Published monthly, PM Network is filled with new ideas and fresh perspectives from the profession's most experienced and engaging minds. With in-depth articles and interviews with the industry's most successful and respected project managers, this publication from the Project Management Institute sets the standard for excellence. Now you can also read select articles from the magazine on ProjectManagement.com!
As a pillar of the U.S. housing market, the Federal National Mortgage Association—or Fannie Mae—knows that owning a home is about more than having a place to live. It’s also an opportunity to make a sound financial investment. For more than 80 years, the government-sponsored organization has been a leading source of financing for the country’s home lenders, creating access to affordable credit for buyers across the nation.
At a time when creative problem solving can make or break a business, design thinking is fast moving beyond the fringe and squarely into the mainstream. By focusing on the people for which projects and products are being built, teams can discover hidden opportunities. Whether teams are using an agile, waterfall (predictive) or hybrid approach, identifying users’ less observed behaviors, subtler motivations and barriers to action can provide a competitive business edge.
Could the biggest risks threatening a project’s success lie not in the external environment but between the ears of every person involved in a project? It’s possible. From the sponsor to the project or program manager to individual team members, everyone is susceptible to certain cognitive biases that can subtly influence how they approach and plan for initiatives and how objective they are when assessing risks.
Like any leading aerospace company, Embraer is driven by a mission to aim higher. The company ranks as one of the world’s largest commercial jet manufacturers, but with newer, more fuel-efficient engines threatening to make its topselling aircraft obsolete, Embraer launched a project to roll out a new family of airplanes—and fast.
There are many lessons to be found in the Most Influential Projects. We’ve pulled out 10 of them from the Top 50 list. We encourage you to consider (and even circulate) your own lessons. What’s influential to each individual person and organization may be somewhat different. But we can all learn from each other.
Blistering desert heat. Arctic chill. Middle-of-nowhere sites. When projects happen in extreme environments, teams face a test of professional skill—and personal will. Embracing a climate of unprecedented yet expected risks means teams have to rewrite the script to keep projects on schedule and satisfy stakeholders—while in some cases enduring life-threatening conditions.
Four project professionals reveal how they stretch the limits when they encounter high-wire circumstances.
Report potholes. Rat out rodents. Replace a busted garbage can. One of the largest cities in the United States has made it radically easier for residents to request public services and resolve nonemergency problems.
As the busiest inland commercial shipping route in the United States, the Ohio River is a valuable link in the country’s economy. More than 80 million tons of grain, coal and other commodities pass through each year—together worth more than US$22 billion. So when antiquated locks and dams at one juncture began causing serious transit delays decades ago, the U.S. government knew it had to fix the bottleneck as quickly as possible.
Kiruna Sweden won’t be rebuilt in a day. But the first major milestone for relocating the Arctic mining town made one thing clear: The 18,000 residents are fully invested in driving the vision for a new Kiruna—no matter how long it takes.
