People, Planet, Profits & Projects

From a recent article in Scientific American:

"In July 2012 three of India's regional electric grids failed, triggering the largest blackout on earth. More than 620 million people — 9 percent of the world's population—were left powerless.

The cause: the strain of food production from a lack of water.

Because of major drought, farmers plugged in more and more electric pumps to draw water from deeper and deeper below ground for irrigation.  Those pumps, working furiously under the hot sun, increased the demand on power plants.  At the same time, low water levels meant hydroelectric dams were generating less electricity than normal ...

Energy, water and food are the world's three most critical resources.

Although this fact is widely acknowledged in policy circles, the interdependence of these resources on one another is significantly underappreciated.

Strains on any one can cripple the others."

Sound a little familiar?  Increase your project's scope, and you proably have a budget and schedule problem.  Fiddle with the schedule, bringing the date in by 3 weeks, and you probably have to spend money on overtime and may have to leave out some featres.  Got hit with a budget cut?  Get ready to just admit that the delivery date has moved out by a couple of weeks, and/or once again, you have to take a scissors to some features.

Sure enough, the Iron Triangle - or Triple Constraint - has lost its mojo recently, at least in terms of presence in the PMBOK(R) Guide.

But as Gene Wilder said so well in Young Frankenstein... "IT"S ALIVE!". 

Sure, the PMBOK(R) Guide 5th Edition talks about multiple contratints on page 6, and now leaves out the formal reference to the Triple Constraint, but you know - you feel - that it is still there.  And it often rules your proejct - doesn't it?

Now back to Scientific American.  The point of the article - definitely worth a read - is that the triad of Food, Water, and Energy is a similar set of constraints.  And as we work on our projects, it's worth thinking about the relationships that our project - and the project's outcomes - have on the social infrastructure around them.   We realize that not every project has the obvious connection to food, water, and energy, but any such connection is easier to imagine if you think about the product of your project in action -  cumulatively - say 5 or 10 years from now.  And it may not be the exact "Cripple Constraint" called out by Scientific American, it may be some other set of dependent variables.

We just urge you to think about your project - just as Gene Wilder did - not only in its assembly stages - but when... IT'S ALIVE!

Hot off the press!

Here are ESI‘s top 10 trends for project management 2015:

1. Lofty expectations: PMs need to become adept at managing gaps between the constraints of cloud-based platforms and the business expectations.
2. Out-of-whack: Talent management within the PM community comes back into focus.
3. Fuel for the hybrid: As the pace of change continues to accelerate, hybrid project methods will become the norm.
4. Too little, too late: The ability to find and hire top PM talent is dwindling.
5. Bottoms up: Organisations must build bottom-up processes to link project outcomes to organisational strategy.
6.  Ignore them at your own peril: Project managers will continue to be ignored and not get the coaching and mentoring they are screaming for.
7. Run!: Project managers continue to sacrifice project transparency as they flee from conflict and avoid difficult conversations
8. Change is coming: The disciplines of change management and project management continue to merge as PMs become responsible for delivering project and business outcomes.
9. Knocking at the door: Project management and business strategy better align to the benefit of the organisation.
10. Culture shock: Organisational culture becomes a bigger consideration in risk management practices.


You may have noticed that we highlighted two of these - #5 and #9.  Why?  It's because both of them are evocative of - or more accurately, speak directly to - sustainability thinking in project management.

Let's look at them one at a time (and then together).

5. Bottoms up: Organisations must build bottom-up processes to link project outcomes to organisational strategy.

When we see "bottoms up" here, we think of the Stanford Execution Framework (SEF) which is a model describes how enterprises really work.  And it goes from "Purpose" at the top, to "Operations" at the bottom.  "Strategy" is an itermediate step, which connects ONLY through Portfolios, Programs, and Projects, to "Operations".  So the "bottom" here is operations - the steady state result of projects, programs and portfolios.  And those projects, programs, and portfolios are the precious connective tissue that allows the enterprise's purpose (think mission, vision, and values) to really show up for stakeholders.  However, that only happens if the project manager looks "up" and "down" to know the purpose of the company and the longer-term effects his or her project's product actually has.  This is so critically important and urgent to us, we took the time to write a follow-up book to Green Project Management with a title that sounds like it may have come right out of this Top Ten  List: "Sustainability in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios: Realizing Enterprise Benefits and Goals".

Bottoms up, everyone!

And we're only halfway there - let's move on to #9.


