cpos: make room in the -...
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MP NETWORKMAKING PROJECT MANAGEMENT INDISPENSABLE FOR BUSINESS RESULTS.®
DECEMBER 2010 VOLUME 24, NUMBER 12
> Companies are hiring again. Do you have what they’re looking for?
> New outsourcing hotspots
> Making the jump to consulting
CPOs: Make Room in the Executive Suite
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T he government of Guatemala wants to play with fire.
The Pacaya volcano erupted in May, killing two and forcing mass
evacuations—but harnessing its energy could help the nation meet its goal of producing 60 percent of its energy from geothermal and hydroelectric power by 2022.
Ormat Technologies Inc., a Reno, Nevada, USA-based company, led projects to build and set up two geothermal power plants in Guate-mala. The plants use heat generated by the shift-ing tectonic plates that cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Geothermal plants harness this renewable energy source and are more reliable and eco-friendly than hydroelectric dams, according to Ormat.
Such a volatile environment does come with risks—the company had to temporarily shut down one of its plants when Pacaya erupted.
That isn’t stopping it from planning future proj-ects, though: “There’s a phase where you just have to drill and see,” Ormat representative Yossi Shilon told the news agency Reuters. “The problem is that you risk a very expensive investment and are not always satisfied with the results.”
Governmental tax breaks, though, help con-vert these project hotspots into ROI.
Guatemala
PH
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>>> OPENING SHOT“ ”
You build a power plant and drill the wells, which is the fuel for the 30 years to come. So there is a significant capital investment involved, but it pays out—that’s for sure. —Edward Corash, Ormat Technologies Inc., Reno, Nevada, USA
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Hail to tHe CHief
There’s a big gap between the executive suite and project managers—and that’s where chief project officers can help. by Sandra A. Swanson
Got talent?
Companies around the globe are hiring again. Project managers without experience and standout skills need not apply. by Simon Kent
pmi 2010 projeCt of tHe Year finalist
HealinG a CommunitY
A healthy dose of communication helps a team bring in a hospital construction project right on time and US$2.9 million under budget. by B.G. Yovovich
takinG on tHe tiGer and draGon
Outsourcing’s reigning powers face fierce new competition—though their upstart rivals come with some very real risks. by Sarah Fister Gale
Career traCk
so, You Want to Be a Consultant?
Choose your projects. Pick up experience across sectors. Sounds tempting, but going independent also means worrying where your next gig is coming from. by Rachel Zupek
tHe peaCe proCess
Stakeholder vs. stakeholder. Team member vs. team member. Conflict happens—and it’s up to project managers to ease tensions. by Chauncey Hollingsworth
pg. 38
contents
Timing Is Everything“When you are opening a healthcare facility, and the marketing department is putting up bill-boards that say it is going to open on August 26, it does no good to open on August 20. It has to be on schedule, and it is important for everyone to finish together.” —Janice Weaver, PMP, Norton Healthcare, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
features
a Closer look: ipreo, neW York, neW York, usa & epam sYstems, kiev, ukraineA financial software company discovers a newfound faith in out-sourcing.
pg. 52
dec10
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01 Opening Shot06 The Buzz24 In This Issue66 Help Desk
26 CPOs: Make Room in the Executive Suite32 Companies Are Hiring Again44 New Outsourcing Hotspots 56 Making the Jump to Consulting
68 Featured Books70 Services Directory72 Metrics
17 From the Top The Project Pipeline Roberto Newton Carneiro, Comgás, Sao Paulo, Brazil
18 Ask PM Network A Failure to Communicate by Bud Baker, PhD, Contributing Editor
20 Inside Latin America Going in Prepared by Roberto Toledo, MBA, PMP, Contributing Editor
21 Asia Pacific Watch Lost in Translation by Lynda Bourne, DPM, PMP
22 Voices on Project Management Endangered Species by Dan Patterson, PhD, PMP, Acumen, Austin, Texas, USA
viewpointsUPCOMING MAJOR PMI GLOBAL EVENTS
9-11 May PMI Global Congress 2011—
EMEA, Dublin, Ireland.
Visit www.PMI.org for details.
dECEMBER
13-16 PMI SeminarsWorld, San Diego,
California, USA.
www.PMI.org/Professional-Development.aspx
JANUARy
12-17 PMI Charleston 2011 Seminar @ Sea,
Charleston, South Carolina, USA.
www.pmi-charleston.org/sea
24-26 PMI-Arabian Gulf Chapter 13th
International Conference, Manama, Bahrain.
www.pmi-agc-conference.com
MARCh
1-2 PMI Sweden Chapter Congress 2011,
Gothenburg, Sweden.
www.pmi-se.org/Sweden_Congress_2011
calendar of events
also in this issue
on the cover
dec10
The Two Sides of Tech Hiring“Right now it’s a two-tiered society. Some skills are in high demand, while others are being left on the wayside.” —Valerie Frederickson, Valerie Frederickson & Co., Menlo Park, California, USA
pg. 06
contentsdec10
Winner of a 2009 Honorable Mention for general excellence and a 2009 Silver Award for a single-topic issue from Association Media & Publishing (formerly Society of National Association Publications) for general excellence among magazines with a circulation of more than 100,000.
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Mp network
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Publication & MeMbershiPPM Net work (ISSN 1040-8754) is pub lished month ly by the Proj ect Man age ment In sti tute. PM Net work is printed in the USA by Quad Graphics, Sussex, Wisconsin. Pe ri od i cal post age paid at Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 and at ad di tion al mail ing of fic es. Canadian agreement #40030957. Post mas ter: Send ad dress chang es to PM Net work, 14 Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA. Phone +1 610 356 4600, fax +1 610 356 4647.
The mission of PM Net work is to facilitate the exchange of information among professionals in the field of project and program management, provide them with practical tools and techniques, and serve as a forum for discussion of emerging trends and issues. All articles in PM Net work are the views of the au thors and are not nec es sar i ly those of PMI.
Sub scrip tion rate for mem bers is US$42/year and is in clud ed in the an nu al dues. PMI is a non prof it pro fes sion al or gan iza tion ded i cat ed to ad vanc ing the state of the art of proj ect man age ment. Mem ber ship in PMI is open to all at an an nu al dues of US$119. For in for ma tion on PMI pro grams and mem ber ship, or to re port change of ad dress or prob lems with your sub scrip tion, con tact:
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PMI has offices in India, China and Australia. See www.PMI.org/AboutUs/Customer-Care.aspx for contact details.
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Publications Mail agreeMent #40030957 Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses to: Circulation Department / P.O. Box 1051 / Fort Erie, Ontario L2A 6C7
© 2010 Project Management Institute Inc. All rights reserved.All rights reserved. “PMI,” the PMI logo, “Making project management indispen-sable for business results,” “PMI Today,” “PM Network,” “Project Management Journal,” “PMBOK,” “CAPM,” “Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM),” “PMP,” the PMP logo, “PgMP,” “Program Management Professional (PgMP),” “PMI-RMP,” “PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP),” ”PMI-SP,” “PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)” and “OPM3” are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. “Project Management Professional (PMP)” is a service mark of Project Management Institute, Inc. in the United States and/or other nations.
PM Network welcomes story ideas and/or suggestions about sources. Our stories are written by professional journalists. Please contact Imagination editorial director Cyndee Miller or PMI editor in chief Dan Goldfischer with your ideas and suggestions. If you are interested in submitting articles for the PMI Knowledge Shelf, located at www.PMI.org/Knowledge-Center/Knowledge-Shelf.aspx, please contact Dan Goldfischer. More information can be found at www.PMI.org/en/Knowledge-Center/Publications-PM-Network.aspx . Published articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the magazine or the Project Management Institute. PM Network is not responsible for loss, damage, or any other injury to unsolicited manuscripts or other material.
Digital eDitionA digital edition of this issue is available to PMI members by logging on to www.PMI.org and selecting Resources, Virtual Library, then Publications Online Library.
reaDer servicesFor placing orders or for inquiries, please contact PMI Publishing Department at [email protected]. Permissions. Requests to reprint articles published in PM Network must be made in writing to the publisher using the online form at www.PMI.org/Forms-Permissions.aspx. No part of PM Network may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includ-ing photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.Back Issues. Back issues may be purchased when available by contacting [email protected]. Pricing varies with number of copies, and members receive a discount.PDF Files. Articles in PDF format are available for download from the Marketplace at www.PMI.org. The most recent five years are at no cost to mem-bers; older articles are US$10 each for members and US$5 each for student members. Non-member price for all articles is US$15 each.Glossy Reprints. Requests for glossy reprints of articles in quantities of 100 or more can be sent to [email protected] Copies of Current Issue. Copies of the current PM Network can be obtained in quantities of 25 or more. Orders must be placed 40 days prior to date of issue. The cost is US$5.50 per copy plus shipping.Change of Address. Members can edit their demographics, including their addresses, by logging onto www.PMI.org and accessing “My PMI.” All readers can send change of address information to [email protected] or call PMI customer service at +1 610 356 4600 option 8.
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6 PM NETWORK May 2008 WWW.PMI.ORG
The U.S. job markeT is boom-ing—if you’re young, talented and have a very specific set of engineering IT skills.
That’s the message coming out of the job boards and tech-sector hiring reports that hit the marketplace in the fiscal fourth quarter of 2010.
raking in a median salary of $144,000, U.S. software engineering directors ranked among the top 10 highest-paying jobs across all industries, according a 2010 survey of 40,000 workers published in october by CNNmoney.com and PayScale.com. Software architects also cracked the top 20 with a median salary of $119,000.
“right now it’s a two-tiered soci-ety,” says Valerie Frederickson, Ceoand founder of Valerie Frederickson & Co., an IT career transition and outplacement consultancy in menlo Park, California, USa. “Some skills are in high demand, while others are being left on the wayside.”
That means recent graduates armed with the latest whiz-bang skills and highly specialized engineers
10 just the Fracks 12 3G Is So 2009 14 The New Dubai?
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“Many organizations have realized that technol-ogy investments can lead to long-term cost savings and better efficiency, which has resulted in hiring in a number of IT specialties,” John Reed, execu-tive director of Robert Half Technology, said in a release.
Filling the Strategy gapThe silver lining for struggling IT professionals is that project management expertise can give them an edge on the competition, Ms. Freder-ickson says.
“Those who can walk the line between stra-tegic thinking and doing the hands-on work are in demand,” she says. “And project management experience is the perfect solution.”
In the wake of all the layoffs and restructuring that have rocked U.S. corporations, many execu-tives simply don’t have time to communicate the organization’s strategic goals down the layers, Ms. Frederickson says.
“Project managers can fill this gap,” she says. “They understand how to work with the executives on the strategic plan, then translate that plan into actionable items for project teams.”
Of course, sometimes those translation skills must work the other way, deciphering nitty-gritty details into executive speak.
“The ability to explain complex technology to non-technical people has been and continues to be the most valuable skill that I learned,” Scott W.D. Rankin, vice president of technol-ogy at Corporate Reimbursement Services Inc., told CNNMoney.com. “Most of the people that make the decisions in a corporate environ-ment are non-technical. If you want to stand a chance of determining your own fate, you need to know how to be able to talk to them in their language.”
Ms. Frederickson recommends candidates showcase project management accomplishments on résumés and prepare succinct anecdotes that illus-trate their skills and experiences.
“Even if you have the highly sought-after skills, it’s still a competitive market,” she says.
A targeted marketing mix can make the differ-ence. “You have to think about the issues CEOs and CIOs are facing now and be able to speak to those needs.” —Sarah Fister Gale
and scientists are getting their pick of top jobs. But some seasoned mid-tier IT professionals are struggling to find work as many once-cutting-edge tech skills are outsourced to less-expensive markets.
The programming language C++ “is now an international language,” Catherine L. Mann, PhD, told The New York Times in September. “If that’s all you know, then you’re competing with people in India or China who will do the work for less,” said Dr. Mann, a global finance professor at the Brandeis University International Business School who studies the outsourcing of jobs.
“We are talking about people with very par-ticular, advanced skills out there who are at this point just not needed anymore,” Bart van Ark, chief economist at The Conference Board, a busi-ness and economic research organization, told the Times. “Even in this sector, there is tremendous insecurity.”
Hiring has stagnated or declined for profes-sionals in computer systems design, Internet pub-lishing, data processing and software publishing. Computer scientists, systems analysts and com-puter programmers all had unemployment rates of around 6 percent in the second quarter of this year, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The talent gap is even more pronounced in Silicon Valley, the Northern California hub for high-tech jobs. The region has an 11.5 percent unemployment rate, yet there are hundreds of tech job openings at big-name high-tech firms, includ-ing Samsung, Google and Facebook.
Robert Half Technology’s quarterly hiring index, published in September, shows a similar imbalance. Despite an overwhelming declaration of confidence that their companies will continue to grow, the majority of the 1,400 U.S. CIOs sur-veyed have no plans to hire new IT staff, according to the report. Only 9 percent expected to increase hiring, 6 percent expected to decrease staff, and the rest planned to stay the course.
The CIOs cited network administration, data-base management and Microsoft Windows admin-istration as the most in-demand skill sets. The jobs they cited as most difficult to fill are networking roles, followed by information security and help desk/technical support.
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The talent gapis even more pronounced in Silicon Valley, the Northern California hub for high-tech jobs. The region has an 11.5 percent unem-ployment rate, yet there are hundreds of tech job open-ings at big-name high-tech firms, including Sam-sung, Google and Facebook.
PMN1210 1-25.indd 8 11/15/10 10:53 AM
provincial government is reworking its regulations to address the challenges posed by fracking, which the company insists is just fine.
“We’re not in a rush; there is no rush,” Ques-terre CEO Michael Binnion told The Globe and Mail. “We’re not in commercial development, and there is plenty of time to update the regulations. And quite frankly, the industry is unlikely to pro-ceed unless there is a good regulatory environment in the first place.”
It may be a moot point. Operating costs in Quebec are so high that natural gas prices would have to rise significantly for the shale in the area to be profitable.
Risk VeRsus OutRageWhether or not the regulations are put into law, companies launching fracking projects should tread carefully.
Project managers have to factor in the potential for community pushback and the need for local sup-port into their project plans, says Dennis Lathem, executive director of the Coalbed Methane Associa-tion of Alabama, a Birmingham, Alabama, USA-based trade association of the state’s gas producers.
“It goes to risk versus outrage. It might be that technically and logistically, the project is very low-risk. But if you don’t understand the outrage factor, you are going to have problems,” he says.
“It’s easy to dismiss people as environmental extremists, but a lot of times that’s not the case,” adds Gene Citrone Jr., engineering project manager and director of special projects in the energy and environment business unit at Process Plants Corp. (PPC), Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, USA.
PPC is currently leading a project to clean salts and chlorides from flowback water used in fracking projects at the massive Marcellus Shale development field in Western Pennsylvania. Seventy-three drill-ing companies are currently operating onsite—and they’re all contending with a great deal of attention.
For any project manager, the focus should be on stakeholder management.
“These citizens are concerned about their water and their environment and they are the most important people for project managers to talk to,” Mr. Citrone says.
Many of the chemicals that worry people, includ-ing manganese and magnesium, are already present
A COnTrOvErSIAL oil-drilling technique has environmentalists, landowners and regulators loudly pushing for greater accountability. And in the whirlwind news cycle, project owners are quickly learning they’d better address concerns—or risk project failure.
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a process by which companies drill deep wells, breaking through hard layers of shale or other deposits to access untapped oil and natural gas reserves. They then pump pressurized water, sand and chemicals down into the wells to pry open fissures and flush
the gas or oil to the surface. Although drillers use mostly water, a number of environmental groups contend the companies are also injecting harsh toxins that taint aquifers and wells.
“We have a lot of doubts about whether [fracking] can be done safely without hurting our precious water,” new York State Assembly-woman Barbara Lifton said at a community meeting in late September.
The issue is particularly contentious in north America. In the United States, the suspicions are amplified by the fact that fracking is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act. A flurry of protests, articles and public events arguing that the projects are hazardous to the environment is prompting legislators at the state level to enact new rules aimed at lifting the veil of secrecy on fracking. The state of Wyoming, for example, passed a law requiring energy companies to reveal the chemicals used in fracking, so if groundwater contamination does occur, the toxins could be
either identified or ruled out as the cause. The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) is in the process of con-ducting a $1.9 million study of fracking’s effect on groundwater and any potential for public health risks, but the results are not due until 2012. Like the EPA, the state of new York has not yet issued any determination on the process, but its sen-ate did pass a moratorium bill that will remain in effect until 15 May 2011.
In the Canadian province of Quebec, Questerre Energy Corp. was forced to
postpone its plans to drill two test wells along the St. Lawrence river after some residents demanded a moratorium over environmental concerns. The
Just the Fracks
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>>Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is a process by which compa-nies drill deep wells, breaking through hard layers of shale or other depos-its to access untapped oil and natural gas reserves.
grapHic courtesy of redstate.com
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in the earth. Drilling holes can disrupt pockets of heavy metals, which then flow into drill water.
