Defence

Defence Materiel Organisation

Peak performance through coaching

Dr Stephen Gumley

The Defence Materiel Organisation's (DMO) leading-edge approach to project management through coaching is assisting Defence's project managers achieve success and peak performance in their projects.

Since November 2005, project management coaches from the Directorate of Coaching and Review within the Deputy CEO Division of DMO have assisted over 80 projects spanning across the project management life cycle. All in all, over 1300 hours of coaching have been provided on ACAT I to IV projects, and ACAT V projects in Army, Navy and Air Force.

Benefit for Defence

While it is intuitive that coaching can assist projects, there are also strategic benefits for Defence in having formal project management coaching. Some of these benefits include:

• Enabling identification of systemic problems. Because project management coaches take a 'big picture' approach, they are able to see the systemic problems within the organisation. These issues are subsequently raised in the monthly situation reports that are provided to the Program Management Council for consideration and corrective action.
• Enabling a learning organisation. Project management coaches are able to see the good practices in projects and to consolidate them as 'lessons learnt' and highlight them for use in other projects.
• Building networks of expertise. Project management coaches are able to connect subject matter experts and practitioners across projects with the eventual aim of developing 'communities of practice' that can mentor each other.
• Designing better processes and policies. As project management coaches are actually 'in the field' with projects, they can have a significant influence in disseminating pragmatic project management advice and guidance, as well as provide an excellent mechanism for policy improvement feedback.

Benefit for managers

The benefits of formal project management coaching that have been reported by project managers include:

• providing effective help and pragmatic guidance at the team and individual level, particularly with initial project start-up and in bolstering confidence through support and reassurance;
• providing perspective in relation to other projects—for example, gaining an understanding that an aspect of project management may be difficult for most projects;
• assisting with changing perceptions about projects and project performance—for example, this team is doing good project management even though the key stakeholder is delivering late;
• performing a role as benign change agents—for example, project management coaches are able to reinforce key messages within projects by showing participants how to achieve specific project-related goals such as improved risk management or undertaking effective schedule development; and
• providing advocacy for the projects in key forums such as governance boards.

At the forefront

How does DMO stack up against companies around Australia that have introduced project management coaching? Client feedback to date has been very positive. DMO is currently at the forefront of organisations that have introduced project management coaching, as evidenced by external feedback and industry's lower success rate. The latter is due to industry generally implementing project management coaching as an informal, decentralised service (that is, the program director does ad-hoc coaching) rather than as we do with a formalised, centralised approach, employing full-time project management coaches that deliver strategic benefits to the entire organisation.

Moreover, take-up of the services has been steadily growing by word of mouth, which is probably one of the best indicators of the success of this initiative. As a consequence, there are plans to increase the number of project management coaches from the initial six to 12 by the end of 2006, in step with organisational needs.

The Directorate of Coaching and Review is running a series of forums that are open to all Defence personnel. If you're interested in how project management coaching could assist your project, come along to the next forum.

Details of the forum schedule through to December 2006 are available at http://intranet.defence.gov.au/dmoweb/sites/coaching/.

Dr Steve Gumley is the Chief Executive Officer of the Defence Materiel Organisation.

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