People, Planet, Profits & Projects

I teach graduate level project management at Boston University.  During the nicer weather, I like to eat my dinner on the banks of the Charles River. So you can imagine my surprise when I read this op/ed piece from a recent edition of the Boston Globe (10/10/2011) by Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jackson.  I never even thought about the river in a negative way, although I am old enough to remember the 1966 hit by the Standells that had the lines “Down by the banks of the river Charles” and “Well I love that dirty water. Oh, Boston, you're my home.”  I guess this is what that song was referring to. According to the Globe piece; “It was unthinkable 20 years ago that the Charles River would ever be clean enough to win the world’s leading environmental prize for river restoration. Back then, human feces lapped at the Museum of Science. It was a river with “belly-up fish and algal blooms making dogs sick,’’ recalled Arleen O’Donnell, former state department of environmental protection acting commissioner.”  Further, Jackson states in his piece, “Today, the Charles is one of the nation’s cleanest urban rivers, and recently claimed the International River Foundation’s top award for river management, beating out more than 20 other countries. The award went to the Charles River Watershed Association, which was formed in 1965 to protect the river.”

It is clear what this has to do with sustainability, but what does it have to do with project management? In our book, Green Project Management, we talk about “stakeholder demand” as one of the drivers of the Green Wave, and how project managers should add green (sustainable) project management to their skill sets to take advantage of the Green Wave.  This is a prime example of that. “The award provides a great moment to see what can happen when degradation spurs people to action. Former Governor Michael Dukakis remembered last week the collective shrug of the shoulder when Havey Beach in West Roxbury was closed to swimming in the 1950s. “There were no protests, no nothing,’’ Dukakis said. “The city itself was deteriorating. State government was corrupt. It was an angry place. The river was so polluted; it kind of symbolized the time. One by one, people started believing, and we hit that tipping point where people remembered that their grandmothers swam in the Charles and wanted that for themselves again.’’” Stakeholder demand in action.

So what was done to stop the degradation and improve the water quality of the Charles River?  Well I’ll tell you.  Project management, that’s what happened.  ““The state’s environmental secretary at the time, John DeVillars, took reclassification to another level when he became regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. He launched a 10-year mission (project) to make the Charles swimmable by 2005 and began issuing annual report cards on its water quality. “There was something about establishing a goal, timetable, and a measure of accountability that helped turned the tide (our emphasis),’’ DeVillars said.””  Sound familiar?  He established a green by definition/green by project impact - project!  Yes, there can be some overlap across the green spectrum.

“Towns whose sewage outflows emptied into the river as well as offending corporations were held accountable for violations, most notably the fines levied against Conrail in 1995. Pollution from its Allston rail yard resulted in $2.5 million in criminal penalties, including a record $1.5 million under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. In a move to restore public relations, Conrail also gave $250,000 to CRWA to build a water testing lab. How the CRWA came to be the recipient was a story by itself.”

Project funding, and of course you’d need a budget for this project, can come from unusual places.  We know as project managers to be careful of discounting any potential resource.  “Bob Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association says “A snaggle-toothed guy with bad breath came to my office. I listened to him talk about the river for half an hour. I didn’t think anything about it, but then came the Conrail headline and the money for us. It turned out that the snaggle-toothed guy was the fly-fishing writer from Sports Illustrated and he went fly fishing with senior officials of Conrail on the Rappahannock River [in Virginia]. I guess Conrail was trying to figure out what to do and they mentioned this to him and he said, ‘No question you should give the money to these guys.’ ’’”

Again, stakeholder demand asserted itself.  ““When we started, the attitude was, ‘So what, even if we fix our pipes, what about the next town?’  Walsh-Rogalski (Bill Walsh-Rogalski, a longtime attorney in the EPA’s New England office) said. “But one by one, people started believing, and we hit that tipping point where people remembered that their grandmothers swam in the Charles and wanted that for themselves again.’’”

We know that a project is not a project without a way to measure its success or failure, and this project is no exception.  It needed a metric. “Another visible tipping point of the Charles is the wildlife. The river now hosts otters, beavers, fishers, herons, hawks, herring, and migrating loons. Maury Eldridge, one of the river’s most dedicated kayaking photographers, says it has become more a “national park or wildlife sanctuary than an urban/suburban river.’’”

And as further prove of the effectiveness of project management discipline; “Still, major challenges remain, such as phosphorus runoffs from car exhaust, fertilizers, and animal waste, which can cause toxic algal blooms. But the lessons (learned) of the Charles have inspired and informed river cleanups in the state and throughout the nation. Frymire (recreational kayaker Roger Frymire) is today most frequently at work on the Mystic River, where he says he has seen at least 50 source problems.”

