Integrated Program Management

The Need for an Integrated Digital Environment (IDE) Strategy in Project Management*

Putting the Pieces Together

To be an effective project manager, one must possess a number of skills in order to successfully guide the project to completion. This includes having a working knowledge of the information coming from multiple sources and the ability to make sense of that information in a cohesive manner. This is so that, when brought together, it provides an accurate picture of where the project has been, where it is in its present state, and what actions must be taken to keep it (or bring it back) on track.

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Shake it Out – Embracing the Future of Program Management – Part Two: Private Industry Program and Project Management in Aerospace, Space, and Defense

In my previous post, I focused on Program and Project Management in the Public Interest, and the characteristics of its environment, especially from the perspective of the government program and acquisition disciplines. The purpose of this exploration is to lay the groundwork for understanding the future of program management—and the resulting technological and organizational challenges that are required to support that change.

The next part of this exploration is to define the motivations, characteristics, and disciplines of private industry equivalencies. Here there are commonalities, but also significant differences, that relate to the relationship and interplay between public investment, policy and acquisition, and private business interests.

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Shake it Out – Embracing the Future in Program Management – Part One: Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

I heard the song from which I derived the title to this post sung by Florence and the Machine and was inspired to sit down and write about what I see as the future in program management.

Thus, my blogging radio silence has ended as I begin to process and share my observations and essential achievements over the last couple of years.

My company—the conduit that provides the insights I share here—is SNA Software LLC. We are a small, veteran-owned company and we specialize in data capture, transformation, contextualization and visualization. We do it in a way that removes significant effort in these processes, ensures reliability and trust, to incorporate off-the-shelf functionality that provides insight, and empowers the user by leveraging the power of open systems, especially in program and project management.

Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

There are two aspects to the business world that we inhabit: commercial and government; both, however, usually relate to some aspect of the public interest, which is our forte.

There are also two concepts about this subject to unpack.

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Potato, Potahto, Tomato, Tomahto: Data Normalization vs. Standardization, Why the Difference Matters

In my vocation I run a technology company devoted to program management solutions that is primarily concerned with taking data and converting it into information to establish a knowledge-based environment. Similarly, in my avocation I deal with the meaning of information and how to turn it into insight and knowledge. This latter activity concerns the subject areas of history, sociology, and science.

In my travels just prior to and since the New Year, I have come upon a number of experts and fellow enthusiasts in these respective fields. The overwhelming numbers of these encounters have been productive, educational, and cordial. We respectfully disagree in some cases about the significance of a particular approach, governance when it comes to project and program management policy, but generally there is a great deal of agreement, particularly on basic facts and terminology. But some areas of disagreement–particularly those that come from left field–tend to be the most interesting because they create an opportunity to clarify a larger issue.

In a recent venue I encountered this last example where the issue was the use of the phrase data normalization. The issue at hand was that the use of “data normalization” suggested some statistical methodology in reconciling data into a standard schema. Instead, it was suggested, the term “data standardization” was more appropriate.

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Sledgehammer: Pisano Talks!

My blogging hiatus is coming to an end as I take a sledgehammer to the writer’s block wall.

I’ve traveled far and wide over the last six months to various venues across the country and have collected a number of new and interesting perspectives on the issues of data transformation, integrated project management, and business analytics and visualization. As a result, I have developed some very strong opinions regarding the trends that work and those that don’t regarding these topics and will be sharing these perspectives (with the appropriate supporting documentation per usual) in following posts.

To get things started this post will be relatively brief.

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Take Me To The River, Part 3, Technical Performance and Risk Management Digital Elements of Integrated Program Management

Part three of this series of articles on the elements of Integrated Program and Project Management will focus on two additional areas of IPM: technical performance and risk management. Prior to jumping in, however–and given the timeframe over which I’ve written this series–a summary to date is in order.

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Take Me To The River, Part 2, Schedule Elements–A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements

Recent attendance at various forums to speak has interrupted the flow of this series on IPM elements. Among these venues I was engaged in discussions regarding this topic, as well as the effects of acquisition reform on the IT, program, and project management communities in the DoD and A&D marketplace.

For this post I will restrict the topic to what are often called schedule elements, though that is a nebulous term. Also, one should not draw a conclusion that because I am dealing with this topic following cost elements, that it is somehow inferior in importance to those elements. On the contrary, planning and scheduling are integral to applying resources and costs, in tracking cost performance, and in our systemic analysis its activities, artifacts, and elements are antecedent to cost element considerations.

The Relative Position of Schedule

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Take Me to the River, Part 1, Cost Elements – A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements

In a previous post I recommended a venue focused on program managers to define what constitutes integrated program management. Since that time I have been engaged with thought leaders and influencers in both government and industry, many of whom came to a similar conclusion independently, agree in this proposition and who are working to bring it about.

My own interest in this discussion is from the perspective of maximization of the information ecosystem that underlies and describes the systems known as projects and programs. But what do I mean by this? This is more than a gratuitous question, because oftentimes the information essential to defining project and program performance and behavior are intermixed, and therefore diluted and obfuscated, by confusion with those of the overall enterprise.

Project vs. Program

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Ground Control from Major Tom — Breaking Radio Silence: New Perspectives on Project Management

Since I began this blog I have used it as a means of testing out and sharing ideas about project management, information systems, as well to cover occasional thoughts about music, the arts, and the meaning of wisdom.

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Technical Foul — It’s Time for TPI in EVM

For more than 40 years the discipline of earned value management (EVM) has gone through a number of changes in its descriptions, governance, and procedures.  During that same time its community has been resistant to improvements in its methodology or to changes that extend its value when taking into account other methods that either augment its usefulness, or that potentially provide more utility in the area of performance management.  This has been especially the case where it is suggested that EVM is just one of many methodologies that contribute to this assessment under a more holistic approach.

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