Mr. Citrone’s project aims to clean the metal from the water once it has been used in the drilling so that the water can be repurposed. But for many people, the sudden appearance of heavy metals sug-gests that drillers are putting them there. “A lot of people don’t understand what’s happening, and that scares them,” he says.
Get them on Your SideBecause every project and every stakeholder is dif-ferent, there’s no project planning template for avoiding outrage. There are, however, strategies that project managers can use to minimize the risk of public pushback. It begins with good communica-tion early in the project.
“It’s important that the public knows what you are doing as much as possible,” Mr. Lathem says. “You may still have people who don’t like what you are doing, but there’s value to getting ahead of the curve when it comes to communication.”
Mr. Citrone says sometimes you can win over the skeptics. “When people are educated about our pro-cess, and they understand that we have geologists and engineers work-ing with the drillers, they are more likely to support us.”
Keeping stakeholders in the loop can also help quell rumors. Mr. Lathem recalls running a fracking project in which his team produced an advertising insert in the local newspaper explaining the process, complete with photos and descrip-tions of the equipment used. “Most of those vehicles were just carrying water or sand, but people were see-ing all these trucks traveling down their roads, and they wanted to know what was in them.”
He also advises holding public events to answer questions and educate people about how fracking works, and meeting with local lead-ers and landowners to communicate
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>>On the RiseFracking’s popularity in the United States largely stems from rich deep resources coupled with tax incentives for alternative fuel projects.
This combination has enabled the industry to flourish over the last 20 years: Shale gas’ share of total U.S. gas production rose from 1 percent in 2000 to 20 percent in 2009, according to The Shale Gas Revolution: Hype and Reality, a Sep-tember report from think tank Chatham House.
But few other countries have been able to grow their fracking industries as well. Europe, for example, lacks the resources and policy advantages that have helped groom the U.S. fracking industry, according to the report.
Despite these constraints, shale exploration projects are slowly gaining worldwide traction.
Lane Energy Poland partnered with Schlumberger to launch two drilling proj-ects in the Baltic Basin of Northern Poland in 2010 to evaluate the potential of shale gas production.
Similarly, while almost no shale exploration projects have begun in the Middle East, Saudi Arabian giant Saudi Aramco’s chief executive, Khalid al-Falih, announced in September that the firm was considering exploration of shale gas reserves for future projects.
Saudi oil companies have traditionally considered such reserves too costly and difficult to develop. But the success of projects in the United States, com-bined with a need for new gas resources, is sparking a reexamination.
Saudi Arabia currently burns significant quantities of crude oil in its power stations, and the government would prefer to burn gas even if extraction costs increase substantially, Samuel Ciszuk, a Middle East energy analyst at IHS Global Insight told The National.
“For a long-term strategy, they would definitely want to go for shale gas—if indeed available—rather than burning liquids,” he said. “With domestic demand rising as fast as it does, I think they will look to all kinds of future gas opportuni-ties available to them.”
the benefits of a project. In Alabama, 43 percent of all natural gas produced comes from underground coal seams that have been hydraulically fractured. Those projects translate into local jobs, added reve-nue streams and reduced dependence on foreign oil.
Even environmental groups acknowledge the need for newer sources of energy. Michael Brune, executive director of the powerful conservation organization Sierra Club, acknowledged the con-troversy and the opportunity in an August post on his blog: “I am cautiously hopeful that strong regulation and government oversight will make drilling safe, because we sure could use the help of natural gas as we push quickly and aggres-sively toward a truly clean energy future powered by wind, solar and other renewable resources.”—Sarah Fister Gale
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technologies, and don’t have any legacy of 3G premiums,” Yota CEO Dennis Sverdlov said at the launch ceremony for the company’s 4G net-work in Kazan, capital of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. The $20 million project, which covers the city’s more than 1 million residents, was completed in two months.
“As a result, we will soon see these countries leapfrog the more-developed Western econo-mies when it comes to wireless broadband ser-vices,” he says.
Technical DifficulTiesFor all the opportunities, there are just as many challenges to making 4G projects work in emerging markets.
The first is infrastructure. Typically, data network projects use existing cell towers to roll out broadband access. The data network equip-ment is installed on the towers, and cables are buried or radio links deployed to create blanket high-speed Internet access. If a market has no cell towers or they’re inconsistent, the broad-band provider has to build its own, which can cost more than $100,000 per tower, says Phil Marshall, PhD, chief research officer at Tolaga
Research, Newton, Massachusetts, USA.
That can make the ROI of such projects prohibitively low. In many developing mar-kets, though, cell towers already exist, and opera-tors are open to partner-ships with broadband providers, Dr. Marshall says. “If you can share resources, the project becomes feasible.”
In most emerging markets, where voice penetration is low, such alliances are possible because mobile provid-ers aren’t investing in broadband access and present no competitive threat, he says.
IN ThE bATTlE to offer the world’s fastest wireless broadband connection, startup 4G ser-vice providers are finding the best projects are in emerging markets—if they can manage the risks.
high demand for wireless Internet services, combined with a lack of existing infrastructure, is giving forward-thinking broadband providers a foothold in places such as Africa, Malaysia and the Philippines, says Dov bar-Gera, CEO of 4G Africa ltd., a Zurich, Switzerland-based builder and operator of 4G networks.
“The opportunities in emerging markets are amazing,” he says. “The only fast alternative for a quick, reliable and large-scale broadband deployment is 4G.”
Why even bother with 3G when you can jump right to 4G?
Russian upstart Yota has deployed 4G networks in seven cities on its home turf. It recently completed its first rollout in Nicara-gua, and has plans to unveil similar projects in belarus and Peru. Since its launch less than two years ago, the company has invested $500 mil-lion in 4G projects in emerging regions.
“These particular markets are not hindered by the complexities of upgrading existing
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they do in developed markets.
“Simple issues like the lack of certain tools or components, which could be solved in a couple of hours in Europe, require a sophisticated and expensive logistical process to resolve in Africa,” Mr. Bar-Gera says.
Any provider con-sidering launching a 4G project in an emerging market must be aware of these dif-ferences and keep a strong presence in the community.
“Remote project management doesn’t work,” Mr. Bar-Gera warns. “Project teams must work closely with a local management team, develop good working relationships with the incumbent service provider and follow all the rules of the application process for the license.”
Done right, though, 4G projects could put emerging markets—and some wireless upstarts—on the fast track. —Sarah Fister Gale
“In developed nations like the United States or the United Kingdom, there are already established players who can roll out their own 4G networks. But in places like Russia or Malaysia, it’s still a land grab,” Dr. Marshall explains. “It gives new broadband providers a chance to scale up.”
Getting construction permission for antenna sites in Africa is simple compared to developed markets like the United Kingdom, where the process is complex and fraught with red tape, Mr. Bar-Gera contends.
Even with the infrastructure in place, securing financing can be a big hurdle. “These kinds of projects have high startup costs and high recurrent fixed costs, and you need a lot of money to achieve profitability and even more economies of scale,” he says. “A lot of players go after broadband projects but under-estimate the delays in funding, and the proj-ects fail.”
He likens it to building a railroad that only reaches the next town.
The instability of the electrical power net-work in developing nations also often adds time and upgrade costs to project plans. Uplink availability—linking the local network to the Internet—is also very limited and very expen-sive in emerging markets, Mr. Bar-Gera says.
“Prices can easily exceed $1,000 per megabit, compared with advanced markets, where the same connection costs only a few U.S. dollars.”
And project schedules don’t always work like
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100 megabits per second The data speed of a true 4G network
2 megabits per secondThe data speed of current 3G networksSource: International Telecom-munication Union
>> the need for speedMore-established economies won’t be left in the 4G dust. Competing carriers in the United States,
for example, are scrambling to roll out faster networks to accommodate data-heavy apps, games
and video tools that consumers want on their phones.
Mobile service giant Verizon Wireless recently made a major splash with its plans to roll out a 4G
network in 38 U.S. cities before the end of 2010.
At the recent 4G World conference, Clearwire chief commercial officer Mike Sievert envisioned
download speeds 10 times faster than they are today. The company’s tests have produced download
speeds of more than 90 mbps (megabits per second) and upload speeds of more than 30 mbps,
according to a report in PCWorld.
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ultra-sustainable Shahat Garden City in the Green Mountain region of eastern Libya are in full swing. Managed by U.K. firm Edward Cullinan Architects, the community will create homes for 60,000 people over a 3,707-acre (1,500-hectare) site, plus schools, a university and a botanical gar-den. Because the location is near the UNESCO World Heritage site of the ancient city of Cyrene, project planners are working to accommodate the area’s rich archaeology and unique biodiversity. The master plan strives for low-carbon living through walkable neighborhoods, shaded streets, natural-cooling and low-energy buildings, wind farms and solar power fields.
Clearly, the move is on to reshape and mod-ernize Libya—but it hasn’t always been that way.
Reconciliation—and GRowthIt’s no secret that Libya’s economy struggled under strict sanctions by the United States and other countries, due mostly to longtime leader Muammar el-Qaddhafi’s alleged ter-rorist ties and the country’s weapons of mass destruction program. But in 1999, Col. el-Qaddhafi surrendered two suspects wanted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland and later compensated the families of the 270 victims.
The move was a powerful first step for Libya’s return to the international community. In 2004, the United States removed all remaining sanc-tions, Libya dismantled its nuclear program, and companies jumped at the opportunity to have a crack at the long-dormant market.
While other countries falter, Libya’s GDP is projected to grow by 8.4 percent in 2010, accord-ing to the International Monetary Fund. Foreign direct investment into the country quadrupled from $1 billion in 2005 to $4.1 billion in 2008, according to the United Nations.
Still, the Libyan landscape can present chal-lenges—both literally and figuratively. The coun-try’s ancient capital city of Tripoli, for example, has coastal and desert features, points out Eric Butterworth, vice president and managing director of U.K. project management, Hill International, London, England.
So when the global construction giant started working on a project to manage the
NO LONGEr an economic pariah, Libya is transforming itself into the latest project hotspot.
“It’s absolutely the boom country at the moment,” richard Barber, supervisor at Han-miParsons, a South Korea-based construction management company, told the Associated Press.
With no debt and a $70 billion sovereign wealth fund—thanks to the largest proven oil reserves on the continent—the North African country is investing in its economic and social expansion.
Libya is “really trying to become, for lack of a better term, a new Dubai,” Carlos Caceres, a deputy senior regional manager for U.S. engineer-ing firm AECOM, told the Associated Press.
The country plans to spend $500 billion over the next decade on an array of projects to improve housing, hotels, hospitals, education facilities, ports, airports and security. Libya is also keenly aware of the need to address its still-limited infrastructure. Plans are in the works for high-speed railways and first-class roads along the Mediterranean coast, connecting the capi-tal with Egypt and Tunisia, according to libyaonline.com.
Housing is fast emerging as one of the hottest sectors. AECOM, for example, is overseeing an $80 billion-plus program in Tripoli and Benghazi, the nation’s two largest cities. Projects include constructing 160,000 housing units and laying new sewage and electrical pipes.
Turkey’s EMSAS Con-struction is building the Bab Tripoli complex, a $1.3 bil-lion luxury high-rise on the road to Tripoli’s airport. The
finished project will contain 2,000 apartments, a hospital and a mall—complete with a bowling alley and ice-skating rink.
And it looks like Abu Dhabi won’t be the only one with a carbon-neutral city. Plans for the
the new dubai?
Libya’s economy is projected to grow by 8.4 percent in 2010.
$1 billionThe amount of foreign direct investment in Libya in 2005
$4.1 billion The amount of foreign direct investment in Libya in 2008
Source: International Monetary Fund and the United Nations
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design of 25 new university campuses across the country, the designs had to reflect the climate.
“Some locations require only cool-ing, others only heating and some both. Some loca-tions are remote and have to be self-sufficient regard-ing electricity and sewage treatment,” he explains. “Rain-water is collected for reuse wherever possible, but in some locations this is not economic, as the rainfall is so low it will not justify the infrastructure for collection.”
The project owner, the Organization for Development of Administrative Centres (ODAC), wanted the campuses to reflect the country’s traditions.
“At the outset of the project, the ODAC insisted that the campus designs should respect the local culture, heritage, architecture and cli-mate,” Mr. Butterworth says. Hill conducted research at each location and implemented regular site visits during design development “to ensure that the interpretations are appropriate.”
Hill is not only dealing with local culture. The megaproject involves coordinating all of the campuses with design teams and contractors from Europe, the Middle East, China and South Korea, Mr. Butterworth explains.
“Leaving foreign-language speakers to have to interpret and understand the written word against a background of their own culture can have issues and result in misunderstandings,” he says. To help “break down those barriers,” the company holds frequent workshops and meetings.
Rough TRansiTionThe campuses megaproject is slated for completion in 2013, but Mr. Butterworth says
there’s a tremendous push to deliver ahead of schedule. The first should be completed by 2012.
“Political representatives from the various regions press for their local projects to pro-ceed as quickly as possible,” he says. However, the country’s collaborative way of governing means “individuals rarely make decisions, and committees are not able to respond as quickly.”
Any market—especially one that remained stagnant for decades—comes with some issues. Libya is no exception as it attempts to transition to a more market-based economy.
The country remains heavily dependent on its oil industry, which contributes about 95 percent of export earnings, 25 percent of the GDP and 60 percent of public-sector wages, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook. While substantial revenues from the energy sector coupled with a small population give Libya one of the high-est per-capita GDPs in Africa, little of that income f lows down.
Even so, in a down market, companies are always on the hunt for new project opportuni-ties. And Libya is emerging as a surprise con-tender for the “next big thing.” —Rachel Zupek
Al Fateh University Library, Tripoli, Libya
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In the volatIle energy industry, there’s little room for error. Roberto newton Car-neiro, CIo at Comgás, Brazil’s largest natural gas distributor, relies on sound project management principles not only to accommodate tight deadlines and budgets, but to help ensure projects deliver direct and measurable results.
For almost five years, he has overseen many high-profile, highly complex It business solu-tions projects, including the implementation of major infrastructure management and several large outsourcing initiatives. he leads a team of 30 employees and more than 80 contractors, all working on a vast portfolio of projects aimed at helping the company maintain its competitive edge in the marketplace.
How does Comgás manage its projects? our approach is not limited to project manage-ment but expands to portfolio management as part of a broad It governance model. our main objec-tive is to guarantee that every It investment brings value to Comgás as well as ensuring that each par-ticular project meets its core objectives.
We have a project management office that is focused on delivering It projects and we try as much as possible to stay in line with A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).
What unique challenges do you face managing projects in the natural gas industry?We operate with narrow margins, which means that projects must always meet their time and budget targets. they also need to fully realize their projected benefits, or we risk losing profit-ability. the tightly regulated business environment requires that project status, outcomes and post-implementation reviews be constantly presented to regulators. this adds time and complexity to the project schedule.
and fierce competition and accelerated business expansion put constant pressure on project teams to deliver results without delays and ensure that the planned benefits are fully realized.
How do you decide which projects should be a part of your portfolio?We are going through a series of reviews by internal commit-tees of the It demands within the organization and assessing these demands against the value that they can bring to the orga-nization. this review process will enable us to prioritize those projects and investments that will deliver the greatest value and RoI to Comgás, so we can best determine which projects and improvements should receive investment. our portfolio manage-ment approach requires every project within the organization to be directly related to a strategic goal as part of our business case and planning stage.
How do you manage risk?Risk management is an important part of our project management practices. Prior to project initiation, we list all of the possible risks and rank them according to the probability that they will occur, potential harms to the organization if they do occur, and any mitigating factors. no project in Comgás starts without risk assessment.
What have been your biggest struggles?one of the hardest challenges we face now in par-ticular is the completion of a large customer rela-tionship management and billing solutions project that was delivered last year but failed to meet some of its objectives.
It was the most important project delivered at Comgás for the past year, and one of the reasons the project failed was that project management techniques were poorly used. We decided to reopen the project to fix the problems, enhance what we recognized as deficiencies or limitations in the original project plan, and develop all the missing parts using a more strict approach to the project management methodology. We are already seeing good results. PM
The Project Pipeline
Roberto Newton Carneiro, Comgás, Sao Paulo, Brazil
>>We operate with narrow margins, which means that projects must always meet their time and budget targets. They also need to fully realize their projected benefits, or we risk losing profitability.
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For reasons he hasn’t disclosed, my boss, a director of our company, doesn’t per-mit me to share project details and finan-cial status with my team members. As a
result, they don’t fully understand our project status or objectives, which has predictably led to big trouble. I don’t want to create problems with my boss, and I’m not ready to resign. What are my options?
The late management guru Peter Drucker used to say that when sane, rational and moral people behave in ways that seem inexplicable, it’s because they see a real-
ity different than ours. So let’s start by giving your boss that
triple benefit of the doubt: He’s sane, ratio-nal and moral. (If he’s not…well, that would lead to a whole different sort of article.) This leads us then to the second part of Mr. Drucker’s maxim: Your boss is seeing a real-ity you don’t.
