Maneesh Vijaya

1. Philips “Complexity Points” Calculation Establishment

The healthcare division of Philips was involved in record numbers of projects. The senior management wanted to know how to figure out which project manager is more productive. Their in-house Six-Sigma consultant advised counting all the projects undertaken in a year and divide the same with the number for project managers, thus providing an average number of 7 projects that a project manager must undertake annually. If any specific project manager completes more projects than that average he/she would be regarded as a performer else otherwise.

When I had come to know about it, I had severely objected to this “simplistic” calculation and offered my services to establish a scientific calculation technique that would not only measure project complexity but would also be future ready. How could one equate a MRI installation at a hospital at Leh (one of the highest altitude cities as well as the remotest and difficult cities in the world) with a project about installation of MRI at a hospital in Delhi?

Since the organization was a bit resistant at first, I offered my services and thus began a 4 month journey to measure, list and assign complexity points to each of the elements in a project at Philips that contribute to project complexity. Project Complexity points were created even for those projects for future innovations. It even took into account portability of the “Complexity Calculator” to other geographies as well.

The data for everything was collected in such a way that all stakeholders (and not just the key stakeholders) agreed to it without any resistance.

The calculation was piloted and it was immensely successful among project managers, program managers, senior managers and even the procurement department.

Every project was assigned “Total Points” based on the complexity of the project and hence to measure the performance of the project and program managers, their total points accumulated in a year became the most uncontested benchmark.

This calculation not only benefited the tracking of project efficiency, it also became the basis for tailoring project processes based on complexity. Soon, as the organization grew they used the total points of projects in order book to estimate the number of project managers to be hired. Later, this point calculation system also became a way to distinguish “A” category vendors from “B” and “C” category vendors, thus promoting healthy competition.

This complexity calculation can be created for projects in any domain or industry that would bestow healthy transparency, employee appraisals, tailoring or project processes among a host of other benefits to the organization.

2. PMO Establishment at MCB

Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) was expanding its operations across Africa, which translated into many projects. Being a bank, their core focus was operational work and not projects.

I was hired through my Mauritius office to establish a Project Management Office and train a series of bank officers in project management.

I worked with MCB to first create a series of customized trainings on project and program management of differing intensities and depth based on the role those identified bank officers would play in expansion projects.

Having trained a large number of them, I helped select some of their officers who topped my “suitability assessment” that I had created for them. Those officers were made the “First” officers for PMO.

Having a team of PMO professionals who really knew their job well in project management and program management, I embarked upon the “exact set of possible roles” that the PMO at MCB would engage in.

Once the possible roles of PMO were identified, I worked with the senior management at MCB to create a “Tour Of Duty” career path for high performing project managers to maintain continuity for PMO staffing

Helped create a career path and hierarchical parity for PMO officers within the organization.

Finally established archives, processes specifically engineered for the organization, templates and tools for project management, and other tracking processes for projects for PMO. Stayed on until the success of the PMO piloting phase before handing over to the PMO team.

PMO establishment is not a “One Size Fit’s All” kind of event. It needs customization and forethought for future growth and changes within the organization before a version of PMO is selected for establishment.

3. Designing Organization Specific Engagements

Apart from consulting organization on various topics, I am routinely engaging in customization and even creation of brand new training engagement for different organizations. Here are just a short sample offering you glimpse into the diverse kinds of training customization and creation of training engagements done in the past.

• a. Project Management course for Hindi speaking vendors of an organization
  

  An organization where I had been consulting and training for several years, realized that while their project managers and other support staff were highly educated and skilled in project and program management processes, they felt dragged down by vendors who were also part of the project during crucial junctures.

  Hence, I was called upon to conduct a series of project management training engagements with all the vendors in different regions of India.

  Met and interviewed some of the vendors and understood their pain areas. Conducted similar interviews with project managers and program managers. I also reached out to note the observations of some of the clients of the organization where their projects faced challenges.

  Armed with all the information, I created a series of project management courses for vendors and delivered the same in Hindi. Something that was very well received by the vendors.

  A post training review with that organization revealed that since the training, project managers and vendors were working together as though they were a “team” and they were speaking the same project management language.

  Hence, I was called upon to conduct a series of project management training engagements with all the vendors in different regions of India.

  Two of these training were done in Tamil and one in Marathi as well where I was accompanied by officers of the organizations who would translate the conversation between the vendor team and me.

  When there is a good intention, there is always a way.

• b. Recovering slipping projects at ABB
  

  I was invited by ABB Bangalore office (plant and office) to work with them to understand the kind of projects they engage in as well as the pain areas the plague certain projects.

