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September 9th, 2010
I like reading, although I must confess that my breadth of reading is not much. I am slow to move on to new genres, topics or authors and do not mind reading one book more than once. I was nestled in with the third volume of Miss Marple omnibus for like the n+1th time the other day when these lines caught my interest – “…I have learnt one thing about a man who I wish to employ. He has to have a flair. A flair for the particular job I want him to do. It is not knowledge, it is not experience. The only word that describes it is flair.” This got me thinking “Do we, as project managers, also need to have a flair for the role of a project manager? Something that goes beyond our knowledge of say, the best practices or the tools and techniques of project management, something more than just experience of handling and successfully delivering projects? And if yes, then what is it that we need to have a flair for?
Some pointers that readily answer that question – a flair for getting along with people. Because at the end of the day, it is only people who deliver projects and people come in a wide variety of personalities, attitudes and moods. No book can ever hope to teach us the technique for getting the work done of every person type who we encounter and no amount of experience in handling projects will guarantee that we do not meet one or more people who tend to be ‘difficult’ and therefore who need to be managed in a certain way. It is our innate ability to empathize and win the person over that ensures that the project goes on with no major hiccups on that front.
A flair to ’see the future’ maybe…an ability to determine the prognosis of the current task or situation as well as any unforeseen circumstances that may come its way and therefore need to be managed in a certain way. True, experience over similar projects does provide us with a sixth sense by which we are able to do this, but let’s say, tomorrow we move to new domain, a new company or a new country where the situation may be totally different. Even in such a scenario, it is an added bonus if we are able to utilize our basic flair of gauging the entire scene and making efficient use of project resources. Related to this is the flair for being able to accept that bad things happen. Despite the team’s best efforts and the individual’s own super-efficiency, things do tend to change and change for the worse. A project manager can ill-afford to lose her cool in the face of adversity or flee at the first sign of trouble. Rather she needs to have the flair to accept that things have gone wrong and they now need to be corrected. A sense of detachment of oneself from the success or failure of the project helps a great deal in such situations.
What happens if an individual lacks the flair to be a project manager? Does that make her a bad project manager? Not necessarily, I think. A manager who tends to get nervous when things go wrong may still recover her cool and steer the project back on track. A manager who is unable to get along with a certain person may be able to use her authority and influence to get another person capable of doing the job. But notice that there is a tiny blip associated with these workaround solutions, a small feeling of negativity, tension or disappointment. There is a short moment in time when we are bound to feel uncomfortable with what we are doing to the extent of not even wanting to do it. I guess the absence of the flair does not make an individual less successful, but the presence of the same certainly makes the job more enjoyable!
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July 27th, 2010
One of the earliest lessons of our project management classes teaches us to distinguish between projects & operations. Projects are finite, we are told, unlike operations which comprise existing procedures repeated over time. We are given to understand that projects create unique outcomes which are missing in operational activities. All fine, I wonder, but is it possible that in our enthusiasm to engender “unique” products or services, we are ignoring the downstream use or implementation of the same? The proof of the pudding, it is said, is in the taste. Are we giving due attention to our project ingredients to ensure that not only is the project pudding ready in time, but that it actually tastes good?
These thoughts were triggered while driving along the streets of Hyderabad a few days back. The congested junctions in the city were recently equipped with flash cameras with the intention of capturing images of individuals and vehicles that violated traffic rules. What was done with these images or whether anything was photographed at all is another topic to discuss, but at least the intermittent flash ensured that bewildered two wheelers stopped behind the Stop line or prevented certain vehicles from screeching through the last few seconds of a Go light. A month or so later, today the cameras seem to be non-functional and the chaos appears to have returned to the junction jungle. No device or stratagem is available to keep the vehicles in check with the result that these congested junctions have gone back to demonstrating how “might is right”. As I try and maneuver my vehicle through this mayhem, I wonder, whether we should classify the ‘project’ of setting up the cameras at these junctions a success? Was the project definition so narrow that it only visualized the setting up of cameras with little or no attention being paid to the subsequent use of the devices and the associated system? What happens to the tax rupees that go into a public project such as this if they cannot yield any sustainable benefit for the public itself? Is this the same situation in most of our projects, are we also simply taking a narrow vision of the final outcome of the project? Are we able to see beyond the product/service created, into its actual use, operation and maintenance? No time to ponder over this now, need to get through this junction with my car and myself unharmed!
