Back from a broken wrist

I've been gone since September, and now I'm back.

I fell playing basketball and broke my wrist rather severely. After surgery and a long recovery, I'm near back to full. The event was somewhat of an awakening. Never had a broken bone and never had significant surgery. There's a sense of limitations sometimes feels like a constraint, in a way that I haven't felt it before. I was unable to type on the computer and bought the Dragon speech recognition software. After a learning curve, I was at least able to stay on top of my classes.

Getting back to my blog in January was a New Year's resolution now it's time to get back at it.

I have been reading project management journals and doing some writing. I will get back to critiquing research and project management and sharing some ideas. I plan to write about the direction of project management, what we need to learn and the skills we develop to become more effective and efficient project managers.

Next time I plan to share some thoughts on my attendance at the annual global conference the Project Management Institute, in New Orleans, and explore some of the articles in the Project Management Journal. I look forward to sharing with you again.
Russ

Project Management Defined

A discussion of the definition of project management from some of my earlier works might be a useful foundation for some of the blogs I intend to provide over the next couple months. I hope you enjoy and participate in this process.

Russ

“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements” (Project Management Institute, Inc. p. 2013). This simple definition represents a compromise that resulted from intense discussions within the Project Management Institute (PMI) during the 1980’s. One of the priorities of PMI during this time was the development of project management as a profession. Although debate continues on whether project management is a profession with an enforceable code of conduct and other traditional criteria for recognition as a profession, the development of the Project Management Body of Knowledge and the project management certification that derived from these efforts, helped promote the understanding and development of the project management field.

The discussion about what should be included in the definition of project management included debates about the purpose of project management. Is the main purpose to meet client’s expectations or is the main purpose to meet the written specifications and requirements? This discussion around meeting project requirements was not easily settled. If it is assumed that the project client is the one that defines project requirements, then maybe project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet client requirements or client expectations. PMI’s definition of project management does provide a good understanding of project management but it does not help us understand project success. For that, we must include the client.

Meredith and Mantel (2000) discussed project management in terms of producing project outcomes within the three objectives of cost, schedule, and specifications. Project managers are then expected to develop and execute a project plan that meets cost, schedule, and specification parameters. According to this view, project management is the application of everything a project manager does to meet these parameters. This approach to defining project management shares PMI’s focus on the project outcomes in terms of requirements.

Meredith and Mantel added a fourth aspect of project management—the expectations of the client. One client-centered definition of project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to meet or exceed the expectations of the client. This definition focuses on delivering a product or service to the client that meets expectations rather than project specifications. It is possible to meet all project specifications and not meet client expectations or fail to meet one of more specifications and still meet or exceed a client’s expectation. 

Meredith and Mantel discussed a tendency noted by Darnall ( 2007) that expectations often increase during the life of a project. Meredith and Mantel suggest that this is a form of scope increase. A project scope is a carefully crafted document that reflects the performance specifications of the project deliverables. Defining the project scope and managing scope change is a very different process than developing an understanding of a client’s expectations and managing those expectations. Darnall focused on defining and managing client expectations as a critical project management skill that is distinct from scope development and management.

Client expectations encompass an emotional component that includes many client desires that are not easily captured within a specification document. Although closely correlated with project specifications, client expectations are driven by different needs. It is possible for a project team to exceed every project specification and the project end up with an unsatisfied client. 

The Evolution of Project Management?

I was reading my PMI today and found two articles that seemed related to me. The first was a short article describing the new organization of the project management Journal. The Journal will now have six new departments with two editors for each department. This appears to be an excellent approach to expanding the research concepts and opportunities with and project management.

Two things about this article interested me. First, was the selection of the six departments. The human side of project management and the organizational side of projects is easy to understand. The ICT side of project management? I have no idea what they will be researching. The management of infrastructure and public projects and project business is a title that is also confusing to me. I’m not sure what this department will be researching. Complex innovation projects and project strategy sounds like two different departments but included within one group. Project portfolio management, program management and implementation of strategies is the last department. I suspect any selection of departments for project research would be debatable. The current approach appears to be a good first start.

The thing that also interested me about this article was identification of the people to be the departmental editors. There were two editors selected for each department. Of the 12 departmental editors only one came from the United States. Although this group includes members from Canada  and Australia, to group is European centric. I am curious about what this says about the state of project management research.

