2014 PMI Research Conference

PMI 2014 Research and Education Conference; 27 – 29 July 2014, Portland, OR, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

I was able to attend the 2014 PMI Research and Education Conference this year. This is a much better conference when compared to the Global Conference. The research conference keynote speakers are project management professions with interesting, project oriented presentations and instead the management gurus of the speaking circuit at the typical Global Conference. The presentations do not have the glitz that can compare with the consultants of the Global conference but the presentations typically have more project management substance.

The GAC (PMI College Accreditation) invited Universities with Project Management degrees to discuss issues related to accreditation. The new PMI Vice President for Education and Research kicked of the meeting. As a new hire, he said he had no expertise in project management and then gave a speech proving him his point. Overall, a good session.  

There were a couple of things that struck me at the conference. I listened to several conversations on the need for a theory of project management. Interesting discussion but it did not resonant to me as a need for our profession. I asks at a panel discussion on something else “do we ned a theory of project management” and the consensus of this panel was no. I will be interested to see if this discussion develops traction.

Jack Meredith, author of lots of project management books, was the headliner on an unusual session Standing on the Shoulders of Giant”. Jack deserves recognition for his contribution and Erik Larson, another prolific author, interviewed Jack in a setting that gave the impression of a discussion in your living room. Jack met expectations. He reminded me of my grandfather, he had no political agenda and just said what he thought, so of it very interesting. If you can find a transcript, it would be worth listening to.

During the session I asked; “what were the two or three research finding of the past 20 years (this was a research conference) that would impact project management”? Jack thought a minute and then said; “I will pass on that question.” I wonder if he was avoiding the question because he didn’t want to hurt anyone feelings. That had not been the case so far. A small group discussion at our table concluded that Dr. Meredith did not believe that there was any significant research finding in the past 20 years that significantly impacted the management of projects. Think about the implications of that thought.

Here is a list of research projects recently funded by PMI:

• Establishing a Theoretically Sound Baseline for Expert Judgment in Project Management
  Paul Szwed
• Translational Science and Its Effects on Organizational Structure and Program Management
  Dorothy Kirkman, Kevin Wooten, Alix Valenti
• High-performance capital project front-end: a design commons approach
  Nuno Gil, Rehema Msulwa
• Scaling Agility: Adapting Agile Principles to Large Projects in Large Organizations
  Yvan Petit, Brian Hobbs
• Project Management as a Dynamic Collaborative Social Practice: Collaborative Innovation Revisited
  Roula Michaelides, Jeanne Dorle, Elena Antonacopoulou
• Community engagement strategies during the construction phase of controversial projects
  Melissa Teo

I also had a hallway discuss with Hans Georg Gemunden, editor of the Project Management Journal. PMI has struggled to increase the quality of the Project Management Journal. I mentioned that I often blogged a translation of articles from the PMJ for the typical project manager. (most articles are unreadable and only a few are worth going through the pain)

I was surprised to find that they understood the quality of articles did not meet their own standards. They were working hard to increase the quality. I look forward to seeing their new approach.

All in all, it was a good conference.

Next blog: I will presenting at the PMI Chapter in Charlotte in January and will provide a summary here.

Russ

Project Management Research Journal Article on Project Sponsors

Project Management Journal/ Research Articles:

When the research journals from Project Management Institute comes in I tried to explore the different research articles and see if I can pull out some nuggets for use of project managers.

I’ve been reading the February/March edition of the Project Management Journal. The first article discussed executive sponsor behaviors, Project Success and Executive Sponsor Behaviors: Empirical Life Cycle Stage Investigations by Kleppenborg, T., Tesch, D. & Manolis, C.

Essentially, the research involved re-looking at data from four previous studies them but one of the authors to discover the answer to what was labeled as two important questions. Over the duration of a project, does relative importance of compulsory executive behavior vary significantly at stages of completion? If you’re wondering what this means you’re in good company. After reading the entire article, I believe the authors want to know if and executive sponsor makes a contribution by doing something at various stages of the project. Second question asks over the duration of the project, does relative importance of the project success done mentions very significantly within and across different stages of completion? The author spent quite a bit of time discussing project success dimensions. At one stage it seems that they are indicating that success of the project means meeting cost, schedule, quality, and customer satisfaction goals of the project. They labeled this success dimensions. Later in the article they used different terminology to discuss success to missions and labeled these; the firm’s future, meeting agreements, and customer success. My understanding is they took the normal nomenclature of cost, schedule, quality, and customer satisfaction and develop their own terminology. They never explained why.

They justified the research in one instance I discussing the Standish group research that I’ve discussed a number of times and pointed out some obvious flaws in this research. I think the reason researchers continue to use this research is because the Standish group concluded that most projects fail. This is a great beginning for any research paper but the research is so flawed I believe it detracts from any conclusions that the authors may develop.

The authors included charts and tables with lots of percentages and data but there’s no real discussion with the charger cables being. There was neither a conclusion section nor a summary of findings section. There was in one paragraph summary of research contributions. In one example of findings in this section was “finding suggest, for example, that during the executing stage, project sponsor should focus on ensuring communications as a top priority and that such a focus will in turn enhance the most important element of success during this particular phrase the project- the extent to which a customer satisfied with the project deliverables.” Understand this to me the project sponsor to communicate a lot during the execution phase of the project.

I often wonder what we would want researchers to focus on as project management professionals. Until we can answer that question, I suspect researchers will continue to be defined terms and write articles that will be read by only a few people will probably writing their own articles on executive sponsorship of projects.

