Boston, like Interface Global that we’ve talked about before, is “climbing Mount Sustainability” with the same intended timeframe for completion of its goals, 2020. Here is a little background on Boston for context. Founded in 1630, it is one of the US’s oldest cities. That means that there is a lot of old infrastructure. There are about 625,000 people in Boston, a relatively small city. It covers a little over 48 square miles and has a population density of almost 13,000 people per square mile. Contrast that with New York City which has a little over twice the density. So the less density of population may make it a little easier to implement some sustainability efforts because people are not as crowded together. What are some of those sustainability goals for Boston?
Whether it is feedback from our website or feedback after a presentation, we’ve often heard “I’m a code writer or a software developer, how could my project be 'green general*.' There are no aspects of sustainability that I can affect with my code.” Our answer is - you’d be surprised how much you, as a programmer, can affect sustainability or greenality (the degree to which an organization has considered environmental (green) factors that affect its projects during the entire life cycle and beyond). 
It seems that everyone these days are going “green.” Even HGTV, with their new “Dream Home”, “Green Home” 2013 sweepstakes, is going with increased sustainability. Yes, I admit, I am an HGTV watcher (at times). Just like 
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Climate Action – What is a City to Do?
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One of the major 2020 goals is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25%. There is a lot of mass transportation infrastructure in and around Boston that could make it happen. Additionally, by 2050, the goal is to reduce GHG emissions by 80%. Another, and we believe very smart goal, is to” incorporate projected climate change into formal planning and project review process. “There are two things that can be said about this effort. The first is that there is an acknowledgement of climate change at the highest levels of city government. The second, we believe, is that new construction/renovation projects will include the “risk” of climate change, like taking into consideration severe weather and other changes to the climate. In June of 2011, I was in Boston teaching when a huge tornado touched down in western Massachusetts and a smaller one hit closer to the city of Boston. That night, and I was a witness, the city suffered some severe thunderstorms not seen before. So it is just smart that Boston look to protect its citizenry by accounting for that type of climate change risks. The city is also intending on a city-wide effort to get the community and community leaders involved in the effort. Finally, another very smart initiative is to “develop innovative businesses and workforce skills to take advantage of climate action opportunities.” This is not unlike the message we have in our book and what we have been saying for more than three years now, project managers need to be aware of sustainability efforts because of the potential job opportunities, not just building a wind farm or adding solar panels to a roof top. The potential is that all projects have some aspect of sustainability, and by being aware of those aspects, a project manager can broaden his or her horizons. For further information on how you can help your city, big or small, see Boston’s green game plan. For more information on our efforts please visit our website. Inspiration: Suffolk Law, Alumni Magazine, Winter 2013, Shades of Green |
The Superbowl of Project Success
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Today, on Superbowl Sunday* - it seems appropriate to talk about success. For our local team, the New England Patriots, it was a successful season - to a point. They had a tremendous year, but did not win in their game against the Baltimore Ravens, who now advance to the Superbowl to play the NFC's winner, the San Francisco 49'ers. But what about PROJECT success? This has been getting a lot of dicussion lately, and we've been paying attention, becuase a careless definition of project success would be counterproductive to sustainable project management which is our main focus. Let's use as an example an article iIn this month's issue of Project Management Journal. This journal, by the way, is often overlooked by practitioners of our field, becuase authors insist on using words in their article titles (and these are all real examples) like:
These are not always the favorites of a casual weekend reader. Still, there is excellent material in the articles - one needs to just trust that you can get past those academic titles and find that value. It's there. In this month's issue, there is one article called, "Managing the Intangible Aspects of a Project: The Affect of Vision, Artifacts, and Leader Values on Project Spirit and Success in Technology-Driven Projects". Yes - it's a mouthful, as usual, but it's actually quite an interesting article with findings about how motivation and success are related to the amount of effort put into the 'team spirit' and identity of a proejct team. But we were intrigued (quite orthagonally and in a Bayesian sense) by the listing they featured on the definition of "project success". Here it is:
Notice that we have highlighted the bottom chunk of 'success bullets' in green. Why? These green bullets - and we applaud the authors for this - go beyond the traditional view that project managers usually take when they look at project success (and therefore project completion). By taking the view that these 'greener' bullets indicate, the PM takes the longer-term, more sustainable view that we have been talking about now for about four years. We would of course add some others, and we did in our book, Green Project Management. But for now, just focus on these authors' bullets. We will continue to blog on this subject, in fact we have a request in to the authors of this article for more data about these definitions and how they contributed to 'project spirit'; but for now, we'd like to hear from you. How many of the above bullets do YOU and YOUR PROJECT TEAM use when defining success? So, as you watch the Superbowl - or during halftime as you count up the money you may have won by selecting squares for the end-of-quarter-scores - think about this. And take a moment to respond, we really are interested in your definition of project success in the light of these bullets.
