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Date
A very interesting (and sustained!) discussion on LinkedIn is also very much in line with the philosophy of sustainability thinking in project management.
This discussion also keys off of Dave Shirley's excellent post here at Projects At Work, using the Survivor show as an analogy.
Like many interesting questions in life, the question is very simple but has very deep implications.
Robert Lewis, the original poster, asked – in December of 2009 (!) - for people’s reaction to this statement:
"Project managers should take responsibility for project success, not just the magic triangle of schedule, scope and budget. Success - achievement of the planned business benefits - takes much more."
The conversation has been lively, already collecting well over 250 comments, and a conversation which has been going on for a year and a half. Some are taking an environmental angle, which is appropriate here, in our opinion, but the broader – triple bottom line – aspect applies as well, and that’s what’s generating a lot of the interest. In fact, we chose today’s blog post image carefully. It’s about your impression. And it’s about – to paraphrase Tom Cruise’s character in Jerry Magure, “Show me the Monet!”.
Can we, should, we, must we, as project managers, be connected to the long-term success of the product of the project? Or are we bound to respect the triple (and with the 4th Edition PMBOK® Guide, now multi-faceted) constraints of scope, schedule, resources, risk, and quality of the project itself?
This, in turn, forces a few very provocative and productive thought processes in which we should definitely engage ourselves and our teams as project managers, forgetting (for the moment) the ‘green’ aspects of the project.
What does success look like for our project?
-
How will our project’s product really be used in its steady state?
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What are the risks (both threats and opportunities) of the project’s product’s steady state use that should be fed back into the project planning itself?
By asking these questions we:
-
Gain buy-in from stakeholders (because we are more inclusive of real project success
-
Gain connectivity to the operations people
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Gain a broader collection of risks (threats and opportunities). We cannot respond to risks we don’t even identify
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Gain a better understanding of our enterprise and how the project fits into the enterprise’s overall goals and objectives
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Understand end-users’ concerns earlier and more crisply
So we’d like to thank Robert Lewis for posing his original question and the 200+ people who have energized it.
We invite you to participate in that LinkedIn conversation or to contribute here with your comments.
This is not trivial. This debate over whether (or from our view, request that) project managers take on a longer-term view, is fundamental to project managers increasing their value to their enterprises and to projects having a greater chance at true (lasting) success.
Feel free to jump in the discussion – here and/or on LinkedIn.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: June 10, 2011 11:03 AM |
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