Russ

What You Should Know About Megaprojects and Why: an Overview, in the April/ May 2014 Project Management Journal

What You Should Know About Megaprojects and Why: an Overview, in the April/ May 2014 Project Management Journal

I just finished reading the lead article, What You Should Know About Megaprojects and Why: an Overview, in the April/ May 2014 Project Management Journal. This was an invited article from PMI written by Bent Flyvbjerg from Oxford University.

Flyvbjerg presented the current state of megaprojects providing an overview of the current market and trends, a general conclusion that there are a huge number of problems with megaprojects, the source of these problems in a couple recommendations. A historical analysis of the development of your project was very interesting and included a number of statements that needed backup. For example, he said: “when projects of such as go wrong entire company’s national economies suffer.” This may be a logical conclusion but in a research oriented journal I would say he would need to present data to back up his point. He also included the stimulus package that was passed by Congress in response to the banking crisis as a project and the major acquisitions program portfolio of the United States Department of Defense. By including these programs within his discussion of projects he has blurred his arguments.

Flyvbjerg been listed a number of megaprojects that went wrong; over cost, late, not meeting the specifications and leading to a negative ROI. The list of projects that that one or more these criteria for an underperforming project was impressive. One of the most valuable parts of the article for me was a list of challenges that are inherent in megaprojects and are not typically dealt with in planning and executing megaprojects. In paraphrasing these challenges list included:

1.      megaprojects are risky

2.      planners and managers don’t have the appropriate skills

3.      stakeholders have conflicting interests

4.      technology is typically new and untested

5.      overcommitment to project without justifiable data

6.      optimism bias

7.      significant changes over time

8.      ignoring events that could cause risk for the project

9.      inadequate contingency

10.  misinformation about cost, schedule, benefits, and risk

Although I believe this list has a lot of validity, it would’ve been helpful to have some data that supported the belief. In a later section we also indicated that “front in planning this scant and bad projects are not stopped”. These types of conclusions cry out for citations.

Flyvbjerg quoted from the Standish Group research about the number of failed projects and I believe this detracted from his argument because of the flaws in this research that has been pointed out.

One of the more interesting parts of the paper was the discussion of the Hirschman’s Hiding Hand. In short, this is the intentional underestimate of a project in order to get approval. Flyvbjerg presented several situations where the original estimate of the project was intentionally at the level to be approved with knowledge that the estimate was significantly lower than the anticipated actual cost. In the construction industry recalled this “lowballing” an estimate. Companies would bid on projects at or below cost with the knowledge that there would be sufficient changes that could be created that will enable the company to make a profit. The art was estimating how you could go and how many changes could you create to have a successful project. I watch the original estimates for the new nuclear power plant proposal that went to the utilities commission in South Carolina. With my limited experience in this industry I estimated the cost to be at least double what was submitted to the utility commission. After initial approval, every update provided to the utility commission included at least a 10 to 15% increase in the estimate. I find it difficult to believe that the people making the estimate and probably the people accepting the estimate and making approval did not know that the true cost will probably be double.

Flyvbjerg suggested that there are number of drivers that lead to these intentional underestimates. He also recommended that companies and governments establish significant consequences for anyone or any organization that intentionally provides misinformation in these processes. He also gave several examples where countries are taking a step including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Australia. It also appears that many private organizations are relying more on consultants to evaluate project bids more closely. Flyvbjerg suggest that we cannot solve problems that we do not talk about and cited Pres. Obama’s identification of costly overruns, fraud and abuse, and endless excuses as key policy problems, is one indication of a lease beginning to talk about these issues.

As I’ve addressed in other post, I believe this is indicative of where we are in the project management profession in the issues addressed in this article are not exclusively related to megaprojects. One of my focuses the best several years has been to better understand our projects. I believe the tools and techniques for developing a good understanding of the project are not well developed and without a good understanding of the project it is difficult to develop an appropriate execution approach. See my other post on project profiling.

One of the things I’ve discussed in earlier posts has been the breaking up of large projects into smaller components. Most organizations have a project size and complexity comfort zone and when the project gets too far out of that zone is important to break the project down into smaller projects that can be managed independently and coordinated from a program point of view. This approach should have had some mention in Flyvbjerg’s article.

The article is worth reading and does provide a good overview of some of the issues surrounding megaprojects as well as some of our project execution as a whole. It is important to put on the table that much of this underestimating of project costs is intentional and that’s difficult for the project manager to address and project execution.

Russ

The Complexity Equation

In the November 2013 edition of the PMTWORK,  Donovan Burba* discusses project complexity as an increasing phenomenon within project management. I was interested in one quote; “the most difficult aspects to manage are the people within the project…” I wonder what else you manage on a project? I develop and monitor a schedule but I do not manage the schedule. I can change durations, change dependencies on the project schedule to manipulate it to be more realistic or to reflect a new milestone but this not management of a project. How do you manage a project except through people.

Complexity is not defined in the article but whatever it is complex projects need project managers with leadership skills and are less depended on technical skills. There are projects where the technical knowledge of the project manager is important to her understanding of the profile of the project and the development of an appropriate project execution approach. I would challenge that the relative need for technical skills in the project manager is correlated to the complexity level of the project. I do believe that there is a relationship between the project profile and the knowledge, skills and abilities of the project manager/ project team.

I would also argue that leadership skills are needed on all projects. The type of leadership skills depends on the project profile.

Understanding the complexity level of the project and the process for matching the execution approach with the project profile is a critical area of project knowledge development. This article highlighted some trends in project management but gave only standard “leadership is important” type solutions. Maybe a few well designed questions would have been more helpful.

Russ

* Donovan Burba works for Imagination and produces print and digital content for PMI and MSCI.