Rainbow of Green - Pot o' Gold
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by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Dave Shirley
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Date
Every once in a while we feel the need to revisit a subject. It could be because there is new and better information, there is confusing information disseminated that we feel should be clarified, or it is a subject that is very near and dear to our hearts and we want to talk about it. This post is a little of all of that and it deals with our “rainbow of green” or green spectrum if you will.
We have always asserted that there is a green spectrum that runs the gamut; green by definition -> green by project impact -> green by product impact -> green-general. From our book, this green spectrum is based on the assertion that “All projects have some element of ‘green’.” This is one of the more controversial concepts in our book and receives a lot of pushback. We have expanded our thinking and instead of “green” we now refer to sustainability. Since we began researching our book in 2007 and publishing it in 2010, the concept of all projects having some element of sustainability has certainly become more important. More and more organizations are emphasizing sustainability including it in organizational mission/visions. This can only enforce our original assertion. How you may ask?
Let’s look at the “rainbow” in some detail. Sustainability projects by definition are those whose primary function is to directly provide sustainability benefits. A wind farm is a good example of that type of project. It involves extensive construction, but its direct benefit is renewable energy. It is quite easy to see the connection between sustainability and project management. Whether or not you are managing the project sustainably (I’ll explain that in a minute), you are managing a project whose end product has sustainability benefits.
Projects that impact sustainability of their surroundings are the next category along the rainbow. “It can be argued that every project has an immediate impact on their environment, and that statement would not be wrong. However, what we are referring to here, are those projects that have an immediate and significant impact on their environment.” Any major road, tunnel, or airport construction, for example, has significant and immediate impact on its surroundings. Again, there is significant sustainability impact, both positive and negative that needs to be managed with this type of project.
The spectrum message begins to get a little esoteric at the next stage, where the product impacts sustainability. The main focus is not on sustainability or the project itself, but rather focuses on the “steady-state operation of the end product.” The example we use in our book is a rather negative one and we always use the caveat that we were not in the room when these decisions were made, so we don’t know what the rationale for the decision was. However, we can say that as a result of the decision that issues occurred . Our example is of the single service disposable coffee cup used in some popular brands of coffee makers. The product (the coffee maker) is excellent, meeting price point, quality and timeline, but the resulting tens of billions of empty single service that are not recyclable or biodegradable and wind up using space in our landfills.
Finally, and this is probably the most obtuse concept, is the end of the rainbow, and really the pot of gold, a project that does not appear to have any sustainability elements, but we assert does. One example with several elements is a software release. At the “coding” level, there are ways to make the software more efficient, thereby using less processor power, lending to less overall power usage. In Harnessing Green IT, Wiley @2012, edited by San Murugesan and G.R. Gangadharan’s the text I use for my Green IT Course, it is stated that “the behaviours of the software has a significant influence on whether the energy-saving features built into a platform (CPU) are effective. For instance, you could implement a read-ahead buffer methodology and allow optical devices to take breaks rather than continuously spinning the disk.”[i]
One quick note about managing a project sustainably and I will cover this subject in depth in a later post. There are two elements of a project, the product of the project and the processes used to manage a project. We all know about time, cost and quality, but there are other ways to make a project sustainably successful, like electronic rather than paper communications. Again, there is much more to this and I will cover it in a later post, but just wanted to give you an idea of sustainably managing a project as promised above.
Hopefully, I have explained “our” rainbow to you in a little more detail so you can you can then put it in context with other definitions. Let me know what you think.
Remember, even though it may appear that your project has no element of sustainability, our assertion is it does. And, whereever you are on the "rainbow," attention to sustainability will lead you to that "pot of gold."
[i]Chapter on Green Devices and Hardware, Askok Pon Kumar and Sattesh S. Kannegala.
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Dave Shirley
on: August 06, 2013 10:55 AM |
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