PMcrunch

One of the most profound and ubiquitous management concepts over the past 30 years is “systems thinking”. Systems thinking is all around us. One example is that project management has in essence been “systematized” by the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide!

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Oftentimes, as[tag-dir]project managers[/tag-dir] and leaders, we are called upon to compare a variety of potential solutions and to either recommend or choose the best one for our situation. There are a variety of ways to do this. It is important for us to recognize that the answer we come up with is very closely related to the questions we ask and how we do the comparison. Many times—perhaps even most of the time—we do this comparisons in a relatively informal way, putting together our own structure. In other cases however, there is a much formalized organizational structure with a formal name such as [/tag-tec]“analysis of alternatives”[tag-dir] that is performed.

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Many professionals are either “knowledge seeking” or “problem solving” – but, to their detriment, not both. You can create a one-two punch for professional effectiveness by combining “knowledge seeking” and “problem solving”. Let me show you what I mean by looking at some details of some popular bodies of knowledge today.

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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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Some projects are very well defined but others are not. If there is an idea that has been handed down by many, formed into a project that simply needs to be implemented, you may have a well defined project. If, on the other hand, someone or some group has an idea and they simply created a project out of it, then you may have an extra amount of defining to do.

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Using organizational charts in project-planning is very effective in a number of ways. One of the interesting things about organization charts is that they can benefit the project at various times in the lifecycle.

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In any organization of any size and in any industry, politics is a reality. The word politics is, I would say, very definitely perceived differently by different people. Some perceive it positively, and perhaps as a game; others perceive it negatively as something to be avoided. Let’s take a closer look at the reality of politics.

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There are certainly many lessons from the American presidential election, but I simply want to focus on one idea that I have believed in for a long time. That idea is very simple — change is good. While Barack Obama’s campaign was all about change, I would argue that the entire election was about change. Let’s take a look at how this change theme is important to project and program managers.

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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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Project teams, project oriented organizations, and project management offices have an unusually strong opportunity today for building highly motivated project teams. The reason for that is projects sit at the center of a new evolving organizational structure.

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