Volume X - Issue V - May 2008
Viewpoints
Infrastructure Project Management;
By Getachew Teklemariam Alemu Benchmarking successful, domestic or foreign, working procedures, business operations, technologies, administrative workflows, and governance structures is becoming the late trend in most developing countries. This could be attributed to lack of financial capacity, skilled manpower, transparent working procedures, committed government, inter-sectoral integration, technology, developed corporate behavior, and creativity. Despite there exists remarkable difference between the public and private sector; the problem is cross-sectoral in prevalence. In a way out, benchmarking is being taken as both a short-cut, and cost effective way of staying competitive in a rapidly changing business environ. 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. Here is a shortlist, which should not be taken as comprehensive by any means, of lessons that policy makers, policy planners, project planners, project mangers, programme managers, decision makers and politicians could learn from the Chinese infrastructure sector, on which a seminar, that I take part, in title Regional Macro-economic Modeling and Infrastructure Development of Developing Countries, was held from 5th–25th of April 2007. If you want to forward anymore, you are dearly welcome on the PM Forum platform. I can be reached for comment on getdem2006@yahoo.com, or getupfront@gmail.com
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Getting “Buy-in” to anything “New" By Peter de Jager 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. Welcome to the very common problem of implementing a Change. If you’ve been a project manager for any length of time, then you’re well aware that we repeat certain processes time and time again. We don’t set out to do this consciously, but never-the-less these patterns or processes repeat. A good project manager understands the need to identify, categorize and generalize these patterns and use them consciously. In a sense, the PMBOK® Guide is a collection of common patterns. There is a flip side to this, there are also patterns of failure, ‘solutions’ we try time and time again that don’t lead us towards our goal. In a sense, that’s why we attempt to categorize those that work, because this knowledge then helps us avoid the ones which don’t. Good PM practices attempt to steer us towards the successful processes by steering us away from the less effective approaches. Iterative or “Agile” approaches are a current example of this phenomenon. Read complete paper in English
Codes of Ethics and Fiduciary Responsibility
By Paul Giammalvo The article below recently came into my in box and I wanted to share it with you. It was written by Tom Sawyer and was printed in Engineering News-Record, which is a highly regarded construction weekly magazine. http://enr.construction.com/news/safety/archives/080320a.asp . To summarize, it explains how during the investigation of last month’s crane disaster in New York City, it was discovered that a crane inspector had falsified records that he conducted an inspection of the crane. Of relevance, is no one is actually claiming that the fact the crane was not inspected contributed to the disaster. My reason for sharing it is because this example highlights much of the hypocrisy evident throughout the community of practice of project management. Now, the fact that a NYC government official was arrested and will probably spend some time in jail for falsifying inspection documents has significant relevance and importance to the Project Management community, especially for those who continue to consider project management to be a “profession”. Now, some of you may say, “awww…… my projects will never result in anyone being killed or injured, so how does this apply to me? OK, but what about the people who worked on the IRS database project, which cost the US taxpayers some 400 or so million dollars before being scrapped. Or our IT colleagues who worked on the Ford Motor Company CRM project who lost the shareholders of Ford Motor about the same amount? Sure, you didn’t PHYSICALLY kill anyone, but what about financial death. What about your 80 year old grandmother who relies on her dividend check from Ford each month? Don’t you have just a little bit of guilt over the fact that your projects are costing real people real money, and you are unwilling to stand up and report it? What is wrong with us as project managers? Read complete paper in English
You’re a PMP, But… Are You a Project Management Professional? By Lee R. Lambert, PMP In the last five months I have had the opportunity to speak to over 2,000 Project Management Professionals (PMPs) in Anaheim, Hartford and Orlando. During those sessions I conducted non-scientific polls to determine the depth and breadth of the application of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) standards to which this group had been tested for this prestigious professional certification. Frankly, I was shocked with the results of my simple survey. Fundamentally, I sought two pieces of input: 1) how many of the PMPs were consistently utilizing the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) as described in PMBOK on their projects and; 2) how many were implementing the Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM) using the WBS Work Packages to determine logic relationships/work flow. When asked to simply raise their hand if their response to my verbal query was affirmative, the data distribution among the 2,000 plus respondents was as follows: WBS--a total of 31 (less than 2%) PMPs raised their hands PDM--a total of 19 (less than 1%) PMPs raised their hands Interpretation: 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. Read complete paper in English
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