One possibility is culture. In this case, the question comes from a person in sub-Saharan Africa. A friend of mine, a professor and author who happens to hail from the same country, laughed long and hard when he heard the question. “This boss is behav-ing the way that any boss would behave in that country,” he said. “We are raised there to believe that if people have knowledge, they will use it against us, to enrich them-selves personally at our expense. The only way to protect against that is to guard all knowledge jealously, so that we are not taken advantage of.”
Given that culture changes only slowly over time, there may not be a lot you can do here. Your boss’s psychological maps, the way he sees the world, were established a long time ago. They will not be easily modi-fied, by you or anyone else.
There is, however, another possible expla-nation, one which gives us more reason for hope: Your boss is a product of his experi-
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ence, and events in his life have convinced him that when it comes to information, silence is safer than sharing, and secrecy is superior to synergy.
Building Your CaseIf your boss is wary of sharing project data, you won’t persuade him otherwise with generalities. You need hard evidence that clearly shows the value of trans-parency. One great source is an article entitled “The success of international development projects, trust and communication: an African perspective” by Ama-dou Diallo and Denis Thuillier of the Université du Québec à Montréal [International Journal of Project Management, April 2005]).
Be careful dealing with a boss’s lack of transparency. b y b u d b a k e r , P h d , C o n t r i b u t i n g e d i t o r
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Be careful dealing with a boss’s lack of transparency. b y b u d b a k e r , P h d , C o n t r i b u t i n g e d i t o r
Then look at specific evidence you can use from your own project. Approach it like a lawyer building a case: Focus on demonstrating cause and effect—spe-cific past actions and their harmful results. Create a list of your project’s disappointments. Then show, logically and systematically, how each of those setbacks can be traced directly to decisions and actions that kept your project partners in the dark. Stay away from emotion, and keep your arguments data-based and objective.
The best project manager I ever knew lived by the dictum that timing is everything—and that certainly
applies to your situation. Don’t move hastily. Wait until there has been a particularly egregious breakdown as a result of poor communication. Give the boss a few days to get over the disaster, and then make an appointment to present your ideas. That way, you position yourself not as a complainer but as a problem-solver.
You do need to recognize, of course, that you’re in very dangerous territory here. There’s no guarantee your boss will take your suggestions well. No one wants to be told that he or she has caused a project to fail. It’s possible—likely, even, given his track record—that your boss may lash out at the nearest target, and that would be you.
And although you ended your question by saying you weren’t ready to leave your job yet, you must accept that as a possibility. The question really is which course of action allows you to minimize the risk of such a dreadful outcome. PM
Bud Baker, PhD, is a professor of manage-ment at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, USA. Please send questions for Ask PM Network to [email protected].
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>>If your boss is wary of sharing project data, you won’t persuade him otherwise with generalities. You need hard evidence that clearly shows the value of transparency.
Graduate Students Give AGU’s Distance Degree and Certificate Programs All “A”s!
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Project management is all about planning. It’s as simple as that. Without a well-thought, prop-erly developed plan, no project will ever succeed in meeting the desired scope, time and cost
objectives. This is one of the most powerful concepts that today’s project management best practices can teach us.
Understanding the importance of planning is some-thing anybody can learn, either through formal train-ing or real-life project experience. Dealing with unique events that have high degrees of uncertainty—as projects inevitably do—without a proper plan is an instructional (and potentially harsh) way of appreciating the value of planning ahead.
Many people believe that planning is related to a per-son’s culture and background. Studies and research have been conducted over the years about cultural differences in management and work, chiefly by Geert Hofstede and by Robert J. House, PhD, et al, in the GLOBE study. Their works are recognized as the most respect-able sources of information on this subject. Neverthe-less, specific studies on project planning and culture are scarce. Papers from Amy Chin Mei Yen (2007) and Ofer Zwikael, PhD, PMP, (2007) are among the very few that have explored the topic.
It’s a common belief that planning culture is related to the geographical climate where it developed. Cultures that developed in regions of the world with tough climates, par-ticularly harsh winters such as Europe and North America, tend to put more importance in thinking about the future and, therefore, planning. Cultures that developed in more benign climates, with all-year access to food and supplies, such as Latin America and South Asia, tend to focus on the enjoyment of the present and a shorter-term vision.
The truth is that climate is just one among many environmental factors, including history, religion, level of education and development, that shape the way dif-ferent cultures plan. In the end, all cultures plan—they just focus on different aspects of the planning process, putting more importance on one or another component of the project plan.
I have been teaching project management for more than 15 years in Latin America, and I’ve come up with certain key ideas concerning planning that will work for you, no matter how planning-oriented your culture is:
n A planning environment needs to be set first.Project managers and their teams have the responsibil-ity for planning, but senior management also needs to understand the vital importance of a plan. They must set up the appropriate framework that will allow project managers to develop a good plan.
n Project planning is always a team effort. I never get tired of explaining to project managers that they are ultimately responsible when it comes to project plan development. But they should never work on it alone and risk not having everyone know all the details of the project ahead. The entire team needs to be sufficiently committed to the objectives established.
n Fight for enough planning time if necessary. I am regularly asked, “How much time do we need to devote to planning?” And just saying, “Enough” doesn’t work. I have come up with a general rule: Devote 10 percent of the project duration to planning.
n Planning will always be cheaper than correcting mistakes. When resources are scarce, our room for error becomes narrower. Therefore, planning becomes one of the most valuable methods to reduce the cost of a project.
n Developing a simple Gantt chart does not equal planning. A project plan is an integrated collection of documents that includes, at the very least, a scope plan, time plan and cost plan. These, among other important elements, together help to assure success in every aspect of the project.
All too often, project managers are overconfident that their previous experience is an excuse to not prop-erly plan a project. Always stress the importance and value of planning, strategizing your moves and using the plan as a way to communicate and align all the project team members. This is especially key if you are working with a multicultural team, where people will have different ideas about what a plan should be and how important it is to have a detailed road map of the work ahead. PM
Roberto Toledo, MBA, PMP, is manag-ing director of Alpha Consultoría, and a trainer and consultant who works across Latin America. He can be reached at [email protected].
GoinG in preparedDevoting sufficient time to planning could save your project from future mishaps. b y R o b e R t o t o l e d o , M b A , P M P , C o n t R i b u t i n g e d i t o R
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From earned value management to work break-down structures, project management is rife with terms specific to the profession. However, while these terms are familiar to trained project manag-
ers worldwide, there’s a good chance they’re completely unknown to managers trained in organizations and societies that have different approaches to doing business.
As such, it’s not surprising that misunderstandings and confusion among stakeholders can easily arise. (In fact, stakeholders might not even be aware that they are being called “stakeholders.”)
The general business community frequently uses the same words in a similar context but applies completely dif-ferent meanings. Project managers say one thing, and others understand something else completely.
Add in a few TLAs (that is, three-letter acronyms) and total misunderstanding can ensue. When you mention the threats and opportunities in the RBS, you’re obviously thinking of the risk breakdown structure—but your stake-holder may be wondering why the Royal Bank of Scotland is suddenly involved in the project.
Because one of the keys to project success is managing stakeholder expectations, this is a major risk. Good com-munication requires feedback. You must be sure the recipi-ents fully understand what information you’re conveying, including all of the message’s nuances.
False ExpectationsMost project managers who are accustomed to dealing with stakeholders from other parts of the business, other orga-nizations or other cultures understand these issues. They will carefully construct all of their communications and test for understanding. But even this level of care may not be enough. They must ensure that the information itself does not create false expectations. This is particularly important when preparing time and cost estimates.
In many parts of Asia, managers will not provide a precise estimate unless they are absolutely certain they can achieve exactly what’s promised.
However, as project managers, we routinely use schedul-ing tools that calculate very specific estimates. They’ll predict that a task will be complete at, say, 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday in four months, simply because this is the output from the approximations entered into the schedule. Or that the total
cost of the project will be AU$10,986,547.55, because the estimating system churned out that summary total.
These values may be precise, but they’re not precisely accurate. As professional project managers, we know all esti-mates are subject to a degree of variability. When the actual work is done, each task will take a slightly different amount of time to complete and will cost slightly more or less than planned. However, many other people will translate the precision of the estimate into an expectation that the work will be performed exactly as planned.
Estimates made in more general terms are no less valid and can avoid creating this type of false expectation. Achiev-ing a detailed estimate for a US$11 million project to within -5 to +10 percent would indicate a very careful estimating process in a stable, informed environment. The same esti-mate, calculated to the nearest cent, raises stakeholders’ expectations and may result in the project being perceived as a failure when their expectations are not realized.
Effective communication with stakeholders requires project managers to look at the data generated by their spreadsheets and scheduling tools and then condense this information into a succinct summary. Unnecessary detail and pseudo-accuracy should be removed. Instead, simplify information and frame it in realistic terms.
When project managers effectively communicate realis-tic information, they create reasonable expectations—and everyone involved is more likely to view the project as a success. PM
Lynda Bourne, DPM, PMP, is the managing director of Stakeholder Management pty Ltd. and director of training at Mosaic Project Services pty Ltd., both in Australia. Dr. Bourne graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology as the first professional doctor of project management. She is president of the PMI Melbourne Chapter.
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Avoiding jargon and providing realistic data can be the key to effective communication. b y L y n d a b o u r n e , d P M , P M P
GoinG in preparedDevoting sufficient time to planning could save your project from future mishaps. b y r o b e r t o t o L e d o , M b a , P M P , C o n t r i b u t i n g e d i t o r
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>>Unnecessary detail and pseudo-accuracy should be removed. Instead, simplify information and frame it in realistic terms.
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viewpoints
I’ve noticed a surprising trend during the economic downturn: Fewer capital expenditure projects were being sanctioned and funded, but the need for third-party assistance with schedule analysis and
risk assessments actually increased dramatically. This phenomenon indicates a threat to the field of project management—the gradual extinction of the savvy proj-ect scheduler.
Available software tools are more powerful than ever. Although this software provides collaborative, web-based, multi-user capabilities, project managers still struggle to bring projects in successfully under the triple constraint of cost, time and scope.
Project management boils down to “planning the work” and “working the plan.”
Top-Down PlanningCritical path method (CPM) scheduling is the de factostandard for scheduling projects. Estimating durations, sequencing work and assigning resources are all common steps. Yet all too often, project managers who follow this method wind up with a plan that is either unachievable or unrealistic.
A major mistake is to jump straight into the develop-ment of the planned work rather than adopt a more for-mal, top-down approach that better establishes the work breakdown structure (WBS). Project managers should only detail out the work once they have defined the project objectives, elaborated the scope definition and expanded the deliverables.
The WBS of a well-developed schedule should show the entire scope of the project, with the underlying required work encapsulated as activities. Project plans often omit this formal structure, and that oversight inevitably leads to scheduling challenges.
Definitely MaybeHistorically, scheduling has been a deterministic science in which activities have definitive durations and single-point cost estimates. This approach is being replaced by esti-mates that, combined with risk-analysis techniques, give
not only forecasted completion dates, but also confidence levels for the probability that the completion date will be achieved.
The term risk analysis tends to convey the influence of circumstances such as inclement weather or mechani-cal failure. In my experience, I have discovered that 75 percent of the risk exposure within projects actually comes
endangered speciesProject managers need to save scheduling from extinction—and save some projects from failing in the process. b y D a n P a t t e r s o n , P h D , P M P
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>Join the discussion on the Voices on Project Management blog at PMI.org.
Turning good intentions into positive outcomes—that’s what project managers do, said former U.S. President Bill Clinton at PMI Global Congress 2010—North America in October. Go to the blog to read more about his speech and the specific challenges facing project managers in the modern world.
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from scope uncertainty and poorly built schedules—not discrete events captured in a risk register. From a planning perspective, this is actually good news, because scope defi-nition is typically easier to handle and reduce than external risk events. Not only does certainty-based scheduling help pinpoint problem areas within a project, it also gives the team a range of dates to target, rather than a specific day.
Simplifying MattersSitting in a recent project review meeting, I heard a proj-ect manager requesting a copy of the project plan. When the lead project scheduler provided a Gantt chart that listed more than 5,000 activities, the project manager responded, “That’s great, but where’s one that the entire team can understand?”
Excessively detailed schedules can overwhelm project teams. Breaking down a project into grouped activities is the most useful way to analyze costs, schedule, risks and performance. The groups may be disciplines, locations, types of work or phases within the project.
Analysis ParalysisThe ultimate objective of a project plan is to have a target against which to track performance. Project metric analysis goes well beyond applying formulas and calculation to incorporate thresholds and tripwires that give context to the results of the formulas. Does know-ing we have “15 open-ended activities” or “five missed deadlines” really tell us anything meaningful? It would be more useful to know the impact of the open-ended activities, or the cost and schedule implications of the missed deadlines.
The U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency pub-lishes metrics and tripwires as a means of standardizing sched-ule quality checks and setting standards for contractors. Such initiatives are a breath of fresh air to scheduling, and I expect to see similar initiatives across multiple industries in the near future.
But the Goalposts Keep MovingMaintaining an up-to-date schedule is a difficult enough task in the planning phase, but it becomes infinitely more involved during execution.
Project trending can give a more useful indication of performance than simply looking at a single snapshot in time. Many projects track performance trending during execution, but few do so during planning, which is often an iterative process.
If we can plan and forecast the work that is required for project completion and factor in the uncertainties, com-plexities and risks that may occur during execution, then failure will be a thing of the past. This scenario may be easier to describe than to achieve, but adopting the prac-tices above will align project teams to consistently deliver successful results. PM
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raise Your Voice no one knows project management better than you, the prac-titioners “in the trenches.” so PM Network launched its voices on project management column. every month, project managers will share ideas, experiences and opinions on everything from sustainability to talent management, and all points in between. If you’re interested in contributing, please send your idea to [email protected].
Dan Patterson, PhD, PMP, is the ceo and president of Acu-men in Austin, Texas, uSA. He specializes in project analytics, risk management, scheduling, estimat-ing, earned value and artificial intelligence.
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<In This Is sue>Hail to tHe CHief pg. 26
>> as more organizations learn the value of project management, the role of chief project officer, or CPo, is gaining traction.
>> a CPo helps the rest of the executive suite prioritize projects and ensure that all projects in the portfolio align with organizational goals and strategies.
Got talent? pg. 32
>> as world economies attempt to rise out of the recession—with diverse levels of success—the market for project managers is opening up.
>> However, the demand is limited to highly skilled, credentialed project managers who can deliver confidently on complex projects.
HealinG a Community pg. 38
>> the project to build and staff the first hospital in the louisville, Kentucky, uSa area in 25 years came in right on time and nearly uS$3 million under budget.
>> the forward-thinking design focused on maximizing guests’ comfort as well as staff efficiency.
taKinG on tHe tiGer and draGon pg. 44
>> outsourcing stalwarts india and China are facing increasing competition from emerging markets, including ukraine, morocco, Colombia and Vietnam.
>> When evaluating outsourcing destinations for it projects, companies should look at access to talent, maturity, longevity and security.
>> Companies must assess their risk tolerance, as many emerging hotspots come with added dangers.
So, you Want to Be a ConSultant? pg. 56
>> a career as an independent consultant offers appealing advantages, including setting one’s own hours and selecting only the projects one wants to take on.
>> drumming up business will most likely be an ongoing concern, though one job often leads to another.
tHe PeaCe ProCeSS pg. 60
>> Conflict among team members is unavoidable, so project managers should try to defuse any clashes before they derail the project.