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June 16th, 2010
In a perfect world, every project undertaken would start and finish on time & within budget; in a perfect world, all the required documents including project charter, scope & risk management plan, change management plan would be maintained and updated; in a perfect world, project managers would be available for the entire duration of the job in hand and another professional would never be required to take on someone’s existing role. But it is hardly a perfect world and therefore none of the above hold good. And while there are techniques available to aid our attempts to finish projects on time and tools available for the necessary documentation, very little help seems to be available to let us know how we can slip into the role of the manager of a project that is already up and running. The basic principles, no doubt, remain the same; but there are some nuances that need extra attention when one takes on the mantle of a project in execution.
For starters, the mental make up. When we are assigned the job to manage a project that is already in motion, it makes sense to avoid stepping into the same all guns blazing assuming that the project processes need to be changed. This is an initiative that is already underway, it probably has its own methodology, own idiosyncrasies and the team members most likely have their own chemistry with each other as well as the work on hand. An attempt to change this in any way, however noble the intention may be, may well be unnecessary and may even do more harm than good. Also at this point, the new entrant merely possess formal power by virtue of her assignment as the manager. She needs to establish herself as a technical expert, an able manager and a wise leader – all of which need time. Any new change required will need the team buy-in in order to be successful and so the new manager would do well to gain the same over a period of time. She should therefore switch to the role of an observer, a learner during the first few weeks. More questions need to be asked, less opinion offered – what are the processes, tools, templates, standards being used? How has it helped the project? What are the technical aspects of the project? Who are the key stakeholders and partners? A whole lot of sleuthing and data gathering is required to come up-to-speed on the so-far alien project.
A meeting with the existing project manager also provides valuable inputs to the new recruit. Pertinent questions such as information about the stakeholders, particular pain areas that she has experienced, routine activities that need to be carried out as well as her typical daily to-do list all help gather information that is most likely not written down anywhere, but extremely vital and important to know. Also the exiting manager should provide crucial information regarding team member aspirations and motivating factors. This is highly important as team members are more concerned with their individual goals and aspirations and will hardly appreciate any sidelining of the same just because the leadership has changed hands.
Other important activities that a manager moving into a new project needs to do is to have one-on-one meeting sessions with the team members. While this is recommended even for managers who have been on board since day 1, the focus of these meetings for the new guy should be more in terms of gathering know-how about the team member’s roles & responsibilities, his key achievements and pressing needs and also inputs about his specific area in the project. Such meetings help build trust and also communicate a sense of open and frank exchange.
The key in all of this is sufficient communication. Listening and learning from the team members, sharing of knowledge and long-term goals is important. After all, we need them to be successful in implementing our goals.
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May 12th, 2010
To: The Compiler of the Report for Study of Centrally Funded Projects in India (and anyone else that this may concern),
According to your recent study into the matter mentioned above, more than half the big centrally-funded projects – that is undertakings estimated to cost more than Rs. 20 crore – are running up to 25 years behind schedule (Reference: http://in.news.yahoo.com/248/20100510/1582/tnl-many-projects-25-years-behind-time.html). To most of the citizens, there is nothing surprising in this. The most common grievance that puts off many among the “common man” when the need arises to pursue any matter with the administration is that ‘it will take a lo…ng time’. In fact, your report itself cites that time overrun on projects has come down by hardly 11 percentage points – from 62 per cent to 51 per cent in the past 18 years. So hard earned public funds be damned, state governance and development rest in peace; time delay is condemned to be the forever faithful companion to any administrative initiative.
