PMcrunch

I am sitting here, reading a publication put out by the Keller Center For Innovation In Engineering Education at Princeton University. As I have perused the pages, I am struck by one common thing called Integration Across Disciplines. I think this is one of the most important concepts in project management, and even more so in program management.

In the message from the Dean, H. Vincent Poor, the words jump off the page: "Create a new model for engineering education based on expanding cross-disciplinary studies." This theme is common throughout. One example is a course entitled Engineering In The Modern World, where David Billington talks about technology in a language understandable by liberal arts majors and emphasizes the importance of understanding the history of how we got to where we are as a basis for figuring out how to get to the next level. The course Computers In Our World provides a broad understanding of how computer hardware, software, networks, and systems operate, but also talks about how all of this affects the social and business environment today.

So given that a common theme in higher education is cross-disciplinary study, what does that mean for project and program managers? I think what it means is that project and program managers need to step outside of the confounds of their project and ask questions that others may not be asking. We need to ask who we affect. We need to look for connections with other projects, other initiatives, and even activities outside of our current organization. We need to put ourselves in a position of raising the most important issues to our stakeholders.

As project and program managers, we have been entrusted to implement change in our organizations. It is our responsibility to understand the effect of those changes in a broader sense and to be able to provide leadership in communicating these issues to all stakeholders. We need to be constantly learning and probing in a broad way, especially given that we often lead highly technical people who may have narrow and deep expertise.

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John Reiling, PMP
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