Achieving Project Management Success in the Federal Government

Jonathan Weinstein PMP, Timothy Jacques PMP

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781567262759
• eBook ISBN: 9781567262872
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Bookkeeping & Budgets
• Index: Business

Gain Valuable Insight into the Government's Project Management Best Practices!
Although project management is not new to the federal government, the discipline has taken on renewed importance in the face of the ever-increasing size, complexity, and number of mission-critical projects being undertaken by every branch and agency. This book addresses the key facets of project management, from organization and structure to people and process. A variety of government entities share their best practices in areas including leadership, technology, teams, communication, methodology, and performance management.
Based on research and interviews with a wide range of project managers, Achieving Project Management Success in the Federal Government presents a realistic cross section of the project management discipline in the largest single enterprise in the world—the U.S. federal government.

Chapter 1

The Evolution of Federal
Project Management:
Then and Now

We need to internalize this idea of excellence.

— PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

Throughout history mankind has labored to achieve amazing feats that defy our imagination: the great pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, the D-Day invasion. Human beings—and governments—naturally seek to apply resources toward the creation of monuments, public works, and war. Although such efforts have spanned thousands of years, only in the past 60 years has the discipline of project management come to be formally recognized and defined.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) describes the federal government as “the world’s largest and most complex entity.”¹ In terms of scale, the federal government expended about $3 trillion in fiscal year 2008 on operations and myriad projects to develop and provide new products and services—from bridge construction to aircraft development, from AIDS awareness to nuclear material disposal. The expenditure of these funds represents the single largest government marketplace in the world, employing many millions of people directly or indirectly. Federal project dollars are spread across state and local governments, often defining entire industries such as defense.

This is a massive machine, yet no single central, civilian entity has the authority for establishing, promoting, or enforcing standards and guidelines for the project management discipline across the federal government enterprise. The absence of this authority is not the result of a conscious decision to allow different agencies and departments to adopt the system that works best for their particular circumstances. Rather, project management within the federal government has grown and thrived seemingly at random, developing idiosyncratically in the various agencies, laboratories, and field offices where the federal government works and where support for project management is strong.

Project management has evolved into a set of practices that has only recently come into its own across the U.S. federal government. Project management in the federal sector has evolved like the first stars arriving on a summer night—little glowing pockets here and there, lacking order, with the occasional fiery star dominating a corner of the sky. While standards and some requirements exist, no unified field theory, so to speak, of project management within the federal government has yet evolved. Few common templates specific to the project management discipline have been developed to provide suggested or required standards that each agency can adapt to its own needs. Nevertheless, for all the apparent randomness, the evolution of project management within the federal government is a story of great achievement.

PROJECTS IN THE FEDERAL SECTOR

What is a project? The classic definition is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. The product, service, or result is developed through a specific effort that includes a beginning, a middle, and an end. A project is different from a program, which has two general definitions in the federal government. We define program as a group of related projects that are managed in a harmonized way and contribute to the achievement of a common goal. A program often includes elements of ongoing work or work related to specific deliverables. An example is the space shuttle program, which encompasses distinct projects aimed at developing a vehicle, buildings, software, etc. The government also uses program to mean a continuing overall operation or grouping of services, such as Medicaid or the Small Business Administration’s Loan Guaranty Program.

Projects satisfy a deeply held need in the human psyche to commune and conquer. Projects are designed to create change and are at once logistical, political, physical, and mental. They demand our attention and require us to work toward a common goal. Projects are the manifestation of hope—a wish for things to be better in the future if we work hard enough—combined with the need to carry out a finite activity, to set measurable goals and objectives, and to be able to declare success when the goals are reached and the objectives are met.

When everyday work is ongoing, we invoke the mechanisms of process management. When current work is aimed at achieving a specific goal or objective, then the mechanisms of project management are involved—scoping, scheduling, and measuring—in an effort to increase the likelihood of success and realize our ambitions for some future achievement. Infusing project management within an organization that views all work as process management is as much a cultural reformation as it is a procedural one.

Project management asks us to measure twice and cut once. Philosophically this approach makes sense, but when measuring twice costs millions of dollars and takes many years, the demands on a project intensify. The forces that drive project management are largely contextual, evoked by the mission and structure of the host organization. The dynamics in the federal sector revolve around authority and power, scarcity and abundance (two elements that frequently cohabit in an organization), and change readiness and acceptance. Other factors come into play as well, and for these reasons, no two organizations will follow the same exact style of project management.

