The first of its kind PM Conference in India was held between November 13th and 15th in Hyderabad. The turnout was impressive – close to 700 dynamic professionals participating and interacting among themselves as well as with the likes of Mr. Jagdish Khattar, Mr. Som Mittal, Mr. Fredrick Harren and Dr. Prahlada. Great ambiance, great food and although at times, the air-conditioning threatened to freeze the marrow in your bones, great facilities. But perhaps the most profound feature of the conference was the theme – Unleash the Power of Project Management for a Better Tomorrow. Honestly, it was refreshing and enlightening to discuss the application of Project Management beyond the usual industry, client and performing organization domain; to consider its use in making a difference to our individual daily lives as well as those around us; to moot its relevance in building a better society and a better country.

So here are my thoughts on some of the projects that need to be undertaken to do exactly what the theme suggests – unleash project management for the greater good. These are in no particular order; I simply believe that these are areas which badly need attention and also the process-oriented approach advocated by project management. Space restrictions and other considerations prevent me from going into the nuances of responsibility allocation or means of execution, but I would love to discuss these with you, in case you are interested.

Provision of safe drinking water and basic sanitation facilities is one project that I would love to see taken up. Despite best efforts by the government and community organizations, the situation in the country in these two areas still leaves a lot to be desired. Conventional approaches have made little headway, so these need to be supplanted by other innovative projects. Community consciousness needs to be sparked in these areas; I had once read an article where an entire village in north India stepped up to the task of setting up proper sanitation facilities simply because the erstwhile situation had become too embarrassing for their own comfort. Promotion of water supply and sanitation through micro-credit has met with success in the state of Tamil Nadu. This concept needs to be extended to other pockets too.

Project management is probably the only doctrine that can be applied both at the professional and at the personal level. It talks of approaching every initiative in a disciplined manner, taking all possible scenarios into account and working towards a definite goal in time, costs, quality and such other considerations. If we are to develop a better tomorrow, this regulation needs to be made a part of the lives of the future citizens of the country. A project to incorporate the basics of project management in education of young children can serve the purpose of securing the nation’s posterity.

As a nation, we are serious about being considered along the same lines as the other countries that are popularly referred to as “developed nations”. In addition to other steps being taken in this regard, I believe that there is an urgent need to improve the traffic situation in our cities. If we are to hope to stand in the same stead as some of our neighbors, we need to adopt a two-pronged focus to alleviate our city surface transport. One would be in the area of infrastructure – provision of safe and dependable means of citizen passage. Flyovers are only a part of the solution to improve vehicular passage; in most cases, they only move the bottleneck from one area to another. A reliable, mass rapid transit network can not only do much more in reducing the pressure on our already overburdened roads in the major cities, but also provide a safe and convenient means of transit to the people. The second focus needs to be on traffic education. How many of us have not complained about the poor traffic sense prevailing among the drivers in India? How many of us have read or even heard about the Motor Vehicles Act and know what it entails? How many of us are even aware of “right of way” or “lane driving”? A project undertaken to raise the knowledge of basic traffic etiquette will go a long way in improving the lives of this country’s citizens.

Integration management forms a key knowledge area in the overall framework of project management. What this basically implies is that it is not enough to individually manage costs or risks or project schedules; the collective management of all of these is required to complete the project, only by the integration of each of these areas with the others can the project be deemed to be completed and successful. Sadly, this coordination seems totally absent in the city authorities. One arm of the civic department functions independently, almost oblivious of the existence of the others. None of these units seem to appreciate the need to involve others who are crucial stakeholders in their particular endeavor or evaluate the impact of their disconcerted working on the plight of the citizens or be bothered about the huge revenue loss caused by such ad hoc method of working. There is the need for a project to establish a link between the different public departments like roads, telephone and water so that the inconvenience as well as the loss caused by this misalignment can be minimized.

Project management is no esoteric concept; it is the application of certain tools, standards and simple common sense to all initiatives that we take up in our lives. Whether it be the development of a crucial missile program or the planning of a vacation, project management provides the discipline and process-oriented approach to execute the same. Such method and regulation does not always guarantee success, but it sure reduces the chances of failure.

Corporate governance has increasingly captured the attention of the professional world in these times. Concerns in this area are hot on the heels of considerations of how “green” the organization & its activities are and what is being done to minimize its adverse impact on the environment. And just as initiatives taken at the corporate level to address global warming concerns have an impact on individual projects and project managers, so also an understanding and appreciation of the organizational concerns on accountability and transparency is crucial to today’s project managers. Given recent reported irregularities in the national and international corporate scene and the resultant system of legal and regulatory checks that has been instituted in most countries, businesses and individual managers can ill afford to be caught by surprise in this area.

A cursory study of the main requirements of corporate governance reveals an increasing stress on more explicit, clear and accurate representation of financial and such other information. For even the remotely projectized organization, this implies the communication of project data thus establishing a direct link between key project management information and corporate governance. It would not be incorrect to say that project communication management is the process area that is most affected by the stringent needs of corporate governance. As a result of strict regulatory mandates, senior management and audit teams are increasingly “interested” in individual projects; hence the project manager needs to be doubly sure that the information being shared to all stakeholders is consistent, complete and most importantly, accurate.

Effective corporate governance also aims to ensure that no project that clearly exhibits signs of failure be allowed to continue into the next phase without clear issue resolution. As a result, most projectized organizations impose reporting formats that allow easy determination of the project performance. A format that is increasingly being used is the “Traffic Light” representation where green, yellow or red color is used to indicate if the project is doing well, needs attention or is headed towards disaster (I shamefacedly admit that when I first saw this format, I decided it was one of those “new fangled” ideas of my boss; it is only now that I recognize its popularity and ease of use). In order to ensure uniformity in reporting across the enterprise, managements insist on reports in a format that they are familiar and comfortable with. In some cases, the Project Management Office (PMO) implements guidelines regarding information presentation and distribution that all managers need to adhere to. This may present a deviation from the project manager’s usual “way” of doing things. However she needs to quickly fall in line and comply with the guidelines laid down across the enterprise.

In addition to project communication management, corporate governance also shares a relation with some of the other process areas. Corporate governance monitors the use of organizational resources that are normally shared across projects. Use of large amounts of resource or inconsistency in usage may sound an alarm to the audit team. Project and portfolio managers need to ensure that their resource usage is in line with the governance guidelines. Likewise regulations, such as the Sarbanes Oxley act, require that organizations implement an Enterprise Risk Management Framework. This translates to a more formal and frequent approach towards project risk management than some managers are wont to display today. Frequent and more rigid & detailed audits are here to stay; internal audits scrutinize every inch of the project to ensure that the firm does not receive so much as a slap on the wrist from external auditors. Another increasing point of focus for project managers in the light of corporate accountability requirements is to ensure that their projects align to strategic objectives and goals. Rather than focusing on her individual project, today’s project manager needs to consciously evaluate the impact of her project on the overall business strategies.

Which leads us to a crucial transformation in the role of a project manager today. No longer can a manager narrow her vision to the task in hand and concentrate on its completion oblivious to the bigger picture outside. Corporate governance entails that she be completely aware of the business environment at large, recognize how and where her project fits in, know what information can be shared or solicited and what cannot and understand the legal and ethical implications of deviation from the guidelines. Project managers of most performing organizations handle initiatives for a variety of clients across multiple business domains. Failure to understand the nuances of corporate governance in the client domain or an inability to recognize its impact on her individual project will spell disaster to the client, the performing organization and worst – the individual.