What to Expect: Anticipating and Adapting to Dynamic Economic Trends
Categories:
Project Leadership,
Continuous Learning,
Collaboration,
Servant Leadership,
Priorities,
Value,
Cultural Awareness,
project management office,
Project Failure,
Best Practices,
Project Delivery,
Metrics,
project management,
critical success factors,
Managing for Stakeholders,
execution,
Project Success,
Culture,
Project Dependencies,
Business Transformation,
Transformation,
Disruption,
Design Thinking,
Project Management,
Cost,
Risk,
Career Development,
Stakeholder,
Change Management,
Leadership,
Program Management,
Benefits Realization,
Complexity,
Consulting,
Decision Making,
Business Analysis,
IT Strategy,
Business Case
Categories: Project Leadership, Continuous Learning, Collaboration, Servant Leadership, Priorities, Value, Cultural Awareness, project management office, Project Failure, Best Practices, Project Delivery, Metrics, project management, critical success factors, Managing for Stakeholders, execution, Project Success, Culture, Project Dependencies, Business Transformation, Transformation, Disruption, Design Thinking, Project Management, Cost, Risk, Career Development, Stakeholder, Change Management, Leadership, Program Management, Benefits Realization, Complexity, Consulting, Decision Making, Business Analysis, IT Strategy, Business Case
| By Peter Tarhanidis, Ph.D.
In the ever-evolving landscape of corporate strategic planning, organizations face the perpetual dilemma of choosing between capital spending for growth—and optimizing operations for efficiency. Striking the right balance amidst economic trends and leveraging organizational strengths becomes paramount when navigating through strategic projects. Meeting shareholder and stakeholder needs, while aligning with the organization's mission, presents a constant challenge. To anticipate potential initiatives, project managers must consider global macroeconomic conditions and CEO outlooks. A preliminary assessment based on the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects and OECD Economic Outlook reports for 2024 reveals a projected global economic growth slowdown from 2.7% to 2.4%. This trend suggests a delicate balance between slow growth and regional divergences. Key considerations include:
Examining the corporate landscape, a survey of 167 CEOs in December 2023 indicated a confidence index of 6.3 out of 10 for the 2024 economy—the highest of the year. The CEO upsurge assumes inflation is under control, the Fed may not raise interest rates and instead reverse rates, setting up a new cycle of growth. Furthering the CEO agenda, McKinsey & Co. identified eight CEO 2024 priorities:
As project managers, navigating the uncertainty of economic shifts necessitates staying vigilant. The year may bring variables and predictions that impact the execution probability of strategic projects. Shifting between growth plans and efficiency drivers demands different preparation. To stay prepared, consider the following:
In an environment of perpetual change, proactive monitoring, adaptability and strategic collaboration will be key to successfully steering projects through the dynamic economic landscape. How else can you stay prepared as the demands shift on you and your team? References |
Supercharging an Organization’s Performance to Achieve its Mission
Categories:
Social Responsibility,
Portfolio Management,
Tools,
Best Practices,
Strategy,
Mentoring,
Metrics,
Career Development,
Stakeholder,
Innovation,
Change Management,
Leadership,
Lessons Learned,
Program Management,
Benefits Realization,
Complexity,
IT Project Management,
Teams,
Programs (PMO),
Communication
Categories: Social Responsibility, Portfolio Management, Tools, Best Practices, Strategy, Mentoring, Metrics, Career Development, Stakeholder, Innovation, Change Management, Leadership, Lessons Learned, Program Management, Benefits Realization, Complexity, IT Project Management, Teams, Programs (PMO), Communication
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By Peter Tarhanidis, Ph.D. There is a dramatic increase in the strategies corporations implement to meet the needs of their stakeholders. Driving value from all parts of an organization and its functions may seem like repetitive exercises—and even feel more like a medieval gauntlet with only a few successful programs. HBR (2021) wrote that by 2027, about 88 million people will be working in project management—with economic activity reaching $20 trillion USD. Also noted: Only 35% of projects are successful, leaving immense waste of resources. There are many reasons projects fail. HBR (2021) states of the 70% of failed projects, and after exhaustive root-cause analysis across all industries, one can identify common themes such as undervaluing project management skills and methods, and poor performance. Yet organizations that apply project management methods recognized their performance had a 2.5 more times chance to be successful, and organizations can waste 28 times less resources. As such, when applied, the implementation of PM methods works. Yet in a world filled with a variety of project taxonomies, many organizational boards are now contemplating the need to implement environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Forbes states the benefits of ESG and CSR initiatives include:
Therefore, to ensure success for ESG and CSR programs, an organization’s top leaders need to prioritize and align across all the organization’s businesses. Leaders can use the balanced scorecard to achieve this alignment, and can extend its use across the entire project portfolio. This theory was developed by Kaplan and Norton, which state the balanced scorecard method converts the organization’s strategy into performance objectives, measures, targets and initiatives. Linking the concept of cause and effect, the balanced scorecard covers four perspectives:
Marr (N.B.) reported over 50% of companies have used this approach in the United States, the United Kingdom, Northern Europe and Japan. One clear benefit has been to align the organization’s structure to achieve its strategic goals. In conclusion, applying project management methods and aligning an organization’s performance through the balanced scorecard can unlock ESG and CSR benefits that can supercharge a company’s efforts to achieve its mission. References |
Measure, Measure…and Measure Again!
