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Viewing Posts by Richard Maltzman
Driving advances - electrifyingly!
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Let's say you are in the market for a new desktop computer.
Those are some of the key features of the new IBM 5150 Personal Computer! And all of this for a starting price of only $4400 (in 2013 dollars)! So - are you buying? Probably not (unless it's for collectability reasons). Why do we mention this in a blog regarding sustainability and project management? Simple. It has to do with innovation, with inspiration, and with the fact that if you do things right, the environment - as a stimulus - falls to the wayside in comparison to the end result in terms of innovation. So the analogy of the PC is meant to help take away the 'sticker shock' (pun intended) of the Tesla Model S - an all electric vehicle, costing about $75,000, which just received the following quote from Consumer Reports: "it's not only the best electric car we've tested, it's now our top-rated model overall". So that's the point, isn't it? We can - and should - use sustainability as a trigger for innovation. But it doesn't mean that everything having to do with sustainably-developed products has to mean sacrifice and skimpiness. The Tesla is luxurious, comfortable, spacious, and loaded with features. Sustainability can be a driver (pun again intended) but does not have to be the rationale for purchasing. The Tesla is an example of a product that in-and-of-itself is just better than its carbon-hogging peers. We need more of these innovations. And yes, it's expensive. But that brings us back to the IBM PC. Go back up again and look at the features and price. When it first came up, only the extremely wealthy (or extremely geeky, or both) were buying that machine. Same for the Tesla. But look what happened to the great-great-grandchildren of the IBM PC. Witness the fact that your $50 MP3 player or even perhaps your coffeemaker has more computer power than that PC, and you can buy a Chromebook for $199. The $75,000 price of a luxury sports Tesla can easily become a price that is more than competitive with combustion-engine sedans. If not ourselves, our kids will be driving cars like this (carefully, we hope). It will take projects and project managers to get that price down - to design more workaday vehicles that you and I may drive - but it will happen. And it's going to take sustainability thinking built in to our discipline of project management to keep the spark of innovation alive and to keep electrigfying products like the Tesla Model S coming down the road. The move to electirc vehicles is a good thing for the planet. Yes, there is debate over the fact that this simply "moves the problem", but we're on the side that says it's much better to have the car run on electricity because we can innovate more easily on making power generation (in general) more renewable, and not so easily when each vehicle is a small fossil-fuel power plant itself. In fact, each combustion-engine car generates about 20 pounds of C02 for every gallon it consumes. And transportation consists of 29% of all human-generated CO2. We just blogged about great successes in the ICT industry, which makes up only 2%. So improvements in the area of transportation are more than 10 times more effective in impact - clearly showing that innovation in this area is key. We at EarthPM have been working in this area ourselves, as we've described on previous blog posts, running workshops for the ECOCAR2 program of the US Department of Energy and General Motors. We look forward to more collaborations in which project management contributes to innovations that electrify us and improve our lot - and, oh-by-the-way contribute to a more sustainable world. Note: the inspiration for this posting came from a great opinion piece in today's Boston Globe by Tom Keane. |
Told you a THOUSAND times...
Categories:
Leadership
Categories: Leadership
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We all have probably heard that phrase - "I told you a thousand times", from our sons, daughters, moms, dads, spouses, nurses, doctors, customers, bosses, and so on. Above, you see an old 45rpm record label with the title, "I've Changed My Mind A Thousand Times". So it seems like a bad thing... But in this case - it's a good thing. The 1000 times we're talking of is a 1000x reduction in energy use by the telecom industry. Yes - a one thousand times reduction. GreenTouch, a non-profit consortium of companies (see http://www.greentouch.org ) which are normally compeitiors and customers and suppliers of each other, have collaborated on several key energy saving schemes since its inception in 2010. We blogged about this on our EarthPM site. This story, posted just a few days ago, gives a great update in detail. To save you some time, we're just going to point you to a short video that sort of says it all. After watching it, we'll give you the connection(s) to project management, which you've probably already made.