*in the United States, this is our celebration of the final game of the American Footbal season, with the winners of the National and American Football Conferences playing each other for the National Footbal League championship |
Sustainability and Software?
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For instance, and I am sure that the software geeks out there know this, but the way you write software can influence the power used by the computer's processor. If you can reduce the “energy” required to execute your instructions, you can reduce the overall energy required to run a data center, therefore saving precious resources. So how does one do that? I have written and am teaching a graduate course at Boston University called “Green IT”. I am using a new book this semester called Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, edited by San Murugesan and G.R. Gangadharan, @ 2012 John Wiley and Sons Ltd. In Chapter 2, Bob Steigerwald and Abhishek Agarwal from Intel talk about some energy saving software techniques. As an example, for DVD playback applications, “you could implement read-ahead buffering methodology and allow the optical drive to take breaks rather than continuously spinning. “ They also talk about; computational efficiency - using more efficient algorithms and multi-threading, data efficiency – effectively using cache memories, and idle efficiency and evaluating a monitoring software impact to platform power - using the PowerCfg utility in Windows7 to determine whether an application has increased the platform timing resolution, thus decreasing the amount of idle time used to reduce power consumption. Just when you thought that what you do doesn’t have any effect on greenality, you find out that using some software methodologies, designs and development tools, you can have a positive effect on reducing the energy required to process data. That is a positive effect on the environment and it reduces costs, all the while people are “doing the right thing”, plant, people, profits. * In our book, we have cover the “spectrum of green” from Green by Definition – building a wind farm, Green by Project Impact – Boston’s Big Dig, Green by Product Impact – Keurig’s K-Cups and Green General – a new software release. I just love this picture, and I realize the caption is a little small so I will explain the jist. This a a mock up of what the RAND Corporation thought the home computer might look like in 2004. Looks like this was published in the 1950's. |
Dream Home - Green Home
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What caught my attention when watching the introduction to this year’s Dream Home was the fact that they constantly mentioned their project manager and, by supposition, his or her significant contributions to the project, and the fact that it is in a project intended to be truly sustainable, considering the triple bottom line. While the emphasis is on nature, there are aspects of energy efficiency and comfort. The house is in the Kiawah Island Resort, South Carolina. It is a barrier island and according to Kiawah Island Associates“…it will likely be the last large barrier island on the east coast to be privately developed. Containing about 10,000 acres, the Island enjoys a moderate climate, breathtaking natural beauty, controlled accessibility, and the professional and financial resources necessary to create both a resort and year-round residential community without compromise or parallel.” So this resort is not inexpensive, and the lessons learned here can go a long way to helping developers and builders understand the concepts of green building and, perhaps, find less expensive alternatives. Part of the expense, here, is the property. For instance, the philosophy of the Kiawah Island Associates is as follow: “Over the years of its stewardship as the Island’s developer, Kiawah Resort Associates has been dedicated to preserving a unique and ecologically sensitive community. The architectural design and construction philosophy of the Company maintains that homes should generally be unobtrusive in form and color in order to complement their natural setting. No particular period, style, foreign or geographic influence, or traditional approach is specifically endorsed or discouraged. The chief concern is that the residential community be basically homogeneous with certain areas having more architectural diversity than others. This philosophy suggests that each home be treated not as an individual creation or architectural entity arbitrarily placed on its site, but rather as a carefully planned addition to the natural setting which embraces the site and becomes one with it. Consequently, design solutions should extend beyond the building walls to include the entire site, varying in design to complement and enhance their natural surroundings. Designs and colors appropriate for the mottled shade of forest areas might be inappropriate for open or un-wooded sites. Colors and textures of exterior building materials should be compatible with the light reflecting properties of the natural elements such as tree bark, surrounding trees and shrubs, pine needles, natural grasses, and other vegetation.” There is an extensive guideline (5+meg) that can be a helpful planning document for anyone to