If You Can't Keep Your Word, Honor It
| We often talk about keeping our word -- making a commitment and sticking to it, no matter what. But we don't often talk about honoring our word -- acknowledging when we can't meet a commitment. There will inevitably be times when we can't keep our word as circumstances change for one reason or another. Say you've committed to meeting a milestone on a specific date, for example. To keep your word, you have to do whatever it takes to make that date. But to honor your word, you only need to follow up with the person you made the commitment to and clarify why you can't meet the deadline. I'd also recommend recommitting to a different date, time or scope. This way, you're not simply hiding and hoping that things will work out, or that you won't be asked about a deliverable. Be confident enough to raise the issue directly, knowing that it will maintain a workable relationship. Even if you're unable to deliver as promised, you can at least be relied upon to raise red flags early enough, without downplaying the severity, to allow the client or team time to align their activities accordingly. And that saves time and money. To maintain a healthy relationship on your team, you must honor your word. It impacts the results of your work, your reputation, and your ability to earn a renewed trust from your clients and project team members. Honoring your word restores your integrity and creates workability. But the better you assess estimated target dates for the project tasks and milestones and your ability to manage your day-to-day activities per your own commitments to others, the easier it will to keep your word and "do it right the first time." |
Organizations Are Recruiting Project Talent—Finally
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PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
| The buzz at PMI's Global Congress 2010--North America was that organizations are finally looking to hire. And that's good news for project practitioners at any level. |
Great IT Projects Demand Great Governance
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
| As CIO of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Richard A. Spires oversees 91 projects, each with a budget of at least US$50 million. And the first thing he did was conduct a review of each one of them. "It took a while but it was extraordinarily useful," he told the audience at PMI Global Congress 2010 -- North America. To transform great ideas into great project outcomes, you need great governance. But that only comes with the support of empowered executives who understand their role in keeping projects on schedule, said Mr. Spires. It also helps to have a strong governance board that draws on the expertise of business, IT, procurement and finance leaders. "I want them all in the same room, and I want them to buy into this program," Mr. Spires said. "A dynamic of trust and interrelationships are formed that can really help. You need governance to keep things moving, to get decisions made, and this way they're no longer working against each other." In a bureaucratic setting that sometimes seems designed to slow progress, Mr. Spires likes to keep the entire process open. "I always tell project managers, I want you transparent," he said. "I want the major risks brought up at the governance sessions so they can be dealt with." Good governance goes hand-in-hand with good execution -- which means establishing an authoritative project management office with full-time, in-house leadership. As with many presentations at congress, there was talk about agile. Mr. Spires said people don't always know what they want when a project launches. So project managers should get projects out fast -- but be ready to shift. Mr. Spires recommends IT programs incrementally deliver operational capabilities with a first release within the first 18 months after funding. But he also conceded implementing agile requires some attitude adjustment -- especially given that DHS is comprised of 22 separate government agencies. Sometimes that sets off a "culture clash" between individuals who came up through the traditional large program model and those more comfortable with agile processes. If executed well, IT can be a transformational agent, Mr. Spires said. That sounds like pretty good advice whether you're working for a massive government agency or a small startup. Let the transformation begin... |
Bill Clinton Says Project Managers Help Tackle Global Challenges
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
| Former U.S. president Bill Clinton sent out a powerful message: Project managers will play a significant role in taking on the toughest global challenges. "If you're a project manager and you're a professional, there's always going to be something you can do for the next 50 years in the 21st century," Mr. Clinton told the audience Sunday night at PMI Global Congress 2010 -- North America. Saying he was "fascinated" by project management, Mr. Clinton saw how the profession played a role in his own career. "The more I thought about coming here, the more I thought about how much my life [in politics] and my work now revolves around good, or not-so-good, project management -- how to allocate money, time and people in a way that achieves the desired objective," he said. Since leaving office in 2001, Mr. Clinton has headed up the William J. Clinton Foundation, which works to " strengthen the capacity of governments and individuals to alleviate poverty, improve global health, strengthen economies, and protect the environment.." Mr. Clinton said in six years, the Clinton Global Initiative, one of his foundation's separate initiatives, has raised about US$63 billion in commitments over a 10-year period while impacting the