New ISO Standard for Project Management: Is this Necessary?

For those who haven't heard, there is a new ISO standard being developed for project management ---- ISO 21500.

Considering that PMI standards are already establshed internationally, the first question that comes to my mind is "why?"

Apparently, this standard will build on existing global standards, and will incorporate the work of a number of national standards as well. The project brief for the effort claims that there is a need for common terminology in the face of multiple standards, and that the ISO name recognition goes beyond project management circles, thus gaining broader accceptance.

I'd be curious to hear from others. Is there a compelling need for this? Is there room for another standard, even if this one is from a recognized body like ISO? Does this help or hurt PMI (i.e. can it help PMI by opening up new avenues for promoting project management?). What happens if the two major standards bodies conflict?

My personal opinion is that there will be minimal impact to PMI. PMI standards are well established. The PMP (and now PgMP) credential is sought after by organizations looking to staff and individuals looking to boost their credibility. PMI will probably align with the ISO standard anyway. The ISO standard will probably only serve to augment the industry with additional credibility and recognition. PMI will continute to flourish through its maturity and its focus on community.

Here's the announcement from ISO about their new standard...

Project managers keep your team on task

Case is made for focusing team members on as few tasks as possible ... ideally, the critical path. ...

... "Studies have shown that our brains switch between one activity and another (called executive control). We really don't do two things at once very well. " ...

Via Teamwork and Leadership Blog: Multi-tasking?

Agile predicts, senses, and responds

Robert Kaplan sees agile techniques applied to business, where information is leveraged to support prediction and modeling of strategic responses. ...

... "It's also keeping track of competitive forces as well, to be able to offset that. But the front end of agility is information because it's what you're being agile with respect to. " ...

Via SearchCIO: Robert Kaplan, Balanced Scorecard

Project management maturity assessment

Scenario Planning IT Problems and Outages

While planning for problems is a valuable exercise on projects, application management and support groups need to perform periodic risk assessments of critical business systems as user adoption evolves over time after the original implementation is complete. Are your business continuity plans fresh enuf to serve your enterprise during the next glitch? ...

... "Risk management exercises — reviewing likely scenarios of failure and preparing for them — should be a part of every IT project. Huge catastrophic glitches aside, the day-to-day glitches also add up ... " ...

Via ZDNet: Software glitches

The Data Center Consolidation Project

Data center consolidation projects are not out of fashion yet. NYC and the feds move to consolidate their sprawling infrastructure to gain financial and energy efficiencies. ...

NYC Data Center Consolidation via InformationWeek: "current IT infrastructure of New York City is fragmented, with more than 50 unique data centers serving nearly 48 city agencies, many located in prime commercial real estate space. " NYC IT plans overhaul of data infrastructure: "The consolidation will lower the City’s cost of operations by up to $100 million over five years, reduce energy consumption and emissions, strengthen security, and improve overall IT service quality for agencies."

Federal Data Center Consolidation via Data Center Knowledge: Agencies are challenged to ... "prepare an inventory of the IT assets by April 30 and develop a preliminary data center consolidation plan by June 30. " by Federal CIO.

Project Goals and Team Members

Keep a pulse of your project team members, especially off-line, to surface any mis-alignments before they derail your critical path. ...

... "find a way to surface the underlying goals and expectations of project participants. This may involve private meetings, group discussions, or perhaps even a combination of sorcerer’s potions ... " ...

Via ZDNet: IT gridlock

Intel Data Center Strategies Drive Business Value

Top 100 Project Management Blogs

I was recently notified about a great list of the Top 100 Project Management blogs on a construction industry blog called The Fixer Upper. It's a pretty comprehensive list, with great descriptions of each of the blogs. I was of course pleased to see PMThink made the list.

Check out the list here. You're bound to find some excellent blogs, some of which you may not have heard of.

Structural IT Business Alignment

Use Business Value Dials to Steer IT

Business value dials are used to align IT with customer (internal client) objectives in this framework for measuring the business value of information technology. ...

