Project Management Blogs

In my experience in working with multiple companies across multiple industries and globally, I’ve seen many projects succeed while others fail.  Although there are countless types of projects, ranging from a new product launch project to a system implementation project, there doesn’t seem to be a pattern of success among the same type of project.  Instead, I’ve discovered that one of the hidden keys to success is vision.

I think people like a good fight. Certainly the media seems to, as is evident in the world of politics, sports, and entertainment to name a few. In the world of business analysis the current fight seems to pit Agile methods against the Waterfall approach. For the next several blogs we’ll have a Scrum vs. Waterfall match. In corner #1, representing the Agile methods, we have the Scrum framework. In corner #2, representing Waterfall, we have the “traditionalists.”

I recently gave a conference in France on “Changeboxing”. This is an approach, based on timeboxing and emerging organizational change techniques that I developed to help client organizations accelerate the implementation of new project-oriented management processes (project, program and/or portfolio management). The approach considers that “major” cultural changes are associated with implementing these processes and proposes collaborative ways to get people to agree rapidly on how, when and what they will change.

Project managers generally have oodles of responsibility but limited authority. They seldom have any significant control over the five W’s (the who, when, what, where and why of the planned change). Their primary focus is usually figuring out how to take the many diverse (and often unstated) wishes of the project stakeholders and juggle those into a timely, cost-effective and quality implementation. Something like herding cats! Yet, for all the obstacles PMs face, their greatest challenge (and opportunity) is to become the sponsor’s best friend. And, vice versa.

You have likely experienced this at least once in your project management career – your team has thoroughly planned a complex project and has decided to add contingency reserves to hedge against “known unknowns.”  Even in the halcyon days preceding the current global financial crisis, it was common practice for sponsors or other governance bodies to challenge or strip out such perceived buffers.