9.  Knocking at the door: Project management and business strategy better align to the benefit of the organisation.

Alignment of projects, strategy, and steady-state benefits!  It's what we talk about throughout the new book and, well, what we covered above in #5, except this time the focus is on "Benefits".  When we see the word "Benefits" we think of success.  And when we think of success, we want project managers to realize that there is a huge difference between Project Management Success and Project Success.  The former is about meeting deadlines, sticking to a schedule, staying under budget and providing deliverables.  Don't get us wrong; these are all worthy, importnat, difficult things to do which require PM maturity and excellence.  But it's extremely narrow in its vision and viewpoint.  Project Success, on the other hand, is focused on the long-term benefit realization provided by the project's product.  It considers the economic, ecological, and social byproducts of the product while it's operating for a year, two years, ten years, five hundred years.  It's holistic.  And project success yields better project management because it assures that the project is aligned with the enterprise's purpose, which inevitably is geared around longer-term, triple-bottom-line concerns.  Where Project Management Success might be reprsented by a Cost Performance Index of 9.957, Project Success would be represented by a product that responsibly delivers a profit for the organization for 4 years.
We're extremely pleased that the Top Ten list produced by ESI is 20% focused on sustainability thinking in PM.  Now we turn our sights to standard documents like the PMBOK^(R) Guide.  Can such documents put 20% of their focus on sustainability thinking?

We hope so.

And we leave you with this hope:

May 2015 be one of your Top Ten Years!
 

An outstanding article by Ed LeBard, PMP, in the December, 2014 edition of PMNetwork Magazine, makes us very optimistic about 2015 and beyond.  Our positive reaction is due to LeBard's focus on key and traditional project management process groups, such as procurement, but applied to an important consideration for us temporary-endeavor-with-definitive-start-and-finish-minded project managers - the product of the project in the steady state, holitically viewed, and for the long term, in operation.  Just like the photo above which we used to decorate our blog post - projects are not just about where the rubber hits the road - they're about the success of the product of the project way, way down the road.

The first line sets us straight:

That's what we're talking about!

Of course, we'd assert that it goes way beyond construction projects and into any type of project with any type of product.  But let's stay focused on this article, because although it's fairly short, it has so much to convey.

We really like the perspective the article takes on - one of ongoing performance, of expected benefits from the building, rather than (only) the usual focus on project management excellence - on time, within budget, and meeting scoped requirements upon delivery and handover.  No.  This article takes on the proper perspective - focused on realization of benefits, and performance in the steady state, the way that the customer (and residents) of the building see it, to say nothing of the other stakeholders (fellow dwellers of the planet who seek lower impact).

But the article, despite the use of the word "Green" in the title ("Mastering the Green Domain") is not about "Green" in the way we are sometimes bombarded with; it's not an article about saving the whales and hugging trees.

Instead, it's more about the view of sustainability that we prefer - a triple bottom line view, that yes, includes ecological elements but also social and economic sustainability.  A project is successful if it is able to STAY 'in business' for a long time, without causing undue impact on people or environment.  Thankfully, that's what comes across in the story.

The article contains advice about the extra effort (e.g. great communications and teamwork) required to make a project this sort of long-term success.  To us, this illustrates once again the 'integratedness' of sustainability into PM.  It's not a little throw-in extra.  It needs to be a consideration in all of the process groups and Knowledge Areas.  Heck, in the first few paragraphs, LeBard has three out of the ten Knowledge Areas covered already!

But perhaps one of the best parts of the article is the term used to describe this philosophy: "performance-based design".  We love it.  It speaks in very active terms about the thinking necessary for a project manager - beyond handoff... to steady-state performance.  If a project manager can inundate his or her team with that phrase, it will yield more projects that are focused on benefits realization, which, the way we see it, is the true meaning of sustainability.  We'll be covering this much more in an upcoming book.

Have a look at the article.  And even if you're not in construction, imagine your project in this light.

May it shine on ... and on...

No, not that kind of engagement!  I’ve been doing a lot of research for our next book.  I came across several fascinating surveys from the National Environmental Education Foundation(NEEF).  The organization itself is a great resource for environmental (extrapolate to sustainability) information.  According to their website, “NEEF is the nation’s leading organization in lifelong environmental learning, connecting people to knowledge they use to improve the quality of their lives and the health of the planet.  We achieve this by providing knowledge to trusted professionals and other leaders who, with their credibility, amplify messages to national audiences to solve everyday environmental problems.”