Some of the reasons sighted by your study for this delay include – inadequate funding, geological surprises and changes in the scope of projects. Us geeks in the project management parlance would term “geological surprises” as risks – risks that we claim, need to be identified and managed. It is obvious that given the largely capricious nature of the Indian topology, Mother Nature wields some kind of a grudge against all our efforts. How else can one explain the fact that despite holding voluminous amount of geo-scientific data through relentless field surveys and laboratory studies, we are still faced with novel “surprises” that thwart the project risk management plan (or whatever you call that small section buried amidst reams of other crucial data)? Project scope is another area that we professionals audaciously claim to handle and control changes. But of what good is our scope management experience when faced with the changes that are encountered in the gargantuan public projects where sometimes the scope may vacillate between appeasing this section of the community or that or spring up “added” requirements of provision of say, street lights on a newly constructed road?
Luckily handling of project funding is an area where we managerial nerds are on an equal footing with you. Most of our waking hours are dedicated to conjuring schemes by which the sponsor may be convinced to loosen the purse strings. Never mind that our tax money pays for the bureaucratic indulgence in having projects run a quarter century behind the due date. In fact, your performance in this area seems to have outpaced ours; your report talks of a decrease of 50 percentage points in project cost overrun between 1991 and 2009! The visible impact of this saving has already manifested in the amenities provided to and hoarded by the public servants; that on the lives of the needy citizens will obviously be revealed subsequently.
Amid all this rambling, what catches one’s attention is the resolution proposed in your report – ‘the institution of standing committees within ministries to monitor time and cost of projects and to fix responsibility for any delay’. So what if it sounds like another big project that not only may again run into time and cost delays but also degenerate into a blame game with no accountability ever being fixed? And what alternative is available really? Bringing in professional project management consulting and assistance will most likely only complicate matters. Approaching these large projects in a scientific and disciplined manner is obviously going to add to the workload of the custodians of the government charged with serving the country. Centralized Large Scale Project Management Offices, inclusion of domain field experts in project teams, installation of impartial and rigid project governance, providing an option to the professional and certified project managers to make a difference, even through compulsion if necessary – all very high-profile ideas and next to impossible to implement – right? It makes more sense to add to the already corpulent list of committees that consume perishable resources and help provide charges to be tossed among sides for years to come. And “minor” slippages can hardly be circumvented in a large project. As long as the project is deemed complete, how does it matter when and what cost it gets done? Wonder why a well-known national figure was of the opinion that the ‘means are, after all, everything’, that ‘as the means, so the end’?
From,
Another “Project Management” Freak
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April 15th, 2010
A widely known but rarely acknowledged truth is that business and IT are two parts of the same whole – if one is at the heart of every organization’s strategies and long-term objectives, the other is the brain that drives the company towards achieving the same through intelligent tools and techniques. The coordinated effort of both is crucial in the realization of the goals as set by the business body. It is therefore logical to believe that all projects including IT endeavors are driven and supported by a strong business need and belief and that there is hardly any scope for any unproductive conflict between the two; in reality, this is not very often true. What starts as a united effort soon peters out to just “another project that was envisioned to do wonders” and almost everyone is eager to wash their hands off it at the earliest.
The primary reason that contributes to this business-IT misalignment is the lack of or limited understanding of the role essayed and challenges faced by the other party. It is human nature, after all, to look at every situation, every individual from his or her own perspective. Hence while business users may be perceived to be people who do the same job, day in and out and “hardly understand technology” by the IT team, they in turn may think of the IT consultants as “geeks who sit in cubicles throughout the day and churn out fruitless lines of code or systems without actually understanding what is actually needed”.