>> open communication and a deep understanding of stakeholder concerns can help minimize discord.
key takeaways
““We wanted an entirely new-concept hospital that was designed and built on new thinking—from what the patients and guests optimally wanted in a healthcare experi-ence, to what the physi-cians and staff desired in functionality and maximally efficient work processes.”—Stephen A. Williams, Norton Healthcare, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
US$2.9 millionThe amount the project was delivered under budget
38
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<In This Is sue>>>Outsourcing can carry hidden costs, and those must be included in any analysis. It is therefore important to define your overall busi-ness objectives first and identify what you expect to save or achieve in out-sourcing. You are then in a much better position to assess the benefits and risks of each destination. —J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, ESI International, New York City, New York, USA
PG. 46
december 2010
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”
The real effect of having a project offi-cer at the top level of the company is to surface the challenges that project managers have experienced for time immemorial, and to help negotiate bar-riers to getting proj-ects selected and then completed effectively. —Chris Vandersluis, HMS Software, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
PG. 29
“We wanted an entirely new-concept hospital that was designed and built on new thinking—from what the patients and guests optimally wanted in a healthcare experi-ence, to what the physi-cians and staff desired in functionality and maximally efficient work processes.”—Stephen A. Williams, Norton Healthcare, Louisville, Kentucky, USA
december 2010 PM NETWORK 25
Marcelo Andrade, PMP, Eficia Consulting ...................................................... 56Raúl Bellomusto, PMP, UADE (Universidad Argentina de la Empresa) ......... 36Russ Boreham, T-Impact ...................................... 35Angela Brown, Bright Umbrella ..........................37Doug Brown, Brown-Wilson Group Inc. ..........48Brigitte Cobb, BMI Healthcare ..............................51Alexandra Deutsch, Out There Media ............... 28Nancy Dewhirst, BT ................................................37Lalit Dhingra, NIIT Technologies .........................46Lisa DiTullio, Your Project Office ........................ 58Arkadiy Dobkin, EPAM Systems ........................ 55Balazs Fejes, EPAM Systems .............................50Erika Flora, PMP, PgMP, Beyond20 ................. 36Melanie Franklin, Maven Training ....................... 35Dave Glowacki, LexisNexis Risk Solutions ..................................... 28Carl Godell, PMP, CJL Communications Inc. .................................... 58Mattias Hällström, Projectplace .......................... 35Don Jones, BDO .....................................................46Craig Jordan, ESI International ........................... 34Hemanshu Joshi, Global Information Technology ............................ 34Cláudio Kindlé, Clip Engenharia .......................... 29Kurt Kohorst, Liberty Mutual Agency Markets ...................................................... 47Fábio Laranjeira Bernardes, CTEEP (Companhia de Transmissão de Energia Elétrica Paulista) ..................................... 64Pablo Lewin, BASF ................................................ 36
Dmitry Maizet, EPAM Systems ........................... 54Crowe Mead, PMP, Calico Energy Services .........................................48John Megibben, Messer/TMG ............................40Jonathan Meyer, Ipreo .......................................... 53Bill Neuguth ...............................................................37Roberto Newton Carneiro, Comgás ................... 17Mary Osswald, Kamehameha Schools ............. 62Marcello Patrese, PMP, PMT Group ................. 62Peter Ryan, Ovum ..................................................46Charles Ryder, PMP, Kennedy Ryder ............... 58Pedro Serrador, PMP, Serrador Consulting ...............................................48Johann Swart, PMP, Airports Company South Africa ......................... 35Roman Trakhtenberg, Luxoft ...............................48Chris Vandersluis, HMS Software ..................... 28Pattie Vargas, PMP, The Vargas Group ........... 56Tathagat Varma, Yahoo! .........................................37J LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, ESI International ......................................................46 Ngozi Watts, WMS .................................................. 62Janice Weaver, PMP, Norton Healthcare ..................................................40Mark Westcombe, Lancaster University Management School .............................................. 35Stephen A. Williams, Norton Healthcare ..................................................40Janet Yackey, PMP, Norton Healthcare ...........42David Zahn, Zahn Consulting ...............................59
PEOPlE PagE PEOPlE PagE
ORgaNizaTiONs PagEAirports Company South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa ............................... 35BASF, Santiago, Chile ........................................... 36BDO, San Jose, California, USA ........................46Beyond20, San Diego, California, USA .................................. 36BMI Healthcare, London, England ......................51 Bright Umbrella, Wellington, New Zealand .......................................37Brown-Wilson Group Inc., Clearwater, Florida, USA .....................................48 BT, Singapore ...........................................................37Calico Energy Services, Seattle, Washington, USA .....................................48 CJL Communications Inc., West Bloomfield, Michigan, USA ........................ 58 Clip Engenharia, Belo Horizonte, Brazil ............................................ 29 Comgás, Sao Paulo, Brazil .................................... 17CTEEP (Companhia de Transmissão de Energia Elétrica Paulista), Sao Paulo, Brazil ..................................................... 64 Eficia Consulting, Uberlândia, Brazil .................. 56EPAM Systems, Budapest, Hungary .................50EPAM Systems, Kiev, Ukraine ............................ 53ESI International, Dubai, United Arab Emirates ............................... 34ESI International, Washington, D.C., USA ..........................................46Global Information Technology, Dubai, United Arab Emirates ............................... 34HMS Software, Montreal, Quebec, Canada ................................... 28 Ipreo, New York, New York, USA ...................... 53Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA .......................................... 62
Kennedy Ryder, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ........................................ 58Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, Lancashire, England .......... 35LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Boca Raton, Florida, USA .................................... 28 Liberty Mutual Agency Markets, Seattle, Washington, USA ................................... 47Luxoft, New York, New York, USA ....................48Maven Training, London, England ...................... 35Messer/TMG, Louisville, Kentucky, USA .....................................40NIIT Technologies, Atlanta, Georgia, USA ............................................46 Norton Healthcare, Louisville, Kentucky, USA .....................................40Out There Media, Vienna, Austria ...................... 28Ovum, Montreal, Quebec, Canada .....................46PMT Group, Trento, Italy ....................................... 62Projectplace, Stockholm, Sweden ..................... 35Serrador Project Management, Toronto, Ontario, Canada ......................................48T-Impact, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England ............................................. 35UADE (Universidad Argentina de la Empresa), Buenos Aires, Argentina ................. 36 The Vargas Group, San Diego, California, USA ........................................................ 56WMS, Chicago, Illinois, USA ................................ 62Yahoo!, Bangalore, India ........................................37Your Project Office, Cohasset, Massachusetts, USA .............................................. 58Zahn Consulting, Wallingford, Connecticut, USA .....................................................59
ORgaNizaTiONs PagE
US$2.9 millionThe amount the project was delivered under budget
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by Sandra a. SwanSon
illuStration by matt kenyon
hail
chiefto the
there’s a big gap between the executive suite and project managers—and that’s where chief project officers can help.
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ne of the lesser-known additions to the alphabet soup of executive titles is gaining traction. The CPO, or chief project officer, is becoming a common fixture amidst the respected ranks of
CEO, COO, CIO and the like.
“Not long ago, no one had ever heard of a chief
project officer,” says Chris Vandersluis, CEO of HMS Software, a project management software provider, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
“But it’s becoming more and more common in large organizations as the value of managing projects becomes more mainstream,” says Mr. Vander-sluis, who also teaches advanced project management at McGill University in Montreal.
Part of the credit goes to the wildly chaotic business landscape.
“The need to adapt to changing requirements—and a world that is
always moving faster—is increasing,” says Alexandra Deutsch, CPO at Out There Media, a mobile phone advertis-ing company headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
With a shifting array of options like offshoring and cloud computing, com-panies want to know what will work. And CPOs are there to help.
“The more diverse business options become, the more critical it becomes for someone to bring it all together and help executives understand what needs to be decided in order to remain aligned with strategy,” says Dave Glowacki, vice president of product engineering at LexisNexis Risk Solu-tions, a division of the research database provider, Boca Raton, Florida, USA. Although he doesn’t have the CPO title, Mr. Glowacki’s responsibilities include strategic alignment, and the program management office reports to him.
For the CPO, it’s not only about delivering projects on time and on budget. Companies want someone who can optimize project delivery in times
>>Friends in HigH PlacesWith a CPO in the executive suite, project management often receives an
elevated status at an organization. That won’t automatically guarantee buy-in
for projects—but aligning with the CPO can be a smart career move for project
managers.
And it shouldn’t be too hard to get his or her attention.
“The big thing project managers have is information,” says Dave Glowacki,
LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Boca Raton, Florida, USA. “They have all this macro
and micro information that the CPO needs and that really nobody else has. Provide
information that helps the CPO’s ability to pick out and see the key issues.”
To forge a relationship with CPOs, project managers have to be able to articulate
how their projects align with strategy.
They must learn to adapt to different business priorities within the organiza-
tion’s hierarchy, says Cláudio Kindlé, Clip Engenharia, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
“Project managers face the challenge of knowing how to travel from the details
needed by the operational levels to the macro vision required by the CPOs and
CEOs day-to-day,” he says.
O
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of scarce resources and ensure the trans-parent prioritization of projects, Ms. Deutsch says.
And those project professionals who can deliver are moving into the once-elusive upper echelons of management.
carving Out a nicheAlthough companies increasingly rec-ognize the need for CPOs, some have an exaggerated vision of their mission—to put it mildly.
“Companies expect the naming of a chief project officer to ensure that all projects will now be completed on time and on budget,” Mr. Vandersluis says.
Obviously, it’s not that easy.“The real effect of having a project
officer at the top level of the company is to surface the challenges that project managers have experienced for time immemorial, and to help negotiate bar-riers to getting projects selected and then completed effectively,” he explains.
Being a part of the executive suite does give CPOs the power to make meaningful changes in their organiza-tions.
“A CPO can be instrumental in introducing project selection think-ing and methods for senior executives to choose projects that have a better chance of delivering business value to the organization,” Mr. Vandersluis says.
Part of that can be helping to imple-ment project management guidelines and methodologies that foster business success, though their importance will vary based on an organization’s needs.
Training processes rank high for Cláudio Kindlé, CPO at Clip Engen-haria, a civil construction firm in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
“In the industry where I work—civil construction—there is a lack of workers qualified with management skills,” he says. “Training procedures drive more results than all of the others. The most important quality for an effective CPO concerns being a teacher of teachers.”
The process entails spreading knowl-edge about project management as well
as related subjects, such as business, management and technology. “Proj-ect management is multidisciplinary work,” Mr. Kindlé says.
guiding LightCPOs often make powerful ambassa-dors for raising the visibility of the orga-nization’s project management culture to the very top levels of management.
“In some organizations, project management has not had to weave itself into the corporate structure,” says Mr. Vandersluis. “But the existence of a
The need to adapt to changing requirements— and a world that is always moving faster— is increasing.—Alexandra Deutsch, Out There Media, Vienna, Austria.
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CPO brings project management into the mainstream business thinking.”
To play that guiding role, though, CPOs require more than conventional project management know-how and tools. They also need a macro view of the business.
“You don’t have to be an expert in every business vertical,” Mr. Glowacki says. But you do need the expertise to understand how resources interplay, for example. “A lot of my role is about set-ting the table for senior executives so they can make the decisions to ensure
that we’re effectively executing on the strategy,” he says.
CPOs should help their fellow upper managers comprehend what the most relevant project management issues are—without a lot of technical jargon.
“The biggest mistake I see people make is that the information passed up to senior executives is way too compli-cated,” Mr. Glowacki says.
It’s an understandable misstep because project management thrives on attention to detail. But that minutia isn’t necessary at the executive level. CPOs must focus on distilling key take-aways for an executive audience.
“LexisNexis Risk Solutions will deliver probably 300 to 400 projects in a year,” Mr. Glowacki says. “And literally, for all the business verticals, I’ll give them enough information on four pages of paper.”
This report offers a visual portfolio view that reveals the projects’ progress, followed by a summary of the key points.
A CPO must also know when to raise concerns about a project and—just as importantly—when to take a wait-and-see approach.
“There may be situations when something’s gone red, and you’re meet-
A CPO can be instrumental in intro-
ducing project selection thinking and methods for senior executives
to choose projects that have a better
chance of delivering business value to the
organization.—Chris Vandersluis, HMS Software,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
>TIPcPOs can ease the tension that often exists in a matrix organization. The organizational structure and the project or work structure can find themselves at odds. At a software company, for instance, a project manager must go through a laundry list of departments, including design, programming, quality assurance, documentation and marketing.
“Matrix organizations are inherently at conflict,” says Chris Vandersluis, HMS Software, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, “and it is the most popular organizational structure for com-panies in a wide range of industries. A CPO can help balance the pull from both sides of that matrix.”
For example, a CPO should negotiate resource conflicts and create processes so the resource side of the matrix knows how to prioritize what the project side of the matrix requires, and vice versa. “The CPO can establish and foster lines of communication between parts of the organization, such as department managers and project managers, who might otherwise not have any direct contact,” he adds.
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ing with the owner of that business to talk about it and you both decide, ‘We’ve got a good handle on it—there’s no need to share that. And if it doesn’t turn around in a week or two, then we’ll share it,’” Mr. Glowacki says.
It’s all part of keeping things simple at the top.
“A lot of things get vetted below,” he explains, “and that’s how you want it. You only want the critical stuff coming up to the executive level.”
To truly be in tune with business strategy and the executive mindset, Mr. Glowacki cautions project professionals not to look at process in a silo.
“I find that escalation occurs when
you look at problems individually and you say, ‘We’re going to fix this by add-ing a process.’ Then the next problem comes up, and you fix that one by add-ing a process,” he says.
Troubleshooting in this manner can lead to process overload. “Before you know it, there’s so much process that you may be perceived as just slowing everything down,” Mr. Glowacki says. “You lose value.”
Executed correctly, though, the role of a CPO takes project management to the next level, bridging the gap between the executive suite and project teams.
Make room at the conference table. The CPO is here is stay. PM
>>The ROI Of CPOs and PMOsSome CPOs are also in charge of the project management office (PMO).
Dave Glowacki runs the PMO at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Boca Raton,
Florida, USA. While he doesn’t have the official CPO title, he performs many of
the same responsibilities, including helping senior executives tie strategy to the
project portfolio.
“We looked at our PMO and said, ‘If there were four things we wanted everyone
we work with to take away from the PMO, what would those things be?’” he says.
The decided on the following: n Partner. Team up with technical management on one side, and the product
management and business unit on the other. “This is opposed to a ‘throw it
over the wall’ kind of approach or even a subordinate type of relationship,”
Mr. Glowacki says.
n Focus. Provide clearly defined goals for the organization through controlling
scope creep, driving the priority setting, and choosing the number and type of
projects requested across the organization in alignment with its strategy.
n Urgency. Drive the organization and the various deliverables aggressively. For
LexisNexis, time to market is critical.
n deliver. Follow through on what the PMO has committed to.
His team has taken to calling these strategic elements “PFUD.”
“PFUD is the essence of what we strive to achieve in the PMO. How we operate
and evolve is centered around these four descriptors,” Mr. Glowacki says.
“I’m not crazy about the term,” he adds, laughing, “but it’s definitely memorable.”
In fact, those who work for the PMO wear that credo on their sleeves—literally.
They have polo shirts with PFUD embroidered on the arm.
That helps drive home the point for the rest of the company.
“The message is clear,” Mr. Glowacki says. “This is what we’re about, and if we
don’t do these four things, then we’re not doing our job.”
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gottalent?
Companies around the globe are hiring again. Project managers without experi ence or standout skills need not apply.
b y S i m o n K e n t
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talent?Companies around the globe are hiring again. Project managers without experi ence or standout skills need not apply.
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Hope is on the horizon. After more than a year of tight budgets and proj-ects that were delayed or cancelled, job opportunities are appearing for project professionals. What’s more, there is now a real drive toward creating and exploiting untapped markets and push-ing new products and services.
In some regions, project managers on the job hunt will be able to ride the crest of the revived economic wave. But wherever project managers are required, the demand for high-quality skills fol-lows in the wake. To get hired, it helps to have delivered projects across mul-tiple countries, and to have helmed projects that key into an organization’s strategic aims and deliver substantial ROI. Furthermore, many organizations are requiring project managers to hold a credential.
Check out our regional breakdown of where practitioners can expect to see job growth this year:
The middle easTStill recovering from the effects of the global recession, most of the Mid-dle East continues to engage in proj-ect activities—albeit cautiously. The United Arab Emirates’ GDP is forecast to expand by 3.2 percent this year, buoyed up by crude oil prices, accord-ing to Minister of Economy Sultan bin Saeed al-Mansouri.
Demand for project management skills is “higher than average, with a number of megaprojects going on in the region,” says Craig Jordan, Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based business development regional manager at ESI International, a project management consultancy.
In Abu Dhabi, developers and execu-tives are reviewing large-scale construc-tion initiatives like the MGM Grand Abu Dhabi hotel and Sowwah Square business district to ensure that the proj-ect plans align with the city’s economic realities.
Look to a couple of standout nations in the region for burgeoning opportu-nities for project professionals. “The United Arab Emirates was at a peak of economic activity prior to the recession period,” says Hemanshu Joshi, project manager at Global Information Tech-nology, an IT software development and consulting company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “Now economic activities have shifted to Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
But the job market in the Middle East heavily favors experienced project managers over beginners.
“It’s a boom time for well-qualified project managers, but it’s not the mass market for project managers that it was a couple of years ago,” Mr. Jordan says. “A lot of underqualified resources have been driven out, so the overall quality of people is better.”
And there’s no time for training or learning on the job, Mr. Joshi adds. “This region has preference for experi-enced project managers. Environment and competition demand direct usage of skills,” he says.
africaAfrica experienced a GDP growth of 1.6 percent in 2009, but this year has proved much more promis-ing. The continent is expect-ing its GDP to grow by 4.3 percent in 2010, accord-
ing to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union Commission.
In the northern part of the continent, Libya plans to spend US$500 billion over the next decade on an array of projects to improve housing, hotels, hos-pitals, education facilities, infrastructure,
In Tanzania, foreign investment rose by 8.5 percent to US$700 million in 2010.
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ports, airports and security, providing numerous employment opportunities for project and program managers.
