PMcrunch

Looking at lessons learned from the current economic crisis, one that stands out pertains to how people are incentivized in business. Banks with risky loan portfolios somewhere along the line had incentivized their people to fill their portofolios with these loans. Somewhere along the line, the incentives did not incorporate some of the risks involved. How does this play out in project and program management?

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Human resources is an important function in all organizations and that includes the project organization. In these difficult economic times, the human resources’ function is being tested in organizations worldwide. How does that testing in this environment translate into the project team environment?

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Anyone who has been on a project knows that the most important thing is having good people. While we know that projects must be well-designed and well-planned, a project cannot succeed without good people. The question is, what are the criteria for choosing good people?

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Most of us as project and program managers are constantly looking to improve ourselves, our performance, our skills, and our influence on our respective organizations. There are some trends at work that I think we can tap into that can help us to do all of these things and more. They can help us to move our careers to the next level.

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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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I have managed a variety of situations, from project means down to shop floor teams. In addition, I have managed virtual teams and teams of managers. While all these situations are different, there is a common thread when it comes dissention on a team. The key is to understand what kind of dissention you have, what it’s source is, and how you really feel about it.

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Project managers got to be project managers from a variety of career paths. Many of us have become specialists in certain areas, such as earned value, or scheduling, or critical path methods, or other such specialized techniques within the project management skill set. However, many others of us got here because it represented an opportunity to actually broaden skill sets and qualify us for other positions.

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Basic project management teaches us that quality is defined by meeting requirements, but not exceeding them. If we deliver more than what the customer asked for, it is considered to be gold plating – a bad thing. The premise is that there is a balance as per the triple constraint among quality, cost and schedule, and that it is the job of the project manager to manage that balance. In these tough times, however, how can a project manager produce excellence and in essence exceed customer expectations without gold plating?

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By definition all projects must come to a close. This definitive ending to the project represents the end of the project management process, but that end also signifies a new beginning. Successful execution of the closing process within a project helps to ensure that the value of the project is realized.

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Often times in our careers, we feel stuck or stalled, whether in our organization, department, career, or even personal lives. One thing that we can do is to take a good hard look at what it might be that has us stuck. Then identify a problem, or opportunity, and start a project around it!

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