Volume X - Issue VI - June 2008
Editor's Perspective
June 2008 By David L. Pells, Managing Editor Welcome to the June 2008 edition of PM World Today. Since 1998, PM World Today has been a leading online source of educational and informative articles and information about project management. This edition contains project management news articles, papers and stories from around the world of professional PM. As the reach and reputation of this publication continues to grow, we continue to seek new authors and new ideas to share with others who want to advance and grow their careers and organizations. If you have something to share, please consider sending us an article or story for publication. Each month the Editor’s Perspective on the Current Issue provides a short overview of the articles and contributions included in the current edition. This edition of PM World Today again contains articles, news, papers and stories from around the world of project management (PM), including several in Spanish. PM World Today is an educational resource for PM professionals. It is also a resource (and service) for PM experts, leaders and professionals who want to share knowledge and gain more visibility in the PM world as authors and contributors. This month’s Editorial is entitled “Seven Good Reasons for the Growth of Project Management in IT, and why that Trend will Continue.” For the past ten years, the growth of PM in the IT world has been a spectacular phenomenon. For some in the PM profession, it has seemed a mystery. Has it been based on natural market pressures or some other reasons? In this article, I suggest seven major reasons why project management has become so prevalent, and so important, in the IT sector. If you agree or disagree, please let me know. Two Letters to the Editor are included this month. Fred Baker, well known PMI leader in North Carolina, has responded to last month’s article by Lee Lambert. According to Fred, “I have known Lee for a number of years, and have always respected him…On this occasion however, I am wondering if his informal survey analysis is perhaps missing some components.” Russ Archibald, PM pioneer and PMForum Global Advisor in Mexico, has provided a warm and supportive letter on the subject of my May Editorial on “Future Energy”. Russ says, “This extremely informative editorial … should be read by all who are concerned with the future of our planet and our civilization.” I want to thank these individuals for their interesting feedback this month. Three Viewpoint articles are included this month. Rebecca Winston, JD, PMI Fellow in Idaho, USA, has contributed another article on mentoring, entitled “Are We Failing the Next Generation and Ourselves?” According to Becky, “we cannot afford to hold our knowledge as power to share the nuggets of knowledge only when there is a paper to be written or a contract to be won. We must invest in the next generations who will manage the renewable energy programs, send the spacecraft to the other galaxies to explore, and build the next communication hi-ways…” Please read her entire article to see what motivated this important article. Getachew Teklemariam Alemu in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia has contributed another interesting Viewpoints article entitled “Infrastructure Project Management: What can we learn from the Chinese? Part 2” This is a continuation of his May 2008 article. According to Getachew, “Last month I tried to put four lessons that we, project professionals, especially project managers, could learn from the Chinese infrastructure sector… I will add four more points that I think are, mostly, being given less recognition.’ Getachew writes from an interesting and relevant perspective, as he is involved in assessing and planning infrastructure projects in his country. Dennis Stauffer, president of Insight Fusion, an idea lab and consultancy in the USA, has provided an article entitled “The Other Key Question!” According to Dennis, “When you launch a new project, are you asking the wrong questions?...Another question that is just as important but gets asked relatively rarely is, “What do we not know?” … about the customer, the technology, the target market, the ultimate user, or any of a myriad of other relevant issues…along with, “And how can we find out?” What do you think? Please let us know in an email to editor@pmforum.org. This month we are excited to provide a Featured Interview with Richard Pharro, CEO of The APM Group in the UK, the accreditation body for the UK Office of Government Commerce’s (OGC’s) Best Practice Portfolio, which includes PRINCE2™, ITIL® and MSP™. Richard answers a series of questions about PRINCE2, MSP, The APM Group and his own background, providing very interesting information about these increasingly popular project and program management process standards that now seem to be competing seriously with PMI’s PMBOK Guide and PMP certification. Featured Papers are serious professional contributions to the PM literature or papers of significant interest. Some are highly entertaining as well. This month we include five such papers from authors in Canada, China, India and the USA. Robert Prieto, senior vice president for Fluor Corporation in the USA, has provided another major paper entitled “Public Private Partnerships: The New Infrastructure Mega-Projects – A