Our favorite quotes: "Anything that is not green does not belong to the future" "new projects - ongoing....starting... it could be the blueprint of what R&D means to society" "give yourself the freedom to think differently" The project connections are obvious:
Once again - opportunity is knocking. If you are in the ICT industry, it's wise to become conversant in the language not only of bits, bytes, lasers, radio... but also the language of sustainability. |
Geothermally speaking
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A story in this month's PM Network magazine, "Geothermal Energy is Hot in Iceland", provides a good example of the complexities involved in any energy project. But in particular, it points us to the core PM skills that a PM working in the area of sustainability must have. Something that seems so intuitively green - drawing from already-present energy within the Earth to drive turbines and generate electricity with a minimum of carbon footprint - is not as straightforward as it seems. First a little background. Geothermal power projects are increasing. Going back to 2010 - a whole 3 years ago - we find only 26 countries with geothermal developments. Now in 2013 (and we're less than halfway through) there are 64 countries with 567 geothermal projects in progress or in operation worldwide. We suggest that you have a look at the entire article for the rationale to further develop the geothermal power grid in Iceland but it involves a massive undersea cable that would run from Iceland to Scotland and then to continental Europe. And it's part of an overall effort to meet the EU's mandatory agreement to get to at least 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. What's interesting to us is the assemblage of stakeholders that have to be satisfied for this proejct to get underway. You've already read here - and hopefully will read more - about the motivation and the EU governmental stakeholders. Obviously, electric power rate payers are stakeholders as is the Icelandic government. But also in the mix is a non-profit Invest in Iceland group, promoting the project. But there is also a consortium of 11 national environmental groups who warn that the profit margin could drive the project to have enormous environmental impact due to the actual construction of the power plants themselves as well as the overhead power lines. They also warn that geothermal drilling that gets too 'aggressive' could actually remove geothermal from the list of renewable sources of power (because in their eyes it becomes akin to mining). A lot is at stake here. This is a project requiring an initial investment of over US$2B. So our point is that whatever the project, stakeholder identification and management is critical. As we know, PMI has now devoted an entire Knowledge Area - ironically, Chapter 13 - to look at the unlucky combinations of project stakeholders with whom we have to work. Even green projects which appear on the surface (or in this case way BELOW the surface) to be obvious 'slam dunk' projects which should be green lit, deserve a sophisticated and thorough stakehholder analysis. So it pays to drill down. And the pun is intentional. |
Wait! They validated the steady-state. It's great, mate!
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Here is a short blog post just to point out sometihing of interest to those most focused PMs - the ones who read the PMBOK(R) Guide. The 5th Edition of this guide has been out for a little while now, and the new PMP(R) exam based on this version will begin starting on 1-August 2013. As some of our readers will know, we worked with a "crowd" of about 200 other PMPs to 'crowdsource' 18 changes to the PMBOK(R) Guide. Most of these changes were 'deferred' to the 6th Edition, one was accepted after an appeal process. In other words, most of our ideas to integrate sustainability into the PMBOK Guide did not get in this version. However, as we study the guide further, we noticed that - whether we had anything to do with it is up for debate - but we noticed that one process name changed along the lines of our suggestions. To quote PMI: "The Verify Scope process was renamed to Validate Scope and the text was reworked to add emphasis that this process is not solely about accepting deliverables but validating that the deliverables will deliver value to the business and confirms that the deliverables, as provided, will fulfill the project objectives, as well as their intended use to the project stakeholders."
There are some pretty key words in there. First of all, the main word - "validate'. We are constantly preaching about the need for the PM to be connected to the organization's mission, vision, and values. Well - the word validate, at least as we see it, is an affirmation that we don't just veirify scope, we test it against the project's, and as PMI says, the connection to the 'value to the business' and (shudder) 'intended use'. Do they mean 'long term' use? Well, they don't say so explicitly, but they do say "use'. And use refers to the steady state, to operations. And that's a major message of our book. We don't care how it got in there. It got in there. And that's what we call valid. |
Is there an Antikythera Mechanism in your future?
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The year: 413 BC. A fleet of Athenian vessels forms a blockade at Syracuse. It's critical that they have the light of the moon to work and patrol. One fateful night however, there is a full lunar eclipse and half of the huge 130-ship fleet is destroyed by the Spartans. The Greeks realized that knowing when eclipses were coming... well, that just might be important. Flash forward to 1901. A sponge diver discovers a wreckage of a Roman ship which clearly was full of Greek artefacts when it sunk, at some point probably around 65 BC. Amongst the items in the wreckage is a small, laptop-PC sized chunk of corroded bronze metal which clearly is composed of gears. Lots of gears. Lots of very small, intricate gears that until that time, nobody thought the Ancient Greeks were capable of making. Some of these gears even had pin and slot and other sophisticated mechanical 'tricks' to account for the eliptical and changeable orbit of the moon. It's really quite an amazing device. What drove them to invent this device, called the Antrikythera Mechanism, was a need for long-term planning. Turns out that this device was actually a sort of astronomical clock/computer which could forecast not only the timing of the eclipses (both solar and lunar) but even the colors and directions of shadow which would be seen on them. Pretty amazing stuff. If you are interested in this story and the Antikythera Mechanism itself we strongly encourage you to watch this video and perhaps the entire episode of NOVA which covers the story (it's called 'Ancient Computer'). You may also like this video:
Our points here are simply these:
Taken together, the Antikythera Mechanism can serve as a symbol for you and your project. Did you think about the kinds of things that happen when your project is in its steady state? Have you thought at all about the product of your project while it is in operation? And - perish the thought - have you considered what happens to the product of your project when it is disposed of? All of those should not be 'Greek to you'. We assert that they should be fundamentally part of your project planning process. So - go out there and "gear up" for long-term thinking. Stay tuned here and also visit EarthPM for more posts like this. |