“So long a pauper among rivers, the Charles is now one of the greatest American civic accomplishments of the last 50 years. That in itself is a crowning achievement.”  We believe that this is a good example of green (sustainable) project management at work.  The effort could not have been accomplished without the acknowledgement of the green wave’s driver of stakeholder demand, and the intersection of the disciplined approach of project management.

We were listening to one of our favorite podcasts the other day - Wayne Turmel's Cranky Middle Manager.  In this particular episode, Wayne was - in his usual witty and outstanding fashion - was interviewing Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton, co-authors of The Orange Revolution.

The more we listened to this podcast and the more we heard these authors speak, the more we thought that the Orange* Revolution and Green Project Management had something in common other than an association with a crayon color.  Much more.

In our book, Green Project Management, we assert that the project manager, as a change agent, can be a source of change for their organization.  For example if they are to seek a connection to their organization's Environmental Management Plan (EMP) - and find tha their organization has no EMP, that you - the project manager could be the one to prompt the organization to create one.

And in The Orange Revolution, the authors study hundreds of thousands of people (350,000, to be exact) in a wide variety of organizations, and share their findings about how great teams were formed - teams with "breakthrough" capacity.  In many cases these were operational teams - groups of nurses, for example.  However the principles they expound certainly fit with project managers, and definitely can be adopted by green project managers.

For example, the authors found four essential qualities amongst these breakthrough teams:

• A noble cause
• Simple Rules  (simple, boiled down to 3: [Wowing customers, no surprises due to great communication, and mutual team support].
• Drive engagement
• Have team loyalty, sometimes at the expense of enterprise loyalty - not always popular with CEOs, but it works

In the book they go on to define 6 traits of breakthrough teams:

• Big dreams and ambitious goals
• Belief in in each other
• Belief in what the team can accomplish together;
• Take calculated risks while closely measuring results;
• Perseverence despite problems or conflicts that arise; and
• They have a "charming habit of Telling Stories" exemplifying what they are trying to achieve.

The big dreams and ambitious goals could be the dreems of making an organization as a whole more sustainable (economically, socially, and ecologically), couldn't it.  And that's one of many touch points we found.

Some others, very quickly -

Perserverence despite problems - well we know that getting people to think sustainability takes (ironically) sustained perserverence.  Telling stories - that's what we've been doing at EarthPM and it's working.  By telling stories and giving webinars on the topic of sustainability in project management we have found that our followership (heading towards 1,000 twitter followers, and an exponentially growing LinkedIn Group for example) is growing by leaps and bounds.

Bottom line: we recommend that you start with listening to Wayne Turmel's podcast regularly, but in particular the interview with Gostick and Elton.  Then, or in parallel, pick up their book, the Orange Revolution, perhaps buying it in tandem with Green Project Management.  After all - as the post heading says, they go together.

*why Orange? We knew you'd be curious...it's a nod to the authors' first book, the Carrot Principle.

We want to challenge you with the definition of what seems to be a mundane but pleasant word.

That word: success.

To do that, we're going to use an example provided from a very thoughtful post at an outstanding blog we suggest you visit, called SUKAD. 

So here is the scenario:

You are charged with building a gymnasium at a warehouse facility for an industrial company which has a large number of employees in the region.

And here is the first challenge question:

What is the project?

Many will say that it is the successful construction of the gymnasium.

Don't answer too fast! 

Now we quote directly from SUKAD:

Is the company in the business of building gymnasiums?

No!

OK, then what is the project?

Maybe we should ask the question differently, what is the business objective for the project, the business driver; business case?

Uh!

We understand. In this case we can say “improve employee health.”

To repeat and rephrase: the project is to build a gymnasium to improve employee health.

Great – now we know the project.

SUKAD goes on to discuss their four elements of project success.  And by now you know that although of course the completion of the gym (on time, meeting requirements, and within budget) is an important element of success, it's not an "end-all" measurement of success.

Here are the four measurements of success:

1. Product Success: did we deliver the gymnasium in accordance with the project detailed plan (PDP) and specifications? If yes; good, first success measure is achieved.
2. Project Management Success: did we deliver the gymnasium in accordance with the project management plan (PMP); i.e. within the established time, cost, and other metrics?  If yes; excellent, second success measure is also achieved.
3. Project Success: did we deliver the gymnasium in according to the project authorization (PAD)? Another way we can consider this is: did we deliver an acceptable and good standard gymnasium that the employees would consider using? If yes; wonderful, the third success measure is achieved. It is worth nothing here that since this can be measured shortly after completing the gymnasium, in most situations we consider the project a success and project is closed. However, we do not agree hence the need for the fourth measure.
4. Business Objective Success: We could have delivered an outstanding gymnasium and closed the project. However, the most important question is: did the project deliver the expected benefits that we anticipated when we considered the project and authorized it? Did we realize the benefits? The benefit expected is to improve employee health. It is unlikely that we will be able to give an answer at project close. We can measure the success a year or two after completion, long after the team demobilized.