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by Christian Bisson
In a complex world where we strive to improve, there is one trending weakness that I’ve seen amongst many teams and organizations—they measure little to nothing, and make decisions based on “gut feeling.” Having key metrics is a powerful tool to identify areas to improve, and not just for weak points—you want to recognize strong points as well so that you can continue them. Here are a few examples…
ValueHow many times have you seen teams happy to deliver something—only to have absolutely no idea what value was ultimately gained from that delivery? There are a few ways you can be blind to the value being delivered (or not delivered):
All too often, people waste money when they could focus their resources elsewhere if they measured the return on investment (ROI) and adapted accordingly.
Delivery predictabilityWhat will be delivered, and when? Every organization faces a challenge to know this. And all too often, typical random delivery dates are given to stakeholders—and forced on teams. This in turn hurts the quality of the deliverable (not to mention the very small odds that the dates are even being respected). By measuring on a small scale (like a team’s velocity throughout sprints) or a larger scale (like being familiar with SAFe and its “product increments”), you can compare results to actual data to make more reliable predictions (at the end of the day, it is still a guess).
Product backlog healthThroughout the years, I’ve seen many backlogs, from small to gigantic. And I rarely see any of them being measured to make sure they’re actually healthy. The definition of “healthy” varies, but in this case let’s assume it means that the backlog is an ordered/usable artefact that teams can rely on to know what to work on next to bring value to stakeholders.
Here are a few things that can be measured:
ConclusionThere are so many things that can be measured and used to properly align next steps—and they require the proper tools to do it efficiently. You want to spend as little time as possible getting the data and results that you need, and utilize reliable “live” information (with little cost to get it).
What will you be measuring in 2023? What do you think your blind spots are? |
Predicting the Future in Project Management
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By Ramiro Rodrigues
In the 2009 film Knowing, a boy finds a time capsule filled with documents from decades ago. His father, an astrophysics professor, then discovers that the messages list some recent and impending major disasters, and even predict a global calamity in the near future.
Apocalyptic visions of an imminent end to the world have always brought joy to the film industry—but they bump into the same logical limitations that are still impossible to overcome. As far as we know, we do not have an effective technology capable of predicting the future. Whether it is related to weather forecasting, economics or sociology, we are not able to tell, at present, precisely what will happen at a specific moment in the future.
What we have always had is a great will to take a chance and get it right. Since the beginning of time, man has ventured to predict the future and, during these attempts, we’ve come up with an ocean of predictions that have been proven wrong. But we don't give up.
A New Model of Scheduling
In today’s organizations, modern project management has to meet the need for schedule development that seeks, in a deterministic fashion, to set the estimated dates of future events related to people, project deliveries and work that will be executed. This usually is a great Achilles' heel in the field of project management. The organizational frustration that results from estimated scheduled activities that turn out to be incorrect is very common.
Why don’t they happen as expected? There are different reasons, usually related to people and intrinsic characteristics of the expected activities. But in essence, they happen because it still is impossible to predict the future. Of course, there are some strategies that can help mitigate the risks of the deterministic forecast, but in the end, they are only predictions.
However, we must understand that organizations need to estimate when the returns on their investments will be accessible for use. Some executives will say that there is no progress without clear and foreseen goals.
That’s right. But how do we get out of this complex scenario in which future dates are determined but do not happen as planned?
One trend that has been applied by industries such as consulting, engineering and research & development is the probabilistic forecast of schedules. In this case, with the assistance of simple statistical concepts, the forecasts of the activities and of the project are viewed as a whole, with probability ranges to conclude them.
It is not solely a mathematical solution; the change is conceptual. The idea is no longer to set, within the organization, the delivery estimates at certain dates grounded on the expectation that they will come true. Rather, the goal is to present length ranges that provide the company with a perspective that there is, for instance, a 68 percent, 95 percent or 99.7 percent chance that the project delivery will take place during the expected dates.
This change in principle allows for the understanding that one can never be 100 percent sure of what will happen in the future but, at the same time, enables the management of the risks involved with reasonable control.
This planning model can bring, in the near future, more maturity and quality to the management of schedules and deliveries.
Do you use this model in your organization? Share your thoughts below. |
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Is Your Company Mature?
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A good definition of the word “maturity” is the state of people or things that have reached full development. For entities such as business organizations, maturity needs to be associated with a specific expertise. This can apply to operational, technical and also project management maturity. Project management maturity means that an organization is conditioned to evolve qualitatively in order to increase the chances for project success. To this end, there are both paid and free maturity evaluation models on the market. The application of one of these models allows you to achieve the first important objective: identifying what stage your organization is at. This step is difficult, given the complexity in trying to compare whether an organization is doing its projects well in relation to others, without being contaminated by individual and subjective perceptions. Often, most models will question various aspects of how projects are executed and produce a score for ranking. With this result, the models will classify the organization's current maturity level. Once this level has been identified, the next step is to try to plot an action plan to move to the next level. Here is another benefit of a good maturity model: Many offer references to the most common characteristics expected in each level. With this, it is easier to draw up a plan of action focused on the characteristics expected at the next level. This progress should be incremental—one level at a time. The action plan should be thought of and executed as if it were a project, following the good practices and methodology of the organization itself. It should be scaled to be completed in time to allow its gains to be observable and perceived by the organization. This will then cause the expected positive impacts in the next cycle of a new maturity survey. In summary, the steps to be followed are: 1. Apply a maturity search. 2. Evaluate and disseminate the results of the first survey. 3. Develop an action plan. 4. Rotate the project to the evolution of the level. 5. Go back to step one and continuously improve.
By following this sequence, you can foster a constructive cycle in your organization as you continue to evolve your ability to execute projects.
I’d love to hear from you: Have you used maturity models in your organization? |
By Ramiro Rodrigues
