Are You Wasting Money On Your Projects?
From the pmStudent Blog
by Josh Nankivel
Ranting and raving about project management and systems engineering.
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What is the fiscal responsiblity of the project manager anyway?
Are we just supposed to deliver projects within budget? Is that the extent of our responsibility?
No
Look, there are plenty of ways to manage projects.
Some of them involve a ton of paperwork, and some involve just what adds value to the end user.
Some build in a certainty of tons of rework by planning for detailed design months or even years before development, and some plan on progressive elaboration after formulating a solid start-up plan to get a clear idea of the end goals and project constraints.
Ask Yourself
I challenge you and myself. Let's ask ourselves as we go about our working day to stop and think about our own activities and those of our team members.
Do those activities add value? Which activities could we do without or do better. Are we getting the 'bang for our buck'.
Do we run on our fuel of incoming investment dollars like a shiny new hybrid compact sedan, or a gas-guzzling Hum-Vee?
And in the final analysis, does your project either 1) save money for the organization or 2) make money for the organization? Do you measure ROI in a rigorous way? If not, how can you even tell?
Posted on: January 25, 2012 09:52 PM |
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Comments (2)
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Josh,
Terrific post as usual.
For those interested in more information about how they can connect the Lean project methods you mention here, I would humbly refer them to our book - Green Project Management, which we are proud to say has won the 2011 Cleland Award for Literature from PMI.
We have a whole chapter (Lean Thinking, Muda, and the Four Ls") on the topic.
Cheers
Rich Maltzman
Josh Nankivel
Engineering Project Manager| Apple
Sioux Falls, Sd, United States
Congrats on the award Rich!
Lean and sustainability go hand-in-hand, because when you map the value stream for a product from end-to-end you usually find that sourcing locally helps eliminate muda (waste) and decreases cycle time and work in process.
I haven't read the book yet, I'll have to get a copy!
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