As you can imagine, this last measure, business objective success, is related, at least in our minds, to the broad sense of project sustainability.  Notice that it doesn't have a thing to do with the environment, and yet it is still a sustainability issue.  We extend the view of the project beyond the deliverable and think in term of the steady-state.

Some project managers will find this objectionable.  "Out of scope!", they will say.  "Not our job!", they will declare.

We would like to agree quite strongly with SUKAD.  Whether or not they realized they had a posting on sustainability thinking, they absolutely did.

We also would like to know what you think.  Is there an advantage to you as a project manager and will you tend to do a better job as a PM if you consider these four measures?

Tell us!  We won't know until you do... and the posting will only be a success if it generates some good discussion....

Oh yeah...one of our deliverables was a link to the full SUKAD posting on this subject.

http://sukadipms.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/four-dimensions-of-success-example/

To us, Information Technology organizations have always been on the leading edge of project management.  It could be that IT is more disciplined than other departments within an organization.  We don’t mean in a bad way that others are not disciplined; they are in their own way.  But like the healthcare industry, IT lives on technology, procedures and processes, which makes it easier to adopt the more formal process and procedures of structured project management.

Couple that with the fact that IT uses a lot of organizational resources; costs of power, heating and cooling, as well as its effects on human resources, has a huge influence on the ability of people to be efficient with their work, and you find that IT projects greatly affect sustainability.  One of the major projects undertaken by IT departments is computer virtualization.  Because most of today’s computers are designed to run a single operating system and a single application, most computers are underutilized.  Virtualization allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single hardware platform.  In other words, a single hardware platform can run different operating systems and different applications.  For simplicity, and it is anything but, a single hardware system could run a PC environment with all of its applications, as well as a MAC environment with all of its applications.   

So how does it work?  There is software available from various manufacturers that allow a single computer hardware system to be virtualized so that each virtual machine can run its own operating system, as described above, and look like its running on its own hardware system.  Each virtual machine is a “stand-alone” so that there are no conflicts between systems.  VMware, one of the more popular virtualization software, “works by inserting a thin layer of software directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machine monitor or “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computer and share hardware resources with each other. By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, and network devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems, applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each having access to the resources it needs when it needs them.” 

So what does that have to do with sustainability, or Green IT?  It probably seems obvious to you, and you’re right, it will allow you to get rid of multiple hardware platforms that use power, heating and cooling, saving all those resources, without affecting the way people work.  We’ll talk about server virtualization another time.

As a member of the US TAG, US Technical Advisory Group, for ISO 21500, EarthPM receives various correspondences from the organization.   Project Managers, who are not familiar with ISO 21500, should avail themselves.   ISO 21500 is the proposed standards for project management or as they put “guidance on project management.”   But this blog posting is not about ISO 21500, but rather was inspired by the delivery of the “ISO Code of Conduct for Technical Committees.”  Without going into detail, the code provides guidance to committee members to: (1) work of the net benefit of the international community, (2) uphold the principle of consensus, transparency, and impartiality, (3) agree to a clear purpose, (4) participate actively, (5) escalate and resolve disputes, (6) behave ethically (our emphasis) and further states act in good faith and with due care and diligence, and (7) respect others in meeting.  These are seven excellent responsibilities not just for committee members, but for project managers and we can resonate with them.

And, it got us thinking about ethics and sustainability.  To us, behaving ethically and sustainability (protecting scarce resources including environmental resources) cannot be separated.  So, we looked at the Project Management Institute’s (PMI®) Code of Ethics and Personal Conduct.  It currently contains two references to the environment:

“3.1 Respect is our duty to show a high regard for ourselves, others, and the resources entrusted to us. Resources entrusted to us may include people, money, reputation, the safety of others, and natural or environmental resources.

2.2.1 We make decisions and take actions based on the best interests of society, public safety, and the environment.”

We think that there should be more.  Therefore, we are proposing some changes to the next edition of the PMBOK as well as changes to the Code of Ethics and Personal Conduct.  Those changes to include the folowing:

• Our commitment to sustainability means that we will take efforts on our projects (considering both the project itself and its product) to help eliminate or reduce:
• the buildup of compounds and chemicals in the earth’s biosphere
• the progressive physical degradation and destruction of nature and natural processes
• conditions that undermine people’s capacity to meet their basic human needs (for example unsafe working conditions and not enough pay to live on)

 As you probably note, this wording comes from The Natural Step, an organization that we feel is a leader in sustainability.  We welcome your comments on this addition to the Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, as well as the other changes we are proposing to the next edition of the PMBOK.  Please join the conversation at EarthPM.