Via Intel Press: Measure Business Value of IT (PDF)

What does it take to be GREAT?

Obviously one must have technical project management capabilities. But that is NOT enough to be a GREAT project manager. To be called upon to lead the most important projects, one must also have backbone, leadership skills and the ability to think broadly as well as in detail.

1) Backbone – You have to be willing to take on a tough project and tell the TRUTH to people who may not want to hear it; people who are powerful and who influence your career and income.

2) Leadership – This covers a lot including timely decision-making under pressure. Your team members need to know that you have their back and you will stand up and say “they did a great job” when things are going well and “it is my fault” when something goes wrong. See also BACKBONE.

3) Broad and detailed thinking (the PMO Executive Council calls this "seeing the forest AND the trees") - there are some people who can think “big picture” and strategicially but have no tolerance for details; there are many people who can think in details but lose sight of the big picture; there are fewer people who can create a big picture that everyone can rally around as well as break that picture down into all of its pixels and then lead the effort to build it one pixel at a time. See also LEADERSHIP.

Note that none of these can really be tested in a multiple-choice exam. They often come as part of someone's "chemical make-up" or DNA. This is why, despite my PMP designation, when I am hiring PM's, I look for evidence of these characteristics as well as clear expertise in the use of solid project management practices. And as a manager of project managers, it is important to support and nurture these elements. If you do that, your team of PMs will be well on the way to being a GREAT success!

Resource Capacity: Where Have All My People Gone?

My friend and colleague Terry Doerscher, Chief Process Architect at Planview, has a superb blog called Enterprise Navigator, and recently posted an excerpt from his upcoming book, Taming Change with Portfolio Management, which he co-authored with Planview CEO Pat Durbin.

The excerpt talks about resource capacity planning and reveals a startling fact: For an average staff of 500 people, there's only enough capacity for about 12 medium sized projects at any given time! Thus it's no surprise when similar sized organizations flounder in their attempts to take on hundreds of projects.

Where does all this capacity go? For the answer, read on..

PS: This supports my longtime stance that many organizations suffer from a lack of strategic focus, and try to take on too many parallel initiatives as compared with their capacity to deliver. In essence, they plan to infinite capacity.

Project Milestones

Create good project milestones with bite-sized tasks and celebrate them routinely to create high-performance teams. ... Via Tom Peters: http://bit.ly/alY5fC

Cloud Email Project in LA

LA government moves to outsourced cloud-based email solution (Google's Gmail) and will demonstrate the effectiveness of the cloud in supporting an enterprise solution, while delivering tangible savings to the city. ...

... "Los Angeles is now slowly marching toward a full implementation of Gmail for the city work force. If successful, the project could open the floodgates for other governments that are awaiting a successful test case ... " ...

Via Government Technology: Cloud-Based E-Mail

CIO CFO Alignment

CIO CFO alignment can be built on a partnership of business value, metrics, and governance. ...

... "So engage the CFO on a shared set of requirements and implementation actions. Then follow up with outcomes that can be tracked to common measures ... " ...

Via Baseline: CIO-CFO Partnership

Stabilization Phase of Projects

Often, there is a short support period after a project phase is completed and the team moves on to the next phase as planned in the schedule. State of Georgia meets with some success by planning for the stabilization phase and slowing down the phases, as necessary, to bring the organization and process to a stable state prior to next-phase kickoff. ...

... "Still, Moore said the biggest challenge has been holding vendors back from launching new phases of the project before agency managers were ready." ...

Via Stateline: Making IT work in state government

Project Police

The project police use portfolio visibility to control the funding lever at the VA, if project performance degrades. ...

... "The new evaluation system temporarily stops projects that miss incremental, 6-month milestones to determine whether to spend more money rejuvenating them or permanently end them. " ...

Via Next Gov: VA IT Projects

The Open Innovation Bridge

Personal networking across organizational and enterprise boundaries enables open innovation to flourish.