In reviewing the August 2013 project management Journal I noted that none of the authors were US authors. There were six research papers presented by 17 authors and none were US authors or US research institutions. I am just curious what the implications are for US-based project management research.

This month is a PMI member I was asked to vote on the slate of officers for the PMI Board of Directors. I decided I would only go for board members became from an industry other than IT. I have a sense that IT is overly represented in many of the leadership roles within PMI. This might be a natural result of the growth of the IT industry. I also believe that the PMI board needs to be diverse. Therefore, my decision to only vote for board members outside the IT industry.

When the ballot arrived we were asked to vote for five out of the eight candidates for the PMI Board of Directors. After looking at the credentials of all a candidates and my determination not to vote for anybody with an IT background, I was only able to vote for three candidates. Of the people with non-IT backgrounds I voted for one candidate whose vita indicates he is a professional speaker. I voted for another candidate who’s the president of five companies including the biggest sport small in Argentina. The third candidate I voted for is an advisor for the United Nations with a focus on PMO’s.

The Board of Directors also has a resolution that they’ve asked the PMI membership to pass which would eliminate the ability of members to be nominated by a 1% approval of the membership. This would mean only the nominating committee could nominate people to the Board of Directors. I read the justification for this motion and do not understand why the board would want to restrict the nomination process.

I do not draw any conclusions based on these observations. There does not seem to be any correlation between the euro centric research approach and the IT dominance in the Board of Directors. I just contemplate disease trends have any implications for the future of the project management profession.

Russ

Broken wrist

Project management blog, August 26, 2013 I have not been into the blog several weeks. My energy has been focused on accomplishing the bare essentials of life such as getting my class work done with a broken wrist. During the last week of July, I was playing basketball and made a heroic effort to save the ball from going out of bounds while not breaking any bones. I failed on both accounts. I ended up at the ER and x-ray indicated multiple fractures of the bones in the hand and wrist. A week later I had surgery and had pins placed in my wrist. I am unable to use the wrist in any significant way until about Christmas time. I have been writing with one hand until recently. The one hand approach is about one third as effective as my two-handed technique. I recently purchased Dragon software which enables me to talk and have it appear in front of me for major edits, because as good as the software is my accent provides a major challenge. I thought about what lessons learned a project manager can gain from an intense experience with the medical industry. I thought the four and a half hours in the emergency room to get a referral to a hand surgeon. This might be an experience worth discussing. I realized I was just frustrated and any learning I developed would sound like ranting. I am on the mend and finishing up grades for the end of the semester and will be reading the new PM Journal which I suspect will provide plenty of fodder for the next blog. See you in a few days Russ

Traditional Project Manager Again?

 

Traditional Project Management

I am a traditional project manager. This is a statement that seems to draw weird looks. Something like declaring the “I belong to the old school”.

I was pursing the PMI website and read about Christophe Midler was recently awarded the PMI Research Achievement Award. I went and downloaded his research paper from the PMI Research Conference in 2000. Project Management for Intensive Innovation Based Strategies: New Challenges for the 21^st Century.

In his paper, Midler stated that traditional project management did not provide the processes needed for innovative projects. I am over simplifying his statement but his characterization of traditional project management still paints a picture of project management as a stagnant grounded in the processes of the construction and similar industries.

Project management is an evolving profession adjusting methods, knowledge, processes and skills needed to apply to a growing number of industries that value the benefits of project management. Every project still needs a scope, budget, schedule, risk analysis, and closeouts processes to name a few. Every project also needs to customize these processes based on the profile of the project.

Traditional project managers manage the scope, budget, schedule and risk. If you are using new tools and processes, that is great. We need to be developing new tools and processes and we need to develop research techniques to better understand the effective of these tools. We also need to develop research techniques that allow us to better understand the appropriate project profiles that will benefit from these new tools.

By labeling the baseline processes of project management as traditional and not applicable to new project profiles is doing a disservice to our profession and stymieing the research we need to be doing.

Russ

John De La Howe School

Blog Post July 13, 2013

I have been supporting the Leadership Team of the John De La Howe School in developing their strategic plan. It has been an exciting process with a very dedicated and talented leadership team.

