7 Keys for Sustaining Project Excellence
By Douglas R. Gaspardo, PMP
Senior Consultant, Kepner-Tregoe, Inc
“Sustaining Project Excellence” – easy to say, tough to achieve. Everyone knows the end goal – consistently finishing projects on time, within budget and meeting desired business results. And everyone has seen the impact of not having project excellence. Some examples include:
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Capital equipment installations late, over budget with problems that created equipment inefficiencies and lost production;
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New products that do not meet target windows and fail to deliver on revenue expectations;
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Major system upgrades that have significant cost overruns and still do not meet customer expectations;
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Cross-functional project teams have poor morale with resources finding a multitude of reasons to not support projects they are assigned to support;
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Doug Gaspardo
Author
Doug Gaspardo , a senior consultant with Kepner-Tregoe, Inc., is certified as a Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute. His other areas of expertise include skill development, organizational assessment, quality improvement, strategy formulation, process improvement and change management. He has served in both chapter and regional leadership positions in the American Society for Training and Development.
KEPNER-TREGOE (KT) provides consulting and training services to organizations of all sizes including many of the Fortune 1000. KT helps clients implement their strategies by embedding problem-solving, decision-making, and project execution methods through individual and team skill development, issue resolution, and process improvement. Founded in 1958, KT collaborates with many of the most successful companies in the world, helping them build competitive advantage by using the systematic KT methods. Organizations benefit from using KT’s common-logic, common-process approach to set priority, resolve key issues, and achieve strategic and operational improvements. KT offices and affiliated organizations are located throughout the world.
www.kepner-tregoe.com
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Checklist for The Preparation of Road Projects
By Getachew Teklemariam Alemu
In developing countries like Ethiopia where national road network connectivity is at its trough, road projects are the major capital endeavors to be undertaken, mainly by the public sector. Lately, though, the private sector is dominating the sector by undertaking outsourced project components, and also through public-private partnership programmes. For anyone involved in preparing a road project, the following checklist could be used as a reference.
About the Author:
Getachew Teklemariam Alemu
Author
International Correspondent - Ethiopia
Getachew Teklemariam Alemu is an International Correspondent for PMForum and PM World Today based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Mr. Alemu is also an Infrastructure Projects Expert in the Development Projects Department of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, government of Ethiopia. Getachew is responsible for monitoring, appraising and reporting on public sector infrastructure projects financed by the Ethiopian government and bilateral/multilateral donor agencies. He has a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Land Resources Management and Environmental Protection from Mekelle University in Ethiopia. More information about Getachew Teklemariam can be found at http://www.pmforum.org/pm%20forum%20team/index.htm#5. Getachew can be contacted at getdem2006@yahoo.com.
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In Pursuit of the Elusive Benefit
Why Most Change Projects
Fail to Achieve Results,
and What to Do About It
By Nigel Hughes
Research shows that a majority of operational transformation initiatives fail to deliver anticipated business benefits. While things certainly “change,” organizations struggle to quantify results in specific terms such as cost savings, increased productivity, or reduced cycle times.
According to the Harvard Business Review, two-thirds of TQM programs "grind to a halt because of their failure to produce the hoped-for results,” while “reengineering” efforts experience a 70 percent failure rate. A study by Ernst & Young concluded that over 60 percent of organizations could not determine whether the CRM initiative they’d implemented had affected customer profitability
About the Author:
 
Nigel Hughes
Author
Nigel Hughes is Director of Global Market and Service Development at Compass. He has a wide and well-established background in IT and Business. Within Compass, Nigel's specialist areas are the realization of business value from IT applications, IT strategy, combined with governance of IT and knowledge management. His background also includes working at Kodak Processing's European customer service operations where he implemented a corporate document management system, was the corporate expert for Kodak's videotext system and headed the U.K.'s manufacturing distributed computing system. Before this, Nigel was engaged in operational research for Leicester City Council (U.K), which included work in Queuing theory analysis. Nigel gained a BSc in Mathematics from Loughborough University, and an MBA in 2000 with a distinction in Knowledge Management. www.compassmc.com
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Managing and Leading Technical Teams in IT Projects:
Knowing Your Flock!
(Part 1 in a series)
By Melvyn Lee
Throughout the years of managing IT projects, one thing that stood out of my many indelible memories was the challenge to put up a technical team of many flavors. It would be great if it was just plain vanilla, but that won’t usually happen in an IT project especially one that demands a product, solution or service to be running on an integrated platform. The technical teams I’m referring here are Software Developers.
I have the delightful privilege to work with the finest technical minds, whose creativities and foresights had saved the day. And of course, at the other end of the scale, there were other technical teams I have engaged with whose pattern of behaviors and actions were diametrically opposite. Since no two snow flakes are alike, it is therefore wise to tweak our leadership and management style to suite different team personalities.
Melvyn Lee
Author
Melvyn Lee, PMP has worked in various IT organization. He has taken on different roles such as Analyst Programmer, System Analyst, Product Specialist, Pre-Sales, Offshore Development Manager, IT Project Manager, System Integration Project Manager, Resourcing Manager and Technical Manager. He is currently working as a Technical Manager in Axon Solution Malaysia, an established a world-class SAP-shared services centre providing project implementation, application management and offshore/onshore services. The company has high quality consultants supporting Axon’s customers not only out of its head office in the UK but also from its bases in the USA, Europe, Malaysia and Australia. He can be contacted at lee_wmeng@hotmail.com.