Farther south, in Tanzania, for-eign investment rose by 8.5 percent to US$700 million in 2010, thanks in part to the removal of import duties on construction materials. The increased foreign funds are expected to boost infrastructure and mining projects in the East African nation. Already, two large hotels are being refurbished, and gold, uranium and iron ore mines have begun operations.
During the recession, many contracts were terminated or not renewed, put-ting numerous project managers out of work. That has left the African market flooded with applicants, says Johann Swart, PMP, project manager, Airports Company South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa.
As confidence builds throughout the continent, companies will start spend-ing money again, he says. That means more projects and more career oppor-tunities. As in the Middle East, hiring managers want candidates to have some on-the-job experience. “Now is not really a good time to start a project career,” Mr. Swart says. “There are still a lot of experienced project managers out there looking for jobs.”
Organizations can be picky about who they recruit and currently are targeting project managers who can offer specialized skills in areas such as enterprise resource planning, finance and banking, he adds.
europeDespite some economies in Europe coming close to collapse, the European Commission increased its GDP growth to 1.7 percent in 2010, a slight bump from earlier predictions. Faced with a huge budget deficit, though, the United Kingdom’s new coalition government has made drastic cuts to spending, thus ending the perception of the public sector as a lucrative and safe area for project work.
Projects in the region’s private sector have moved from delivering efficiency to delivering revenue. “It’s about finding new routes to market and generat-ing new customers,” says Melanie Franklin, CEO of Maven Training, a project, program, change and risk-management consultancy in London, England. “Organizations have done cost efficien-cies and are now looking at the external picture.”
While there have been noticeable increases in projects that require skilled project managers, it’s too early to say if the effects of the recession have passed, says Russ Bore-ham, project management recruitment partner at T-Impact, a project manage-ment and business process management consultancy in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England. “The recession has left many hiring managers with the lasting view that top-quality resources are available at rock-bottom prices, which simply isn’t the case anymore,” he says.
There are trends emerging in the European project management job market, says Mattias Hällström, direc-tor of research and development and cofounder of Projectplace, a project management software and collaboration company in Stockholm, Sweden. The use of lean management techniques, the end of command-and-control lead-ership and the increased influence of behavioral science all have emerged as powerful new influencers. Project man-agers are also using social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn to find work.
These and other project manage-ment skills are more recognized in Europe than they have been in previ-ous years, attests Mark Westcombe, program director of the project man-agement degree program at Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. Job
Organizations have done cost efficiencies and are now looking at the external picture.—Melanie Franklin, Maven Training, London, England
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seekers with a project man-agement background or certification are more attrac-tive than business managers. “The terms project and proj-ect manager are being used everywhere,” he says. “This shift is due to recognition of the diverse elements proj-ect managers must account for within their positions. They are not just deliver-ing an objective. They are accounting for the reaction of numerous stakeholders and taking responsibility for an initiative that could last for many years,” he says.
North AmericA An 8.8 percent jump in the United States GDP from January 2009 to Sep-tember 2010 seemed to indicate that the worst was over.
In October, the U.S. government emphasized its commitment to infra-structure projects that will help improve the economy and create jobs for project managers and team members.
“We need a new plan for America’s roads, rails and runways for the long term,” U.S. President Barack Obama said at a press conference. “Over the next six years, we will rebuild 150,000 miles (241,402 kilometers) of our roads, enough to circle the world six times. We will lay and maintain 4,000 miles (6,437 kilometers) of our railways, enough to stretch coast-to-coast. And we will restore 150 miles (241 kilometers) of runways and advance a next-generation air-traffic control system, reducing delays.”
There has been a definite upturn in demand for project managers, says Erika Flora, PMP, PgMP, principal at Beyond20, an IT service management firm in San Diego, California, USA. “In the last few months, I have personally seen an increase in the number of proj-ect management opportunities that have come across my desk,” she says. “Nearly
all of the opportunities mention the Proj-ect Management Professional (PMP)® credential. Although some opportunities may say ‘PMP preferred,’ in the current economy, PMP® certification is becoming a must-have rather than a nice-to-have.”
Organizations are also narrowing the scope of what they’re looking for in a project manager. “More and more oppor-tunities ask for specific areas of focus, particularly within IT,” Ms. Flora adds.
LAtiN AmericAThe region is rebounding impressively from the effects of the global recession, according to a report by the Organisa-tion for Economic Co-operation and Development. Despite a 3.6 percent GDP decrease in 2009, forecasters expect substantial growth this year. Moreover, those countries that have opened themselves up to international competition over the past decade have actually been more resilient in the face of the global downturn.
Plenty of opportunities for project professionals have cropped up.
“The level of demand is high,” says Raúl Bellomusto, PMP, freelance con-sultant and professor of project manage-ment at UADE (Universidad Argentina de la Empresa), Buenos Aires, Argen-tina. “Without a doubt, the main sector is IT,” he says. “The consultant industry is in a good place, as is the set-up of project management offices and project recoveries.”
In Chile, demand for PMP creden-tial holders is about 3,000 in a country where there are only 260 or so profes-sionals with the qualification, estimates Pablo Lewin, IT project consultant at the chemical company BASF in San-tiago, Chile. “I’ve seen telecom com-panies hiring project managers from Argentina, Colombia and the United States because of experience and certifi-cation,” he explains.
“The country and most industries have realized that project management is a profession and not a specialization,” Mr. Lewin adds.
There’s no substitute for
real experience that comes
only with years of solving
complex problems.
—Tathagat Varma, Yahoo!, Bangalore, India
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Although the economic crisis hit the IT industry hard in 2009, organizations began to make serious investments in technology again around the middle of this year.
AsiA PAcificWhile other parts of the world are cau-tiously optimistic about the economic recovery and consequent job prospects, Asia Pacific is full-steam ahead. In fact, some business leaders in India have to be reminded that the rest of the world has been experiencing a recession, says Tathagat Varma, senior director of busi-ness operations of Yahoo!, Bangalore, India. Still, “there is a serious short-age of qualified and well-experienced project managers across all industries,” he says. “There’s no substitute for real experience that comes only with years of solving complex problems.”
Projects are in the works across India in IT, infrastructure, real estate, utilities, hospitality and travel. More-over, the country is moving away from simply being seen as an efficient loca-tion for outsourcing. “Businesses are now taking on the high end of the problem set,” according to Mr. Varma. As they initiate more strategic and challenging projects, they’re seeking out a greater level of project manage-ment talent.
“There are a multitude of sectors that we see as growth areas, including tele-communications, banking, finance and manufacturing,” says Nancy Dewhirst, Asia Pacific operations manager for portfolio and service design at the Brit-ish telecom company BT, Singapore.
“Demand for talented project man-agers is very high and increasing all the time in Asia Pacific,” she adds. “There is specific demand around technology experience as well as the ability to inter-face effectively with customers.”
Other highly coveted skill sets for project managers include business Eng-lish and local language capabilities, in addition to a high level of experience and certifications.
Cancelled projects in the region are being restarted. In some cases, organiza-tions have raided other companies for talent, luring employees away with high pay, bonuses and other incentives.
Clients, particularly in the banking sector, are being precise with their per-sonnel demands, adds Bill Neuguth, an independent project management con-sultant in Hong Kong. “There is a lot of demand with very specific skills, and project managers are routinely brought in from overseas,” he says, though, “probably 98 percent of posi-tions are filled locally.”
There is strong demand for project management skills across sectors, says Angela Brown, general manager and consultant at Bright Umbrella, a project management con-sultancy in Wellington, New Zealand. “Organizations are still developing new products, offering new services, heading off competition, becoming more efficient, cost-cutting, amalgamating and so on. There is plenty of activ-ity across the health sector, city and regional councils, exporters, manufactur-ers, banks and financial areas. Even the construction sector is starting to call for project managers after going very quiet during the recession.”
While many industries—and unem-ployed project managers—are still feel-ing the effects of the recession, there’s a marked increase in demand for the profession around the globe. Regions most affected by the economic crisis, such as Europe and North America, continue to straggle. Other parts of the world, including Latin America and Asia Pacific, have recovered earlier.
As the need for project profession-als increases, however, hiring managers are raising their standards for the skills, experience and credentials they expect from their candidates. PM
An 8.8 percent jump in the United States GDP from January 2009 to September 2010 seemed to indicate that the worst was over.
>> Find your next job at CareerHQ.pmi.org.
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HEALING A COMMUNITY
A healthy dose of communication helps a team bring in a hospital construction project right on time and US$2.9 million under budget.
from left, Stephen A. Williams; Janet Yackey, PMP; Doug Winkelhake; Teresa Stroud; Janice Weaver, PMP
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HEALING A COMMUNITYB Y B . G . Y O V O V I C H / / P H O T O B Y N A T H A N W E B E R
P M I 2 0 1 0 P R O J E C T O F T H E Y E A R F I N A L I S T
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The eastern part of Jefferson County in the Louisville, Kentucky, USA metro area had experienced rapid growth, and it became clear that the community needed a new medical facility. A home-town healthcare giant offered a remedy: the city’s first new hospital in 25 years.
Norton Healthcare has a network of five hospitals and 11 immediate-care centers. But executives at the not-for-profit organization were determined to make this project unlike anything that came before.
“In the past, hospitals were designed primarily around the healthcare pro-cesses and the convenience of the hos-pital staff and physicians. The design frequently is not the most conducive to the patients, families and guests they serve,” says Stephen A. Williams, presi-dent and CEO of Norton Healthcare. “We wanted an entirely new-concept hospital that was designed and built on new thinking—from what the patients and guests optimally wanted in a health-care experience, to what the physicians and staff desired in functionality and maximally efficient work processes.
“The entire initiative was a tremen-dous challenge in that we would not allow the planners to bring any tradi-
tional designs, programs, job descrip-tions or work processes to the job,” he explains.
One such innovation is the emphasis on peace and quiet. There’s no tradi-tional overhead paging system; instead, staff communicate via wireless devices. In addition, carpeted hallways help reduce noise.
Like any project sponsors, though, the Norton executive team also wanted the project delivered on time and within budget. With funding approved in 2005, the team set to work combining construction, IT and training expertise.
In SyncMesser/TMG, a local firm, began con-struction on the 298,000-square-foot (27,685-square-meter) Norton Browns-boro Hospital in July 2007.
A construction project of this nature usually takes 30 months to complete, says John Megibben, senior project exec-utive at Messer/TMG. The hospital’s schedule was accelerated to 23 months.
“At the same time that the construc-tion was heading down its path, we also had the staffing of the hospital heading down its path,” says Janice Weaver, PMP, who led the US$146.3 million project.
>>Cost CuttersNorton Healthcare went in with a bold vision of a cutting-edge hospital—but it
had to do so with a fixed budget of US$146.3 million.
“The first construction cost iteration was over-budget,” says John megibben,
Messer/TMG, the Louisville, Kentucky, USA commercial construction company
working on the hospital project.
The team scrutinized all major aspects of the building, taking out the “nice-to-
haves”—such as a clear cover over the rooftop garden and Italian wall tiles—and
downsizing other features to keep the price down.
“For example, the parapet was originally designed to be 36 inches (0.9
meters). To reduce costs, the parapet was changed to 18 inches (0.5 meters),
with the understanding that workers would need to take special precautions
when working on the roof for safety,” Mr. Megibben says.
t
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On the technology front, the facility was being equipped with IT systems used in other parts of the Norton net-work, as well as 12 new systems, says Ms. Weaver, associate vice president of Norton Healthcare’s enterprise program management office (PMO).
The staffing, training and IT sub-projects proceeded along their own trajectories and timetables. Still, they needed to come together and “go through integrated testing to make sure that everything would work when the hospital opened its doors,” she says. “And that really kept me awake at night.”
Given how tightly the subprojects were interwoven, the team realized it didn’t do any good to finish ahead of schedule.
“When you are opening a healthcare facility, and the marketing department is putting up billboards that say it is going to open on August 26, it does no good to open on August 20,” Ms. Weaver says. “It has to be on schedule, and it is important for everyone to fin-ish together.”
A mAtter of trustFor all the pieces to come together, effective communications and trust had to be established right from the start.
“From our very first meeting, we talked about how we work together as a team,” Ms. Weaver says. “We had to make sure that when issues came up, we would nip those things in the bud. Any type of issue, if left on its own, could become a major roadblock. And we could not allow that. We did not have time for it.”
Ms. Weaver implemented manda-tory, weekly project-integration meet-ings for all 15-plus members of the project leadership team.
If someone couldn’t attend, he or she would be teleconferenced in—but “the strong preference was that they physi-cally attend in person,” Ms. Weaver says. “Yes, you can hear people on a conference call, but the personal rela-
tionship is fuller in an in-person meet-ing. You can read body language and find out about concerns that you might not learn on a phone call. It makes it easier to ward off a problem.”
When trust is established, project leaders don’t have to micro-manage and can let project managers and team members work autonomously.
“I had a wonderful person who was responsible for the technology infra-structure,” she says. “I had total confi-dence in that project manager, so I did not go and look after her work. The same thing with construction. I felt totally comfortable with our construc-tion company. I literally trusted my life to those people.”
>>Healing Regimedecember 2005 ............... Funding approved
september 2006 .............. Program manager assigned
december 2006 ............... Construction contract awarded
february 2007 ................. Subject matter experts solicited Design planned
July 2007.......................... Groundbreaking ceremony
August 2007 ..................... Interior design approved
November 2007 ............... IT requirements discussed
february 2008 ................. Hospital processes defined
April 2008 ........................ IT subprojects launched
June 2008 ........................ Staff training and education planned
september 2008 .............. Construction and operational schedules integrated
december 2008 ............... Medical equipment begins arriving
April 2009 ........................ Employee training starts
may 2009 .......................... Monthly departmental readiness assessments begin Nursing units placed on IT system
July 2009 ......................... Construction complete IT integration testing
August 2009..................... IT infrastructure and staff training complete
26 August 2009 .............. Norton Brownsboro Hospital opens
>> the search Is onKnow of a particularly impressive project? Nominate it for the PMI 2011 Project of the Year Award. Learn more at PMI.org.
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Ms. Weaver didn’t rule with an iron fist. Instead, she offered support and made herself available to the team.
“Project managers knew that they could come to me to be a resource in case they hit a roadblock that they could not resolve on their own,” Ms. Weaver says.
Part of the trust she had in her team was based on prior work together. “Most of the team had already been on a project that we had managed, so they
came into the project knowing what to expect,” she says.
One of Ms. Weaver’s most impor-tant relationships was with Janet Yackey, PMP, director of enterprise project management at Norton Healthcare.
“Janet was a lifesaver,” says Ms. Weaver, who cast Ms. Yackey as her personal “backup.” When Ms. Weaver required back surgery less than three weeks before the project was slated to close, for example, Ms. Yackey stepped in to wrap up everything.
In the earlier stages of the project, Ms. Yackey also proved her mettle, leading a group walk-through of the entire facility every Tuesday morning.
“The walk-throughs enabled us to make little corrections as they were happening, when it was less expensive to make the change,” Ms. Yackey says.
They also helped avoid major prob-lems that easily could have caused significant costs and project delays. In one instance, Ms. Yackey recalls try-ing to schedule the vendors to install the patient-monitoring equipment in the nursing stations. She realized she’d need a new plan when the walk-
This is the largest, most complicated project with
which I have been involved. It all came together when
everyone walked across the finish line and
we opened our doors. It was just awesome.
—Janice Weaver, PMP
>> Watch our video for an inside look at this project. Only on PMI.org/PMNetwork
PMN1210 26-51.indd 42 11/15/10 11:25 AM
december 2010 PM NETWORK 43
through revealed that the station coun-ters weren’t in place—which obviously meant the monitoring equipment would have to wait.
Working in a sector rife with regu-lations also added some wrinkles. For example, the team had to obtain certifi-cates of need to make many of the numer-ous adjustments and scope changes that are common in a project of this size. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a state government agency that adminis-ters programs to promote the mental and physical health of Kentuckians, requires these certificates to manage services and costs of healthcare.
“You would not believe all of the agencies—dozens and dozens of agencies—from whom you have to get approvals for changes,” Ms. Weaver says.
Putting in Face timeOnce staff training began in Janu-ary 2009, the team’s weekly meet-ings evolved to include stakeholders such as new directors and managers. Stakeholder participation in meetings helped ensure a smooth transition from the project close to operations. In too many projects, Ms. Weaver says, “if you get the business owners involved at all, it usually is at the end.”
Three months before launch, she had the hospital’s new managers fill out a readiness assessment. Based on their answers, she could gauge how comfortable they were with all of the deliverables, including staffing and IT issues. The form asked for one of three easily identifiable responses: n A sad face: “I am totally unhappy.”n A neutral face: “It’s getting there.”n A smiley face: “I am ecstatic—it’s
done, and we are ready to go.”“I knew that 90 days out, I would see
a lot of unhappy faces, but it was a great way to get the business owners involved, and when they had an issue, it was docu-mented and could be addressed,” Ms. Weaver says.