  Post discussions and a bit of analysis of needs and pain areas, I created a 5 days highly intensive course, replete with a case study around a “ABB Type Project Background”, something that was developed in collaboration with program managers at ABB, and titled the course as “How to recover a slipping project”.

  This course was attended by Project Managers, Program Managers and Function Heads (some of whom had more years of experience than myself), and was exceptionally well received.

  This course is something every organization, engaging in large projects, must organize for their project professionals once all of them have been trained on project management.

• c. Advanced Risk Management at Pfizer
  

  Being a pharmaceutical based research organization, Pfizer mostly engages in projects that follow the iterative (spiral) methodology.

  Needless to say, iterative methodology is inherently risky. However, Pfizer felt that their research scientists, IT staff and other researchers and support staff were not as well versed with the nuances of professional risk management. They were more focused on their respective technical aspects vis-à-vis the project thus being completely unmindful of risk management while actively engaging in Issue and problem management.

  I was hired to customize an advanced risk management course that reverberated with the scientists and researchers from pharmaceutical organization.

  After a few discussions and interviews, I put together a customized course on Advanced Risk Management with case studies take from within their organization, something that also included role play to make the training a lot more intensive.

  This session was highly received and conducted 3 times covering a huge number of their project professionals.

  One of the challenges in most well-meaning organizations is that tend to not be serious about Risk Management while constantly engaging in firefighting and problem resolution. This results in massive amounts of resources (including money) being wasted on “Cures”, something that they could have easily “prevented”.

• d. Negotiating through difficult situations
  

  Being on the panel of “Tata Management Training Centre [TMTC]” at Pune, I have been engaging in a lot of training with various organizations of TATA.

  Most of the engagements are customized courses.

  I was invited by a group of stakeholders from TMTC as well as TCS to craft a half-day session that would empower the participants to practically negotiate “Difficult professional” situations effectively and without losing emotional equilibrium.

  After a few discussions and interviews, I put together a customized course on Advanced Risk Management with case studies take from within their organization, something that also included role play to make the training a lot more intensive.

  Took one month of deep collaboration with stakeholders to create powerful session that would impart deep knowledge and know how to attending senior management participants in just 4.5 hrs.

  This course has been well received and I have been engaging in imparting this course online and offline at various TCS locations since 2021 and is still going on with timely adjustments.

• e. Customized Program Management for MTS and NOKIA
  

  I was hired by MTS, a known organization in the field of Telecom infrastructure. They used to undertake rather complex and large programs.

  I was hired by MTS to customize a Program Management course such that it aligned more to their industry and organization with the clear caveat that they were not interested in PMI PgMP certification.

  The designing of the course involved interviews with key stakeholders as well as going through their templates and tools used. I also involved the PMO for their inputs, which resulted in further insight.

  Once the training was customized and created, two sessions of 4 days each was conducted which were very well received.

  After one of the senior program managers who changed his job from MTS to Nokia Infrastructures, organized another two sessions of that course at Nokia.

  One good turn deserves another.

• f. Hybrid Program Management for Tata Elxsi
  

  TMTC hired me to conduct a Hybrid program management course with TATA Elxsi.

  Reason why it was called hybrid because it would not only be attended by Program Managers, Project Managers would attend it as well. Besides the course would span several methodologies.

  Challenging yes, but interesting, even more.

  We all worked together carefully with the vice president and other stakeholders and created a course that had various levels (difficulty levels) of case studies to appeal to different levels of participants.

  The course also provided for some soft skills aspects, which were discussed by two program managers from unrelated fields but involved in truly mammoth programs.

  This engagement was very well received and rated with high satisfaction across various levels of participants.

• g. Advanced Risk Management for Tata Steels
  

  TATA Steel had reached out to me for organizing an advanced risk management customized course for them.

  During discussions with the senior participants and organizational heads, I came to know that one of the “Big 4” consulting organizations had done an assessment at TATA steel and had pushed a rather generic template on Risk Management to them. Something that had resulted in deep confusion and lack of clarity.

  I realized the sensitivity of the situation where I was expected to remove the layers of misinformation and wrong terminology and tons of “jargons” without pointing fingers or letting any of the senior managers feel that it was a bad decision for them to hire one of those “Big 4”.

  I carefully crafted the session and then during delivery started using the “jargons” only to gently provide more meaningful terms and by the end of 2 days every one of the participants were speaking true Risk Management terms.

  I made it so that the participants themselves “decided” to shift from “Big 4” language to authentic Risk Management language.

  I was later invited to conduct two more such sessions with senior participants at their beautiful Dimna Training Centre location at Jamshedpur.