Almost every practicing project manager will agree that business requirements are seldom simple. Business users seem to speak from 20,000 feet above the air and almost always want the sun, moon, the stars and everything else that comes in between. When these requirements are actually translated to technical specifications, it is well possible that only a fraction of the wants are actually achievable. It is crucial that both business users and the IT team arrive at a concerted understanding of what is actually required, what can be achieved and how that is likley to be achieved. A pictoral representation, say in the form of a WBS can help everyone visualize the work required and the final end product. In absolutely green field endeavors or highly complex systems, the team may decide to adopt prototyping and close customer partnership as recommended by the Agile methodology and thus assist in easier understanding of the project requirement and deliverables.
Just as the difference in backgrounds results in differences in understanding project outcomes between the business and the technology team, it also shapes their project management methodologies differently. Take project schedule for instance. The end users are typically interested in knowing what they are getting and when and a high level schedule that describes these milestones is sufficient to provide them this information. The project team on the other hand needs a more detailed timetable that highlights even the minutest detail as well as takes care of inter dependencies and hand offs. A project manager therefore needs to be able to cater to both these tastes – the high level, result oriented needs of the business and the detailed, task oriented focus for the team members.
Business – IT alignment acquires an even greater significance in recent times as companies grow as much through mergers and acquisitions today as they do through normal organic growth. The data associated with the organization multiplies by leaps and bounds as does the IT system landscape. Pretty soon, there arises the need to either streamline or upgrade the vast range of disparate systems which may turn into an increasingly difficult project. Business users are typically used to accessing the information in one particular way from one particular system and in one particular format. More often than not, they may be reluctant to accept the new process of data submission and retrieval; it is after all human nature to resist anything new. In such a situation, the role of project manager, the IT team as well as the senior management becomes highly crucial in easing the process of change as far as possible. An open and logical approach to the entire process ensures that the organizational needs of the project are met with as minimal heartburn as possible.
Alignment between different departments needs to be driven from the top. The senior management in the organization needs to build an atmosphere of trust and partnership where co operation and diversity are desired and appreciated while hostility and mistrust is not tolerated. Meetings, knowledge sharing sessions as well as fun events like parties, games across normal departmental boundaries helps individuals understand and appreciate the nuances of the other parties’ work and the challenges it faces. This, in turn, facilitates co ordination in project teams as well as serves as a shot in the arm for human factors such as motivation and a sense of belonging. It also widens the know how of the individual team members who now can appreciate both the business as well as the technical aspect of things and thus is a huge investment in team development.
Participative governance as envisioned above also needs to be extended to parties external to the organization. No project today is executed by one person, one team, one company or even in one country. Parity in behavior towards all the stakeholders in a project, internal and external, is crucial to break down the information silos that we tend to build and this speeds up the project success. Display of a sense of inclusion and appreciation, equality in behavior and regular information exchange also portray the organization in a more mature light which does wonders for the company brand image.
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March 16th, 2010
I pride myself in being a good communicator, but this notion was shattered the other day when I discovered that an email I sent was interpreted completely opposite to what I had meant to convey. This is a problem that even the best of communicators and the best of managers among us face – that of perspective management. Have we not all read of the communication model which includes the sender, the receiver and the medium? But more often than not, we miss the latter half of this model – interpretation by the receiver. For without this aspect, the picture is still incomplete; the sender may as well be talking to himself if the message is not interpreted and interpreted correctly at that.
As project professionals, we interact with many different people as we go about our daily business – team members who carry their own personal and professional baggage, bosses and superiors who bear their individual and business crosses as well as external parties who bring to the table their specific skills as well as the mental make up associated with these. How do we ensure that communication and co ordination takes place smoothly within and despite all these varying and possibly conflicting backgrounds? It is not just that this is needed to reduce the conflict in the project (and experts suggest that a minimal level of conflict is not necessarily bad news). Rather it is necessary that we recognize and plan to work with these differing perspectives simply to ensure that thoughts and ideas are easily exchanged and understood and that chaos does not reign supreme.