The team went through a very traditional strategy development process; analyzing the current environment, doing a force field analysis of the organizational strengths and weaknesses, reflecting on the organization’s mission and the refining their vision. Based on these conversations, the team developed the top strategic goals and identified team leaders to begin the process of chartering project teams.

The Leadership of John De Le Howe is engaged in strategy deployment through the use of strategic projects of PPM (portfolio project management). PPM is a trend among many leading organizations to accomplish strategic goals because of the focus, accountability and effectiveness of project management tools and techniques.

I am seeing more organizations use a more focused project approach in an environment where change is constant, speed is important and the environment is less predictable.

John De La Howe is an institution with a proud heritage that is facing challenges from multiple fronts. The School serves families and students with services that are both critical and very difficult to find. The current leadership team are exceptional people with dedication and talent to lead this institution and continue to provide leading edge services to children and families who are in desperate need.

I have been fortunate to be a small player within this organization’s journey and am grateful for the services they provide.

Russ

Interesting discussion is a PMI Discussion Group.

I could not help myself. I have decided NOT to continue to be offended by being called a traditional project manager (whatever that is) and focus on my favorite research topic; how do we develop an understanding of our projects? So I posed in the group discussion. The basic question that started the discussion was; what is the different between Agile PM and Traditional PM? Lots of replies; most focused on defining various aspects of Agile. Some discussed the difference between a methodology and a standard, (Agile vs PMBOK).

Here is my response.

Russ

 

The conversation rest on understanding what is Agile and what is traditional project management. Agile seems well understood. It is a methodology for executing projects, typically in the IT Industry or projects with similar profiles. When people refer to traditional, does this refer to the methodology use to build the Great Wall of China, the project management methodology used in the Apollo Space Program or the methodology to construct offshore wind turbines.

 

The IT Industry has done an excellent job of developing methodologies designed to address the project profiles of the IT industry. There are passionate champions of these methods, creating a strong brand and becoming recognized by PMI and other organizations as best practices in these industries.

 

Do we really believe there are only two methodologies for executing projects? I believe one of the most important research questions of the project management profession focuses on how we develop an understanding of our projects and develop the appropriate execution approach.

 

On three separate occasions beginning in the early 90s, PMI has chartered teams tto explore how we understand, profile, categorize projects. The last effort closed out the charter with a strong recommendation that PMI support research in this area. I just finished reviewing research proposals for funding from PMI and was disappointed; there were no proposals to address these questions.

 

I would like to change the question from what is the difference between traditional and agile project management and ask, How can we profile a project to better understand what methodology is most appropriate for a given profile?

 

Russ

PMI Presnetation at Charleston Chapter meeting

Frinday in Charleston

Yesterday I made a presentation at the PMI Charleston Chapter. It has been a couple of years since I had been to a Charleston Chapter meeting and I ended up at the wrong place. A short call to Nicole got me to the right meeting location well before the meeting start. It was great catching up with some old friends. (the friendship was enduring, not that the people were old)

I talked about one of my favorite topics; profiling projects (you thought I was going to say ME).

Although this is a personal blog I do try to add something about project management. Below is the outline I started with as I prepared the presentation. I stretched and talked about research and our profession.

Heading down to the beach

Russ

1.      Five Assumptions

a.       Project by definition are unique

b.      Projects also have common characteristics (each has a scope, schedule, etc)

c.       These project characteristics can be grouped into project types or profile

d.      There is a management approach that is appropriate for each project profile

e.       The application of the appropriate management approach, tools and skills will have a positive impact on project performance

2.      Project profiling history

a.       PMI Taxonomy Project with Gregory D. Githens

b.      Crawford, Hobbs & Turner, PMI Initiatives

c.       Aaron Shenar

d.      Robert Yonker

e.       Ruth House

f.       Construction Industry Institute   Project Definition Rating Index (2010)

g.      Stretton, (2011)

h.      Stacy Goff

3.      Darnall Preston Project Complexity Index (DPCI)

a.       DPCI Overview

                                                              i.      Project Complexity, Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)

                                                            ii.      Stress Points

                                                          iii.      Gathering Data

b.      External Dimension

                                                              i.      Size

                                                            ii.      Duration

                                                          iii.      Resource Availability

c.       Internal Dimension

                                                              i.      Clarity of Objectives

                                                            ii.      Clarity of Scope

                                                          iii.      Organizational Complexity

                                                          iv.      Stakeholder Agreement

d.      Technological Complexity

e.       Project Environment

                                                              i.      Ecology

                                                            ii.      Cultural Complexity

                                                          iii.      Legal Complexity

4.      Implication of Project Profile for Execution Approach

a.       Leaderships: styles, knowledge skills abilities.