Contractor/Developer’s How-To Guide.” According to Bob, “The funding and delivery of US Infrastructure projects using Public Private Partnerships (PPP) is an increasingly attractive tool in the United States. Legislative changes … provided the States with new and improved tools to foster development. In turn this has created new opportunities for contractors and developers to participate in the design, build, finance, and operation of tomorrow’s transportation infrastructure. The PPP process is not “business as usual” for either the public sector or the traditional service providers that have served the industry over the years…” We think this is another important addition to the PM literature, especially for those in the engineering and construction industry. We encourage all to read it. Professor Hubert Vaughan in Beijing, China, has provided a paper entitled “Where to look when Requirements do not Exist in today’s Software projects.” According to Hubert, “Anyone managing software development projects will agree it is extremely difficult to identify “Requirements” that enable us to define “specifications” of the solution today, thus causing continuous changes during our development cycle, delaying project delivery and resulting cost over-run…. we are confident that Project Components Decomposition Method will enable us to identify project scope that allow us to manage software development projects in a professional way.” Please read about this new methodology and send us a comment. TD Jainendrakumar in India has provided another paper entitled “IT - Project and Program Management-Best Practices (An overview of project life cycle phases & PM process groups).” According to TD, “This article aims to distinguish between the project/program life cycle phases and the project/program management process groups (PMBOK) with reference to the IT project/program management and … describes the best practices (that) can be adopted in IT project/program management…” Mr. Jainendrakumar tries to clarify some basic elements of PMI’s Guide to the PMBOK for “newcomers” to project management. Please let us know if you think he has succeeded. Aleksandr Tarabykin, a project manager raised and educated in Russia but now living in the USA, has provided a very interesting paper entitled “Extreme Programming for Better Results on Software Development Projects.” According to Aleks, “Extreme Programming (XP) is a structured agile approach to software engineering prescribing a set of daily practices. It emphasizes the importance of communication with the customer, communication between team members, and development of automated testing plans over formal documentation. XP is based on principles of rapid feedback, preferring simplicity (and rejection of planning for the future, scalability and reusability in advance), incremental changes and embracing the change in the requirements…” This is another good contribution in support of the Agile school of project management, now growing in popularity and strength in the IT field. Mark Kozak-Holland in Canada, frequent and popular contributor to PM World Today, is back with part 22 in his series on “Winston Churchill, the Agile Project Manager.” Mark uses “Lessons from History” to teach modern PM. His paper this month is entitled “Historical events of June and July 1940.” According to Mark, “…this article enters the final phase of the series that examines the historical sequence of events between June and October 1940. This analysis will reflect on the effectiveness of Churchill’s solution and how well it was utilized.” This is another fascinating look back in history with lessons still to be learned! Read the article, learn and be entertained again this month! One Case Study is provided this month. Debra Lavell and Russell Martinelli at Intel in Oregon, USA have provided the fourth in a series of articles on project management “Retrospectives”, a technique used at Intel Corporation to document lessons learned, share experiences and educate others within the company. This month’s paper is entitled “ Program and Project Retrospectives in a Global Workplace.” According to Debra and Russ, “As in many companies today, our program and project teams at Intel have become highly distributed across the United States, as well as the world, due to the globalization of our business and workforce… we have learned a few tricks along the way that we pass along in this paper in the form of tips to conducting a successful virtual retrospective.” This is more useful information for those interested in the Retrospectives approach to sharing lessons learned for organizational PM development and growth. We want to welcome three new correspondents this month. Bob Owen, PhD, has signed on in Birmingham, UK to provide periodic PM news and reports for PMForum and PM World Today from that historic region in Central England. Bob is a Senior Research Fellow in the Salford Centre for Research & Innovation, the UK’s most prestigious research institute for the Built Environment at the University of Salford in Birmingham. A former pilot and intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force, Bob’s research is focused on the implementation of lean and agile PM in non-traditional sectors. He is on the Northwest Committee of the Association for Project Management (APM) as Higher Education Institute’s