The Newsletter of ProgM  
The Programme Management Specific Interest Group

February 2009 

The ProgM newsletter contains interesting information about events and other areas of interest in Programme Management. This month we feature: 

• Lessons of D-Day

• Dubai write up

• Going live

• PMI

Lessons of D-Day

The previous articles in this series compared the different approaches of famous military commanders and showed how they varied – from the narrow project delivery focus of Richard Coeur-de-Lion or Marshall Blucher, through the politically-rounded approach of Saladin, Marlborough or Wellington, to the “spin” and showmanship of Napoleon III, which resulted in indecision and total failure.  This article, the last of the series, reviews the different approaches adopted in the greatest military programme of all time – the D-Day landings of June 1944.

Montgomery – a masterful military project manager

At this point in World War II, Hitler’s Reich was in retreat.  The Soviets were steadily advancing from the East.  The British had chased Germany’s armies out of North Africa and Germany’s cities were being progressively turned into rubble by the British and US air forces.  Now was the time for the Britain and America to invade mainland Europe from the West.

The planning for D-Day was overseen by Britain’s senior general, Bernard Montgomery.  Universally referred to as “Monty”, he was a career soldier who had led the British Eighth Army to victory at Alamein in North Africa.  He was careful and thorough, and like the Duke of Wellington and other commanders, and all good programme managers, he only moved when confident of success. 

He had earned a DSO as a platoon commander in World War 1 and subsequently sought to avoided unnecessary loss of life through impeccable planning.  He was totally committed to soldiering and was supremely professional in a military sense, and yet was almost totally lacking in inter-personal skills – so much so that he was frequently passed over for promotion.  In the end, he was the only commander who could give the Eighth Army the drive and direction that it needed – and like a focussed project manager - he drove it to success in Egypt.  Eighteen month’s later, he led 326,000 men, supported by 2,700 ships and 12,000 aircraft, to victory in Normandy. 

Monty’s meticulous planning was decisive.  He arranged massive air attacks to pulverise German communications, he organised artificial harbours and the first undersea pipeline to delivery supplies and fuel, and supervised clever subterfuge which convinced the Germans that the allies would land in a completely different part of France.  When the first British paratroops landed on Pegasus Bridge on the morning of the invasion, the German sentry was so amazed that he fell in a dead faint.

After many weeks of hard fighting, the Germans were defeated and fled in disorder, not stopping until they reached the Vosges Mountains of Eastern France.  The “D-Day Programme” had been led to success by a masterful military project manager.

Whilst Monty was in his element controlling the armies under his direct command, he was out of his depth when it came to controlling allies or dealing with superiors.  Since the US was now contributing the largest number of soldiers, US General Dwight Eisenhower, called “Ike” by his friends, had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.  As the US contribution increased further, Monty found himself more and more in a subordinate role, often forced to adapt his strategies to the requirements of Ike’s US generals, such as Patton and Bradley.

Here, Monty’s lack of tact and personal abrasiveness, and the urge of his rivals to gain publicity at his expense, led to constant bickering and in-fighting.  Whilst the judgment of history is that Monty was usually right in military terms, he seemed incapable of accepting that he was commander of but one of the allied armies.  The ambition, lust for glory and readiness of his US rivals to denigrate him with the press only made matters worse.

Whilst it seems bizarre that allied generals should bicker and conspire against each other in the middle of a World War, many modern programme managers will have witnessed similar destructive rivalry amongst the senior managers of modern businesses, at a time when more co-operative competitors are stealing their customers.

Fortunately, Ike was almost the opposite of Monty.  Whilst he had been a soldier since 1911, he had never fought any battle.  But what he lacked in front-line experience, he made up for in an ability to inspire trust and confidence in both his political masters and in his subordinates.  He was appointed by General Marshall the US Chief of Staff and always kept Marshall fully informed.  He also established good relationships with Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister.  At one stage, fed up with arguing with the RAF about getting support for the D-Day landing, he told Churchill that he had “had enough” and would resign: immediately Churchill ordered the RAF to comply.

His key contribution to allied success was his ability to get rivals to work together.  After watching Ike in North Africa, Harold Macmillan, a subsequent British Prime Minster commented “He has two great qualities … he will always listen to and try to grasp the point of an argument … and he is absolutely fair minded”.  Contributing to this were Ike’s affability and self control.  Ike’s first meeting with Montgomery had been in 1942, when he attended a briefing as head of the US Military Mission to Britain.  Monty started with the sentence, “I have been directed to take time from my busy life to brief you gentleman”.  As the briefing progressed, Ike took out and lit a cigarette.  Monty stopped, scanned the room and asked “Who is smoking”.  Ike responded “I am sir” and was forcefully informed that smoking “Smoking is not allowed in my presence”.  Without a word, Ike stubbed out the cigarette and never referred to the matter again.