The surveys I am referring to are all about employee engagement starting with their study “Business Case for Environmental and Sustainability Employee Education” from 2009 continuing through the  study “Toward Engagement 2.0: Creating a More Sustainable Company Through Employee Engagement.”  I point out these studies because they may not appear to relevant to the project manager, but they are in fact relevant because they point out that engaging everyone in the organization helps that organization to “appreciate” the sustainable efforts.  In that environment (excuse the pun), sustainability efforts by the project manager are not only recognized, but encouraged. 

In our new book, one of the sections is about how the internal organization views sustainability efforts.  We explore environmental management plans and ISO 14001 as examples.  While those initiatives must be applauded, the surveys noted above emphasize the importance of employee engagement in the sustainability process by highlighting several major companies’ education implementation.

Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson and Johnson, as well as companies that we considered “top of their game” in sustainability form our previous book, Green Project Management, Stonyfield and Interface Global.  All these companies approach sustainability education by providing “mixed-media” presentation and “multi-departmental leadership.”  The commitment goes across departments and throughout the companies.  From the “toward Engagement 2.0…” survey, NEEF found some “new and interesting results:

• “Sustainability” remains the established phrase to describe a company’s environmental sustainability initiatives. “Greening” for many years was the second-most-used term but is now almost the least used to describe these initiatives.
• Social and environmental activities converge. As companies begin to address more complex supply-chain issues, those surveyed see environmental and social issues becoming more connected.
• Has sustainability knowledge become less important or have we “arrived”? In large companies, those surveyed see less of an increase in the value placed on a job candidate’s sustainability knowledge than in years past, while mid-sized and small companies still see this as increasing.”

And from one of the business case studies (Interface Global) there are some key lessons learned is to:”

·         Make E&S part of a shared vision and the company culture, not a “flavor of the month”

·         Measures are critical, and the best teacher

·         Storytelling is a powerful tool

·         Include all employees

·         Consider E&S motivation and knowledge in the hiring process”

Employee engagement in sustainability is critical to an organization.  It leads to innovation resulting in creative ways for an organization to become more sustainable.  That leads to bottom-line savings and more importantly a stronger connection to social responsibility.  As change agents, project managers can assure that there is an effective method to engage all employees in the sustainability effort.  If there isn’t an ongoing effort, perhaps that will make a good project!

This will be my last post for Projects-at-Work.  I have enjoyed talking with you over the past couple of years, but it is time for me to move on.  I am leaving you in the capable fingers of Rich Maltzman who will continue to provide posts for the 3P’s.

...or rather the lack thereof...

In this post we present to the PM Community the first known revealing photographs of actual examples of projects in 'various states of success'. In our upcoming book, Sustainability in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios: Realizing Enterprise Benefits and Goals, we talk a lot about success and what it means from a a project perspective.

In particular we look at Project Management Success versus Project Success.  In other words, the “efficiency” of how the project works compared to the “effectiveness” of the project’s product, in the longer term.

The graphic below shows the three elements: PM Success on the horizontal, Project Success (the product’s success) and Endurance as a third element/dimension (shown as depth on the chart).

So now on to the photographic evidence.

Let’s first look at a photo of a project that went very well.  The Sony Betamax was released on time, and within budget, and did exactly what the designers and marketeers at Sony wanted it to do.  At least for the sake of this discussion, we’ll say that it did.  But what happened to the Betamax itself?

If you’re younger than us (not too hard) you may want to hear the story.  We provide it to you courtesy of The Engineer Guy:

"This mighty machine sparked a revolution in our use of media. It’s a Sony Betamax video cassette recorder from 1979. This monster weighs about 36 pounds. The engineer in me find it fascinating: there is nothing digital, it’s a truly analog machine -- all moving pieces and parts.

Early adopters of the Betamax used it to record television shows -- a revolutionary concept at the time -- because prior to the Betamax you had to watch a show when it was broadcast. It threaten the entertainment industry so much that in 1979 they argued that recording television shows at home infringed on their copyright. It all came to a head in a Supreme Court case -- Sony Corporation of America versus Universal City Studios -- where five justices allowed home recording. Although Sony won this court battle, they ultimately lost out to a machine that used this size tape. This is a VHS recorder made by Sony’s great rival JVC.

Both machines solved the same problem: How to store information compactly on a tape. Here’s the brilliant innovation used by both machines. The machine grabs the tape, drags it forward, as this silver drum starts to spin rapidly. The drum has two electromagnets (called heads) arranged on opposite sides of the drum that read the magnetic information on the tape. That rotating head allowed for a compact recorder: in many previous recorders the magnetic heads didn’t move, only the tape. Because there was a limit to how fast the tape could move, it took a lot of tape -- about a seven inch reel to record an hour, which means that a movie would need two 7-inch reels inside a cassette. So, the rotating heads dramatically reduced the amount of tape needed, reducing the size to where it could be easily held in a cassette.