She also knew she had to keep gov-ernment officials in the loop, which
meant flagging monthly project reports as high priority for her team.
“I explained to my team that it is not just a matter of me wanting the report,” Ms. Weaver says. “I need it to create the overall program progress report that goes to all the key stake-holders, which includes our vice presi-dent of strategic planning, who has to report to the state every six months.”
The combination of monthly project reports and weekly integra-tion meetings “provided the sufficient amount of communication structure that I needed to feel comfortable that things were under control,” she says.
crossing the Finish Line togetherThe Norton Brownsboro Hospital project was delivered on time and US$2.9 million under budget. The acute-care facility, with 127 beds and eight operating rooms, opened at 6 a.m. on 26 August 2009.
“This is the largest, most compli-cated project with which I have been involved,” Ms. Weaver says. “It all came together when everyone walked across the finish line and we opened our doors. It was just awesome.”
The goal was to have 85 percent of the nursing and ancillary positions filled by the time the hospital opened its doors. The project team surpassed this benchmark, with 98.5 percent of the nursing staff and 98 percent of the ancillary employee slots filled.
The medical center wasted no time proving its value to the community: The first surgery patient showed up for a bilateral total hip replacement, and an emergency patient arrived at 11:48 a.m.
And Norton’s CEO, for one, knows it couldn’t have happened without project management.
“Simply put, the project would have been impossible to have been achieved without our project manage-ment staff,” Mr. Williams says. “They achieved a result which exceeded everyone’s expectations.” PM
700The number of
employees to be hired and trained before the
hospital opened
US$146.3 million
The project budget
US$2.9 millionThe amount the
project was delivered under budget
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tigerPMN1210 26-51.indd 44 11/15/10 11:25 AM
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by Sarah FiSter Gale >> illuStration by Stephanie Wunderlich
tigerand dragon
taking on the
Outsourcing’s reigning powers face fierce new competition—though their upstart rivals come with some very real risks.
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The iron grip that China and India have held over outsourcing projects is loosening—and fast.
For one thing, neither the tiger nor the dragon is as cheap as they once were. In India, the brutal competition for talent helped send the cost of labor soaring over 100 percent in 2008, says Don Jones, international tax partner at global accounting firm BDO, San Jose, California, USA.
Rising costs combined with politi-cal discord in both India and China have given vendors in more obscure locations their big shot at luring in budget-conscious clients. With still-high unemployment rates, even the United States is emerging as an option for some North American companies looking to keep projects close to home.
“Since the economic drop in 2008, many companies are rethinking their outsourcing strategies,” Mr. Jones says.
Vietnam, Mexico, Egypt and Ukraine are just a few of the more promising upstarts. Yet Mr. Jones has heard many cautionary tales of companies that have moved all their outsourcing projects to one of the up-and-comers, only to watch them floun-der due to poor project management and a lack of experienced talent.
“They eventually gave up and went back to the traditional outsourcing locations like India,” he says.
Such failures are why many of the outsourcing companies in India and China aren’t worried about these new global players, says Lalit Dhingra, the Atlanta, Georgia, USA-based president of NIIT Technologies, a global IT services firm. “Everyone has technol-ogy, but it’s the companies that bring deeper knowledge of an industry that add value,” he says. “Because at the end of the day, even if you get a lower price from a new vendor, if you’re not getting the work done right, it still costs you more. Smart CIOs know that.”
That’s not to say companies should patently reject new outsourcing desti-nations. Rather, they have to proceed
with caution, says J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, executive vice president at ESI International, a consultancy in New York, New York, USA.
“Most companies outsource projects to save money,” he says. “However, out-sourcing can carry hidden costs, and those must be included in any analysis. It is therefore important to define your overall business objectives first and identify what you expect to save or achieve in outsourcing. You are then in a much better position to assess the benefits and risks of each destination.”
The first step is to evaluate the orga-nization’s risk tolerance around issues such as political instability, inexperi-enced talent pools or less-developed infrastructure.
“You have to balance your need for cost savings against your willingness for risk to the investment,” says Peter Ryan, Montreal, Quebec-based lead analyst for business process outsourcing at Ovum, a global research firm head-quartered in London, England.
In many emerging markets, com-pany employees may be facing physical danger, for example. “Executives are a target for kidnapping,” Mr. Ward notes. “If you are going to send your people back and forth to such high-risk locations, you have to be extremely careful and provide the necessary secu-rity and protective measures to ensure their safety.”
riding on brazil’s coattailsWith Brazil ensconced as a major player in IT outsourcing, other parts of Latin America are looking to make their mark.
“The people are well-educated, there are strong technology-focused colleges and universities, and the time differences often aren’t as great as in other outsourcing destinations such as Eastern Europe, India or China. This makes it much easier to do business for certain types of outsourced projects,” Mr. Ward says. All of those factors are
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>>Group DecisionChoosing an outsourcing vendor should involve individuals far beyond just the project
team, says Kurt Kohorst, Seattle, Washington, USA-based director of business process
management at insurance company Liberty Mutual Agency Markets. “The goal is to
find an organization you can build a relationship with. The cornerstone of this should
be the ability to structure the relationship so there are common goals around out-
comes, even though the motivation behind attaining the outcomes may be different.”
When Liberty Mutual chooses key outsourcing vendors, Mr. Kohorst brings in the
troops:
>> IT security addresses data-access policies.
>> IT operations ensures the necessary systems are available when the project team
needs to work.
>> Audit and corporate risk-management teams make sure the provider sites meet
standards.
>> Human resources assesses the vendor’s hiring practices.
“Nearly the entire organization is touched by decisions to outsource, especially if
you are offshoring,” he says.
By involving key people up front, companies can mitigate risks as well as ensure
their outsourcing choices align with the organization’s larger strategic goals.
Mr. Kohorst saw first-hand the dramatic effect a shift in corporate vision can have
on outsourcing projects.
He also managed business outsourcing programs for Safeco Insurance before Lib-
erty Mutual purchased the company in 2008. Safeco’s primary goals for outsourcing
reflected the organization’s desire to be nimble and to leverage third-party vendors to
assist its journey to be faster and cheaper than the competition. Focusing on those
objectives, Mr. Kohorst had his team outsource a number of projects to India, where
they could tap into low-cost talent and build relationships with mature vendors.
After the buy-out, however, the corporate vision changed.
“Rather than outsourcing to offshore vendors, Liberty Mutual wanted to create jobs
in the communities where we do business,” Mr. Kohorst says. In addition, “in many
cases the ongoing expense wasn’t justifiable, and the decision to fix a process or a
system was a better choice.”
That led Mr. Kohorst to move several business process outsourced projects back
in-house and onshore, and focus other outsourcing initiatives on regions where Lib-
erty Mutual operates.
In making the shift, Mr. Kohorst benefited from the relationships he had forged
with his vendors.
“If we had just been about cost savings and not about building partnerships, they
might not have been as inclined to help us,” he says.
Instead, his Indian vendors provided access to their development teams, offered
to help with training and resource transition, and supported frequent site visits. Mr.
Kohorst’s team is currently two-thirds of the way through the transition of a major
back-office support development project to Liberty Mutual internal operations at sev-
eral locations in the United States—and has had no service disruptions to date.
“Some vendor relationships are more like going on a date—they are limited in
duration and relatively low-risk,” he says. “Outsourcing is a partnership more like a
marriage. It’s a long-term relationship, and you need to work on that relationship or
it won’t last.”
>> What new outsourcing hotspots have you discovered? What are the pros and cons? Discuss in the PMI Service and Outsourcing Project Manage-ment Community of Practice at soa.vc.PMI.org
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helping IT vendors pull in more com-plex projects.
Brazil remains the powerhouse because of its size and talent supply, but Mexico is gaining appeal with its highly trained work force and large English-speaking population. Colombia also shows potential as more vendors open up shop and keep prices relatively low.
One downside is that project leaders have to worry about safety, particularly in Mexico, which has seen a jump in killings and kidnappings.
“Many of these new outsourcing destinations, including Mexico and
Colombia, are doing little in terms of government initiatives or social change to allay fears about their safety as an outsourcing destination,” says Doug Brown, principal of outsourc-ing research firm Brown-Wilson Group Inc., Clearwater, Florida, USA.
AsiA’s UntApped mArketsAmidst Asia’s next generation of economic power players, Vietnam is worth checking out for sheer cost sav-ings. Outsourced projects cost from 30 to 50 percent less than in India or Russia, says Roman Trakhtenberg, managing director of Luxoft, an IT outsourcing company in New York, New York, USA.
“The talent pool is growing, and there is huge potential for this destina-tion in the future,” he says. “Vietnam’s an untapped market.”
It’s also one that’s trying to make a name for itself in the global outsourc-ing community. After several years honing their skills on basic projects, along with investing in infrastructure and talent development, Vietnam’s tech companies are looking to take on higher-value projects.
“The vendors are interested in more challenging projects, which cre-ates some interesting opportunities for cost-conscious companies,” says Crowe Mead, PMP, vice president of technical operations for Calico Energy Services, an energy management consultancy in Seattle, Washington, USA.
For all those pluses, though, Viet-nam still has a relatively inexperienced talent pool. Approximately 40 percent of the population is 23 or under, according to Oxford Analytica, which limits the kind of projects a company may be willing to send there.
“You wouldn’t hire a 22-year-old to lead a multimillion-dollar project,” says Pedro Serrador, PMP, president of Ser-rador Project Management, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. “If it’s a simple proj-ect and you don’t need the most senior people, then it may be worth trying a
Outsourcing is a change
process, and you can’t
neglect the people side
of things. If you have
cultural differences,
issues are more
difficult to resolve.—Brigitte Cobb, BMI Healthcare, London, England
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new lower-cost destination. But if you are outsourcing a complex system, you need people with experience.”
When Luxoft first considered mov-ing projects to Vietnam, it began with small internal pilot projects around applications development and mainte-nance to see if the outsourcing team could handle the work.
“We started slowly with projects that weren’t customer-facing,” Mr. Trakhtenberg says. “Gradually, we increased the complexity of the proj-ects we sent to make sure the quality of the deliverables was the same as other locations’.”
AfricA emergesOutsourcing projects to Africa often means accepting high risks. Organiza-tions must be prepared for the possibil-ity of graft, internal strife and safety issues—although government and business leaders in many of the nations are fueling change. Kenya and Nigeria, for instance, have both invested heavily in education and building broad-based telecom infrastructure while staying competitive on price, Mr. Mead says.
However, there are some locations that offer enticing benefits to offset risk.
South Africa is clearly the conti-nent’s economic star, making it an attractive spot for outsourced projects.
“Project management is well-embedded in the South African busi-ness community, and English is widely spoken,” Mr. Ward says. “From a Euro-pean standpoint, it’s within roughly the same time zone,” easing commu-nications.
In northern Africa, Morocco has become a low-cost hotspot for French-speaking companies. Egypt, mean-while, has been aggressively building its reputation as a global presence with major backing from the government. In late September, Egypt’s IT min-ister, Tarek Kamel, said the North African country is looking to grow its burgeoning outsourcing industry to US$10 billion by 2020.
“Many people believe Egypt is unsafe and that it has a negative view of the West, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Mr. Ryan says. “The vendors are eager to work with U.S. and European companies.”
The continent also offers great opportunities for investing in corporate social responsibility projects by sup-porting struggling communities, Mr. Mead adds.
Despite the outsourcing success sto-ries, Africa is haunted—fairly or not—by lingering perception problems.
The talent pool is
growing, and there
is huge potential for
this destination in the
future. Vietnam’s an
untapped market.—Roman Trakhtenberg, Luxoft, New York, New York, USA
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“Africa is an extremely large untapped resource,” Mr. Ward notes. “Unfortunately, due to civil unrest and outright war in certain areas, low levels of education and pervasive corruption in many countries, it can be quite chal-lenging to do business there.”
eastern europe’s expertiseAlthough costs aren’t as low as other emerging outsourcing hotspots, East-ern Europe offers competitive pricing, along with some of the most highly skilled project talent in the world.
Russia, for example, has a long his-tory of investing in science and math education, and its universities produce more than 1 million programmers a year, notes Mr. Trakhtenberg. “Luxoft views Russia as a top destination for high-end complex outsourcing initia-tives,” he says.
Ukraine offers similar benefits, with a strong educational system focused on IT, as well as tax incentives and visa-free travel for E.U. companies.
“The Ukrainian government is tak-ing this industry very seriously,” says Mr. Trakhtenberg, who estimates the country’s labor costs are 15 to 25 per-cent lower than Russia’s.
Romania is another rising leader, particularly in telecom projects. Sie-mens, Alcatel, Microsoft and Oracle
currently have captive outsourcing arrangements in Romania in which they use remote resources for the deliv-ery of functions close to their core business while retaining operational control. The country offers a large number of professionals who speak German, Italian and French as well, Mr. Trakhtenberg says. “It’s harder to find that level of diversity in Russia or Ukraine,” he says.
Poland has a less-developed market than Russia or Ukraine but is develop-ing a niche by targeting its services to financial services companies. In Sep-tember, IBM, for one, opened its sec-ond service delivery center. Located in Wroclaw, it focuses on providing IT and business process outsourcing services to its clients. Anna Sienko, general manager of IBM Poland, said that the company chose the site for its “highly educated and experienced pro-fessionals, language skills and a favor-able business environment.”
decisions, decisionsWherever the destination, project exec-utives need to invest the same time and energy in choosing an outsourcing ven-dor as they would in putting together an in-house team, says Balazs Fejes, the Budapest, Hungary-based CTO of EPAM Systems, a software engineering services provider.
“Just looking at the bottom line is not the most productive way to make a decision,” he says. “You’ve got to look at outsourcing as a partnership and be open about what you hope to accomplish.”
Too often, companies enter out-sourcing agreements with unrealistic expectations, such as assuming they’ll find specific business domain expertise in a still-emerging market.
“In the beginning, both parties must discuss their goals, issues and concerns, and everyone has to be honest,” Mr. Fejes says.
Otherwise, delivery goals will never be met.
If it’s a simple project and you don’t need the
most senior people, then it may be worth trying a new
lower-cost destination.
But if you are outsourcing a
complex system, you need people with experience.
—Pedro Serrador, PMP, Serrador Project Management, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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“You have to consider whether the vendor has worked in your industry, who will be on your team and whether that team is committed to the success of your project,” Mr. Dhingra says.
As organizations assess vendors, they shouldn’t overlook cultural nuances, either, adds Brigitte Cobb, a London, England-based indepen-dent consultant currently working with BMI Healthcare.
“Outsourcing is a change process, and you can’t neglect the people side of things,” she says. “If you have cultural differences, issues are more difficult to resolve.”
Once a vendor is chosen, Mr. Dhingra suggests a multilayered gov-ernance process: n Senior leaders should perform
quarterly reviews of major projects and vendor relationships.
n Project sponsors should participate in monthly progress evaluations.
n Project managers from both the client and vendor sides should have daily or at least weekly updates to ensure tasks are being accom-plished and to identify issues that need to be escalated.
“That level of governance is so important,” he says. “It gives clients an objective tool to evaluate the project and the vendor relationship.”
Companies may also want to imple-ment weekly or biweekly deliverables along with daily access to system data to track project progress from afar, Mr. Fejes suggests. “Frequent deliverables benefit both parties,” he says. “They build trust, create a rhythm and ensure everything is on track.”
No matter where an organiza-tion decides to outsource projects, it must be realistic about what it hopes to achieve.
“There are no magic formulas for choosing outsourcing vendors,” Mr. Ryan says. “But if you are precise about what you expect to gain, there will be fewer surprises down the road.” PM
0082_EMBRY-RIDDLE_SOME_THINGS.pdf 1 9/20/10 10:30:27 AM
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a closer lo okIpreo, New York, New York, Usa & epaM sYsteMs, kIev, UkraINe
from left, Arkadiy Dobkin, Dmitry Maizet, EPAM
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A financial software company discovers a newfound faith in outsourcing.
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PhOTOs by RyaN dONNEll
FFour years ago, Jonathan Meyer was ready to give up on outsourcing. The CTO of global finan-cial software provider Ipreo had tried outsourc-ing a few projects to India, with only marginal success.
Mr. Meyer had experimented with a well-known vendor, a small boutique vendor and even a captive team of his own employees sent to work in India.
but none of his projects delivered much value because teams didn’t always want to write code or build solutions. “It was always a struggle,” he says.
Following an influx of employees and acquisi-tions, Mr. Meyer had to rethink his outsourcing strategy. several of the new hires hailed from Eastern Europe and encouraged him to look in that region for an IT vendor.
he was skeptical. “In India, you know who the big vendors are,
but in Eastern Europe, I had no idea where to begin,” he says.
a colleague suggested EPaM systems, a U.s.-based IT outsourcing services provider with development teams across Central and Eastern Europe.
First the outsourcing team had to prove it knew how to handle security concerns around sensitive financial data. “security is of massive importance to us,” Mr. Meyer says.
