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Author: Mike Morton

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Full Executive Support for the Project Manager: Is it Close?

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Full Executive Support for the Project Manager: Is it Close?

Are we any closer to full executive support for the role of the project manager?

The easy answer is yes. The tougher answer is… it depends. Typical.

I think that the position of the project manager within today’s organization has certainly improved. The project manager is an indispensable commodity within most systems departments out there today. No senior executive who is in touch with the IT division could ever suggest otherwise. Mess with this role and you will seriously jeopardize the success of your IT projects. I cannot imagine any executive today not getting this. So yes, this is big improvement from just three to five years ago.

Let’s put aside the non-IT sectors that have understood the importance of project management from the beginning of time: construction, engineering, aerospace to name a few.

For other areas of our business, the jury is still out! I believe the role of the project manager is crucial outside of IT, but this is where the value and applicability of the role of the PM is still being debated.

Time will tell but for the moment these PMOs and individual project managers are still working under a threat of death. Many out there feel some of these other projects do not need a full time professional PM and thus the level of executive support we are talking about is questionable.

But as with IT, this too will change. As project managers get involved in larger, more mission critical projects outside of IT, their value to the organization will grow. And remember, the new CEO, CIO and other C-levels typically GET project management. Look closely and you will notice that some of them even have a PMP beside their names. This will help!

 

David Barrett is publisher of Project Times, Conference Director, ProjectWorld and BusinessAnalystWorld, and Program Director of The Masters Certificate in Project Management, Schulich Executive Education Centre.

How to Start a Project Management Company without an IT Professional

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on How to Start a Project Management Company without an IT Professional

Have you ever noticed that IT professionals are grumpy? I think that part of the reason is because they never get calls like this: “Hey IT professional, just calling to say that everything is working okay today and you’re great!”

The calls are typically more like this: “Hey IT professional, why is it that the only messages our spam filter prevents from getting through are our sales leads? Luckily, however, it does let all the Viagra ads through, which is good because it gives us something to read while we’re not selling anything. Did they have classes in spam filtering at the college you supposedly went to?”

Working in IT is somewhat like being a fireman. You can never respond to the fire fast enough, regardless of what you do. If I were starting a project management company today, I wouldn’t even buy a server. Rather, I would do everything with Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS (which means it is hosted online on someone else’s server). I would use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Salesforce, a contact management tool like Sugar, and an accounting application like Quickbooks Online Edition. I would also outsource my email and document storage.

In a nutshell, if I were starting a brand new project management company today, I would really try to have no servers at all, thereby avoiding the stale Linux/Windows debate. Without servers and their accompanying headaches, my IT professional could focus on serving our customers instead of building a bunch of technology infrastructure that is, at this point, redundant. IT professionals at project management consultancies have enough work to do without being constantly interrupted with projects such as installing a new network. These tasks can be accomplished elsewhere, which saves your IT professional time. And as we all know, time is money, especially in the project management world.

Not only that, but servers require updates, maintenance, backups and more backups, which, once again, translates into plenty of work. Very few companies, regardless of their size, do a good job with backups. Disks have grown faster than tapes have and this is causing a real problem: Where do we put all the data? Not only that, but all disk drives fail eventually. After 10 years in business, I’ve seen a number of disk drives tank, and it is never, ever convenient.

Consider this: if a tornado (or a disgruntled employee) obliterated all your servers right now, how long would it take you to get it all going again? How do you know the tapes will work? And where are they? Not in the same room as the servers, I hope. Did you know that tapes can sometimes be written to but not read from due to the technology of the tape drive and the error rate on the tape itself? Are those machines still for sale so you can buy replacements for the ones that were destroyed? Where would you get that copy of the operating system you were running? How many millions of patches from Microsoft did it have on it again? And how long will it take to install them?

But wait a minute. “What if a tornado destroys the SaaS site of my chosen vendor?” you ask. That’s a great question.

At my company, Journyx, we have hundreds of customers who run their business on our SaaS site. If we weren’t up and running, pretty much immediately after such an event, we would be out of business and I would be out of a job.

That frightening vision is very motivating to me. So much so that we have redundant hardware, lots of backups, tapes in a salt mine, multiple sites for data, etc. No one can do a better job of keeping our application up and running than we can.

“But what if someone nefarious and evil steals my data and gives it to my competitor?” you ask.

The bank has all of your data, and you aren’t worried about them giving it away. What’s the difference? What about the phone company? They know a lot about you. SaaS companies should be under the same constraints for protecting your company’s privacy as banks and telephone firms are. And so far, they all seem to be doing a fine job. For example, I’ve never heard of anyone swiping a competitor’s sales leads out of Salesforce.

If you’re starting a new project management company today, go SaaS. Get a laptop. An office at Starbucks. If your time, your data security, and your piece of mind are worth anything, it’s definitely cheaper.

Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx (http://pr.journyx.com), a provider of Web-based software located in Austin, Texas, that tracks time and project accounting solutions to guide customers to per-person, per-project profitability. In 1997, Curt created the world’s first Internet-based timesheet application – the foundation for the current Journyx product offering. Curt is an avid speaker and author, and recently published All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource.

Let

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Let

Having been involved with project management over the last two decades, I have seen a great evolution in what is expected of a good project manager. The traditional measure of a great PM was one who could focus solely on the success of his or her project to the exclusion of all else. In the name of ‘focus’ (aka blinkers), we might have been allowed to ignore what was going on around us in the organization, be selfish in negotiating the best resources, use creative estimating skills to get a generous budget, zealously guard that ‘signed off’ scope document and cross the finish line on time and on budget!!

Not so any more (thank goodness!). How often have we tripped on a project that was on time and on budget but was not deemed to be successful? As organizations embrace the concept of projects being the most effective method of executing strategy, they are demanding more from their project managers. Much to many a project manager’s dismay, the success criteria for projects are no longer confined to a list of deliverables, meeting timelines and budgets. Measures of success now often include specific references to:

  • Customer satisfaction
  • Increased revenue
  • Decreased costs
  • Seamless transformations

Could it be that projects, and therefore project managers, are now being held accountable for business results?

What an exciting yet intimidating prospect!! The project manager of the past thrived only because there was a huge assumption that every project initiated was the right one, and ‘someone’ usually the project sponsor, would take care of the minor matter of actually delivering the results. The reality is, that in a competitive market place, the way many progressive organizations rely on project management practices has changed significantly. Some of the changes in organizational behaviour are:

  • Management of project portfolios
  • Movement from individual projects to programs tied to delivering business value
  • Recognition that business strategy needs to be flexible
  • More sophisticated measurement of results
  • Global risk management

Though even today an overwhelmingly large number of projects relate to technology and engineering, more and more organizations have recognized the value of applying project management to the full spectrum of their business. It is commonplace to have projects that bring about organizational development, business acquisition and mergers, product development and launch, business process re-engineering, and even strategy formulation and strategic planning.

This more demanding and complex environment, combined with growing demand for leaders to fill the void left by retiring ‘boomers’, provides project managers with an unbelievable opportunity. The time is right to change the role of a project manager from ‘technical implementer’ to ‘strategic enabler’.

Does this shift mean that the traditional strengths of sound project management principles are no longer valued? Quite the contrary. We do need to, however, go beyond applying the people, process and tools aspects of project management. So what can we do to meet the new expectations?

  • Find out as much as we can about the business strategy our project is aligned with and linked to. Ask questions till we are comfortable that we understand the specific business goals and the rationale behind them.
  • Make sure that all activities and deliverables in our project are able to support the strategy and business objectives most effectively.
  • Be innovative and persuasive if we think there is a better way to get to the desired outcome.
  • If our project is a part of a program or portfolio, have a clear and accurate understanding of the interdependencies with other projects within the program and the portfolio. Prepare for contingencies.
  • Be prepared to take the back seat and play second fiddle to a more important initiative – we don’t have to be primary to be critical to the organization’s success.
  • Show integrity. If our project is going to deliver the outcomes but not the business benefits, speak up.
  • In our plan, include organizational change management considerations, as typically benefits are realized within the business operations. Make sure mechanisms are in place to measure and monitor how effectively our project is contributing to business results after it’s completed.
  • Constantly assess the validity of the project in relation to business objectives, especially if it’s one of significant duration. The competitive landscape and, therefore strategies, change quickly. Be prepared to be flexible enough to change direction accordingly.

But first and foremost, let’ s take off our blinkers!

Ruchira Chatterjee, MA, PMP, is a senior consultant with SPM Group, www.spmgroup.ca. With over 20 years of direct project management experience, Ruchira has led a number of highly successful programs and projects both in IT and business areas. She recently successfully directed the transition of a facilities management outsourcing program for a client representing $400 million annual revenue. She was the program director on a $35 million program related to wealth management system implementation resulting from an acquisition. She managed a program to bring about the operational and technology transformation of a property casualty business division. On multiple occasions she has held accountability for projects to bring about organizational changes, start up new departments and implement new processes. She has also managed a variety of technology projects related to such areas as conversions, expert systems implementations, vendor systems selection and implementations.

With a M.A in Economics from Calcutta University, India, Ruchira has also completed a Company sponsored Executive Management training program at Kellogg, Northwest University. She is a Project Management Professional (PMP) as certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Ruchira can be reached at [email protected]

How

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on How

Editor’s Comments

In Let’s Take off Our Blinkers! Ruchira Chatterjee, uses an equestrian analogy to warn of the danger of too narrow a focus on the success of a particular project, to the exclusion of other corporate priorities. She points out that the success of a project can’t always be judged on the fact that it came in on time and on budget. She says that today’s project success criteria are much broader.

