Volume X - Issue V - May 2008
Editor's Perspective
May 2008 By David L. Pells, Managing Editor Welcome to the May 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 eJournal now contains a broad selection of project management news, papers and stories from around the world of professional PM. As the reach and reputation of this publication grows, we continue to seek new authors and new ideas to share with others who are seeking to advance and grow their careers and organizations. 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 practitioners who want to share knowledge and gain more visibility in the PM world as authors and contributors. This month’s Editorial is entitled “New Frontiers for Project Management: Future Energy.” This is the second in a series of articles on “New Frontiers” for PM, industries and areas of application that I believe represent important future opportunities for project managers and modern project management. An energy crisis has long been predicted; it now appears to be here with record high prices for oil and gas. Attention is rapidly shifting to alternative fuels and sources of energy. In this article, I have tried to provide some new information and perspective on developments in the energy sector, where new opportunities for PM are emerging and growing. Three Letters to the Editor are included this month. Russ Archibald, PM pioneer and PMI co-Founder in Mexico, has provided some additional feedback and information “On the history of project management”. David Maynard, PMI leader in Indiana, USA, has requested permission to use the case studies residing on www.pmforum.org for a scholarship competition. John Ndubuisi at the Federal University of Technology in Owerri, Nigeria, has written to inform PMForum again about the Society of Project Management Technology Students that has been formed there. I want to thank these individuals for their positive and useful feedback and information this month. Four Viewpoint articles are included again this month. Lee Lambert, well known PM consultant and speaker in the USA, has provided an article entitled “You’re a PMP, but are you a PM Professional?” According to Lee, “As a profession, we’ve got a problem! We have far too many individuals who have worked hard, attended the best project management training, and invested time and money in earning their PMP credential but now are admittedly not adhering to the very standards to which they were tested and should be held accountable.” Is Mr. Lambert correct? Please read his article and send us your perspective on this issue. Paul Giammalvo in Indonesia is back with a Viewpoints article entitled “Codes of Ethics and Fiduciary Responsibility to the Consuming Public!” In his article, in which he references a project scandal in New York, Paul asks, “How many times have you, as a project manager, falsified documents? Or lied about costs, schedule or risks? We talk about codes of ethics and we sign them and we swear to uphold them, but when push comes to shove, when your boss tells you to change the schedule or to “adjust” the costs so they look more favorably for presentation to upper management, what do you do?” We think Paul raises some important issues, but would welcome your comments. The third Viewpoints article this month provided by Peter de Jager in Canada has the title “Getting buy-in for anything new.” Peter’s article starts with, “If you’re a ‘doer’ of any sort, whether you’re a project manager, organizer, supervisor, secretary or just one of those people who make the world go round – then from time to time you’re going to stumble across a method or process that you just know will benefit others if only they’ll adopt it. You’ll then discover, sometimes much to your surprise, that your enthusiasm for the new found solution isn’t shared as enthusiastically by those around you.” Please read Peter’s article for perspective and advice related to an issue that we all face at one time or another in our careers. Getachew Teklemariam Alemu in Addis Ababa has contributed an interesting Viewpoints article entitled “Infrastructure Project Management: What can we learn from the Chinese?” According to Getachew, “As being the vibrant sector in China’s economic development, the Chinese infrastructure sector could teach us a lot of lessons that are missing in most of the developing countries, including Ethiopia.’ He goes on to suggest some important practices. Getachew writes from personal experience and with something at stake, as he is involved in assessing and planning infrastructure projects in his country. 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, Portugal and the USA. Robert Prieto, senior vice president for Fluor Corporation in the USA, has provided another major paper entitled “Foundations, Frameworks & Lessons Learned in Program Management.” According to Bob, “The delivery of complex capital programs worldwide is increasingly challenged by the depth and breadth of management skills required for successful program execution. Capital programs today continue to grow in scale and complexity; face growing human and critical material resource constraints; require global resources or as a minimum compete for them; and are increasingly sensitive to successful execution in terms of schedule, quality and cost… This paper reviews the ingredients of a successful program management approach and specifically differentiates it from good project management.” 