Volume X - Issue III - March 2008
Featured Papers
Managing Complex Projects Is Not a Simple Matter By Kathleen B. Hass Editor’s Note: This paper by Kathleen Hass, PMP, Project Management and Business Analysis Practice Leader at Management Concepts in the USA was prepared exclusively for PM World Today and submitted for publication by Trade Press Services in February 2008. Key practices of traditional project management are based on the concept of reductionism, which holds that complex entities may be better understood by reducing them to their simpler constituents. For instance, a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) decomposes a complex project into the deliverables that must be created to meet the project objectives. Subsequently, the project team can determine the skill sets and resources needed for each deliverable and schedule the necessary tasks, and then focus on completing each deliverable to achieve project objectives. If only it were that simple! While a “reductionist” model such as this one may work in physics to describe the interactions of subatomic particles, and even in project management for very simple undertakings, it just does not work for complex projects. Principles of Adaptive Project Management Much of traditional project management is based on two theories. The first is reductionism, and the other is control theory, which holds that, in order to achieve optimal outcomes, one only needs to manipulate the constituent parameters of a complex system. Only in theory can tools such as the WBS help build a solid project management plan, set a firm schedule and predict how much the project will cost. Only in theory can one rigorously control and minimize changes to a project, avoiding all distractions until one reaches the goal. “Projects that are characterized by high uncertainty, high speed and high complexity, both technical and political complexity – in other words, highly volatility projects – do not fit the traditional reductionist mold,” says Doug DeCarlo, author of eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility (Jossey-Bass, 2004). “The dynamics of these extreme projects are simply not compatible with traditional project management, which attempts to nail down everything up front and then tries to control what happens later to keep it within the confines of the plan. In most cases, the plan is obsolete as soon as it is printed.” With highly predictable projects, the theory works well enough. For instance, in the construction industry, builders may break down a project into foundation, electrical, plumbing, drywall and other elements and organize a development project according to lessons learned from building a model home. Provided no customizations or work order changes are permitted, the building of each subsequent home in the same development will be pretty much predictable in terms of schedule, budget and physical and human resources.
Creating Intelligence and Knowledge 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 18 looked at how Beaverbrook focused on the problems of fighter production and took an unorthodox approach that brought in ideas and best practices from other industries. This article looks at the second area of the overall project (Part 16) the mechanization and automation of the production of intelligence. “Knowledge is power” is not a recent quote, it was made in 1597, by Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher. Knowledge has always been critical in the military, and “intelligence,” has emerged as the most vital military asset. Churchill had to use the limited forces he had at his disposal in the most effective way. He could only do with good enemy intelligence. Knowing the extent of enemy preparation and activity would provide the necessary insight to where and how the enemy was likely to strike and so resources could be better targeted to meet the threat. Read earlier papers in this series.
Creating Project-Based Organizations to Deliver Value By Michel Thiry IntroductionProject-Based Organisations (PBO) are fast emerging as a serious trend, but many organisations still do not understand how to structure themselves to effectively create a strategic advantage from projects. PBOs need to be structured to create synergy between strategy, project, program and portfolio management and the project approach needs to both generate tangible value for the stakeholders and be sustainable. PBOs refer to a variety of organizational forms that involve the creation of temporary systems for the performance of project tasks or activities. They include matrix organisations, projectized organisations and other forms of organisations that privilege a project approach for conducting their activities. PBOs are receiving increased consideration as an emerging organizational form, but many researchers report that there is very little knowledge on how project-based organizations actually operate in practice. There are also very few references on how the extensive use of unique and temporary endeavours like projects and programs can influence the strategy and the design of organizations. As the application of project management is spreading in organizations, one needs to understand the different project-based organizational models that can accommodate various situations and address the issues of compartmentalisation, typical of traditionally structured organizations, versus integration, typical of networked organizations, as they structure their project-based organizations (PBOs).
Contemporary Aspects of
Critical-Path Planning and Scheduling
Reported by Earl Glenwright IntroductionA characteristic of contemporary project scheduling is the over-simplification which stems from the inability of unaided human beings to cope with sheer complexity. Even though we know that a detailed plan is necessary, we also know that management need only act when deviations from the plan occur. To resolve this situation we undertook to develop a technique that would be very simple but yet rigorous in application. One of the difficulties in the traditional approach is that planning and scheduling are carried on simultaneously. Our first step was to separate the functions of planning from scheduling. The basic elements of a project are activities and resource expenditures and execution times are associated with each activity in the project. These factors, combined with technological relations, produce schedules proposing varying completion dates. Management comes into possession of a spectrum of possible schedules, each having an engineered sequence, a known elapsed time span, a known expenditure function, and a calendar fit. (In R&D projects, one obtains ‘most probable’ schedules).
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