Technical skills weren’t enough, though—Ipreo needed to be able to communicate effec-tively. The fact that senior team members spoke English fluently boded well.
but the proof would ultimately come in the results. Mr. Meyer gave EPaM a project to test the waters: a sophisticated data-analysis tool that his in-house team had already tried, and failed, to build.
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“It was one of those projects that had a lot of complicated code, and at first, they didn’t want it,” he says.
EPAM eventually agreed to tackle the project, and delivered it on time and to specification.
Since then, all of Ipreo’s major engineer-ing projects that can’t be handled in-house go to EPAM, and Mr. Meyer has come to rely heavily on the company.
“I don’t think of it as outsourcing. I think of it as ‘co-sourcing,’” he says. “Just as we have a New York office and a London office, I think of EPAM as our Kiev office.”
Ready foR the Big timeBased on the success of the initial projects, Mr. Meyer outsourced a major overhaul of Ipreo’s flagship product, Bigdough, to the Eastern European team in April 2007.
Bigdough provides contact and owner-ship data on 50,000 capital markets profes-sionals. The original version was built using ColdFusion, a programming application Mr. Meyer found to be too limited. “People loved it, but it didn’t scale up,” he says.
Ipreo wanted to make the software more robust and scalable, but the company
didn’t have the resources or expertise to manage the redesign. So Mr. Meyer brought the project to his outsourcing partner.
The fate of the mission-critical project would depend on how well the two teams could collaborate, says Dmitry Maizet, director of technology solutions at EPAM and account manager for Ipreo.
“The most critical aspect of how we work with any client is about the relation-ship,” he says. “We take shared responsibil-ity for the outcome, and we have a project management process that prioritizes com-munication and transparency.”
Before launching the project, Mr. Mey-er’s in-house engineers established the code style and methodology they wanted the EPAM team to follow. They also brought the lead engineers from Kiev to New York to discuss the project’s goals and how the database would be used.
“We never want people making assump-tions about the project if there are knowl-edge gaps,” Mr. Meyer says. “Unless you sit down and talk with your team about how to build it and what you want it to do, it won’t come out right.”
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To avoid the out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem, Mr. Meyer set frequent milestones for the EPAM team and established a daily “10 at 10” call, when the two teams talked for 10 minutes about the project. “It’s a way for them to build their knowledge about us, and for us to be comfortable with what they are doing,” he says.
To further foster trust, EPAM granted the Ipreo team full access to project data through a web portal and sent daily status notifications. “They don’t need to ask us what’s happening in the project environ-ment,” Mr. Dobkin says. “They can see for themselves.”
Upon project launch, EPAM’s team immediately started churning out pages of code that Mr. Meyer’s team members had struggled to build on their initial upgrade attempt.
Fueled by their success, EPAM devel-opers began making suggestions to improve the technology and evolve the design rules.
“There is no subordination between the client and the vendor team,” says EPAM co-founder and CEO Arkadiy Dobkin. “Our people feel like they are a part of the team, and they are not shy about pointing out problems when they see them.”
The redesigned Bigdough program was released in January 2009. Now EPAM is working on an upgrade that will integrate the database with salesforce.com, a cus-tomer-relationship management cloud-computing platform. It’s scheduled to go live this month.
Ipreo has faced a few challenges work-ing with an Eastern European vendor, but “no more than you would have with any company,” Mr. Meyer says.
Because of Ipreo’s security concerns, for example, it doesn’t give the EPAM team access to any data used in the tools it devel-ops. Even Skype is verboten, as it’s able to bypass firewalls, and any application that allows file transfers, instant messaging or voice that can’t be monitored or archived has risk of viruses or worms. Although EPAM commonly uses Skype, team members are forbidden to use it on any Ipreo project.
The strong relationship forged between the two organizations has also given Ipreo the confidence to work with EPAM on a time-and-materials basis rather than a fixed contract.
The move marks a huge organizational shift, Mr. Meyer says, allowing Ipreo to adjust project goals based on changing marketplace needs without worrying about pre-defined specifications.
“It takes a gigantic amount of trust,” Mr. Meyer says. “If we miss our dates, it’s our risk, not theirs.”
But it’s a risk worth taking, he says: “Working this way makes us both more nimble.”
Companies shouldn’t give up on out-sourcing, Mr. Meyer believes. But they do need to invest the time and due diligence required to develop trust. “When you view outsourcing as a partnership, wherever your vendor is, that’s when you get the best work,” he says. —Sarah Fister Gale
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>>There is no subordination between the client and the vendor team. Our people feel like they are a part of the team, and they are not shy about pointing out problems when they see them.
—Arkadiy Dobkin, EPAM
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A
BY RACHEL ZUPEK
Choose your projects. Pick up experience across sectors. Sounds tempting, but going independent also means worrying where your next gig is coming from.
A few years ago, Marcelo Andrade, PMP, was a full-time IT project manager at a manufacturing company in Brazil. Then he got a glimpse of life on the other side.
“Having worked intensively with a team of consultants for more than six months on a project, I became interested in the dynamics of their work,” he says.
One year later, he received a job offer from one of the consulting firms on the project. He took the plunge and made the switch, eventually starting up his own project man-agement consulting firm, Eficia Consulting in Uberlândia, Brazil. “I came to the conclusion that, in the worst case, I will be adding a rich experience to my career,” he says.
For any practitioner, launching a career as an indepen-dent consultant is a gamble. Striking out on your own
means wondering where the next paycheck will come from and constantly drumming up new business. It cer-tainly comes with its advantages, though—like choosing which projects you take on and working across a variety of industries.
“You can gain exposure to a wide range of business mod-els, products and industries,” says Pattie Vargas, PMP, princi-pal of The Vargas Group, a management consultancy in San Diego, California, USA.
Consulting often proves to be a project management crash course.
“You can learn as a consultant in a few months what you would take years to learn by working in just one company,” Mr. Andrade adds. “You are put to the test
SO, YOU WANT TO BE A CONSULTANT?BE A CONSULTANT?SO, YOU WANT TOSO, YOU WANT TOSO, YOU WANT TOSO, YOU WANT TO
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with more intensity than the corporate environment, so it’s like accelerated professional development.”
Consulting also gives project managers added legitimacy—a definite advantage in a profession that all too often lacks official authority, says Charles Ryder, PMP, direc-tor of Kennedy Ryder, a project manage-ment training and consulting group in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“Working within a corporation, I felt that although I had a lot to offer, my voice was not being heard,” he says. “Consul-tants are more likely to be listened to, have their recommendations acted upon and have access to more senior people than full-time employees.”
On YOur OwnOf course, a lucrative career as an indepen-dent consultant doesn’t happen overnight. Too often, project managers take the leap without proper preparation.
“Many consultants don’t have a fully defined business plan before they launch out on their own,” Ms. Vargas says. “Investigate the market to understand the likelihood of employment, have a firm financial plan for how to manage your business and cash flow, and clearly define your service offering so you can do better target marketing.”
Do your research. Look at websites, attend workshops and pose questions on professional bulletin boards to see what other consultants are doing.
“Put together some marketing materi-als and then get input from hiring manag-ers,” she adds. “Ask if they would hire you for the services you are offering, and, if so, what they would expect to pay. Solicit input on your message. Ask hiring manag-ers if your value proposition is clear and compelling.”
Being an independent consultant means understanding how to run a small business.
“You will be your own bookkeeper, marketing department, office supplier and scheduler,” Ms. Vargas says. “All that work that got done by others at your previous employer will now be done by you.”
That can be the greatest shock when transitioning from the corporate envi-ronment to working independently, says Lisa DiTullio, principal, Your Project Office, a project management consultancy in Cohasset, Massachusetts, USA. “The first two years were full of surprises as I fumbled around with tasks I never had to manage in my prior existence.”
With self-management must come discipline.
“There isn’t necessarily a boss holding you accountable,” Ms. Vargas says. “If time management is a challenge as an employee, it will be worse as an independent.”
And time management becomes all the more complicated with consulting gigs. “The project manager’s schedule is constantly in flux,” Mr. Andrade says. “It is very difficult to establish a normal work-ing schedule.”
Devise a system—and be sure to con-sider work-life balance. “Have family and private time,” Mr. Ryder advises. “You will be a better consultant for it.”
Although project management consul-tants put in some long hours, your time is your own. “Even if you are working a full-time contract, you can take time off here or there—provided the work gets done on time,” Ms. Vargas says.
marketing mOdeAlthough companies looking to cut costs will frequently hire consultants, competi-tion remains fierce. To attract clients, you must clearly demonstrate what sets you apart from other consultants.
You have to sell your personality. Cus-tomers must like you and see that you can adapt to fit into their culture, says Carl Godell, PMP, owner and director of operations at CJL Communications Inc., a project management services company in West Bloomfield, Michigan, USA.
“I must keep adjusting to meet those unique individual customer needs, listen-ing to what the customer needs, finding the pain, fixing the pain and accepting some of the risk,” he explains.
And while one of the perquisites of being an independent consultant is that
I realize I can never be complacent or sit back and assume business will always come my way. It is a constant search for the next new opportunity. —Lisa DiTullio, Your Project Office, Cohasset, Massachusetts, USA
caREERtrack
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you get to pick your own clients, you also have to find them.
“As a consultant, you can never rest on your laurels,” Ms. DiTullio says. “My mind runs 24/7, constantly brainstorming new ideas, ways to create visibility and channels to land new business. I realize I can never be complacent or sit back and assume business will always come my way. It is a constant search for the next new opportunity.”
Sometimes you don’t have to search very far. Consulting jobs often come from current clients, so consultants should try to leverage their connections.
“Every client you deliver the expected results for is another part of building a professional network, members of which will eventually remember the value of your work,” Mr. Andrade says.
Nearly all of Ms. Vargas’ business is based on existing relationships.
“They knew me and the quality of my work, so they felt comfortable referring me to their clients or colleagues,” she says. “Those networks are crucial to gaining new opportunities and making new intro-ductions.”
Online resources such as LinkedIn and Facebook can certainly add to your network, but never abandon in-person networking, Mr. Godell suggests.
“The computer is an amazing tool
for connecting throughout the world,” he says. “But you still have to knock on doors, shake hands and look eye-to-eye.”
Manage networking as you would a project. “It should be targeted—don’t spend time at networking events that don’t draw your target market or you’ll find it to be a large time drain,” Ms. Vargas says. “Likewise, there may be other consultants who are eager to ‘pick your brain’ about ideas, opportunities and guidance. Just as someone helped you, you should be gracious to them, but beware of too many meetings like that or your week will be gone.”
Ultimately, whether you get jobs will come down to your performance. Fail to live up to expectations, and you could find yourself blacklisted.
“Years ago when I was a project man-ager full-time, there was a ‘not recom-mended’ list of consultants who we did not want in our projects due to low com-mitment and capacity to deliver them,” Mr. Andrade says.
As with any career, there will be some trials and tribulations.
“There is no ‘perfect’ job, so make sure you aren’t switching to consulting to escape a bad job environment,” Ms. DiTullio says. “While the switch can be liberating, it requires dedication, persever-ance and relentless energy.” PM
How much is your time worth? For indepen-dent consultants, it’s no philosophical conun-drum. They need to put an actual monetary amount on their work—and it should account for all of their expenses.
“Simply taking your salary and dividing it to get a daily or an hourly rate will rarely prove to be an effective method for forecast-ing your income or meeting financial needs,” says David Zahn, president, Zahn Consulting, a strategic alignment and coaching firm in Wallingford, Connecticut, USA.
“It assumes that you will be at 100 percent capacity and that none of the ancillary costs have been factored in,” says Mr. Zahn, coauthor of How to Succeed as an Independent Consultant—Fourth Edition [Wiley, 2004].
Those ancillary costs can add up very quickly, says Pattie Vargas, PMP, The Vargas Group, San Diego, California, USA. Once you go independent, you’ll be paying for healthcare, mar-keting, advertising, office overhead, travel, legal fees, insurance, accounting services, training and certifications.
And while project management consultants typically earn more than salaried practitioners, they also have a heavier work-load, says Marcelo Andrade, PMP, Eficia Consulting, Uberlândia, Brazil.
To calculate fees, work under the general assumption that you will be able to sell about 50 percent of your time, not including weekends, holidays and vacations, Mr. Zahn suggests. “Choose a fee structure that will meet your annual needs, based on only being booked half the time.”
He suggests three possible methods to determine what to charge for your services:n Per basis: Fees are calculated per time unit, per project, per type of project, etc.n Prevailing rate: See what others are charging and choose to be on par. Alternately, you can present yourself as a premium provider or a value offering.n Value to client: What is the worth derived from the execution of this particular work?
In the grand scheme of things, money is but one factor in deciding to become a consultant. It just happens that, for many, it’s the deciding factor.
>>Money Matters
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PEACEthe
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BY CHAUNCEY HOLLINGSWORTH
Stakeholder vs. stakeholder. Team member vs. team member. Conflict happens—and it’s up to project managers to ease tensions.
O CESS
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If your biggest workplace conflict con-sists of telling the guy down the hall to shut his door when he’s using his speakerphone, consider yourself lucky.
Slashed budgets, scope creep, per-sonality clashes and office politics can all fuel confrontation. Maybe one stakeholder doesn’t want to wait around another week for the lat-est round of bells and whistles that another stakeholder simply cannot live without. Perhaps a team member is silently stewing over some per-ceived slight in the morning meeting. Even a simple desk rearrangement can escalate into a major showdown over disputed territory.
And more often than not, it’s the project managers who must broker the peace deal.
The best way to turn down the heat on simmering disagreements is to address them before they flare up—extinguishing potential tensions when they’re little more than signal fires on the horizon.
STAKEHOLDERS AT STAKEIt comes down to the physics of project management: A project can’t go in two directions at once. Two stakeholders with significantly dif-ferent visions can, and will, cripple a project—and it happens all the time.
“It’s a common dynamic on many projects,” says Ngozi Watts, business developer at WMS, a video game designer and manufacturer in Chi-cago, Illinois, USA.
The ramifications of two proj-ect stakeholders at odds with each other cascade down, says Mary Oss-wald, senior manager of asset opera-tions and reporting at Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
Clearly determining each stake-holder’s vision for the project’s final destination is step one in curtailing friction.
“Sometimes we think we know what those interests are,” Mr. Watts says. “But the onus is on the project
manager to peel back that onion and really understand at a very intimate and detailed level what the interests of the various stakeholders are. Then go through the exercise of figuring out where those interests may align.”
You’ll never completely compre-hend a person’s opinions and objec-tives unless you dig.
“A project manager needs to facili-tate feedback from stakeholders, even if it is not easy to get,” says Mar-cello Patrese, PMP, partner at PMT Group, a project, program and port-folio management consultancy and training company in Trento, Italy.
Request comments on all corre-spondence, he suggests.
And be vocal: “If you give feed-back, you get feedback,” Mr. Patrese says. “Even if it’s not requested or necessary, it’s still a lesson for the stakeholder.”
INTERNAL STRIFESometimes conflict rears its ugly head within the project team itself.
The discord can grow out of a lack of understanding—an inability or refusal of the warring factions to rec-ognize each other as working on the same team for a common goal. Left to fester, enmity between colleagues can quickly escalate and halt a project’s progress.
It’s an age-old problem that even the finest minds in business have yet to solve. Short of some new epiphany, project managers just have to go in and do whatever it takes to facilitate a resolution.
“You can’t let your project fail on a couple of people not getting along,” Ms. Osswald says.
On many teams, it comes down to a battle between the old and new guard, she says. People are, by nature, averse to change and they don’t neces-sarily appreciate a fresh perspective. New additions are often met with a frosty skepticism. “There’s an imme-diately distinct view: ‘You don’t know
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how to do our job. You don’t under-stand what we do,’” Ms. Osswald says. “In this kind of cultural clash, you need to foster communication that focuses on the project’s vision and objectives. You need to bring everyone to a shared understanding of the expectations of the team and each individual’s role in the success of the project and the organization.”
The sub-context of this exercise is to build trust.
“It is almost always worth slow-ing a project down by a few days to take the time to assemble the project teams and revisit the project goals and objectives,” she says.
Project managers must also find ways to contend with passive-aggres-sive behavior. Some team members keep to themselves or don’t speak up when they should. Others run around complaining about how the project’s going without recommending any solutions to fix matters.
