Perhaps it is time for “Critical Path” to take a graceful bow … and exit with dignity. Perhaps its day has come!

Be sure to check out this thought-provoking presentation and the interesting comments and discussion.

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The scope is highly technical, the schedule is tight and the budget must be parsimoniously managed. With so many aspects to balance all at once, how is it that we have come to be the project manager of this endeavor.

Why?

Did you choose to study the discipline of project management and make a career out of it? Perhaps you were chosen because of your technical skills. Or maybe you drew the short straw. But one thing is for sure, you are it. You are the project manager and all eyes are focused on your actions, right or wrong.

I write this post to ask the pmStudent audience to share their personal story of “Why Project Management”.

Please, share your story by leaving a comment below!

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Many of us have experienced frustrations with obtaining useful program performance data. It is not always an easy process of maturing project management and earned value management best practices…

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Many of us work in different industries, have different experiences, live in different parts of the world, and are from different generations, but I bet we all have a few books in common among all of us here…

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Guest post by Travis Anderson

We continuously read about how innovative projects execute and deliver products and services that have never been done before. In terms of formulating strategy on our programs, I sit here and wonder how cognition of strategy determines the future results on our programs. Since cognition is primarily based on past experience, does the past influence the future?

Planning a project is sometimes daunting and more or less ongoing throughout the life cycle of the project. Program managers that are responsible for high-risk, complex, innovative endeavors must cognitively formulate a strategy that will bring the project in on scope, schedule, and budget. This type of program manager must have an outstanding ability to mentally structure and organize knowledge in order to embark on such an initiative. For innovative projects or any project for that matter, I wouldn’t think a PM is selected based on luck and past experiences alone. The PM must have a different way of thinking, a different way of cognitively formulating strategy. Is this kind of cognition taught or is it purely obtained through experience?

Executing such unheard of tactics to achieve this grandeur of projects must also be a great challenge and take a great deal of influence to enact buy in from the project team. Therefore the leadership abilities of PMs are also important when evaluating the two questions presented above. Leadership is also comprised of experiences, knowledge, and competencies that are representative of the PM’s values and are displayed in his/her style. How does one attain the leadership abilities needed to be an innovative PM?

I am interested in your thought on this topic.

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Guest post from Travis Anderson

According to Jack Welch, strategy is very straightforward in life. On page 165 of Winning, he says, “You pick a general direction and implement like hell.”

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Guest post by Travis Anderson

Yukl and Falbe define seven types of leadership power. The authors decided based on research that the dichotomy of positional power and personal power was a two-factor concept of leadership power.

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Guest post from Travis Anderson

As Thomas N. Gilmore reports in his article, Effective Leadership During Organizational Transitions, leaders of organizations or programs are to focus on the seams between the subordinate roles and the overall strategic relation of the business unit to its environment.

Gilmore also suggests that the organizational chart be drawn in a way that promotes the idea of the leader’s job as being a supervisor of these seams between people.

This is a difficult concept because one cannot call a seam into the office to give a status report. The following story is an analogy to this point:

Recall the story about the drunk who loses his keys and is seen underneath a street light looking for them. Someone comes along and offers to help looking.
“Where did you lose them?” The drunk replies, “Down the alley.”
The helper questions, “Why are you looking for them here?”
The drunk responds, “Because the light is better here.”

The important take away from this analogy is an effective leader must leave the light or comfort zone on a regular basis to adventure into the dark, unknown, shadowy alley to conduct business with some degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. Often this leaves the leader feeling at the edge of one’s competence and authority. The effective leaders constantly push themselves to work in the areas of uncertainty and vagueness. These are the seams of an organization.

Gilmore reports that leadership’s core task is managing uncertainty and coping with fast changing and shifting environments. In addition, teams will prove critical to leadership, as teams are more resilient and adaptive for supporting the organization as issues arise on the boundaries among tasks.

So, how do leaders stay close to the teams during conditions of rapid change and yet acknowledge that careerism, restructuring, changes in government regulation, and technology are all creating rapid turnover of leaders in industry?

For example the leadership team of a large health care organizations has had in a 10 year period, six Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of which two were acting, three Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), six Directors of Nursing of which two were acting, three Chief Operating Officers (COOs), four Vice Presidents for Health Affairs, seven Human Resource Executives, three Legal Counsels, and six Public Information Officers. As the author indicated, this is more of an extreme case, but it gets the point across (Gilmore,1990, p 136).

Organizations and program managers must understand that leadership transitions absolutely ripple through the organizational structure. A transition of a leadership position represents both an opportunity and danger. As an opportunity, they offer the organization a new perspective from the new comer as well as from existing staff looking forward to a fresh start. However, they also serve as a danger to the company if they do not understand the fragility of the team’s relationships (Gilmore,1990, p 137).