lives of 300 million people in more than 170 countries. "All these things require establishing and executing projects -- and recognizing when they don't work, because not everything does," he said. Even projects aimed at the greater good must have a solid plan of action. You have to prove sustainability projects make economic sense, he said. Turning good intentions into positive outcomes -- that's what project managers do, Mr. Clinton said. Mr. Clinton identified three specific challenges facing the world today: • Global instability • Growing economic inequality between rich and poor countries • The need for change in the way energy is produced and consumed in the world "We've got to do something about these three things, and we have to decide who is going to do it and how," Mr. Clinton said. Mr. Clinton also highlighted the challenges facing Haiti and the projects his foundation launched in the wake of the massive earthquake that rocked the country in January. Calling his efforts in Haiti "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life," Mr. Clinton encouraged project managers to do their part. "Anybody that wants to come help me develop building standards to make sure that everything we do is both earthquake- and hurricane-resistant, I would be happy to have your help," Mr. Clinton said. "The good news is, every day I live I become more convinced that intelligence, ability and hard work are equally distributed [throughout the world]. Organization and opportunity are not." As the world begins its economic recovery, Mr. Clinton says he remains hopeful and that "the process of digging out of it will be somehow purifying for us." Updated October 19, 2010: Ricardo Viana Vargas, PMP, past Chair of the PMI Board of Directors, shares interesting details of President Clinton's remarks at congress in a podcast on his website. |
U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra Says Process Continues to Trump Outcomes
Categories:
PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
Categories: PMI Global Congress 2010 - North America
| The US$80 billion U.S. federal IT project portfolio needs to escape the "deadly loop," said Vivek Kundra in the government keynote address at the PMI Global Congress 2010 -- North America. Too often, people are spending more energy preparing reports than on executing, he said. As the United States' first CIO, Mr. Kundra is charged with the strategic direction of IT coordination across the entire federal U.S. government. On his first day on the job, Mr. Kundra remembers being handed a stack of PDF documents covering the government's vast array of IT projects, some of which dated back to the early 1970s. It wasn't that many were millions of dollars over budget or months behind - they were billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule. The U.S. government was making massive capital investments that didn't produce business results. The Department of State, for example, has spent US$133 million on security documents for 150 major IT systems in the past six years, he said. The documents comprise 95,000 pages and 50 feet of shelf space. They cost US$1,400 per page. Mr. Kundra joked that reports were filed away more securely than the very systems they were supposed to protect. "The government has created a culture where process continues to trump outcomes," he said. The U.S. government has focused on a three-step strategy to improve the process behind government IT projects: 1. Shine light. "For too long, we've tried to sweep these problems under the rug," he said, but unless CIOs and project managers have candid conversations there will never be solutions. Government must move away from "faceless accountability," he said. "Because everyone is responsible, no one is responsible." The Obama administration is taking that directive figuratively as well as literally. It went so far as to put up pictures of every CIO responsible for an IT project along with the project status. "Very quickly, we started seeing change and people started focusing on those investments," he said. Successful projects should get their share of the limelight, too, so best practices can be shared and simulated. Mr. Kundra called for the creation of a community where our project managers can "practice" in the same way a pilot might go through flight simulation. It starts from the top. U.S. President Barack Obama, for example, is committed to making sure IT investments are producing dividends promised at the beginning. Mr. Kundra even posted a picture of the president monitoring the government's IT project dashboard. 2. Make tough decisions. After identifying where problem projects are, the government has to be ruthless in deciding which projects to pursue, Mr. Kundra says. It "should not continue to throw good money after bad money." Instead, it must terminate projects that won't deliver dividends and focus on turning around troubled projects. "People are too afraid of the color red. It's okay -- red is actually a nice color," he said. But project managers and CIOs must embrace and take on challenges --not pretend there aren't issues. "The goal is not to be green, the goal is to drive outcomes." 3. Reform federal IT. The U.S. government must rethink how it manages IT projects. It will look at structural challenges for how it funds and forecasts -- making sure project outcomes are customer-facing and have shorter deliverables. Mr. Kundra said he'd like to introduce the threat of Darwinian pressure seen in the commercial sectors -- where IT companies are just one click away from extinction. No matter what sector you're in, the pressure's on -- and the United States' first CIO is no exception. "If we can manage this $80billion portfolio effectively, we can solve a lot of problems." |
