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Situation: You want to take a broader view of managing projects.
My new favorite author spoke at our local PMI chapter meeting last night. Aaron Shenhar's book, Reinventing Project Management gives you a LOT of food for thought, but I think that one of his points is truly a breakthrough concept in our field. It cuts to the core of why there is so much controversy around PMBOK-based approaches and Agile approaches. In his presentation, given mostly to PMPs mind you, he says, "PMI has given us a great foundation. However, it's time to leave that foundation and go to the next level."
During his talk, he described a number of reasons why the standard approach to projects must change. A lot of it sounded rather "Agile" in nature. For instance, he talked about the Triple Constraint theory as being a key impediment to successfully delivering projects - because it incorrectly defines the success criteria. He said, success should not be defined just in terms of Scope, Cost, and Time - which are strictly efficiency-based. The focus should be more on business results and customer satisfaction.His definition of success is broken down into the following categories:
- Efficiency (criteria similar to the triple constraint)
- Customer (criteria = customer satisfiers)
- Team (criteria = customer satisfiers)
- Business Needs (criteria = things like ROI, strategic fit, and competitive advantage)
- Future Needs (criteria = future value, like in the case of new technology where much of the value is yet to be defined)
His theory (he describes it as 'project manager as mini-CEO') is "If you approach projects with this broader set of success criteria, you will be a better project manager, because the results will be better." It's hard to argue with that. It feels to me like he is calling for us to combine what PMI is starting to address separately as leadership skills with the PM approach in general.
How do you define project success? If the Triple Constraint good the way it is or should some of these higher level issues always be considered when managing projects?
Posted on: May 21, 2008 01:52 PM |
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