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. Lev Virine in Calgary, Canada has provided a very interesting paper entitled “Adaptive Project Management.” The paper begins with “Originally developed by ecologists, adaptive management has become a powerful framework for project management. It is a structured and systematic process to continually improve decisions and practices by learning from the outcomes of previous decisions. Adaptive management includes a number of organizational principles, such as iterative development and avoidance of irreversible decisions. Adaptive management relies on metrics and quantitative methods to integrate actual project performance to the management of projects.” Mr. Virine goes on to define and describe Adaptive PM, in another significant contribution to the literature growing up around modern project management. Alexandre Rodrigues in Lisbon, Portugal has provided a paper entitled “The Trend of Earned Value Management as a Cross-Industry Best Practice: Conclusions and Lessons Learned from Real-Life Implementations.” According to Alex, “Our practical experience over the last ten years of using and applying EVM in the field, has demonstrated … Earned Value can be used effectively in any type of project and industry sector, very often requiring little effort in small projects…. In this paper, we briefly present ..(an).. extended version of Earned Value Management along with the critical factors for successful implementation, in particular communication and data quality issues.” We think this is another significant addition to the literature on EVM as a project management best practice. Jim Miller in Irving, Texas has provided an important paper on the topic of “Catapulting Productivity with IT Project Management and Corporate Governance.” According to Mr. Miller, “…to thrive in today’s demanding high tech business climate, there is no question that IT Project Management must enlist the aid of strategies that accelerate progress. To ensure best practice ideas, project management leaders, particularly in the IT world, must focus on keeping a team on track and above all, help to avoid costly mistakes. This is where IT Project Management and Corporate Governance come in.” Based on his experience in a major IT organization, Jim discusses how an IT PMO can contribute to both improved performance and corporate governance objectives. This is important stuff for every organization, not just technology companies. Mark Kozak-Holland in Canada, frequent and popular contributor to PM World Today, is back with part 21 in his series on “Winston Churchill, the Agile Project Manager.” Mark also uses “Lessons from History” to teach modern PM. His paper this month is entitled “Storey’s Gate.” According to Mark, “This article looks at the fourth area of the overall project, command and controlof the whole system. A command centre at the heart of the solution was the final piece in the jigsaw.” Based on information from “the summer of 1940”, this is another fascinating look back with lessons still to be learned – when a ‘war room’ really was a War Room! Read the article, learn and be entertained again this month! Two papers are included in Case Studies this month. “Streamlined Decision Making and Sharper Project Focus at BAE Systems” is a case study authored by Liz Fletcher and provided by TPG The Project Group in Munich, Germany. The paper starts with “As part of a strategy to implement Earned Value Management (EVM) methodologies throughout the enterprise, BAE Systems set out in 2006 to improve its project management techniques and increase efficiency. The Air Support business of the Military Air Solutions group, which provides maintenance and support services to military aircraft in multiple countries, has been the first to see results.” Read this article to see what was done to improve PM at BAE. The second paper in this section is the third 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 by Debra Lavell and Russell Martinelli at Intel in Oregon and is entitled “The People Side of Program and Project Retrospectives.” According to Debra and Russ, “As with any organization or business process change endeavor, one of the most difficult challenges to overcome is getting people en mass to change the way they work and behave. Bringing the retrospectives methodology into Intel has been no different. A key learning we’ve discovered is that the services of a trained facilitator is beneficial to improving the likelihood of sustainable change in moving to the retrospectives methodology. In this paper, we explore the people side of bringing retrospectives into an organization from a facilitator’s perspective, and how one deals with human aspects of introducing changes in the way people work and behave.” There is much more!! Read complete editor's perspective in English We want to welcome a new sponsor, TPG The Project Group in Germany this month, and thank our continuing sponsors that include the ESC Lille, IPMA,Journyx, Keller Graduate School of Management, The APM Group, The Graduate Program in Project Management at theUniversity of Texas at Dallas,Threon 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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