Volume X - Issue IV - April 2008
Featured Papers
Evolution of Owners Role Under Program Management By Robert Prieto Implementation of major capital facility programs requires Owner organizations to undergo change in several dimensions. Each of these dimensions involves a significant departure from the established management, operating, commercial and cultural patterns which have typically characterized the Owner’s capital delivery programs and processes. Organizational Transformation must be achieved while the skills and capabilities of the current teams, their performance excellence, and accumulated lessons learned are retained and, in fact, a new larger, more diverse organization is built upon them to achieve the higher level of performance. When considering this Organizational Transformation, two generic types of change must both be managed synergistically in order to effect the strategic change that is the goal in the decision to shift from a multi-project to program based delivery. Tactical Change:
Cultural Change:
RAF Fighter Command By Mark Kozak-Holland Most people are very familiar with Winston Churchill but may not be familiar with his “agile” approach to project management and his skills as a PM in the summer of 1940. With an invasion imminent Part 19 looked at the second area of the overall project (Part 16) creating intelligence and knowledge. This article looks at the third area, RAF Fighter Command, and how the clever use of emerging technologies and reengineered processes could better maximize the effectiveness of pilots/fighters in an integrated air defense or sense-and-respond system. In June 1940 Air Marshall Hugh Dowding’s organization faced major challenges, despite his best efforts, with massive losses of 500 operational fighters in the air battle over Flanders and France. The RAF was about 50% below its target (set in 1939) with 620 fighters (out of 1,200), the minimum thought to win an air battle over the United Kingdom (U.K.). The fighters were outnumbered by a ratio of 2:1. In 1935 when Dowding founded RAF Fighter Command he was aware that the Air Ministry was very slow in scaling up its fighter production schedule, and unlikely to reach minimum target levels required. So Dowding looked to other ways to assist his fighters in an air battle. The physical organization of Fighter Command was most significant with a geographically distributed hierarchy of stations (Group/Sector) and air fields networked to Bentley Priory the operational headquarters. Each sector had a main fighter base, with an operations room, maintenance and repair facilities, and satellite bases attached to it. a total of 1,029 aircraft and over 1,500 personnel
SIX SIGMA vs. PMBOK Complementary and Mutually Supporting Methodologies for Handling Projects By TD Jainendrukumar Six Sigma Sigma (the lower-case Greek letter σ) is used to represent standard deviation (a measure of variation) of a population (lower-case 's', is an estimate, based on a sample). The term "six sigma process" comes from the notion that if one has six standard deviations between the mean of a process and the nearest specification limit, there will be practically no items that fail to meet the specifications. This is the basis of the Process Capability Study, often used by quality professionals. Six σ is a set of practices originally developed by Motorola to systematically improve processes by eliminating defects. A defect is defined as nonconformity of a product or service to its specifications.While the particulars of the methodology were originally formulated by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986, Six Sigma was heavily inspired by six preceding decades of quality improvement methodologies such as quality control, TQM, and Zero Defects. In addition to Motorola, many companies are adopting Six sigma approach. The term "Six Sigma" is following a set of processes using necessary tools, has its roots in this tool, rather than in simple process standard deviation, which is also measured in sigmas. Criticism of the tool itself, and the way that the term was derived from the tool, often sparks criticism of Six Sigma. Then what is Six Sigma exactly?
Martial Arts: The Essence of Project Management By Quang Ton The Chinese People have many longstanding traditions, some of which incorporate techniques and concepts applied in project management. Two of these, Hung Gar, a form of Kung Fu, and the Lion Dance, a traditional costumed dance form, will be used to draw parallels with modern project management. Hung Gar is a Martial Art formoriginated from the Shaolin Temple in the southern part of China. Practitioners of Hung Gar must go through rigorous training and conditioning to improve themselves both physically and mentally. Not surprisingly, project management concepts are applied throughout the training regimen in order to improve the likelihood of successful results. The discussion presents a brief description of some of the similarities between the two disciplines.
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