I operate in a well regulated industry focused on project management. What this means practically is that there are data streams that flow from the R&D activities, recording planning and progress, via control and analytical systems to both management and customer. The contract type in most cases is Cost Plus, with cost and schedule risk often flowing to the customer in the form of cost overruns and schedule slippages.
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Synergy — The Economics of Integrated Project Management
The hot topic lately in meetings and the odd conference on Integrated Project Management (IPM) often focuses on the mechanics of achieving that state, bound by the implied definition of current regulation, which has also become–not surprisingly–practice. I think this is a laudable goal, particularly given both the casual resistance to change (which always there by definition to some extent) and in the most extreme cases a kind of apathy.
(more…)All Along the Watch Tower — Project Monitoring vs. Project Management
My two month summer blogging hiatus has come to a close. Along the way I have gathered a good bit of practical knowledge related to introducing and implementing process and technological improvements into complex project management environments. More specifically, my experience is in introducing new adaptive technologies that support the integration of essential data across the project environment–integrated project management in short–and do so by focusing on knowledge discovery in databases (KDD).
(more…)Rear View Mirror — Correcting a Project Management Fallacy
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun
Over the years I and others have briefed project managers on project performance using KPPs, earned value management, schedule analysis, business analytics, and what we now call predictive analytics. Oftentimes, some set of figures will be critiqued as being ineffective or unhelpful; that the analytics “only look in the rear view mirror” and that they “tell me what I already know.”
(more…)Takin’ Care of Business — Information Economics in Project Management
Neoclassical economics abhors inefficiency, and yet inefficiencies exist. Among the core issues that create inefficiencies is the asymmetrical nature of information. Asymmetry is an accepted cornerstone of economics that leads to inefficiency. We can see in our daily lives and employment the effects of one party in a transaction having more information than the other: knowing whether the used car you are buying is a lemon, measuring risk in the purchase of an investment and, apropos to this post, identifying how our information systems allow us to manage complex projects.
(more…)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.
(more…)New York Times Says Research and Development Is Hard…but maybe not
At least that is what a reader is led to believe by reading this article that appeared over the weekend. For those of you who didn’t catch it, Alphabet, which formerly had an R&D shop under the old Google moniker known as Google X, does pure R&D. According to the reporter, one Conor Doughtery, the problem, you see, is that R&D doesn’t always translate into a direct short-term profit. He then makes this absurd statement: “Building a research division is an old and often unsuccessful concept.” He knows this because some professor at Arizona State University–that world-leading hotbed of innovation and high tech–told him so. (Yes, there is sarcasm in that sentence).
(more…)Technical Ecstacy — Technical Performance and Earned Value
As many of my colleagues in project management know, I wrote a series of articles on the application of technical performance risk in project management back in 1997, one of which made me an award recipient from the institution now known as Defense Acquisition University. Over the years various researchers and project organizations have asked me if I have any additional thoughts on the subject and the response up until now has been: no. From a practical standpoint, other responsibilities took me away from the domain of determining the best way of recording technical achievement in complex projects. Furthermore, I felt that the field was not ripe for further development until there were mathematics and statistical methods that could better approach the behavior of complex adaptive systems.
(more…)The Monster Mash — Zombie Ideas in Project and Information Management
Just completed a number of meetings and discussions among thought leaders in the area of complex project management this week, and I was struck by a number of zombie ideas in project management, especially related to information, that just won’t die. The use of the term zombie idea is usually attributed to the Nobel economist Paul Krugman from his excellent and highly engaging (as well as brutally honest) posts at the New York Times, but for those not familiar, a zombie idea is “a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both.”
(more…)For What It’s Worth — More on the Materiality and Prescriptiveness Debate and How it Affects Technological Solutions
The underlying basis on the materiality vs. prescriptiveness debate that I previously wrote about lies in two areas: contractual compliance, especially in the enforcement of public contracts, and the desired outcomes under the establishment of a regulatory regime within an industry. Sometimes these purposes are in agreement and sometimes they are in conflict and work at cross-purposes to one another.
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Life, Project Management, and Everything 
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