Project Management 2.0

Leveraging Tools, Distributed Collaboration, and Metrics for Project Success

Harold Kerzner

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781119000280
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Industrial Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2.0

MASTER PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR A VIRTUAL WORLD

In this full color guide, Project Management expert Harold Kerzner provides much needed guidance on today's changing project management mechanics, especially the growing importance of value metrics and key performance indicators. In Project Management 2.0, Kerzner explains how PM 2.0 offers better outcomes with a focus on new tools, better governance, and improved collaboration. Kerzner also compares various methodologies and examines how PM 2.0 facilitates problem solving and decision making. You'll find essential background on PM 2.0, as well as a detailed examination of web-based project management tools and how to use them.

• Improve project governance and collaboration with stakeholders
• Achieve more meaningful information reporting with KPIs, metrics, and dashboards
• Discover easier ways for teams to work together from different locations
• Gain an understanding of the project manager's role in strategic planning and portfolio management
• Implement problem-solving and decision-making processes
• Understand how to implement effective methodologies

Project Management 2.0 explains PM 2.0 tools and techniques that managers, project team members, engineers, and consultants can start using now for improved project outcomes.

CHAPTER 1
PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2.0

Copyright © Scott Maxwell/LuMaxArt/Shutterstock

1.0 INTRODUCTION: CHANGING TIMES

In today's business environment, we have a new generation of workers that has grown up in a Web 2.0 world of Web-based project management tools allowing people on virtual or distributed teams to work together much more closely than in the past. Advances in computer technology and information flow have shown that the way we traditionally managed projects, PM 1.0, is a hindrance and ineffective for many of today's projects. Literature is now appearing describing PM 2.0, which focuses on new project management tools, better project governance, improved collaboration with stakeholders, and more meaningful information reporting using metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and dashboards.

1.1 CHARACTERISTICS OF PM 1.0

Project management had its roots in the aerospace, defense, and construction industries more than 50 years ago. Project management practices were effective on large projects with reasonably known and predictable technology, assumptions, and constraints that were unlikely to change over the duration of the project and a somewhat stable political environment. Unfortunately, for most companies, these types of projects represented only a small portion of all of the projects that companies needed to complete to remain in business.

Today, we are applying the project management approach to a wider variety of projects encompassing all areas of business where politics, risk, value, company image and reputation, goodwill, sustainability, and quality are seen as being potentially more important to the firm than the traditional time, cost, and scope constraints. As such, the traditional project management practices that we have used for decades, which we shall call PM 1.0, are now seen as ineffective for managing some of these new types of projects.

PM 1.0 is based upon the following activities:

• Projects are identified, evaluated, and approved without any involvement by project managers.
• Project planning is done by a centralized planning group, which may or may not include the project manager.
• Even though the planners may not fully understand the complexities of the project, the assumption is made that the planners can develop the correct baselines and plans which would remain unchanged for the duration of the project.
• Team members are assigned to the project and expected to perform according to a plan in which they had virtually no input.
• Baselines are established and often approved by senior management without any input from the project team, and again the assumption is made that these baselines will not change over the duration of the project.
• Any deviations from the baselines are seen as variances that need to be corrected to maintain the original plan.
• Project success is defined as meeting the planned baselines; resources and tasks may be continuously realigned to maintain the baselines.
• If scope changes are necessary, there is a tendency to approve only those scope changes where the existing baselines will not change very much.

With PM 1.0, executives were fearful that project managers might begin making decisions that should be made only at the executive levels. Senior management wanted standardization and control in the way that projects were being managed. Project managers were given very little real authority to make decisions. Almost all important decisions were made by the project sponsors. Enterprise project management (EPM) methodologies were created with the mistaken belief that one size fits all. Every project had to follow the EPM methodology because it supported the executives' comfort zones regardless of the ramifications. The EPM methodologies were constructed around rigid policies and procedures. Project status reporting resulted in massive reports and as much as 25% of a project's budget could be consumed by reporting requirements.

Even though a new edition of the PMBOK® Guide comes out every four or five years with changes to get us further away from PM 1.0, the PMBOK® Guide still contains many of the elements of PM 1.0. It may not be possible, or even practical, to create a single PMBOK® Guide that can satisfy those firms that still prefer PM 1.0 and those that have a necessity for PM 2.0.

1.2 OTHER CRITICAL ISSUES WITH PM 1.0

PM 1.0 has worked well for many companies for the types of projects that they traditionally managed. But for other companies there were significant defects with PM 1.0 that needed to be changed. As an example, conventional project and even business planning, as used with PM 1.0, worked on the expectation that managers can predict future outcomes by extrapolating from past results. Planning is often based upon history. But for many new business opportunities and the forthcoming projects this way of planning was often not possible. Experience may be lacking or extrapolating from past experience may be misleading.

A solution to this problem using PM 2.0 is to predict future outcomes based upon assumptions. Some of the assumptions made during the planning process will very likely come true, whereas the outcome of others may very well impact the project to a point where the project should be redirected or even canceled. Project managers may have to test all of the assumptions by developing contingency plans based upon “what-if” scenarios. However, with PM 1.0, the assumptions that appeared in the business case or the project charter were taken as fact and often never challenged. This resulted is a waste of valuable resources.

There were several other PM 1.0 issues that needed to be corrected with PM 2.0. Some of these were:

• Believing that one project management methodology can be applied to every project
• Taking for granted that the constraints and assumptions that are in the business case/charter are correct and need not be tracked
• Trusting that the planning of others, such as a planning department, is always correct and need not be challenged
• Lacking ownership of plans we did not participate in, resulting in lack of commitment to the project
• Working with a structured project plan that does not allow for the creativity of team members
• Not having all necessary information available to the project team
• Working with sponsors and governance committees that do not understand their roles and responsibilities
• Trusting that all of the decisions made by the sponsors or governance committees are the correct decisions
• Believing that implementing project management by executive decree will make it work
• Having no project management culture in the firm
• Believing that a changeover to a project management culture can happen overnight
• Having project management recognized as a part-time addition to one's primary job rather than seen as a career path opportunity
• Not understanding the need for project health checks or how to perform a health check
• Having limited tools to support project management activities
• Having too many projects a...