PMcrunch

Many project management positions are just that — positions managing projects. However, many other positions seemingly in project management are much more positions in programmatics. They involve tracking, reporting, working with metrics, and passing information on to decision makers. While, often, there is a need for these functions, there, often, also is not.

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These tough times are different from past recessions in that “visibility is low”. What I mean by that is that it is not just a matter of seeing that sales had declined a certain amount, or that certain costs had reached a certain amount; it is not just that there is a general slimming or pruning of weaker competitors across the board. The problem is that it is very hard to predict with any reasonable level of certainty what is going to happen next and, thus, we find ourselves driving through our challenges “with low visibility”.

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In today’s economy, managers of all kinds are under pressure to right-size their businesses or business units. With the contraction of the economy, sales decreases trigger the need for rethinking, resizing, and reshaping throughout any organization. Projects and programs are no different. Let’s take a look.

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When thinking about stakeholder analysis, I am reminded of the old carpenter’s motto which is to “measure twice and cut once”. The idea here in project management is to make sure you have clearly laid out what is to be done before beginning a project. Now this being said, there are many shades of grey.

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Often times, in the day to day course of business, as well as life in general, we resist certain conditions if they are not favorable in some way to us. I would call this less resistance to change and more a matter of not accepting the inevitable.

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In managing a project or program, we start with an objective, work in the details, get buying, put together a schedule, and implement. Of course, that is a very simplified version of what happens in project and program management but…

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FMEA is an important lean Six Sigma technique that has potential to be used in project management. While in Six Sigma it needs to be used at a very rigorous way, there certainly is some room for flexibility when used in project management. In either case, it is a good structured technique for analyzing problems and identifying solutions.

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The Project Management Institute, Prince II, and numerous other project management centric organizations have, for some time, had at their core that there is great an broad value to the application of structured and formal project management. At the same time, people have been managing projects really for about as long as humans have existed, albeit with varying levels of complexity. The question is, what is the value of formal project management?

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I recently listened to a Wharton podcast where a unique perspective on these turbulent times was cited. The book, entitled “Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual For Thriving In Change” by Dr. Gregory Shea and Robert Gunther. This book apparently lays out strategies for dealing with turbulent times. But what really caught my eye (or ears) is the reference to whitewhater versus an ocean liner as a description for work environments today. Let’s take a look.

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It’s human nature to stay with what is familiar, even when we know that a big change is needed. The prospect of venturing into the unknown comes with fear and risk. Tough times, like that presented by our current economic climate, might make changing necessary.

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