use. Some of the sustainability techniques being used is green landscaping; using native plants, butterfly attracting bushes and also takes into consideration the area wildlife. Forest Stewardship Council certified wood is used in the project. According to Jason Shuey, Rainforest Alliance, “Another myth is that FSC-certified products cost much more, sometimes more than twice as much, as wood products that are not FSC-certified. Often contractors and/or pro-dealers who do not want to put in the extra effort to source FSC-certified products will significantly mark up the quote of the products that are FSC-certified to sway the project manager toward not going with the FSC-certified products. Most contractors also like to deal with pro-dealers that they know and are comfortable with. So if these suppliers do not wish to locate and sell FSC-certified products to their contractors at a reasonable cost then the contractor needs to use the resources available to find and purchase FSC-certified materials from another FSC-certified supplier.” One other thing to note (among lots of things), is “cellular pvc siding” used on the home. “Polyvinyl chloride is the plastic used to make the white drain pipes used in household plumbing. But when the molten plastic is whipped with air and then extruded into building materials, it makes a terrific substitute for exterior wood. HGTV Dream Home 2013 is clad in PVC trim and wall shingles. Each shingle boasts a distinct faux grain pattern and can be cut and nailed in place using the same techniques and tools as wood. But the plastic won’t absorb moisture, rot or host termites. So like every part of this house, siding will withstand the harsh island elements for an extended period of time.” By the way, the house has earned a Platinum LEED Certified rating. That means that the house achieved the highest rating using the following criteria; sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy & atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation is operations.
I did find this about the benefits of a LEED certified home:
Looks a little (a lot) like the triple-bottom line to me. |
A new baseline
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We have based our company on the intersection of sustainability and project management. And we're hopeless project management professionals who for better or worse see almost everything through a PM's eyes. Thats' why it was such a surprise this morning - I literally had to rub my eyes - when I saw what looked like an S-curve right under the top, front-page headline story of the Boston Globe. We're going to provide that graphic for you below to look at, download, and consider. But let's start with a mini-lesson on S-curves for our more casual readers. For this, we turn to Max Wideman's outstanding resource and glossaries of PM, where we can findthat an S-curve is: "A display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time. The name derives from the S-like shape of the curve, flatter at the beginning and end and steeper in the middle, which is typical of most projects. The beginning represents a slow, deliberate but accelerating start, while the end represents a deceleration as the work runs out." It all looks like this:
As a project proceeds, we track our progress against this S-curve. The planned progress is called the baseline. Changes in scope, budget, schedule - any of these must be reflected by formal integrated change control, which (as the picture above shows) involves acknowledging that change and creating a new baseline. Great! Lovely. Now what the bleep does that have to do with the picture on the front of the Boston Globe? Well, there is a connection. Turns out, the chart is not cumulative spend of resources but rather temperature from January through December for decades (of Boston data), plotted to show the 'normal' baseline of that pattern and also to show that 2012 was the Boston's (and the USA's) warmest on record. So although the S-shaped curve's shape was only a bit of a bizzare coincidence (it had to do with the natrural fact that temperatures in the USA go up from January to December in that particular pattern), the idea of it being a representation of an old baselie and a new baseline was actually seen properly through my tired eyes. In fact, the last line of the article sums it up well: It was “a huge exclamation point,’’ said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch at Climatic Data Center. “This is consistent with what we would expect in a warming world.’’ So, just as we have to re-baseline a project when we face reality and acknowlege triggered risks, issues, scope change, and so on, it appears that we have to acknowledge (and we would assert act on) factual information presented to us as PMs - or in this case, folks who happen to live on Earth. We're both. Some of the 'new-baseliney' facts from the article:
Have a look at the graphic. Are you a project management nut like me? Do you see an S-Curve there? And...once you realize that it isn't, do you get a feeling, like we do, that this is even more ominous than a project going bust? It's more like an eco-system giving us a 'risk trigger' that something is quite wrong? At least consider that possibility.
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