This reminds me of another incident that occurred during the early stages of my career when I was working as a part of a cross-cultural team. My inherent prejudices, cultural and mental make-up had provoked me to respond to an email in a manner that, on hindsight today, seems silly if not wrong. My manager had then told me that a golden rule of the organization was to come to work leaving behind all prejudices at the doorstep. No one is more important than the project goals and any minute behavior that threatens these should be avoided. This is not to say that we turn into stones or become immune to any form meted out to us. Rather the idea is to approach the whole situation in an objective and fair manner without letting emotions and biases cloud our judgment.
Easier said than done, did you say? I agree. But who said life is easy? And look at the flip side, at what we lose if we act simply based on our immediate understanding of the situation. Did I feel good after the particular incident in question? Honestly no…like I said, I felt silly and stupid. I reproached myself at not being able to even sense where my colleague was coming from and why he was saying what he was. Nothing can be more harmful to the personal and the project environment as a labor carried out in conflicting perspectives and that too carried out in haste.
In addition to making an effort to keep our individual perspectives from interfering with our prudence, there are some minor steps that we can take to ensure that others do not interpret our deeds and words any different from how we mean them. I have encountered quite a few people who start off on a conversation about 20,000 feet above ground level. The assumption here is that the listener is already aware of the background and so should easily be able to jump on to the bandwagon and grasp what the speaker wishes to convey. Here the latter is blissfully oblivious to the fact that the other party has little clue about what he is talking; he may be a new entrant to the situation and so may need some amount of background information. Why not instead start with the assumption that the listener has absolutely no clue about the topic at hand and venture into the conversation through a mix of questions and information? This could form a likely guard against the listener being left totally in the cold about what is being discusses as well as serve as a platform for a productive conversation and exchange of ideas.
Context building is another crucial tool in perspective management. This is more like story telling; the effort here is more on forcing the listener to abandon the comfort of his inherent beliefs and instead open his eyes to the practical needs of the situation and therefore appreciate the chosen solution or suggest improvements of his own. In the humdrum of regular work, most of us lose sight of what the bigger picture is; our vision gets restricted by our innate biases and immediate needs. This myopic sight needs to be corrected by looking at the larger scheme of things, at the specific situation at hand and doing what is needed to alleviate the same.
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February 12th, 2010
Japan and its manufacturers have been synonymous with Quality and Reliability for quite some time now. This is unlike the 1950s and 60s when Japanese goods were notorious for being cheap and of poor quality. It is only due to the concerted efforts of industrial majors in this country assisted by quality champions like Deming and Juran that the situation witnessed a complete turn-around; from the 1970s onwards, Japanese products achieved high standards of quality. In fact, it is most ironical that the quality initiatives invented by the Japanese are today respected and practiced by the same western countries that once derided Japanese methods.
It is against this background that two of the country’s and the world’s leading automobile manufacturers – Toyota and Honda – announced the recall of millions of vehicles on account of various problems reported. The recall in itself is just the tip of the iceberg; the problems go way deeper – safety risks to and suspicions of the drivers of these vehicles, legal action against the auto companies, global and local impacts of the crisis across different markets, different cultures, the domino impact on suppliers and the overall Japanese economy…the list is endless. But there is probably nothing more damaging that the black mark that this incident has inflicted across these motor giants that were till yesterday set apart from competition and revered as quality pioneers. As IHS Global Insight analyst Carlos Da Silva “It’s not that their vehicles are worse than the others, (the recalls are) just showing maybe that their vehicles are like the others”, the situation is nothing short of the loss of the differentiation factor that took decades to build! Such an event in itself compounded by its size and scale only begs the question “Could it be that the race to cut costs and sell more is so fierce that even the mighty Japanese cannot be trusted any more?” Never realized that a case of quality mismanagement can have this huge an effect now, did we?