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Overcoming the Hurdles to Effective Delegation
By Bob McGannon, PMP
As businesses seek to tackle larger and more complex projects, the wise project manager will increase their ability to delegate effectively. This can be a very tricky game, as skills around the world are becoming more scarce, and the pipeline of new personnel to replace them is slowing considerably. Project managers need to overcome the obstacles that get in the way of effective delegation, as a matter of survival. Here we will explore the obstacles to effective delegation, the cause of those obstacles (you might be surprised by a common cause) and the way forward to more effective and successful delegation.
Hurdle #1 – “I don’t have anyone with the correct skills to whom I can delegate.”
About the Author:
Bob McGannon
Author
Bob McGannon is a Founder and Principal of MINDAVATION, a company providing project management training, consulting, keynotes & coaching services throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Bob can be reached at rmcgannon@mindavation.com. For information about MINDAVATION, please visit WWW.MINDAVATION.COM or call 866-888-MIND (6463).
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Risk in Projects Communication!
(Part 3 in a series)
By Glenn R. Koller
If you have been faithfully following this riveting and enthralling series of articles on one of the driest subjects on earth, you would know that we concluded the second article with the queries:
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How can we create an organization and a culture that promotes the best-portfolio reward system?
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How do we encourage employees to take an objective view of their project?
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How do we discourage the firefighting mindset that requires big bags of cash when threats “blow up” instead of making relatively small investments when the threats “show up”
I have previously alluded to the fact that changes in the organization and culture require changes in the reward system. The reward system, however, is just the salient issue in a relatively long list of impediments to positive change.
About the Author:
Glenn R. Koller
Author
Dr. Glenn Koller received his Ph.D. in geochemistry/geophysics from Syracuse University. In his career Glenn has held positions with the Department of Energy, DuPont, Amoco, BP, and Schlumberger. Glenn’s primary focus for the past 20 years has been on aspects of risk-and-uncertainty analysis, management, and training. Responsibilities included implementation of risk-assessment/management technologies and processes; development of statistical routines that comprise risk systems; marketing risk technology; and performing technical and consulting services. Areas of responsibility include business and product development, environmental concerns, ranking and prioritization of projects and products, analysis of legal commercial, security, logistical, financial etc. scenarios and other aspects of a diversified business. Glenn has authored four books on risk/uncertainty and currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Glenn may be contacted at riskaid@cox.net.
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Top Five Ways to Keep Project Passion Alive
By Michelle LaBrosse, PMP®
We’ve all been there: stuck on the project that won’t end, wishing for a rain dance that could conjure up a quick, action-packed Hollywood ending. I don’t have a rain dance for you, but I do have some ideas that have worked for me when my team is in the tight grip of project fatigue.
Five Ways to Keep Project Passion Alive
1. Acknowledge the elephant in the room. What’s worse than empty corporate platitudes when everyone knows the project team is in the doldrums? This is when humor is very effective. Say what everyone is thinking. Turn the groans into laughter with the simple truth. “I know this project stinks right now, so the question is: How can we make it rock?”
Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then; life is dull without it. -- Pearl S. Buck
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About the Author:
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is the founder and Chief Cheetah of Cheetah Learning. An international expert on accelerated learning and Project Management, she has grown Cheetah Learning into the market leader for Project Management training and professional development. In 2006, The Project Management Institute, www.pmi.org, selected Michelle as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the World, and only one of two women selected from the training and education industry. With a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, LaBrosse has done extensive postgraduate work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Educational Studies and with the University of Washington Industrial Engineering Program in accelerating adult learning with respect to meeting core business objectives. Michelle is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner & President Management program for entrepreneurs, and is the author of Cheetah Project Management and Cheetah Negotiations.
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The Role of Project Management in Established
and New Venture Organisations
By Laurence Nicholson, ACQI, FPMA
Introduction
This article seeks to consider the use and responsibilities associated with Project Management in the dynamic venture environment. It considers the differences in need between new venture and established organisations, what the role of project management is within the new venture arena and how to ensure the benefits can be articulated at the highest levels through participation on the Board
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About the Authors:
Laurence Nicholson
Laurence Nicholson, PMP, MAPM, ACQIis currently the Head of Operations at ProcServe, a Shared Service eProcurement Marketplace Solutions Provider. He has successfully led teams of 40+ consultants and developers, in multi-million pound international projects. He is a qualified Accounting Technician and has in-depth knowledge of several project and development methodologies as well as being a Project Management Professional (PMP), a Fellow of the International Professional Managers Association (FPMA) and a member of the Association for Project Management (MAPM). He has had numerous articles published in multiple languages and is an Associate of the Chartered Quality Institute (ACQI). Mr. Nicholson can be reached at Laurence.Nicholson@Procserve.com.
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Thirteen Tips to Effective Upward Management
By Lonnie Pacelli
So let's get right into this....
Have you ever known a manager who held great respect of his or her team but was not respected by his or her management? Or maybe you've had a manager that just couldn't get things done effectively because he or she just didn't know how to "work the system"? Or even still, are you are a manager who is continually frustrated because you can't get your manager to do what you need him or her to do? If any of these sound familiar to you, welcome to the world of ineffective upward management.
Upward management is one of those skills that some do very well, many never seem to master, and virtually all learn only through on-the-job lessons-learned. When done well, both the manager and employee work as a team to ensure each other is informed, address problems before they spin out of control, and be more effective at managing. When done poorly, both manager and employee are not only ineffective at getting the job done but are chronically frustrated due to mis-steps and surprises
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About the Author:
Lonnie Pacelli
Lonnie Pacelli is an internationally recognized project management and leadership author and consultant with over 20 years experience at Microsoft, Accenture and his own company, Leading on the Edge International. Read more about Lonnie, subscribe to his newsletter, see his books and articles, and get lots of free self-study seminars, webcasts and resources.
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