project management

Let the Journey Begin — Mentoring a Better Project Manager

I have been involved in discussions lately regarding mentoring in the project management and IT business management field.  The question is: what does it take to build a better project manager given the rapidly changing paradigm defining the profession?

Having mentored many younger people over the course of a 22 year plus career in the United States Navy–and then afterward in private business–I have given this line of thought a great deal of consideration.  Over the years I have been applying personnel development and growth strategies as one assigned to lead both men and women among the uniformed military, civil service, and contractor communities.  Some of these efforts were notable for their successes.  In a few cases I failed to inspire or motivate.

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I Get By With A Little Help… — Avoiding NIH in Project Management

…from my colleagues, friends, family, associates, advisors, mentors, subcontractors, consultants, employees.  And not necessarily in that order.

The term NIH in this context is not referring to the federal agency.  It is shorthand, instead, for “Not Invented Here”.  I was reminded of this particular mindset when driving through an old neighborhood where I served as a community organizer.  At one of the meetings of a local board, which was particularly dysfunctional (and where I was attempting to reform their dysfunction), a member remarked:  “I am tired of hearing about how this or that particular issue was handled somewhere else.”  Yes, I thought, why would we possibly want to know how Portland, or D.C., or Boston, or Denver, or Phoenix–or any of the number of other places faced with the same issue–effectively or ineffectively dealt with it before us?  What could they possibly teach us?

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No Bucks, No Buck Rogers — Project Work Authorizations, Change Control, and Cash Flow

As I’ve written here most recently, the most significant proposal coming out of the Integrated Program Management Conference (IPMC) this year was the comprehensive manner of integrating all essential elements of a project, presented by Glen Alleman et al.  In their presentation, Alleman, Coonce, and Price, present a process flow (which, in my estimation, should be mirrored in data and information flow) in which program artifacts were imbued with measures of effectiveness, measures of performance, and measures of progress, to achieve an organic integration of all parts of the project that allow the project team to make a valid assessment of achievement against the plan, informed by risk and opportunity.  (Emphasis my own).  The three-legged stool of cost, schedule, and technical performance are thereby integrated properly at the appropriate level of the project structure, and done in such a way as to overcome the rigidity and fallacy of the single point estimate.

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More on Excel…the contributing factor of poor Project Management apps

Some early comments via e-mails on my post on why Excel is not a PM tool raised the issue that I was being way too hard on IT shops and letting application providers off the hook.  The asymmetry was certainly not the intention (at least not consciously).

When approaching an organization seeking process and technology improvement, oftentimes the condition of using Excel is what we in the technology/PM industry conveniently call “workarounds.”  Ostensibly these workarounds are temporary measures to address a strategic or intrinsic organizational need that will eventually be addressed by a more cohesive software solution.  In all too many cases, however, the workaround turns out to be semi-permanent.

A case in point in basic project management concerns Work Authorizations Documents (WADs) and Baseline Change Requests (BCRs). 

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Doctor My Eyes — Excel is Not a Project Management Tool (and neither is PowerPoint)

This is not to disparage the utility of a good spreadsheet to take care of those transient requirements to take a bit of data from the reporting systems and to run some custom algorithms or trends to perform what-if or other one-off analysis.  Probably most of us do this occasionally.

What I am referring to is the condition in many organizations in which data that consists of information essential to business operations is kept and analyzed using spreadsheets or other flat delimited storage or text methods.  The issue here is the optimum use of information, which the use of Excel and PowerPoint does not achieve.  Before anyone thinks that this is a contrarian’s post that is critical of Microsoft products, one need only read the technical advantages of true relational database management systems that are managed by specialized language like MS SQL.  Each of these applications and products has their proper place.

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Family Affair — Part II — The Micro and Managerial Economics of Projects under Public Monopsony

In my last post I summarized by the macroeconomic environment in which we operate and delved into some discussion of microeconomic foundations.  The response was positive if lukewarm overall, but ego-boosting is not why I started a blog.  One of my readers once asked why I don’t take on some hot button issues.  Well that’s not my role or area of expertise.  I’m not a politician or a social commentator.  The community I inhabit has a large impact but is relatively small and mostly consists of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, some policy-makers, thought leaders, and other technically-focused professionals.  I’m not trying to stir up emotions.  I’m out to stimulate discussion and thought.  I’m relieved that I don’t get trolls when posting factual information that goes against popular misconceptions.  They are a waste of time.

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Family Affair — Part I — Managerial Economics of Projects, Microeconomic Foundations, and Macro

A little more than a week ago I had an interesting conversation on a number of topics with colleagues in attending the National Defense Industrial Association Integrated Program Management Division (NDIA IPMD).  A continuation of one of those discussions ended up in the comments section of my post “Mo’Better Risk–Tournaments and Games of Failure Part II” by Mark Phillips.  I think it is worthwhile to read Mark’s comments because within them lie the crux of the discussion that is going on not only in our own community, but in the country as a whole, particularly in the economics profession, that will eventually influence and become public policy.*

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Frame by Frame: Framing Assumptions and Project Success or Failure

When we wake up in the morning we enter the day with a set of assumptions about ourselves, our environment, and the world around us.  So too when we undertake projects.  I’ve just returned from the latest NDIA IPMD meeting in Washington, D.C. and the most intriguing presentation at the meeting was given by Irv Blickstein regarding a RAND root cause analysis of major program breaches.  In short, a major breach in the cost of a program is defined by the Nunn-McCurdy amendment that was first passed in 1982, in which a major defense program breaches its projected baseline cost by more than 15%.

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Mo’Better Risk — Tournaments and Games of Failure Part II

My last post discussed economic tournaments and games of failure in how they describe the success and failure of companies, with a comic example for IT start-up companies.  Glen Alleman at his Herding Cats blog has a more serious response in handily rebutting those who believe that #NoEstimates, Lean, Agile, and other cult-like fads can overcome the bottom line, that is, apply a method to reduce inherent risk and drive success.  As Glen writes:

“It’s about the money. It’s always about the money. Many want it to be about them or their colleagues, or the work environment, or the learning opportunities, or the self actualization.” — Glen Alleman, Herding Cats
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I Can See Clearly Now (The Risk Is Gone) — Managing and Denying Risk in PM

I just returned from a project management conference, and among a very distinguished venue of project management specialists, one of the presentations that really impressed me by its refreshingly candid approach was given by Dave Burgess of the U. S. Navy Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) entitled “Integrated Project Management: ‘A View from the Front Line’.”  The charts from his presentation will be posted on the site (link in the text on the first line).  Among the main points that I took from his presentation are:

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