Projects in the federal sector differ in many ways from projects in other sectors or industries. The Project Management Institute (PMI)² has identified several factors that affect how project management works in the public sector³ (particularly for large projects but not necessarily for the thousands of small projects that are regularly performed across the federal government):

1. A wide array of important stakeholders is involved. Projects may involve input from or output to world leaders, Congress, highranking appointees, taxpayers, policy makers, special interest groups, and others. Managing powerful constituencies invokes new dimensions of communication management.
2. Project outcomes often have great consequences. Launching space shuttles, consolidating military bases, developing a vaccine to fight a pandemic, and building billion-dollar bridges all represent potentially significant public consequences. Because public projects are highly visible, a failure can live on for a generation or more.
3. The revolving political landscape means constant change. New administrations arrive every four years, much of Congress turns over every two years, and agency leadership often changes even more frequently. With each new political cycle comes a new or revised set of priorities, legislation, and often a new approach to management. Civil servants and appointees must work together to effect change in the context of current political and ongoing organizational priorities.
4. Public scrutiny magnifies mistakes. Publicly funded projects must endure—indeed, must embrace—a continuous open window to the public. The public includes individual citizens, special interest groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and corporate interests. While some federal projects are shielded from continuous external inspection, freedom of information laws and the public sentiment can influence a project manager’s approach or the project’s execution or outcomes.
5. Dramatic failures can lead to intense oversight. Examples of “extreme” failures in federal projects (such as the response to Hurricane Katrina and oversight of the financial industry) often elicit intense reactions from key stakeholders, especially Congress. However, project management is a highly contextual field and Congress has not yet adopted laws specific to project management practices.

Recent legislative attempts have sought to establish trigger points for greater oversight, even project cancellation, if major projects begin to fail, as with Senate Bill 3384, the Information Technology Investment Oversight Enhancement and Waste Prevention Act of 2008 (2^nd session of the 110^th Congress). Even in the absence of legislation, however, it is possible to codify the structural components of project management, and the federal government has been moving steadily toward instituting more formalized processes.

In this context, project management in the federal government is both exciting and challenging. Successful project managers must deal with the realities of fickle priorities, political administrations, tenuous budgets, and the tangled web of regulations, laws, and policies that direct federal activities. Yet the federal government, with all its subordinate agencies, departments, administrations, and commissions, still must take the long road to successful project management, implementing one piece at a time. How did such a complicated environment come into being?

THE EVOLUTION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

The practice of project management in the federal government has evolved over the course of the nation’s history. Since the early days of the United States, there have been numerous minor improvements and major innovations in the discipline and practice of project management. The impact of some of the more important milestones is evident in project management in the federal government even today.

Back in the Day …

The government has used documented planning techniques since the earliest days of the nation. Journals, lists, and diagrams characterized planning documents dating back to the late 1700s. These documents often took the form of correspondence regarding administrative details.

Early American society relied on experiential cues more than information for planning projects. People learned by doing much more than by attending schools or gathering information, and access to independent information sources was limited. Early civil projects depended on the hands-on experience and training of the chief engineer. Thus, projects often represented an individual’s interpretation and pursuit of personal or group objectives.

The term project did not come into its current usage until the early 20^th century. Throughout the nation’s early years, project meant something akin to an undertaking, an endeavor, or a purpose. Compare that with today’s dictionary definition of the word, “a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim,”⁴ or PMI’s more focused definition, “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.”⁵

A good example of these early endeavors involves Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the famous military engineer of the Revolutionary War. Kosciuszko⁶ was a key figure in the Continental Army’s bid to maintain control of the Hudson River and Fort Ticonderoga on the southern end of Lake Champlain. Kosciuszko’s topographical skill, expertise, and experience enabled him to establish superior defense works by taking advantage of natural terrain and creating effective fields of fire. His approa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Praise For Achieving Project Management Success in the Federal Government
• About the Authors
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 - The Evolution of Federal Project Management: Then and Now
• Part 1 - Organization and Structure
• Part 2 - People
• Part 3 - Process
• Recommended Resources
• Index