                                                              i.      Myers Briggs

                                                            ii.      Emotional Intelligence

                                                          iii.      Project Organization/ Span of Control

                                                          iv.      Project Lifecycles

b.      Alignment

                                                              i.      Common Understanding

                                                            ii.      Means and Methods

                                                          iii.      Trust

c.       Use of Goals

d.      Schedule development and control, use of milestones

e.       Cost estimating and control

f.       Risk analysis and mitigation

g.      Quality defining and managing

h.      Scope development and control

i.        Team building, managing

j.        Communication plan, processes

                                                              i.      Listening

k.      Managing client expectation

l.        Measurement

m.    Project culture

5.      Conclusions

It has been a while since by last blog. Seems to be a busy summer.

I am still reading the Project Management Journal with interest. The new editor, Hans Georg Gemunde, put out his fist issue in June. His letter from the editor was great. Dr. Gemunde discussed trends in project management and the need for quality research. Hard to argue his points.

As I have pointed out in past blogs, if the PMJ is a representation of the PM Research, and I believe it probably is, then we have a ways to go before we will have research that has practical application for the project manager.

 

I reviewed research proposals for PMI this summer and found some good research concepts; which I take as a good sign. Most of the proposal suggested that the authors did not have any PM experience and the research they proposed would be of little value.

 

There were six papers in the June edition of the PMJ. The article, MBTI Personality Types of Project Managers and Their Success by Cohen, Orney and Keren, all professors at Israeli Universities, is the only one that interested me. The research conducted a survey of 280 project managers identified by master’s degree students from their universities, representing several different industries. The survey included four parts. The first focused on project success; did the project manager believe the project was a success based on the PM’s satisfaction, the client’s, the manager’s and overall satisfaction.  The second and third focused on the PM’s personality type and the third focused on demographic data (years as PM, gender, age etc.) Completing the questionnaire took 20 – 30 minutes.

 

The authors concluded that Project Managers have unique personality type. Essentially, project managers were more likely to be NTs (43%) on the Myers Birggs Type Indicator (MBIT). This indicates an ability to tolerate risk, make decisions with less data and deals with uncertainty and ambiguity. These conclusions are consistent with my own observations and no surprise.

Interestingly, the survey showed that NT project managers had the lowest self- reported success rate. The SF, the MBTI with the least project managers (6.9%) showed the highest self-reported success.

The authors suggest four reasons why SFs might be more successful as project managers.

1.      SF project managers have special talents needed to be project managers

2.      They manage unique projects

3.      Success is inflated

4.      Data is insufficient

The authors conclude by suggesting that the relationship between personality types of project success need more research.

Understanding the relationship between personality type of the project manager and project success is a reasonable research question for the project management profession. Unfortunately, this research does not help us answer this question.

1.      Using the MBTI is a good tool for developing a personality type for project managers.

2.      Defining success by asking project managers to report their belief on their own success does not seem very reliable.

3.      Many times I have seen project managers be very successful on one project and fail on another project. This indicates that each project type may need a unique set of skills, knowledge and personality type.

Until we have a tool, method or process for profiling projects, all research on generic project success based on an independent variable will have serious flaws. I strongly believe that our number one research priority in project management should be the development of a method for profiling projects.

Russ

I just got back from a nice vacation break. I was able to catch a Crosby, Still and Nash concert. It was great to see "rock stars" older than I am with so much energy and talent on the stage and fully appreciated by the audience.

I read the PMNET after I got back and was interested in the article about the labor shortage. The article focused on the labor shortage in construction. I always suspect articles including the ones that suggest a shortage of project managers.

Surveys of the industry are useful but a much more useful indicator of shortages is the labor or wage rates. The laws of economic indicate that when demand for a product or service is in short supply, the market will respond with higher higher price or wages, unless there is some mitigating factor. Since there is no indication of increasing wages in the construction labor market and has not been for many years, the article would be more useful if there was some explanation for the lack of wage increase.

Good to be back, although I could have used another week.
Russ