Ike also had a strong sense of personal responsibility and never blamed others when things that were under his control went wrong.  On the eve of D-Day, when he had authorised the invasion to go ahead in the face of one of the worst summer gales in living memory, he carefully wrote out two draft telegrams, one reporting success: the other saying that, in spite of the courage of the troops, the landings had failed and he had ordered a withdrawal.

Like a good programme manager, he gave Monty full authority to plan and execute the D-Day landings but, when political circumstances changed, he adjusted has organisation.  And all the time, his personal charm helped ensure that his generals spent the majority of their time fighting the enemy rather than each other.

Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer and Supreme Military commander of Greater Germany was everything that Eisenhower was not.  He cared no more for the German people than he did for those of the other nations that his regime enslaved.  He was prickly, neurotic and lost his temper with anyone who told him unpleasant truths.  Any General who argued with him was lucky to be merely demoted, the unlucky ones were imprisoned or shot.  Even when his orders were ridiculous, he expected total obedience.  Thus world-class generals such as Rommel were subjected each day to minutely detailed instructions from a man who had never risen above Corporal and who was cowering in a bunker hundreds of miles away.

This micro-management in military matters had the same effect as when attempted by inadequate project and programme managers.  Such efforts are doomed to failure, the micro-manager gets more and more neurotic as the results of his meddling are revealed, and those at the receiving end become casualties.

In a rare moment of realism, Hitler, the ultimate bully, committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.  Monty became a Field Marshall and a Viscount, but he spent much of the rest of his life trying to justify his actions during the war.

By contrast, Ike went from strength to strength, eventually being elected to the Presidency of the United States under the slogan “I like Ike”.  What programme manager could hope to achieve more ?

Promoting Programme Management in the Middle East

In January, Paul Rayner, Chairman of ProgM, was invited to address the Dubai Project, Programme and Portfolio Management Conference, hosted by the Middle East Community of Practice for Project, Programme and Portfolio management.

The keynote speaker was Dr Mohammed Dulaimi, Director of Research and Innovation at the Abu Dhabi International Centre for Organisational Excellence and Paul shared the platform with leading Middle Eastern and European experts.  The conference was attended by project, programme and portfolio managers from all over the United Arab Emirates.

Paul’s theme was that programme management skills are needed to turn visions of the future into reality.  He sighted the success of Dubai in turning desert wastes into a dynamic global financial centre as an example, but pointed out some of the difficulties that future developments in the region were likely to encounter.

Below is one of Paul’s slides showing before and after views of part of Dubai’s financial district across just twelve years.

Going Live – The Lessons of Terminal 5

Those who manage large programmes within the public sector are always very conscious that if anything goes wrong, they may end up be quizzed by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee or featured in a National Audit Office enquiry.  Because of this scrutiny, there is a large body of freely available material on the mistakes of large UK public sector programmes and it makes excellent case studies.

It’s generally much harder to find out about what goes on in the private sector.  Because of this, many of us have been particularly interested in the opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow in March of last year.  The chaos and misery associated with losing 28,000 pieces of passenger luggage over five days was widely featured in the UK press and on television, so most of us have been able to form view on what happened and why.

As a result, it was with particular interest that 30 hardy souls braved the London snow on 4th February to hear Dr Peter Barker of Cranfield University present on “Going Live – the Lessons of Terminal 5” at Transport for London’s Palestra offices. 

Dr Barker’s speciality is the design and installation of mechanical handling systems, hence his interest in the 17 kilometers of conveyors and attendant computers that help to make up the baggage handling facilities of Terminal 5.  He explained that teething troubles are the norm in these sorts of facilities and therefore sensible organisations avoid a “big bang” go-live and allow up to three months for transition.  By contrast British Airways and BAA were so keen to switch over to the new terminal that they allowed testing to be constrained and a major element of transition to occur over a single weekend.

The audience included an IT sub-contractor to Terminal 5 and a passenger who was caught in the misery of day 2, so there was much informed questioning and discussion.  One conclusion from the evening was that “go lives” and transitions from old facilities to new ones should be planned to the highest possible degree and all aspects thoroughly tested and rehearsed, especially if the customers themselves are going to be involved.

Dr Baker pointed out that such was the profile of the problems that Willie Walsh, the Chief Executive of British Airways, was called before the House of Commons Transport Committee on May 11, 2008 and their report on the opening was published on 3rd November 2008 and can be read at
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmtran/543/54302.htm.

Those who were not able to attend the event will find a copy of Dr Baker’s presentation on the ProgM Web site at
www.e-programme.com.

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