“That can spiral out of control really quickly,” Ms. Osswald says. “You go to a meeting where nobody will speak up or express an opinion, so you leave the meeting thinking that everybody’s in agreement with what the few vocal people have to say. Then a week or two later, you get a memo saying everything you’re
>>Boons of Contention It takes a massive geological force to create a diamond. Likewise, sometimes the conflict among converging project elements can be used as a force for good:
build team cohesion.“Sometimes a conflict situation means a high level of stress and, in some projects, could be very useful when you are in a hurry and need a strong and close team,” says Marcello Patrese, PMP, PMT Group, Trento, Italy.
secure different viewpoints.“Conflict can be good because you get the devil’s advocate position,” says Mary Osswald, Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. “Conflict usually comes because someone doesn’t want change or they don’t agree with how you’re making change. It certainly inspires better conversation and more thought about what’s being done and why it’s being done. It forces the project to evolve.”
air buried grievances.“If you have a project with no conflict, you might have just as much of a leadership prob-lem as if you were experiencing massive conflict,” Ms. Osswald says. “It’s very unlikely everybody always agrees with how the project activities are progressing. If you have zero conflict, my thought is you’ve got a bunch of ‘yes men’ who are keeping their mouths shut and simply doing what they think the leaders want. Maybe you don’t have an open enough environment. That’s possibly more dangerous. You risk implementing something that’s not going to work for anyone.”
develop creative solutions.“Conflict from different interests and the expression of those interests sometimes create the opportunity for creative solutions,” says Ngozi Watts, WMS, Chicago, Illinois, USA. “However, the later conflict occurs, the less likely it is to create those opportunities. The project manager has to identify conflict early on to really leverage potentially compelling interests into a positive.”
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64 PM NETWORK december 2010 WWW.PMI.ORG
TRADITION. ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE. ONLINE CONVENIENCE.
PMP, CAPM and PMI Registered Education Provider logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.© 2010 All Rights Reserved. Made Available by University Alliance® – The Nation’s Leading Universities Online. SC: 197070ZV1 | MCID: 11297
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doing is wrong, and nobody sup-ports it, and the project is completely derailed.”
To avoid such ugliness, project managers must foster consistent com-munication.
“The one rule that’s really impor-tant to establish is that silence is agreement, so if you don’t say any-thing during a meeting, we’re going to assume that you agree,” Ms. Oss-wald adds. “The meeting is your opportunity to say ‘I agree’ or ‘I disagree.’”
easy does ItWhen project managers see a poten-tial conflict looming, they need to convince their team of the best path to take—not just impose change, says Fábio Laranjeira Bernardes, project management office leader at CTEEP (Companhia de Transmissão de Energia Elétrica Paulista), Sao Paulo, Brazil.
When Mr. Laranjeira Bernardes recently launched a new standard for managing project budgets, he knew it might set off an uprising among the company’s project managers. He had to make the case, explaining both the pros and cons.
“A new budget control based on deviations of executions would bring more operational work to the project managers, but it would also give more analysis power to them,” he says.
First, he secured buy-in from the chief project officer and coordina-tors, while also warning them of the possible resistance. Mr. Laran-jeira Bernardes then held a meeting explaining the change to the project managers. “They were less resistant to that new control, being convinced to use it rather than being obliged,” he says. “People who are convinced become part of the solution instead of being only part of the problem.”
By taking the time to address team member or stakeholder concerns, proj-ect leaders can prevent—or at least mitigate—angry knee-jerk reactions.
“A lot of times, project managers are able to get ahead of the conflict and guide those dynamics better than other parties,” Mr. Watts says. “There’s often a clear way for two parties to agree, but it’s not obvious to them. A project manager is in a particularly good posi-tion to be able to identify a solution to two parties’ potential areas of conflict.”
Just add peacemaker to the project manager job description. PM
There’s often a clear way for two parties to agree, but it’s not obvious to them. A project manager is in a particularly good position to be able to identify a solution to two parties’ potential areas of conflict.—Ngozi Watts, WMS, Chicago, Illinois, USA
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66 PM NETWORK december 2010 WWW.PMI.ORG
HELPDESK>>tabLEt timE
Tablet computers are wildly convenient, but the project management apps aren’t quite there yet.
Personal digital assistants (PDas) were holstered to the belt of every rising business professional in the early 2000s. When you hooked your Palm to your laptop, you didn’t just update your calendar—you hot-synced. Like a term from a William Gibson cyberpunk novel, the act seemed to signify something beyond updating your appointments. You were plugging into the streamlined, recalibrate-on-the-fly culture of the project management jet set, business 2.0 on a double espresso and a small monochrome screen.
Nowadays, tapping a stylus on a digital brick seems about as retrograde as scratching a stone on a clay tablet. PDas have evolved, their capabilities merging with mobile phones into touch-screen tablet computers, one-stop-shop communications and scheduling platforms.
< Leader of the Packtaking its place at the head of the digital device hierarchy is Apple’s iPad. as sleek and sexy as the company’s Newton Pda (rIP, 1993-1998) was clunky and slow, the iPad is a game-changer. despite new slim netbooks and the much-hyped release of hP’s Slate 500 in mid-November, the iPad is currently the undisputed leader.
With prices starting at US$499, the iPad requires less of an investment than many laptops and still has more than enough processor power to handle most project man-agement software.
though much smaller than most computer screens, the iPad work area appears cleaner and more spacious than a Pc desktop because top-of-the-screen menus are largely absent. the setup creates an elegant look that makes you feel as if you’re navigating within a smooth flow of information rather than tinkering around from the outside. and having your pick of vertical or horizontal orientation allows you to decide which best suits the perusal of project details.
Like many technophiles, enterprising project managers were quick to explore the iPad’s potential, but the current lineup of project management tools is a bit under-whelming.
Straddling the line between casual and professional, the products enable quick though simplistic overhead project surveying, but lack the greater depth of a more robust software offering. as of press time, fewer than 40 project management choices show up in the itunes app store, many of which are simple time-trackers or education products rather than proper tools.
PMN1210 50-72.indd 66 11/15/10 11:55 AM
>>TABLET TIME
B Y C H A U N C E Y H O L L I N G S W O R T H
< STREAMTIME is offering an iPad version of its project management software that allows client-server inter-action identical to the company’s desktop PC iteration. Scroll through client lists by sliding your finger down the screen, enter notes with a few taps and access project-wide commu-nications with another touch.
But what about other project management tasks that require heavier lifting, such as resource allocation variables and critical path charting?
SG PROJECT 2 > from FourthFrame Technologies comes the closest to something a project manager might find truly useful. It accommodates multiple projects, parent and child
tasks, and dependencies between tasks, with durations, ownership and percentage-completed options for each. You can view tables and Gantt charts in split views, and a few finger movements let you zoom in or out. Data formatted in PDF or XML can be exported to exchange information with Microsoft Project or provide team-wide status updates.
Like other iPad apps, the bonus comes down to cost savings: The software is only US$9.99. For the price of a low-end PC software license, an organization could outfit a couple dozen iPads.
Tablet computers are wildly convenient, but the project management apps aren’t quite there yet.
DECEMBER 2010 PM NETWORK 67
THE VERDICTEach product among the relatively small family of proj-ect management iPad apps comes with significant limitations. Some can’t trade information with Project and/or are dependent upon a local Wi-Fi network. Cus-tomer reviews also reveal extensive bugs—unsurprising, given the rush to port existing applications into iPad versions.
Project managers shouldn’t despair. Toshiba keeps promising a next-gen tablet, and the Omni Group has been detailing its plans to bring OmniPlan to the iPad since January. Plus, developers eager to exploit the expanding market will presumably beef up their project management offerings.
Only then can the iPad go from being a cool new toy to a serious must-have tool for project managers. PM
PMN1210 50-72.indd 67 11/15/10 11:55 AM
Quentin W. Fleming and Joel m. Koppelman
Earned Value Project Management—Fourth Edition
BarBee davis, pmp
Quick Quizzes for Project Managers
Test your project management knowledge and expand your skills through story questions about situations faced every day by project man-
agers in the field. Every answer in this handy book is followed by a short, specific explanation that gives you background detail on the topic and a problem-solving approach you can try in your own organization. Many of the questions come from working project managers around the world concerned with issues they face in real projects. Each tip is educationally sound and consistent with the concepts and terminology found in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)—Fourth Edition and other current PMI Standards.
project management institute, 2010, isBn: 9781935589105, spiralbound, 218 pp., $31.95 member, $39.95 nonmember.
Kerry r. Wills, pmp
Essential Project Management Skills
Today’s project managers can master the essential skills of persuasion, self-management, communication and relationship management with help from this volume. Its four sections are enhanced with tables, diagrams and case studies that illuminate each skill and its impact. It offers tech-niques that can be applied to master these new skills and ties together the evolution of the project landscape, the challenges posed and the new
skills required to manage projects suc-cessfully in the modern world. It also provides a checklist of the skills and techniques in the context of different project scenarios.
CrC press, 2010, isBn: 9781439827161, hardcover, 220 pp., $66.45 member, $69.95 nonmember.
stephen Jenner
Transforming Government and Public Services: Realising Benefits through Project Portfolio Management
Exploring a number of key themes fun-damental to a value-based approach to government and public-sector project portfolio management, this book
explains how to develop a business case to achieve a desired end rather than jus-tify a particular solution, create project documentation that is technically rigor-ous and gives users a clear understand-ing of the project goals, treat projects as investments rather than costs, and plan for success rather than hold people responsible for failure. It provides a clear and applicable guide for those working on complex projects in often confusing and politicized environments.
gower, 2010, isBn: 9781409401636, hardcover, 188 pp., $109.20 member, $114.95 nonmember.
>>>pmimarkEtplacE FEaturEd books
elizaBeth harrin
Social Media for Project Managers
Communication is a key aspect of project management—and social media has become an essential tool. Many companies that initially used social media to reach customers and build their reputa-tions are now expanding its use to internal project management. This book shows how adapting various types of social media to project management drives efficiencies. In addition, it reveals how the most common forums used for socializing and connecting with team members help to improve group communications—teambuilding, networking, community blogging—open forums for dis-cussion and feedback, and shared best practices and lessons learned.
project management institute, 2010, isBn: 9781935589112, paperback, 153 pp., $31.95 member, $39.95 nonmember.
o
HOW TO ORDER Online: Marketplace.PMI.org • Telephone: 1-866-276-4PMI (U.S. and Canada) or +1-770-280-4129 (international) • E-mail: [email protected] Marketplace.PMI.org
>>evpm allows more
effective decision-making,
which helps evaluate and
control project risk
by measuring an
initiative’s progress in
monetary terms.
PMN1210 50-72.indd 68 11/15/10 11:55 AM
rganizations that follow the principles of earned value management (EVM) create an environment that allows teams
not only to successfully operate but also thrive—even in the face of challenges that could negatively impact their projects.
Earned value project management (EVPM) is a methodology used to mea-sure and communicate the real physi-cal progress of a project by taking into
account the work completed, the time taken and the costs incurred to complete that work. As a result, EVPM allows more effective decision-making, which helps evaluate and control project risk by measuring an initiative’s progress in monetary terms.
In the first two editions of Earned Value Project Management, Quentin W. Fleming and Joel M. Koppelman provided guidance for project management prac-titioners already familiar with EVPM, as well as those who were new to using this technique. The third edition expanded the information available on EVPM for medium and smaller projects while still being relevant for larger projects.
There are two approaches to EVM discussed in an important addition to Earned Value Project Management—Fourth Edition. Both are valid, but one is better-suited to the management of major projects, while the other is appropriate for use on all projects. The authors cover the pros and cons of each, with a bias in favor of simple, broad-based EVM for use on all projects.
Project Management Institute,
2010, ISBN: 9781935589082,
hardcover, 231 pp., $39.95 Member,
$49.95 Nonmember.
QueNtIN W. FleMINg aNd Joel M. KoPPelMaN
Earned Value Project Management—Fourth Edition
december 2010 PM NETWORK 69
>>>pmimarkEtplacE FEaturEd books
elIzaBeth harrIN
Social Media for Project Managers
Communication is a key aspect of project management—and social media has become an essential tool. Many companies that initially used social media to reach customers and build their reputa-tions are now expanding its use to internal project management. This book shows how adapting various types of social media to project management drives efficiencies. In addition, it reveals how the most common forums used for socializing and connecting with team members help to improve group communications—teambuilding, networking, community blogging—open forums for dis-cussion and feedback, and shared best practices and lessons learned.
Project Management Institute, 2010, ISBN: 9781935589112, paperback, 153 pp., $31.95 Member, $39.95 Nonmember.
o
HOW TO Order Online: Marketplace.PMI.org • Telephone: 1-866-276-4PMI (U.S. and Canada) or +1-770-280-4129 (international) • E-mail: [email protected]
>>eVPM allows more
effective decision-making,
which helps evaluate and
control project risk
by measuring an
initiative’s progress in
monetary terms.
PMN1210 50-72.indd 69 11/15/10 11:55 AM
University of Management & Technology www.umtweb.edu
1-800-924-4883
PMP, PMI Global Accreditation Center logo and the PMI Registered Education Provider logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
Academic Programs in Project and Program Management Lead to:
Doctor of Business AdministrationMaster of Science in ManagementMaster of Science in InformationTechnologyMaster of Public AdministrationMaster of Business Administration
Online Courses and CertificatePrograms for Project and Program Management Professionals:
http://pmsuite.umtweb.edu
Project Management SuiteTM
More than 30 courses in project and program management
Executive Certificate in Project ManagementExecutive Certificate in Acquisition Management
UMT courses are online and self-paced.®
0008_ PMI_ONLINE_SERVICE_AD.indd1 1 1/19/09 11:42:230062_PM_EDUCATE_GET_PDUs.indd 1 7/19/10 9:45
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0071_BELLEVUE_UNIVERSITY_PREPARE.indd 1 8/23/10 9:41:13 AM
ServiceSDirectory
Statement of ownerShipcompany, placechallenge: manage a 10-year, $1 billion improvement project
Solution: Unifier, Skire Inc., menlo park, california, USa
www.skire.com
roi: easier tracking of multiple projects and funding sources,
1. publication Title: PM Network 2. publication number: 1040-8754 3. Filing date: 10/01/10 4. Issue Frequency: monthly 5. number of Issues published annually: 12 6. annual Subscription price: $42.00 7. complete mailing address of Known office of publication: project
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PMI Today®
is another benefit of project management institute membership.
PMN1210 50-72.indd 70 11/15/10 11:55 AM
University of Management & Technology www.umtweb.edu
1-800-924-4883
PMP, PMI Global Accreditation Center logo and the PMI Registered Education Provider logo are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.
Academic Programs in Project and Program Management Lead to:
Doctor of Business AdministrationMaster of Science in ManagementMaster of Science in InformationTechnologyMaster of Public AdministrationMaster of Business Administration
Online Courses and CertificatePrograms for Project and Program Management Professionals:
http://pmsuite.umtweb.edu
Project Management SuiteTM
More than 30 courses in project and program management
Executive Certificate in Project ManagementExecutive Certificate in Acquisition Management
UMT courses are online and self-paced.®
0008_ PMI_ONLINE_SERVICE_AD.indd1 1 1/19/09 11:42:23
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to receive free information about products or services advertised or listed in this issue, please contact advertisers via their web address below.
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PMN1210 50-72.indd 71 11/15/10 11:55 AM
12345678910
The top five reasons why companies lack an adequate IT security contingency plan:
1 Lack of training 2 Incomplete plan 3 Delay in implementation 4 Lack of management support 5 Lack of partner cooperation
Source: 2011 Global State of Information Security Survey, CIO, CSO and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Results based on a survey of more than 12,840 global executives and directors of IT and security conducted in February and March.
metr1cs
72 PM NETWORK december 2010 WWW.PMI.ORG
“
”40%
23%
63%
SocIal SecurITy
The portion of global executives and IT directors who have implemented security technologies supporting Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and social networks
The portion who have security policies that address the use of Web 2.0 technologies
The portion of respondents who either don’t have an IT security contingency plan or say the one they have doesn’t work
Source: 2010 BPM Pulse, BPM Partners. Results based on a survey released in June of more than 500 corporate executives around the globe.
73 percent
of corporate executives have business performance management projects, such as initiatives to measure key performance indicators (KPIs), planned, in progress or completed in 2010
mIndSeT ShIfT
21percent
The [survey] seems to indicate we are still hung over from the economic woes of the last 18 months, but many companies do realize that business performance management can help them weather the storm while prepar-ing for brighter days ahead.
—Craig Schiff, CEO, BPM Partners
of companies with more than 2,500 employees spent over US$1 million on business performance management projects, up from 15 percent last year.
Business productivity and cost reduction
Business agility and speed to market
IT and business alignment
IT reliability and efficiency
Business process re-engineering
IT strategic planning
Revenue-generating IT innovations
IT cost-reduction
Security and privacy
Globalization
Source: 2010 IT Industry Trends Survey, Society for Information Management. Results based on a survey released in September of senior IT executives from 172 U.S. companies.
cauSe for concernThe top 10 concerns of CIOs, CTOs and IT executives:
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Copyright © 2009, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
oracle.com/primaveraor call 1.800.ORACLE.1
90 of the 100 Top Engineering & Construction Firms
12 of the 15 U.S. Federal Cabinet Agencies
9 of the 10 Top Aerospace & Defense Contractors
13 of the 15 Top Utilities
10 of the 10 Top Oil & Gas Companies
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0106_ORACLE.indd 1 10/23/09 10:38:35 AMPMN1210 Covers final.indd 4 11/15/10 12:05 PM