How to Start a Project Management Company without an IT Professional by Curt Finch addresses the idea of having a project management with no, or very few servers. His point is that by having the servers outside the company, the IT professionals within the company can focus on serving customers instead of worrying about solving internal IT problems.

Our bloggers are back with their take on the many issues that project managers have to face every day. Also, please take a look at our forums and give us your views on the important project management issues that our readers are discussing.

And, as always, we’d like to hear what you think of this issue and what you want to see in the future.

Achieving Project Excellence: What

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 6 Comments on Achieving Project Excellence: What

Many organisations are working to improve their business processes in an effort to stay competitive. Most try to travel the ”Toyota Way”, using lean manufacturing approaches including, among others, “Achieving Excellence” (AE) initiatives.

Because of globalization and innovation imperatives, many of those organizations are plagued by projects, programs and portfolio activities in their AE initiatives. They then try to improve their project-oriented business processes, or whatever shadow of a project management process they might think they have. Hence, they mistakenly apply AE frameworks for recurring operations to project-oriented activities and processes. By doing so, they make a very costly mistake, similar to the one that was made when everyone tried to apply ISO 9001-1994 – a standard addressing manufacturing issues – to service industries.

Those who know a bit better include OPM3-type assessments and approaches to their AE initiatives. But, frankly, I am not that sure either that the OPM3 model is based on a proper understanding of “what wastes we are trying to eliminate” when we talk about implementing Lean Project Management processes. Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell, in their landmark article, The underlying theory of project management is obsolete1, published in the 2002 Proceedings of the PMI Research Conference, invite us to ask ourselves very relevant questions about this model. It should be read by anyone who thinks that applying blindly such a model will help his or her organization attain the Nirvana of Lean, World-Competitive Business Excellence.

It is easier to criticize the efforts of others, many of them trying to help each other in complete good faith, than to improve on them. The truth, however, is that improvements on mainstream PM models have already been offered by organisations like the Lean Construction Institute2. Alas, they are not well known, although the true wastes of currently used project management processes have already be identified and documented.

Wastes associated with recurrent production, as identified by Taiichi Ohno (the late father of the Toyota Production System), concern themselves mostly with managing a flow of materials. Opposingly, wastes associated with project work, as identified by Greg Howell, Lauri Koskela, my friend Hal Macomber3 and lately by Norman Bobek, who identified a ninth one4, concern themselves mainly with managing a flow of humans and of human thoughts. They are, including a tenth one of my own design (that I’ll explain in my next blog entry): 

  1. Not using people’s talents 
  2. Underutilized people’s skills and capabilities 
  3. Lack of relevant information (on what to do or how to do it) 
  4. Excess irrelevant information 
  5. Behavioural Waste (not listening, not speaking) 
  6. Not taking advantage of people’s thoughts (wasting good ideas) 
  7. Providing something the customer doesn’t value 
  8. Making do (working without the proper resources) 
  9. Saying No (resistance to change)
  10. Not managing perceptions

Anyone who wants to Achieve Excellence in project-oriented activities should have a very good look at this list, because those are the wastes associated with current mainstream project management processes; these are the wastes to eliminate to become lean. Thus, It would be a very good idea to add a measure of their current status in current AE or OPM3 assessment tools and then take action to eliminate them.

Furthermore, using PMI’s proposed IPECC (Initiate, Plan, Execute, Control, Close) recurring project management process loop – the essence of the PMBOK and a real stroke of genius – would be a very good idea for anyone trying to implement AE initiatives in their organisation. I see many of those initiatives going on; most won’t make it for lack of proper phasing, scope definition, work breakdown structure and target dates. They are not properly defined and planned, although they should be. After all, Achieving Excellence in manufacturing is a project-oriented endeavour…. and it is subjected to the same wastes as those found on any other type of project work.

What do you think?

1 https://www.projecttimes.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/ObsoleteTheory.pdf
2 www.leanconstruction.org
3 http://www.reformingprojectmanagement.com/2004/08/15/394/
4 http://www.reformingprojectmanagement.com/2007/10/09/841/

Claude Emond is one of the founders and president of Qualiscope Enterprises, a project management consulting, coaching and training firm based in Montreal, Canada. He has degrees in chemical engineering from Canada’s Royal Military College (BEng) and Montreal McGill University (MEng), a MBA from Ottawa University, workshop leadership training from Le Centre Quebecois de la PNL, and is a certified PMP. He has over 25 years experience managing major public and private projects. He teaches project risk management in the Schulich School of Business Master certificate in project management and the PMP certification revision class for PMI, Montreal. He is one of the authors of the current PMI standards for Portfolio Management. Claude can be reached at [email protected]