. In this post we draw attention to three steps in particular that you should consider for this phase:

• Step 1: Document the key collaboration, work and project management processes.
• Step 2: Identify and map the relationships between the processes.
• Step 3: Create a complexity spectrum for each key process.

Step 1: Document the key collaboration, work and project management processes.

Draw a picture of all the relevant processes – get everything down on paper.

Sample 1.1: Here is a sample list of key work and project management processes:

• Project Management (of single projects)
• Program Management (of multiple projects)
• Process Management (incl. best practices)
• Product Management (incl. work products)
• Priority Management (incl. project selection, change requests)
• People Management (incl. resource mgmt., skills)
• Partner Management (incl. suppliers, vendors)
• Price Management (incl. cost, budgets, etc.)

Note that each of the processes in Sample 1.1 has sub-processes. Remember that this list is but a sample - these are clearly not the key work and project management processes for every organization. You and your customer must analyse the customer’s organization to identify the customer’s key work management processes.

Step 2: Identify and map the relationships between the processes.

Remember that most of the key processes identified in Step 1 do not exist in isolation; rather they have connections to the other key processes. Sample 1.2 maps the relationships between three of the key project management processes identified in Sample 1.1 of Step 1 above.

Sample 1.2: The relationships between three key work management processes



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Step 3: Create a complexity spectrum for each key process.

If we consider a spectrum for work and project management processes, we know that work and projects need, deserve and get different levels of process and structure, even in the same department of an organisation. This happens due to any number of factors, including the time that is available, the complexity and risks, the customer profile, demands and budget and the individual experience level of team members. It is therefore important that a spectrum can be assigned to each key process that is appropriate to the nature of the work in hand. Your architecture needs to reflect this reality.

Sample 1.3: Work and project management process spectrum

Sample 1.3 shows a sample complexity spectrum that can be applied to work and project management processes generally. For example, some projects can be managed by exception - more to the left of the line. Because of the nature and often simplicity of some projects, there is no time or need to document and approve every activity in the project. Therefore, the project manager only raises issues and seeks outside intervention when problems arise. But other more complex projects require and deserve much more structured management processes - more to the right of the line.

Having developed a complexity spectrum that can be applied to key work and project management processes generally, it is then necessary to apply that spectrum (or a suitable variation) to each of the key individual processes. Sample 1.4 gives an example of how the spectrum for work and project management processes can be used to define the range of appropriate Program Management processes for the management across many projects. In summary, then, for Step 3, you should produce a complexity spectrum for each key process identified in step 1 of this first phase.

Sample 1.4: Program management spectrum

Summary

It is important to note that the Workplace Architecture Definition phase is not a one-time effort. The output of the phase will be reviewed and most probably revised as one iteration is delivered and another iteration is about to start.

Table 1: Phase 1 Workplace Architecture Definition Summary