So, if the machines are so similar why did Betamax lose to JVC? Many thought the betamax machine would win: It had the better image quality and the Betamax is decidedly better built. Compare ejecting a tape on the Betamax to the VHS. First, watch the Betamax. Note how smooth it is. And then watch the VHS. That’s abrupt and will wear out the mechanism. Yet, to my engineer’s eye the VHS was the better solution.

First, the VHS was lighter than the Betamax: 29 and a half lbs compared to 36 lbs for the this Betamax machine. That’s a huge difference for a mass manufactured object. It impacts everything from material costs to assembly time to shipping costs. So, at the low end of the market the VHS machines were cheaper than Sony’s Betamax.

Second, the earliest Betamax tapes played for only one hour, VHS played for 2 hours -- enough time for a movie. The ultimate killer, though, was the rental market.

While, Betamax focused in its ads and energies on time shifting -- their ads featured headlines like “Watch whatever, whenever” -- while JVC, the maker of the VHS system, created relationships with the nascent video rental industry. When this market grew, VHS dominated in titles. While you could for a while find both formats eventually retailers began giving shelf space to the slightly more dominant brand, which then dominated even more.

So, the Betamax versus VHS dispels the notion that simply being first to market is the most important issue. It reminds us that technical excellence in one area isn’t enough -- here the superior picture quality of Betamax -- but that all technical aspects matter. For any mass manufactured object, the winner is usually the one that is just good enough."

Now, let’s go diagonally to the opposite side of our matrix – a project which itself is considered a failure but its product – at least in the long term – is considered a success.  Representing this corner is the Sydney Opera House.

Some of its project attributes, from this article in the Australian newspaper The Courier-Mail:

In 1957, the Danish architect Jorn Utzon won a NSW government competition to design a public building for a prized piece of harbour land at the time employed as a tram shed.

Utzon's concept was little more than a sketch when then premier Joseph Cahill, facing electoral defeat after more than two decades of Labor power, hastily decided to begin construction within two years.

Budgeted at an initial cost of $7 million, the Opera House ended up costing more than $100 million and took more than a decade to construct. That cost blowout, of 1400 per cent, makes Sydney's Opera House the most expensive cost blowout in the history of megaprojects.

And yet:

“....the Opera House adds $775 million to the Australian economy every year in direct ticket sales, retail and food spending and by boost to tourism to Australia.

The Opera House is (one of the most) most distinctive (icons in the world), attracting tourists from all over the world.”

Finally let’s go to the southwest corner of our matrix, where we have a project which is considered by many to have had poor project management efficiency and also has a product with enduring issues.

Boston’s  “Big Dig”

We won’t go into lots of detail here because the story of the Big Dig is fairly well known (refer to the Wikipedia entry for a good review).  The project was over budget by many billions of dollars and very late ($2.6B versus $14.6B and many years behind schedule).  That's of course bad enough. No, here, our focus is on the continued problems the project’s product has had.  This includes the death of a driver as a result of a concrete ceiling panel.  Here, we provide the 'revealing photo' as evidence that the project's product continues to have problems.  What you are looking at is a set of lighting fixtures.  The black bands that you see indicated by the arrows are straps which are holding up the lights because the project’s design failed to take into account the galvanic corrosiveness of the environment (and its long-term effects). Galvanic corrosion is an electrochemical process resulting in oxidation or corrosion of two dissimilar metals in contact in the presence of an electrolyte.  This takes place over time.  Projects are handed over in a moment of time.  The project manager has to get their team to think past – way past – that handover! 

In this case, the repair cost over $54 million – and the installation of 25,000 support straps like the ones in our actual photo- and caused frequent and disruptive lane closures.  The final deliverable of the project was ‘eased traffic’.  You can see that aside from the project efficiency – the things we’re used to measuring like schedule and budget and immediate product delivery, this project also continues to have problems with effectiveness: the project’s product and what it offers stakeholders in the steady state.  Here’s a story from a local news station, including a video that shows the issue.

We do not yet have a photo of the elusive northeast corner – here is where a project is run efficiently and it yields a product which works in the long term.  We know they're out there.  And we know there are a lot of smartphones...equipped with really good cameras... often on project sites...

Perhaps you have one?  Send in your photos!