Agile meets DCMA

An interesting debate at a program meeting last week - the DCMA 14 point analysis was being summarised for a group using Agile methodology. The sponsor for the program is a government agency and software development is being done by one of the well known large contracting companies. Major features of the required system are well described but not so for many of the details. For one of the phases, the contractor proposed using an Agile approach with month long sprint cycles. The government still has to use earned value methods for reporting project progress and demonstrating sound management to the Government Accountability Office.

So we have the Agile project plan which includes time-bound sprint cycles with a backlog list approach to scope of deliverables in each cycle. And on the other side is scoring the project for compliance with the 14 points.

For those who haven't come across them, the DCMA 14 points are a way of assessing the structure of a project, typically adversely scoring items like 'tasks without predecessors or successors' or 'delays between linked tasks'. The first attempt at putting together a project plan to represent sprint cycles strained the DCMA scores on leads and lags and date constraints. It will be interesting to see how the second attempt comes out.

Lean Partner Teams

The integration of enterprises through global sourcing strategies is a common occurrence today. As part of its sustainability strategy, Nike works with its partners in the value chain to drive principles to the team level and develop an empowered extended workforce. ...

... "Lean principles put the decision making closer to the worker through skill building, teamwork and understanding quality over quantity. HRM builds the factory’s managerial capacity and helps them value an empowered workforce. " ...

Via Nike: Sustainability Strategy

Social Media and Project Management: Elizabeth Harrin's Pioneering Research

I was speaking recently with Elizabeth Harrin of the amazing and award-winning blog "A Girl's Guide to Project Management." Elizabeth is a fellow member of PMI's New Media Council, and is working on a book on how social media changes the way we manage projects. This book is very timely, and much needed in the project management space.

Here's what Elizabeth has to say about it...

The aim of my new book, which is provisionally titled Social Media for Project Managers, is to look at how Web 2.0 tools like social media and enterprise collaboration software can make a positive difference for the running of projects. It's a very practical book, with guidelines on how you can implement this kind of technology on your projects.

There has been a lot written about how to use social media for marketing, but not a lot about how organisations can use the same principles to improve collaboration and team work within their company walls. This book aims to fill the gap.

Just scanning through the survey results has given me an interesting glimpse into how people are using social media and what for, in relation to a project environment. The survey closes at the end of the month, and I'll be sharing the results after that.

For those who want to take the survey, here's your last chance! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B6JVSY9

IT Budget Constraints and Strategic Shift

Technology and business priorities shift as CIOs focus on IT transformation to strategic business partner. ...

... "CIOs see 2010 as an opportunity to accelerate IT’s transition from a support function to strategic contributor focused on innovation and competitive advantage ... " ...

Via Info Management: IT Strategic Role

Got Research? PMI Wants you to Apply for Grant Funding

Good news for reseachers and writers. Between February 1st and April 25th, 2010, the Project Management Institute is accepting preliminary proposals for research funding for potential 2011 research projects. Awards can be up to $50,000 USD.

Examples of areas they're especially interested in are:

- Ethics and governance
- Project management as a career choice
- Portfolio prioritization
- Standards evaluation and development
- Project Management in the context of the current global economic crisis
- The role of project management in:
--- Government
--- Non-Profit Organizations
--- Non-Government Organizations
--- Healthcare
--- Education

For more information, visit the PMI Sponsored Research Submission Page. Questions can be addressed to the PMI Research Coordinator at research.program@pmi.org.

Groundbreaking Interaction, New Media, and Pioneering Research at Upcoming PMI Conference

The 2010 PMI Research and Education Conference, being held July 11-14 2010 in Washington DC, promises to be eye-opening for project managers interested in new ways to involve people.

For one, PMI is offering new interactive session formats that do away with the old paper proceedings and leverage visual thinking. Also, attendees will use new social media networking techniques to increase their involvement.