• h. Scheduling and Cost control simulation for Tata Steel
  

  Having tasted the quality of training on Advanced Risk Management, I was invited by the then Vice President for Programs at TATA Steel, to conduct a customized simulation engagement for project managers on the subject of “Scheduling and Cost control”.

  After several interviews and going through their templates and obtaining an understanding their processes, we chose a case study that was a bit different from their usual line of work. The reason for doing so was to ensure that none of the participants is hung up the details of the case background during the session. To avoid such a situation I devised a highly engaging but still a rather tough program. That background was to be used for a series of simulation and exercises that would take the participants from planning schedule and budgeting to all the way to controlling, change management, difficult situations and finally closing.

  All through a series of extreme exercises in groups, followed by group presentations and my debrief.

  The success of this session lead to two more such sessions and several other customized and standard training engagements at TATA Steel.

• i. Customized Program Management Course – GKN
  

  This is the longest running customized program management course that I have been engaged in.

  This course is a highly customized course the world leading automotive sector organization called GKN. This course is done in three parts spread over a period of four or five months and is replete with case studies, which are from within the organization, and each participant is provided a role with their own personality and information.

  Though I was not involved in the course creation when it started for the first time in 2008, I have been on the team for modifying it routinely to align with the changing automotive world around the globe as well as the increasing complexity.

  I am responsible for conducting this highly customized session in two to three global locations every year.

• j. Aligning Work with Organizational Strategy – CISCO
  

  I was hired by CISCO through their global training integrators, to customize an existing course that I had on the topic of Organizational strategy. The customization was to involve making it relevant to the project managers and other senior technical team members at CISCO, such that they could understand how to align their work with the organizational strategy.

  This course became such a success with CISCO that I conducted this session for nearly a decade with up to 4 sessions every year.

  Later their global training integrators put me on their panel to work with other global clients like Cognizant and Microsoft on similar topics.

• k. Project Management and Business Analysis – Nomura / Deloitte
  

  I was hired by Nomura to newly create a course that sensitized their mid and senior employees towards Project Management as well as Business Analysis.

  The course was to be designed such that it would have a common case study, taken from within their organization, but would be used in Project Management as well Business Analysis. It is not as easy as it sounds.

  However, the end result has been such that I have conducted six to seven such engagements with Nomura and Deloitte over the last decade.

  This training has been imparted in both, traditional classroom style as well as online live versions.

• l. Advanced Negotiation Skills – Alcatel Lucent
  

  I had been a prolific trainer at Alcatel Lucent for nearly a decade until they split up. I guess both of them lost me during their divorce.

  One of the customized trainings I was hired to design was around the world of Negotiations and Negotiation tactics. It was titled as “Advanced Negotiation Skills”.

  The main challenge of that course design was that it was to appeal to three different hierarchy levels of participants who would engage in negotiations at different levels and complexity.

  There was bit of political challenge as well. Many participants were expected to attend along with their bosses.

  Therefore, I simply created three different categories of case studies for each of the hierarchy levels of the participants attending.

  While the discourse and discussions of the training was done in a joint forum, the case studies and role plays were done in hierarchical groups thus removing chances of any kind of reservations and resistance from the participants.

  This was so well received that I was invited to conduct three more such sessions.

4. Establishing BA Career Path In Cognizant

When Cognizant adopted the Business Analysis as an organization role, they faced a challenge. How would they create a Business Analysis role within the organization how would they be assessed for efficiency over time? What would be their growth path? How to make their growth path, which also allowed them choices for super-specialization? How to create parity in their remuneration vis-à-vis the other established roles within the organization?

I knew that the biggest problem with the establishment of BA Career path in Cognizant (or any other organization in similar situation) would be latent resistance from senior management stakeholders when they find the scope of their work increasing.

Therefore, I first worked with the senior stakeholders, used a carefully designed assessment system, and obtained all their inputs, suggestions, challenges and apprehensions. Through a complex series of prioritization and discussions, I was able to get all of them on a common page within 4 months. The time for this phase was originally kept at 6 months. The stakeholders were from six different countries.

Once I had all the inputs, it was rather straightforward to create different hierarchies of BA roles with assessment stages for growth. The assessment system was designed for eliminating “Boss Bias” (both intended as well as unintended).

This BA Career path was adopted through internal discussion within 8 months instead of the one year that was earmarked for it.