It is an accepted fact that quality assurance is a vital component of any initiative – small or big. Whether it is the construction of a building, institution of a new car model or the launch of a space craft, the slightest let up in this area can cause a ripple effect across businesses and countries. As a result, we can never be too sure, too complacent. This incident of vehicle recall suggests that despite man’s humongous technical advancement, we can still not guarantee that every system we design, every product that we launch will be cent percent anything and everything proof. Neither can we confidently state that so-and-so company has rolled out quality products so far and hence will continue to do so till eternity; even quality elephants hit a rough patch. No matter how many lines and lines of software programs we develop that can achieve feats that were hitherto difficult or time consuming, there is always a possibility of one small defect bringing the whole system crashing down. Call me old-fashioned or a paranoid skeptic, but I feel that the more we rely on technology and machinations, the more complications we add to our lives and the more unsafe we make ourselves and our fellow human beings. So technical advancement does not actually mean that our products are error free; on the contrary, they establish the need for greater monitoring and control.
Okay, so quality management is crucial in every project, in every industry and in every era. But how often do we arrive at the complete definition of quality. I am not referring to the “definition” as expounded in text-books, rather I am looking at the total delineation of the quality of a product. I am looking at the inter-relation between quality management and risk management. The process of risk management is normally carried out thus – “there is a 20% chance that so and so event will occur, if it does, the impact is so much and this is what we need to do to handle it.” Likewise quality assurance guidelines specify “the product should meet so and so standards.” Nothing wrong with these maybe, but have we ever asked ourselves “So what? What if the product does not meet the standard? What is the risk that a quality failure can engender? What is the bigger picture that we are simply not seeing?” This is crucial, if you ask me; one defect in a product can translate to a risk to loss in revenues, loss of face, loss of life even! The PMBOK postulates that the different knowledge areas are inter-related. Why is it then that we ignore this vital link instead of analyzing it with the attention that it deserves?
An honest and responsible attitude is any day better compared to silence which can easily be interpreted as “I don’t care what happens to you”. It is not enough to accept that there has been a defect, it is important that this is accepted on time. As children and young adults, we are groomed to share good news with anyone and everyone but shy away from delivering bad news. It is high time that we shrugged off this approach and adopted an upfront and upright method of communication with regard to quality. And mind you, the communication needs to be logical and feasible, it needs to address the problem. There is no point in saying that “the brakes will work if you push on it a bit”. I, for one, would want a machine to behave as it is supposed to within the purview of the laws of science; a brake pedal is supposed to stop a car when applied and it better do just that and do it every time I step on it. Telling me to keep pushing it until it works is, to me, an unscientific, unsafe and downright retrogressive approach.
The truth is that despite our best efforts, many a time, we are unable to deliver a fool-proof quality product. It is in such situations, that we are forced to handle product recalls, just as Honda and Toyota are now having to deal with. One can only hope that these giants realize that even this initiative is a full-fledged project and approach it with the careful and responsible attitude that it calls for. Unlike regular launch projects, the key success factor of this project will be largely based on softer aspects such as communication and people management. I am sure the owners would not mind if the vehicles are repaired and delivered later, but delivered with absolutely no faults. Likewise the makers would be eager to salvage their reputation by not faltering on the quality this time, even if it means any additional investments.
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January 27th, 2010
I was recently involved in planning and organizing a program here at Hyderabad and this gave me a chance to interact with different individuals interested in attending the same. Innumerable phone calls, emails and meetings later, I can safely claim to know enough to dispense advice (yes, it’s free) on how one should choose a project management training program (here I restrict my thoughts to classroom courses, e-learning programs have their own set of “how to’s”).
Firstly, before you even talk to a second individual about the training, ask yourself why you wish to go for it. Think out and maybe even write down your objectives – perhaps you want to clear a certification exam, maybe you are interested in learning new concepts or possibly seeking a career change, maybe it is a culmination of more than one reason. Now when you come across a training program, look for its objectives. What does it claim to provide? Is there a match between the two? This is crucial; even the slightest mismatch means avoidable wastage of time, effort and money, not just for you but also for the other party.