Representative, and on the national KD2 – Knowledge, Development and Dissemination working group. Martina Huemann, PhD, was named an International Correspondent in Vienna, Austria on May 15. Dr. Huemann is a member of the faculty of the PROJEKTMANAGEMENT GROUP at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, founded in 1898 and one of Europe’s top 50 business schools. She is also an adjunct professor for project management at Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Lille (ESC Lille) in France. Martina is actively engaged in research and writing on the topics of human resources management in project-oriented companies; project and program auditing; and maturity of project-oriented companies, industries and nations. She is a board member of PM Austria, a member of the IPMA Research & Development Management Board, and the director of the IPMA Research Awards Program for 2008. Peter Berndt de Souza Mello was named an International Correspondent for PMForum and PM World Today in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil on May 24, 2008. A leading program, project and portfolio management consultant in Brazil, Peter is also the Chief Information Officer and a Senior Consultant for X25 Treiinamento e Consultoria, based on Brasilia. With an interesting 15+ year career in technology organizations in Brazil and Paraguay, Peter is actively engaged in the PM profession in Brazil, presenting papers and presentations at various PMI chapters around the country and in North America. He has a BS degree in International Relations from the University of Brasilia. Ribeirão Preto is at the heart of Brazil’s ethanol energy producing industry. Please see the articles about Bob, Martina and Peter in the PM Community News section of this edition. We want to also welcome Professor Rodney J. Turner, who became an International Editorial Advisor for PMForum and PM World Today in May. Professor Turner is Professor of Project Management at the Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick in Ireland, and in the Graduate School of Management at the Ecole Supériere de Commerce de Lille (ESC Lille) in France. Professor Turner is one of the most widely published and best known academic leaders in the PM field. As a former Chairman of both the Association for Project Management (APM) in the UK and the International Project Management Association (IPMA), he is also a well known and respected leader in the PM professional world. His research results have recently been published by PMI, of which he has been a member for two decades. His PM textbooks have been published in the UK and USA, and translated into several languages. His articles appear frequently in journals worldwide, including Brazil, China and Russia; he is the managing editor for the International Jounal of Project Management. For more information, see the news article announcing his participation in the PM Community section of this edition. We also want to congratulate Alan Harpham and Tom Taylor in the UK who joined the PM Ambassadors™ Speakers Bureau this month. Alan Harpham is Chairman of The APM Group and a Fellow of the Association for Project Management in the UK. With over 40 years of projects experience, Alan is a well known project management expert and executive; he speaks at events throughout the UK and Europe. Alan is also chairman of the Workplace Ministry Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and a board member of the International Spirit at Work Awards program, and Chair of Cranfield University’s Science & Engineering Ethics Committee. Tom Taylor is former Chairman and a Fellow of APM. With over 30 years of front line PM experience, Tom is a well known and popular PM expert and speaker in the UK. A creative and entertaining speaker and writer, Tom is an active advocate for the involvement of project managers in sustainability, the environment and green issues. He is an occasional lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London and Bath, England. He was the founder of Buro Four, an eminent UK project management company in 1985 and its chairman for 15 years. Please see the articles about Alan and Tom in the PM Community section of this edition as well. There is much more!! Read complete editor's perspective in English We want to thank our continuing sponsors that include the ESC Lille, IPMA,Journyx, Keller Graduate School of Management, PM Guru, The APM Group, The Graduate Program in Project Management at theUniversity of Texas at Dallas,Threon Group, TPG The Project Group and The World Bank. Please click on their logos and visit their websites. Sponsors receive visibility and publicity in the PM World Today e-Journal that is emailed to thousands worldwide, and on the PM World Today home page at www.pmworldtoday.net. If your organization is interested in sponsoring an issue of PM World Today please contact editor@pmforum.org. Thank you for your subscription, and for reading the articles submitted by our authors and correspondents. We are excited about the future of this online publication and the world of project management. Please send this to a friend or colleague. Free subscriptions are available at http://www.pmworldtoday.net/subscribe/subscribe.htm. Read complete editor's perspective in English
Good luck with your projects!
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