5. Rolling out Microsoft Project Enterprise at Batelco

Batelco is telecom service provider giant in the Gulf Region. Through my, the then, office at Bahrain Batelco reached out to me for helping them roll out the enterprise version of Microsoft Project. It seemed that they had earlier hired some other organization and those consultants seemed to have bulldozed their way into rolling out thus creating a palpable risk of project staff and other functional staff to reject it.

Having done this kind of roll out several times earlier, I knew that the more difficult part of the rollout is not the technical installation and server configuration but the expectation setting and change of mind-set required by the staff and employees whose working the rollout would affect.

Knowing that most such enterprise rollouts fail mainly because of heightened focus on “Technical Implementation” instead of working with affected stakeholders to understand what features would work best for them. Such rollouts need a “Bottom Up” (more difficult) approach rather than the “Top Down” (easier) approach.

I teamed up with one my colleagues who also specializes in such rollout; we first worked with individuals whose life it would affect and collected all their requirements. Later we bounced off those requirements with the “owner” stakeholders of the rollout to ensure that the requirements were aligned to the overall vision for rolling out the enterprise MSP.

While my colleague continued rolling out as well as conducting technical manipulation, I conducted a series of pre-rollout expectation setting and change management engagement with different groups of stakeholders.

This rollout was accepted with near 100% participation and near zero resistance within the first year of its rollout.

6. Establishing Function Point Estimation – IT Organization Pune

One of the IT organizations had reached out to me for ensuring that their entire project management staff not only understand the concept but also become highly effective in using Function Point Estimation.

Function Points (FP) is the only scientific sizing technique for Software Development projects. They can even be used for embedded software projects.

This initiative involved training a large group of participants along with establishing all the templates and processes along with productivity calculations as well.

Post piloting for 4 months this was fully accepted within the organization without any further modifications.

7. Establishing Function Point Estimation – Konkan Railways

Someone from the Pune IT organization had recommended my name to Konkan railways for FP.

Konkan Railways had a different requirement. They did not undertake any kind of IT or Software Development project themselves. Many of the electronics and signalling systems need sophisticated software systems including chip based embedded systems.

Since such projects were being done by their vendors, Konkan railway officers were not sure about two things. Whether the vendors understood all the requirements and whether they were quoting fair fees for the same.

The way FP is set up is that one has to completely understand the requirements before sizing it and hence if someone is able to calculate FP they would, in all probability, know expected requirements well.

I was hired to first train all the procurement and technical officers on FP and lay down the procurement and evaluation process whereby the Konkan railways would calculate the FP of the system they propose to outsource. Once done through a series of templates developed and productivity calculations the Konkan railways could compare the FP calculations by bidders and then use productivity factors to ascertain if the vendor was quoting fair fees.

This entire consulting was implemented in 2 months.

8. Consulted Konkan Railways On “Anti – Collision” device

Having had the experience of my consulting discipline, I was again asked by Konkan Railways to figure out Risks as well as FP processes for embedded systems to help them design an “Anti-Collision” system themselves instead of obtaining a super expensive system from abroad.

Though this was completed and rolled out into the organization, I came to know later that due to ministerial involvement (or lack of it) the “System” was kept on hold.

9. Mentored Individual Mid Management and Senior Management Professionals

Apart from consulting and training, I also engage in mentoring senior and mid management professionals from different domain and industries.

Most of my mentoring is for long-term transformative reasons.

Some of my mentees have reached levels of Country heads while they engaged with me when they were a project manager.

A smaller number of professionals go through my mentorship to overcome some political situations in office, changing careers or domain, getting through an interview and overcoming political situations in office.

A large number of such mentoring activities I do completely free of cost and has become my way to give back to the Industry that has given so much to me.

10. Assessment Of Project and Program Maturity of an Infrastructure Projects Organization

I have done assessments around maturity of the organization vis-à-vis their project and program management capabilities against global averages.

Results of some of the assessments results into finding exact GAPS in skills that need to be fulfilled.

Post a series of targeted training and after suitable elapse of time the assessment is done again to find evidence of practical closing of the GAPS through the training. Something like the ROI of training.

A couple of times I have been hired to design a completely new assessment to understand just how well versed their teams are vis-à-vis global etiquettes and knowledge as well as do’s and don’ts while working with cross cultural teams.

In one of the organization I was retained on a routine basis for a few years to help selected technical team members to be “Ready for Japan” before being sent their for project work.

I guess having travelled across 73 countries and worked and consulted in 19 countries does help in such consulting and assessment work.

Several times, I have also conducted or helped organizations conduct Belbin team assessments as well.

There is one consulting work that had been the most difficult and emotionally draining and it involved Kashmir location and Rashtriya Rifles. I am barred from stating anything more whatsoever about that engagement.