Partnerships, projects and performance

Topics: Performance management, project management, IT systems

Today I was in Bristol speaking at a conference sponsored by one of the many IT companies in the performance management software business. There was, of course, the obligatory sales pitch, but it was brief and not too pushy (and actually pretty entertaining). But the rest of presentations - from Teignbridge, Bristol City Council, Devon County Council, Torbay and Mid Devon DC - were all very good.

Through the PMMI project, we did develop some guidance on IT performance monitoring systems (when to use them, what to look for). But that guidance, like the presentations today were very much focused on performance management in single organisations.

That's hard enough. But the new challenge is, of course, is the increasing pressure (both locally and nationally) to deliver better outcomes through partnerships, because complex outcomes are delivered by multiple agencies. Managing performance through partnerships means (among other things) using information in a different way and sharing information openly, robustly and in a timely fashion. That's even harder, but that's what makes it more important.

A good place to start looking at some of these issues is Local Area Agreements (including new guidance published this week) and of PM Partner - our collaborative website has lots of information and links, too.

Not many councils yet have PM IT systems that encompass all of partnership activity and are open to partners, but some do. Lorraine O'Donnell, described what Darlington is doing in this area in our online conference Partnerships: Governance and Performance.

_________

Much of partnership delivery is managed through projectrs. At today's conference Tim Bridger, from Mid Devon District Council gave a cracking presentation today on project management. It's early days for their approach, but it seems that they're really engaging councillors constructively in the oversight of priority projects. They say they've already reaped some benefits, such as identifying where a number of projects (each with their own managers, teams and resources) were essentially working toward the same goal. Knowing this has helped them combine efforts - much more efficient and effective. And even though the Mid-Devon example was for projects within the council, imagine how powerful this approach would be among partner agencies.