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PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN ACTION: Prioritizing Projects at D. D. Williamson

One of the most difficult, yet most important, lessons we have learned at D. D. Williamson surrounds project prioritization. We took three years and two iterations of our prioritization process to finally settle on an approach that dramatically increased our success rate on critical projects (now called VIPs, or “Vision Impact Projects”).

   Knowing that one of the keys to project management success is key management support, our first approach at prioritization was a process where our entire senior management team worked through a set of criteria and resource estimations to select a maximum of two projects per senior management sponsor—16 projects in total. Additionally, we hired a continuous improvement manager to serve as both our project office and a key resource for project facilitation. This was a great move forward (the year before we had been attempting to monitor well over 60 continuous improvement projects of varying importance). Our success rate improved to over 60 percent of projects finishing close to the expected dates, financial investment, and results.

   What was the problem? The projects that were not moving forward tended to be the most critical—the heavy-investment “game changing” projects. A review of our results the next year determined we left significant money in opportunity “on the table” with projects that were behind and over budget!

   This diagnosis led us to seek an additional process change. While the criteria rating was sound, the number of projects for a company our size was still too many to track robustly at a senior level and have resources to push for completion. Hence, we elevated a subset of projects to highest status—our “VIPs.” We simplified the criteria ratings—rating projects on the level of expected impact on corporate objectives, the cross-functional nature of the team, and the perceived likelihood that the project would encounter barriers which required senior level support to overcome.

   The results? Much better success rates on the big projects, such as design and implementation of new equipment and expansion plans into new markets. But why?

   The Global Operating Team (GOT) now has laser focus on the five VIPs, reviewing the project plans progress and next steps with our continuous improvement manager in every weekly meeting. If a project is going off plan, we see it quickly and can move to reallocate resources, provide negotiation help, or change priorities within and outside the organization to manage it back on track. Certainly, the unanticipated barriers still occur, but we can put the strength of the entire team toward removing them as soon as they happen.

   A couple of fun side benefits—it is now a development opportunity for project managers to take on a VIP. With only four to six projects on the docket, they come with tremendous senior management interaction and focus. Additionally, we have moved our prioritization process into our functional groups, using matrices with criteria and resource estimations to prioritize customer and R&D projects with our sales, marketing, and science and innovation teams, as well as IT projects throughout the company. The prioritization process has become a foundation of our cross-functional success!

   Following are excerpts from the spreadsheet D. D. Williamson used to select and prioritize our VIP projects last year. Exhibit 2.16 shows the five criteria used to prioritize the projects. Exhibit 2.17 shows how associate time when assigned to a project is not available for other projects. Note all executives agreed to spend up to 120 hours this quarter on projects and Brian is overallocated—meaning either he will need to do extra work, something needs to be assigned to another person, or one less project can be completed.

EXHIBIT 2.16 PROJECT SELECTION AND PRIORITIZATION FOR D. D. WILLIAMSON

How does a truly global company with fewer than 200 associates achieve noteworthy results and market leadership? Certainly strong and talented people are a key part of the answer. A good set of leadership and management tools and processes, and the discipline to use them, is another key. A small, privately held company in Louisville, Kentucky, has been fortunate to use both talent and process to achieve success by any measure. That company is D. D. Williamson.

   D. D. Williamson was founded in 1865 and today is a global leader in non-artificial colors. Operating nine facilities in six countries and supplying many of the best-known food and beverage companies around the world, D. D. Williamson has more complexity to manage than most companies, regardless of their size.

D. D. Williamson identified the need to improve project management as a key strategy to achieve the vision. Our weakness was twofold—we had too many projects, and the projects that were active were sometimes late, over budget, and not achieving the desired results. We began by creating a prioritization matrix to select 16 “critical projects” that would have senior leadership sponsors and be assigned trained and capable project managers to improve our execution.

   The prioritization matrix was a great initial step to narrow our focus and improve our results—overall project completion improved. However, 16 projects meant that the scope and impact of projects still had wide variation. Smaller, simpler projects were likely to be executed brilliantly and improve our total percentage of “on time and on target” projects, but if the project that was late or over budget was very high impact, we were still leaving opportunities for growth and profitability on the table.

   We next improved our prioritization process, selecting no more than five “Vision Impact Projects” (VIPs) that would get high-level focus and attention—monitoring and asking for corrective measures in weekly senior management meetings, tracking online in our project management system for our Continuous Improvement Manager, and tunneling time and resources to help when projects get off course.

   The results are dramatic—large and complicated projects are getting the attention and resources and are achieving our strategic target of “on time, on budget and on target” regularly. Our successes have positioned D. D. Williamson to continue to do what we do best—serve customers effectively, grow our business, and return strong financial results to ensure a solid future for the business.