And that's not to mention the insights from over 60 sessions revealing the latest research in the field. There's also, for the first time, a session for Registered Education Providers (R.E.P.s) and an open session for those interested in activities of the Global Accreditation Center (GAC) for PM Education Programs.

If you're interested, act now, because the event is limited to 500 people and is first-come, first-serve.

Green IT Pilot Project

HP and Eaton will collaborate on green IT project to drive energy efficiency in server racks through government grant program. ...

... "The joint project from Eaton and HP will develop a fully enclosed IT rack system that provides its own internal power and cooling. High voltage and chilled water will act as the primary inputs to the system and it will also accept alternative energy power sources, such as wind and solar power.

A major benefit of this system is a 38 percent reduction in energy use to support a 100 kilowatt (kW) IT load, which equals a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 400 tons annually. " ...

Via Eaton Corp: Energy Efficiency in IT, Stimulus Grant

Is a life a project?

An elderly and beloved family member scared us over the weekend. We thought we were going to lose her. Fortunately, she is a fighter and now seems to be recovering well.

However, PMThinkers, it occurred to me…is a life a project? By definition, a project is temporary and unique. So is a life. Even if you believe in lives beyond this one, I think you will agree that this life, in this time, born into these circumstances (e.g., parents, birth order, etc.), meets the definition of temporary and unique.

In projects, though, at the outset we determine the purpose, the problem we are attempting to solve and/or the opportunity we need to exploit, as well as the corresponding goals and objectives, constraints, assumptions, etc. In life, some of this is determined for us (e.g., the socio-economic class into which we are born is a constraint, at least at first). Even before we are born, who our parents are lead folks to assume what the baby will look like, be like, and become. Luckily for some of us, some of these assumptions are proven wrong. Again, the same holds true in projects. As assumptions are proven wrong, they can positively or negatively impact the project outcome.

I suppose some people do have predetermined goals, like projects should. Take royalty for instance. A baby is born a prince and so it is expected that he will become king. Many of the rest of us are left to figure out our purpose. Personally, I am still struggling with this one. And many of us, like my family member, look back nearing the end of their lives and reflect on the best of times and how life progressed, without objectives. So it is with projects that have not been run tightly. One looks back at the end and says, “well, we accomplished a lot so we were successful”. However, one did not accomplish what one set out to achieve since one set out to achieve nothing in particular. This is a fine way to live, I suppose. This is not a fine way to run projects.

If a way to frame my life is in project format, I better go do some more thinking. I have done these exercises before, but it is time to revisit them. Since I wasn't born a princess, when I am closer to the end of my life than to the beginning, what times do I want to remember with a toothless smile?

IT Market Insights

The mid-tier enterprise is exhibiting leadership in adoption of new strategies for driving operational efficiency in the technology infrastructure. ...

... "Mid-sized enterprises are more aggressive and pioneering than either small or large enterprises. They are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and deduplication at 11-17 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises. " ...

Via Symantec: 2010 State of the Data Center

System Reliability

Project Manager as Enabler of Business Value

The roles and skills of IT professionals are shifting and project managers will be well served if they cultivate a personal brand of enabling business value. ...

... "enabler jobs such as business enterprise architects, business technologists, systems analysts and project managers will be most in demand in the near future. " ...

Via ITBusinessEdge: Skills of Future IT Org

Executive Engagement in Business Technology Projects

Healthcare CEO supports a mission-aligned IT investment with active engagement that ensures implementation and drives adoption. ...

... "Raymer has taken a much more active role than most CEOs might when it comes to an IT project. She developed a detailed chart with scores of lines of responsibilities for employees throughout the organization, including herself. " ...

Via Triad Area Business Journal: IT investment

Best Open Innovators

Nominate companies that innovate across and beyond traditional enterprise boundaries to the Open 100. ...

... "The Open 100 competition was born out of NESTA’s search for the world’s top 100 open innovation companies. Now we are opening it up to the public to find who the best open innovators really are. " ...

Via OpenBusiness: The Open 100

Agile Team Lead Role