Once you establish why you wish to go for the project management training, you need to employ all possible means to search for associations and organizations that can service your need. Ensure that you do your homework on the training that you wish to undergo. Read up on all the parties that are involved in the delivery of the program. There is an abundance of information on practically every topic under the sun today; make sure that you scratch more than the surface of these sources. This yields many benefits. Not only does it provide you enough information to discuss and ask the right questions, but also it increases the confidence of the training provider and makes the entire interaction easier and more productive.
When you talk to the training provider, there are some questions that you can simply NOT miss asking – faculty, audience and testimonials. Firstly who is the faculty member? Many a time, the program brochure is extremely loquacious about the institute, the program and the course material but silent about the person delivering the same. This is unacceptable in every way; even the best of training material is unhelpful, even dangerous if not interpreted rightly. It is the instructor who can transform the bookish concepts into thoughts and ideas that you can relate to and even apply. By virtue of past experience, he / she can simplify the process of learning and maybe even make it fun. The next thing to check is the target audience, your classmates in the program. This is vital since learning occurs as much from the teacher as from the collective knowledge of your fellow professional members. Evaluating the profile of the target audience helps you validate if the program can provide you the intellectual platform that you need. Lastly ask for the list of the client base of the training provider. Check their testimonials, if possible contact them directly. It may not provide a fool-proof means of evaluation, but it definitely helps in making an informed decision.
Remember the adage – “All that glitters is not gold”? This holds true even in this case. Do not be misled by freebies and perquisites. These only divert your attention from what should be your main and only point of concern – the training delivery. Ensure that you have all the information concerning this and only then look at the additional benefits. Finally remember that training is no easy job, nor is it a mere monologue. Most of us have been guilty of using training programs as a means to escape our normal routine and so obviously do not look at spending too much time or money for the same. In today’s world however, every small initiative is a project and so every individual is a project manager. A cavalier attitude or a lazed out approach to the program that attempts to educate you in this vital discipline can not only mean a lost investment but also spell bad news for your professional career.
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January 13th, 2010
A few weeks back, I was in conversation with a gentleman and we were discussing the relevance of PMP training across different industries. As any professional project manager will confirm, most of the PM methodologies practiced around the world are based on global best practices. This implies that the policies & processes advocated by them have been developed and tested across organizations and industries around the world and have been found to be successfully effective; hence the name “best practices”. The common understanding is that since it has worked in most or all of the organizations and domains where it has been tried, it will deliver with equal ease in any new company or vertical too. Or is that really so?
The dictionary defines “best” as “of the highest quality, excellence, or standing, most advantageous, suitable, or desirable” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/best ). What is hidden in these definitions is the addendum “among those tested / verified / checked”. Thus even within the superlative form of the word is hidden a comparison – best out of a chosen sample set. Any change to the sample set and the purported best practice may either retain its title or be dethroned by an entirely new process. Mere word play, you say? May be…but think about it. As practicing project managers, professionals and logical human beings, have we not encountered situations that seemed remarkably similar to an earlier experience; but on actually dealing with it, we found a thread of difference, a peculiarity that called for special attention and an altered approach? Is it then not likely that the reputed best practices that have worked so smoothly for businesses around the world may need to be tweaked around and tailored for our particular line of business or may not even be applicable for us?
As human beings, we like to believe and rightly so that each of us is unique in some or the other way. So also are our projects; even though most of them may seem similar due to similarities in stakeholders, industry, execution platform or desired result, each possesses a feature that is unique to that particular endeavor. That being the case, global best practices should serve only as a guideline to us. Rather than blindly applying them to our specific project, company or industry, we need to critically examine its applicability and tailor it to our specific requirements. This underscores the need for thorough understanding of both – what is prescribed by the standard as well as the nuances of the particular situation at hand. If either of these is missing or is incomplete, we may end up implementing a process that does not fit our needs or rejecting a better way of doing things. The time and effort spent in gaining this understanding is an investment to ward off unwanted events and costs at a later date.
