One of the large financial company, I have recently cooperated, made a summary of 2020 project portfolio performance versus 2019.

The results were astonishing.

More than 20% more projects were delivered, and at the same time,  more of the budget was consumed year to year. No, it was not because projects were not delivered, but there were more projects and bigger ones.

I don’t have to remind, that 2020 was a special year – a first COVID year. It was a huge distraction for businesses to operate. The bigger organization bigger distraction.

The company had to stop almost for 1 month to reorganize for home office 100%, which was never in their practice.

It is worth mentioning, so the most pandemic adjustment was delivered by Business-As-Usual operations, and a very little fraction of the project portfolio was executed directly due to COVID.

With such a big distraction, how it comes the project portfolio performance was so good and unexpectedly better than the normal year?

Communication Efficiency

After some observation, they found out that one of the fundamental reasons for the great performance was better communication efficiency.

Sounds contradictory, switching over to remote "zooming" rather face to face is rather perceived as a decrease.

But when we look at this more critically some factors are not obvious but played a role in the total company picture.

Firstly, more meetings became possible.

In this organization (heavily centralized) in pre-pandemic times to organize meetings it needed to find and book the room. And this was not easy job.

Meeting rooms were an asset. Always busy. Next available suitable length slot in a week or so.

Funny? Yes but very real.

 

Another factor - meetings became more efficient. People are not that late. They don’t need to walk another part of the building, no chatting on corridors (but this was helpful somehow from another perspective), much more meetings started w/o delay.

Meetings stopped having extended small talks, and everybody was able to make coffee invisibly during a meeting, without need for a break.

It sounds unbelievable but all switching to “zooming” and outlook calendar released a big bottleneck on communication, making decisions, etc.

On a scale of total organization and project portfolio, things started to move faster.

Extended Working Hours

Another one is also obvious. Suddenly all more hours were dedicated to working.

No need for transportation. Almost everybody saved one or more hours on commuting.

Meetings could start easily at 8:30 am  - earlier past 9 was still a risk if all could manage.

A little less proud achievement is people working more than normal hours.

Many could easily make a break between 4 and 7 pm and come back to do things later. The computer is on a home office desk all active hours. It was not happening before that much as commuting time was a hard line between work and home.

For many, this got blurred now.

I can easily say on average people spend 1 to 1.5 hours more in work than it was before.

 

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In Home Office mode more meetings are on time and they are more efficient. And surprisingly overall more communication is possible.

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Disciplined Suppliers

The last factor impacting the great performance of projects in 2020 was that suppliers got more disciplined.

In deliver but also in motivation to contracting financial organization to perform its duties on the projects.

For the moment, the world slowed down investments. So external delivery companies refocused on getting new business to have existing orders to execute better and on time to make sure 100% contracted for 2020 cash flow is there.

I have heard from many companies delivering projects it was a great year financially. Just because of it.

Also, suppliers were more effective as all was suddenly possible to deliver remotely. And its customer also switched to this method.

Conclusion

Were those all reasons for the growth of project activity? No definitely not. There is always a natural growth ranging up to 10+ percent.

But if we take the large financial company, I mentioned here and the scale of the organization, suddenly all those factors do matter a lot.

Over the pandemic months, the gain in efficiency was surprisingly high.

But not without a price of course.

Is effective remote work perfect?

No, it is efficient, but it lacks.

For me, I do miss "whiteboard" to explain graphically the concept to the audience.

Also, a 1:1 small kitchen discussion is not happening. Unbelievable how many issues were solved in the kitchen?

The biggest issue is work balance. But this is another discussion.

I can hear voices that many people like this style, as they can work and prepare a meal for kids at the same time.

Or receive courier with delivery during a business call.

We all could experience it many times during calls.

And interesting those courier's delivery did not distract them!

 

Note and Disclaimer: The author of this Blog post is Marek Rudnicki. He is the guest author of PMI.hu. The writing reflects the author's own professional opinion, findings, and conclusions, which do not necessarily agree with the position of PMI Budapest, Hungarian Chapter, and cannot be considered as an official recommendation, resolution, or opinion of PMI Budapest. The copyright and publication rights of the writing belong to the original author.