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I was reading the most recent Project Management Journal (Volume 47, Number5 – October/November 2016). Being the Project Management Journal, the articles all have long titles (I think this may be an international regulation!) and the one I am going blog about is no exception: “Lessons for IT Project Manager Efficacy: A Review of the Literature Associated with Project Success”.
Two words in the title caught my attention immediately: Success and Efficacy. Success is the key word of our latest book, “Driving Project, Program, and Portfolio Success”. Efficacy, because the definition relates to that success: the ability to produce a desired or intended result.
Both words speak to sustainability. In particular, the words “Project Success” were used to make a major point in our book – the PM needs to think about not only Project Management Success – focused on the efficiency of the project (scope, cost, and time of the project lifecycle) but also the effectiveness (the ability of the project to provide a lasting, worthwhile result), which is Project Success.
The article is a survey of literature – 59 ‘relevant and influential’ articles on ‘success’ in the PM context, so it has valuable pointers to many respected authors on this topic – I recommend you flip through it to find your own particular takeaways.
My takeaway was their focus on the intersection between Project Success, Project Management Success, and Project Manager Success. Of course, the ‘sweet spot’ is the intersection of all three.
This article comes so close to covering sustainability – so, so close – but it doesn’t quite get there. We think that the element of Endurance has to be added to Efficiency and Effectiveness (what they call Efficacy). Because a “desired result” is not enough. As a project manager focused on benefits realization, we need to know this and make it part of our DNA. Examples? You want examples?
Here are three examples of a desired result without considering endurance
- a diesel car that passes EPA tests for a while but then gets uncovered as having ‘cheat’ software to fool the EPA by turning off the environmental controls when it is on the road.It’s okay at first… but with the test of ‘endurance’ cost the company billions of dollars and resulted in the firing of executives and untold damage to individuals.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/volkswagen-to-pay-up-to-14-7-billion-to-settle-diesel-emissions-claims-1467117548
- a gigantic civil project in the city of Boston, which (among many other problems) uses a light fixture design that doesn’t consider its local environment and starts to fall off into the roadway, causing a $54M rescue project to prevent the light fixture detachments from causing injuries.
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/04/05/big_dig_tunnels_need_54m_light_replacement_mass_officials_say/
- a coffee maker - from a company with lofty goals about environmentalism – which produces tens of billions of non-recyclable plastic cups in its steady-state use and now has its inventor full of regret.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/03/the-abominable-k-cup-coffee-pod-environment-problem/386501/
and/or
http://www.businessinsider.com/k-cup-inventor-john-sylvans-regret-2015-3
- a city water board toasts each other (see photo above) with the new water supply they have created choosing to use a different river source for their water, toasting to their own “success” at the handover to operations , but which did not apply even basic rules about what to do when the water chemistry between rivers is different, and yielding an issue of leaded water which has become even a US presidential election campaign issue
http://mashable.com/2016/01/24/flint-water-crisis/#gF1K_NASskq1
I realize that this means a project’s success can’t be measured at handoff to operations, and perhaps for some time - maybe even years into operation, and that’s highly problematic for a project manager. I know that some will question whether this goes beyond the bounds of (at least traditional views of) project management. Okay, I admit it. It does! But it doesn’t mean that we as PMs cannot learn from the concept of enduring success – or at least the measurement of it and consideration of it, in our risk identification and other project planning.
What do you think?
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: October 22, 2016 09:41 PM |
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