The #noprojects movement seems to be gathering pace so I’d thought I’d publish some thinking I shared with a utilities client recently on what a ‘continuous value stream’ delivery might look like in direct comparison to the projects culture that is embedded in the organisation at the moment:
| Projects | Capability Workstreams |
| Have temporary teams | Have permanent, ongoing teams that work together indefinitely, fostering high-performance |
| End when a set of goals have been reached. BAU, maintenance? | Don’t end, value is continually delivered. Demand for change could be from innovation, from existing backlog or from anywhere |
| May be suitable for one-off things that can be delivered and then forgotten | Are good for core business capabilities that must endure and continuously improve |
| Have success criteria often defined as “On time, on budget, on scope” | Have success criteria defined as “How much business value has been delivered compared to the cost of delivering it” |
| Generate knowledge through documents and artefacts | Generate knowledge in people |
| Confine change to a project | Make change part of everyday business |
| Have start-up costs and can delay the delivery of value | Provide ongoing ‘delivery capability’ that can react quickly and have little or no overhead |
| Promote large funding pots in entirety or ‘phases’ | Promote ongoing funding, deciding whether to spend any more only when some value has been delivered |
The project world on the left may be familiar though I thought folks might find the workstream context interesting.
As the first post on this site I’d welcome comments even more than ever!
Beginners Mind 
I think this is a great concept that has significant benefit for organisations. However, given the way that budgets and funding approvals are managed and governed (certainly in the UK) I think it’s extremely unlikely to be adopted at any significant scale in the Public Sector. A key factor of course is clarifying and communicating the business value model, because unless we know what “value” is, we can’t prioritise and measure results.
Thanks for your comments Colin. I fear you’re right, ‘projects as a vehicle’ thinking may be as embedded in UK public sector as anywhere…. maybe we’ll get lucky and someone from ‘Government Digital Service’ will read this and give their view.