Lessons from Project Integrity Day

I called Project Integrity Day a learning team. Let me explain. I set out with a rather grand plan to create this day that would be well-attended, that would in some observable way change the drift of projects, and would leave all participants equipped to continue to take similar actions for themselves. None of that happened. So what did happen?

We learned to look at project integrity from a number of perspectives. Mary Poppendieck participated in the call. I interviewed her during the last hour. We discussed Chapter Six: Build Integrity In of the forthcoming book Agile Toolkit for Software Development authored by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Mary and Tom refine the distinctions of integrity offered by Kim Clark of Harvard Business School. They say we can conduct ourselves so there is integrity in the design (concept) of the product we are creating. They also point to the elusiveness of the customer recognizing (perceiving) integrity between the design that is delivered and the wants and needs how ever well those are expressed.

In earlier postings I suggested we look for issues of integrity in eight places. I don't think that was sufficient. Perhaps there is a small set of issues that collects the situations for assessing integrity on projects. I propose we can lump a number of the Eight Ps into just three classes. Further, for each class there is an organizing attribute and a performing attribute. (Does anyone see anything else?) While I still don't think I have described a taxonomy for attending to the issues of integrity on projects, I do think it is more useful.

• Product integrity: purpose, promise, and performance
• Conceptual integrity
• Perceptual integrity
• Process integrity: planning, practices, and place
• Structural integrity
• Procedural integrity
• Personal integrity: power, politics, and personality
• Integrity with our declarations
• Integrity with our promises

I must thank Steve Knapp for jarring me with his suggestion that power, politics, and personality all matter with integrity. He found those issues in the description of a seminar on project management. At least that validated the use of P-words for building a taxonomy!

Throughout the three hours we discussed what we can do about project integrity. I thank all the participants in Project Integrity Day for whatever value was created. I take all responsibility for any of the nonsense that might go along with it. Here's my take on what we can do.

I need to clean up this whole project integrity thing up so it can be more useful. While I'm doing that, please give the model another think and let us all know what you learn while you foster integrity on your projects.

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