Adrian Pyne

Director, Pyne Consulting Limited

Adrian Pyne has two impressive track records: practical and professional. For more than 20 years he has run or rescued change projects and programmes in many sectors, learning all the time how to adapt successfully. Adrian has also put this knowledge to good use in designing, building and managing project and programme management capability for organisations. Since 1995, he has worked mostly as an independent consultant. Professionally, Adrian has been at the forefront of the evolution of programme and portfolio management best practice. He is a frequent speaker, has written papers and is co-author of The Gower Handbook of Programme Management. Adrian is also a visiting lecturer, eg at Nottingham University Business School. Adrian says: “Despite all the great developments in best practice over the last 20-30 years, largely in process and (software) tools, much change still fails, wasting huge investment. This is because organisations seem unable to address that most difficult success factor – people. There is so much potential for work in this area and for good very good business reasons.”

Career details and achievements

• BT: Developed an early programme management approach and ran the engineering division’s enterprise programme office to manage £2bn annual investment in programmes.
• AMP: Programme managed the development of their eCommerce B2C investment finance website and a business merger.
• Department of Work and Pensions: Co-developed a multi-supplier model (early intelligent client approach) piloting it on a Top 20 change programme.
• Cable & Wireless: Programme Director responsible for the design, development and operation of their project and programme delivery capability, and management of the customer project portfolio which grew to nearly £800m contract value.
• Energy Technologies Institute: Programme Director responsible for the design, development and operation of their project and programme delivery capability.
• APM: Leading figure in the programme and portfolio management world through chairing a national group for the Association for Project Management. Co-author of The Gower Handbook of Programme Management.

Skill detail, track record and services provided

Gaining value from projects and programmes is business critical for many organisations, and too many projects fail to fully deliver, if at all. The reasons for failure are usually many and complex. Adrian has a proven track record in delivering and rescuing programmes of change. He now assists business leaders to identify the challenges and then develop solutions that will maximise value, ie doing the right projects and doing them right.
His approach is to determine with the business how to integrate and get the best out of people, processes and tools. Adrian advocates proceeding in achievable but significant steps, ensuring that value is gained from each step improvement.