PAOLINO MONTANINOExecutive, Head of European ERP Business Application| AVANADERome, Italy, Italy
Recently I read a statement like this:
"Project entrepreneurship means project managers must develop an "entrepreneurial" mindset. This enables project managers to take on risks, foster innovation and focus on business value rather just looking at the traditional triple constraints."
This means that to successfully lead project the project manager has to develop entrepreneurship skills.
How a project manager, in your opinion, could act as an entrepreneur by balancing company goals, risks and innovation?
Saving Changes...
I think entrepreneur means being able to understand the business environment in which the company operates and identify strategies to make project planning, execution, etc. more effective in that specific environment.
What really is an entrepreneur? He/she starts their own business because he/she sees an opportunity. He/she takes risk because of his/her passion for the chance to capitalize on that opportunity. It really is in the solutioning and problem solving.
Where did this quote come from? Thinking outside of the triple constraints is an odd addition to the end of the statement. This is mixing theory and practice. A project manager should always being thinking about the triple constraints (or whichever model he/she prefers) as it is a theory about all aspects of a project or solution to solve a business problem. This also goes cross-methodology. But, in practice, the application of the theory should start with entrepreneural thinking to come up with a innovative solution to the business problem. Saving Changes...
PAOLINO MONTANINOExecutive, Head of European ERP Business Application| AVANADERome, Italy, Italy
Ahhh... yes, this is discussing project choice and scoping within a program and/or portfolio. Thanks for sharing. This is certainly a big trend right now. This is saying that PMs should learn program and portfolio management. These three practices, although seperate, should start to integrate.
This may be a controversial statement, but choosing what to do (project choice and scoping) should be outside of the execution when handed over to a PM to execute. Don't get me wrong, as the project is executed there needs to be constant review to understand if it is still valuable and meets its objectives. But, with a program or portfolio "wrapped" around a project, the program manager and portfolio manager should be tasked with the duty of determining the objectives of the project whereas the project manager executes upon them.
My opinion is that:
The program/portfolio manager "worries" about the value of the project's scope.
The project manager "worries" about quality execution of the scope. Saving Changes...
PAOLINO MONTANINOExecutive, Head of European ERP Business Application| AVANADERome, Italy, Italy
Right ... I agree with you Saving Changes...
Don KimPROJECT-TO-PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT EXPERT| Seeking opportunitiesSacramento, CA, United States
I think the post you refer to on PMI's blog is one of those token pieces of advice that everyone is saying to treat your project with a more entrepreneurial mindset. Let's be frank, most project managers work in a corporate environment where the desire is to minimize risk and costs as much as possible, especially in the current economic environment we work in. Many companies only pay lip service to giving their employees the freedom to be more entrepreneurial in their work.
Some exceptions would be some high tech companies like Google, etc., but even then their bread and butter is ad revenue and if your side pursuits don't align with this, the projects typically get killed. That's why many at that company have left to start their own start ups.
Let's take the notion further and maybe advocate that project managers may want to become true entrepreneurs or what I like to refer to as "Projectpreneurs" . This type of projectpreneur would no longer look at working as a PM in a large corporation, but would rather search and bid for the best projects, at the highest rates he/she can get, and negotiate a percentage of the profits the project makes and/or a percentage bonus for keeping the project on time, under budget and delivering what the customer wants.
This would be a true project manager as entrepreneur or projectpreneur as I like to term it.
I've written a bunch of articles on this topic that entertains ideas of the free-lance model (which I just outlined), to the recent phenomenon of crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding project that aligns itself quite well to the projectpreneurship model.
