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Finding Value in Project Compliance
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
Compliance is becoming a widespread issue for most organizations. This trend started in voluntary certifications and assessments like ISO 9000 and CMM. What distinguished these early assessments was that they were primarily driven by reasons of marketing, competitive differentiation and customer satisfaction.
Of late, compliance is a product of regulation. While we have had regulated industries for decades (in banking, telecommunications and utilities), these have tended to be established as a buffer put in place for the public good. Acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) have subjected every publicly-traded company, and increasingly many private ones, to similar levels of control and oversight.
We are seeing the impacts of this environment filter down into the world of project management. As organizations implement compliance mechanisms, these structures are beginning to have an impact on how projects are expected to be structured, managed and reported. The inevitable question that must be asked: Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?
Clearly, we're still at in early stage in understanding the ramifications--and value--that compliance mechanisms such as SOX offer organizations. Whether they actually influence a different organizational culture that can prevent future Enrons or simply establish a further set of rules for the next generation of executives to find loopholes in …
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