Another important point of focus that one realizes on pondering over the process of best practice adoption is the need for an efficient tracking mechanism. Monitoring and control is an important domain in any project; but in cases that involve the adoption of a new way of doing things, its importance is even more highlighted. Periodic and stringent audits in the areas that are affected by the newly adopted practice not only ensures that the desired results are achieved but also provides an insight into the actual time, money and effort being input to the change and the benefits of the same. Such a comparison helps in evaluating the global best practice against the organization’s own way of doing things and thus establishing which of the two is more suited to our needs. Having said that, one also needs to realize that it is not necessary that the new approach bears fruit immediately. It will need time while it is accepted, tailored and adopted across the organization; this after all involves unlearning of past practices and mastering of hitherto unknown procedures. A great deal of patience is called for during these turbulent times.
Factors that are not easily monitored and measured but nevertheless play a pivotal role in best practice adoption are largely human. Acceptance of global standards requires humility to concede that there is indeed a better way of doing things. The tendency to bury our necks in the sand saying that “we will remain this way as it works fine for us” needs to give way to an attitude to know what is happening around us and a willingness to seek out and accept the new. A willingness to look beyond one’s own portals and recognize new and improved processes is the big difference between those that ‘pretend to change’ and those that ‘do change’. Which of these are we going to be?
Posted in Change | Comments Off
January 3rd, 2010
The dawn of a new year is the time to make plans for the future. Businesses draw up strategies for future goals, governments plan for new initiatives and individuals make up their personal and professional agendas. Despite our best efforts and most well thought out plans, the future is always one up on us with its own plans and tactics. At such times, it is not unnatural to wish for some means to “see” the future, know what it holds. I know it is impossible to do so with bulls eye accuracy, but given the contemplation and design that our plans involve, one can at least attempt a calculated guesstimate. Take the discipline of Project Management itself; as practicing professionals, what do we think is the future of this line of work? Here are my thoughts.
Contrary to the science of Project Management which is still in its infancy, projects have been around for quite some time. Projects have been planned and executed by man even before recorded history. Of course, the scale and complexity of these has increased over time and it is safe to assume that this will continue to be the case even in the coming years. As human beings, we are constantly in competition with ourselves, challenging ourselves to do better, faster, higher or cheaper. I believe that this race will still hold ground in the near future.
In the past, the focus was in getting the best of that is available, keeping competitors and vendors on their toes by liaising with various parties and minimizing risk through continuous competitive bidding and building redundancy in the system. But increased costs of maintenance and focus on efficient utilization of bandwidth has now shifted the advantage to integrated solution providers. Businesses will no longer go shopping for different piece meal solutions. Companies are more and more looking at partners who can offer a complete suite of applications for their business needs. Given this fact, project managers and performing organizations will increasingly have to widen their service offering or seek out and forge partnerships with entities that can provide competencies that they are unable to develop close at hand.
Volatility in the global landscape and recent recessions will impose stricter criteria on project selection. The process will mainly be driven by two factors – the criticality of the investment and the sustainability of the value it is expected to provide. No more will short term endeavors that provide short term benefits be the way to go. The ends will more than ever justify the means; project managers will necessarily need to demonstrate that their projects provide value and provide value over a longer duration of time, over repeated use, over a wider base of users and over a more adverse situation than the current.
Project governance is an area that will assume pivotal significance. Single person sponsorships are on their way out and management by committees will take its place. Request for Proposals from clients now contain questions on Project Management Office experience as well as other areas of project control. In the light of increasing regulatory mandates, the “how” of project execution will be scrutinized to great detail. This translates to a metamorphosis in the basic idea of project execution; no longer will managers be able to get away saying “I got the job done”. They will now have to account for how they got it done as well as why they got it done the way that they did.
The changing times are slowly blurring the lines between the roles of a sales personnel, a project manager and a relationship manager. The future project managers will be expected to be equally conversant with sales techniques used in clinching a deal as well as in engagement management principles of customer retention. Gone are the days when a project manager was only concerned with the delivery of the project on time and within budget. Sales and marketing will soon become a part of project management and a project manager will need to graduate to the role of an engagement manager.
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