PMcrunch

On our projects, and in our programs and project portfolios, we often struggle with how to make changes.  From my own personal experience, the most challenging part of change management has always been the area of making incremental changes versus making wholesale major changes.  Let’s take a look. 

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At the end of a year and at the beginnning of a new one, we all tend to take some time to look back at the last twelve months and to look forward to the next twelve. This is a good time for us to asses our own performance, strengths, weaknesses, interests, things that we would like more of and things that we would rather do without.

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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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With the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States and his coming inauguration in January, we are beginning to see what his priorities would be; this is an opportunity to think through what some of the impacts will be in the project management world.

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Many people who consider getting into the project management profession are also considering other options, such as earning a degree perhaps in project management. There are also certificate programs where students earn a certificate in project management. The options for programs like this are many. Earning a certificate could include going to school full time, night school, or various online courses. Another option is simply to take some kind of training in the classroom, or online, or maybe in independent study groups, or some combination of those, and simply earn a certification like the PMP Certification.

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As leaders, Project Managers and Program Managers need to communicate clearly. Communication is a tricky thing, and among other things, it is influenced greatly but what we see in the world, and what we see is shaped by what I call the “color or your glasses”.

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Successful delegation requires granting both responsibility and authority. These two, combined properly, constitute “empowerment”. However, these two are often not properly executed by the project manager or program leader, and the blame is often placed on the delegate, not on the leader! We, as project and program leaders, need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we are delegating properly.

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Many project managers wonder if there is a better job for them out there. We are always trying to better ourselves and our situations, but never quite seem to get exactly where we want to be. Much is written about which industries are best, which skills transfer, the benefits of certification, and much more. I would argue that introspection, or a look on the inside, is at least as important as a look to the outside, as this is a personal decision driven more by personal factors than by external considerations.

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How does the emergence of Web 2.0 collaborative capabilities and networks effect the organizational landscape, and how does that effect project and program managers? I think the key to answering this question is to look at what is happening to interpersonal relationships, power centers, and influence within organizations to see how this is changing as a result of this emerging development. I find that we can gain insights into this by observing from the following point of view: a. Organization charts are the way the organization is “supposed” to be, and b. Web 2.0 collaboration reveals relationships, and hence organization structure, as it really is. Let’s explore…

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Sometimes I wonder if we are too success oriented. In other words, we as project managers feel that we have failed if our projects fail in anyway, and we define ourselves by project success and project failure. This reminds me of children in school striving all the time to get perfect grades. The problem with this is that sometimes failures produce our greatest successes. Do we have a project management expectation that acknowledges that?

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