New leaders coming to an organization or a program face many challenges. Gilmore discussed the transition stages of a new leader to increase the benefits from a leadership change and minimize the dysfunctional disruption. The first initial stage is for the new leaders to join by connecting to the system that one entered. Many new leaders tell stories of their old organization, which displays that the leader is still connected to the former organization. The second initial stage is building a team by identifying key skill sets and competencies of people and then determines the appropriate changes required for effectiveness. This means that some people are let go and new people will be hired onto the team. The initial stages are foundational for a new leader, so due diligence is required before moving onto the key tasks to succeed over time.

The key tasks to succeed over time are really the nuts and bolts of the long-standing transformation that the new leader is trying to accomplish. Program leaders must communicate their vision to the entire program. People and teams accomplish initiatives. Reorganization or really a new alignment of the program is often required for developing responsibility and the managing process. Receiving buy-in from all levels is vital for the success of a leader. Often new leaders get so focused on the base level of projects, they forget about leading up to the executive leaders in the organization. If you do not have support from the upper levels of leadership, any initiative is dead out of the gates or at any time thereafter. It is important for new leaders to develop those working alliances. Managing change is where a majority of the action is at for a new leader. Introduce too much change at once and everything starts to become unbalanced. However, take too long and the inertia is lost forever. Remember, these are tasks to succeed over time in the organization or on a long-term program (Gilmore,1990, pp 138-141).

Conclusions & Recommendations

Change brings opportunity and during times of crisis, changes are in abundance. The times are tough and situations seem bleak, but the one that perseveres is the one to seek out these opportunities brought on by change. Find a gap, discover a niche, develop leadership skills, hold the bar high and never stop learning. Know that firms are automating processes, recruiting talent and transitioning leadership, and adapting organizational structures for better effectiveness.

Reference:

Gilmore, T. (1990, May). Effective Leadership During Organizational Transitions. Nursing

Economic$, 8(3), 135-141. Retrieved August 26, 2009, from Academic Search Premier database

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Guest post from Travis Anderson

Article Summary:

The Three Phases of a Trader’s Education: Psychology, Money Management, Method by Jeffery Kennedy

This article is an advisory excerpt by Jeffrey Kennedy, Chief Commodity Analyst at Elliott Wave International (EWI). He advises aspiring traders to conform to three phases of a trader’s education. The first of the phases is “Methodology”, which relates to the development of a trading system. “Money Management” is the next phase. This phase is an analogous construct of examples for managing portfolio windfalls and tactical risk mitigation. The final phase is “Psychology”, whereby the author reveals the importance of personal and group psychology.

Most importantly the author discusses that aspiring traders should use the phases in reverse order. The author advises traders to first understand psychology both on a personal level and then the crowd as a means to focus on money management. Achieving focus minimizes distractions when deploying a trading methodology.

Relevance:

Much to my consternation, Mr. Kennedy’s three phases are almost applicable to anything that we do as professionals or in life for that matter. Think about it for a second. Most of us belong to an organization of people called a company or at least a congregation of sorts. Psychology is absolutely apparent on a daily basis. We all live in a money driven world, so money management is a necessity. What about “Methodology”? Everything has a system, everything! Think about your daily routine….wake up, make coffee, pants go on one leg at a time, check email, start work etc….  Let’s take a journey with these three phases in the suggested order as I try to put this into a project management context.

“Psychology”

How does psychology on a project impact our decisions? The answer is different for each of us and is dependent on the type of project. However, one fact remains true for all of us. People are emotional beings of nature with behaviors of sorts that come into play for each and every one of us on a daily basis. If you are the project manager of a large group of people or just a few programmers, the decisions we make ripple through the masses with resounding affect. So it is important to understand your own psychology and then control the affects of our decisions through effective communication at all levels (up, down, and across) of the organization.

Perception is reality! How are you perceived on the project?

After understanding the affects of psychology in a project environment, we look at how a project manager handles a capital investment opportunity.

“Money Management”

The CEO has selected you as the most capable to evaluate a capital opportunity to invest $100,000 today and, depending on the state of the economy at the end of the year, the investment should fetch one of these equally probable payoffs:

Pessimistic:   $80,000

Most Likely:   $110,000

Optimistic:     $140,000

Dig deep, dust off those odd texts books, and prepare yourself for some fun! Your sponsor has confidence that you will apply logic and money management techniques to derive a decision whether to “go” or “no go” on this project opportunity.

“Methodology”

Considering that all scenarios have the same probability, the expected payoff is as follows:

C1 = (probability)(pess+most+opt)=(1/3)(80,000+110,000+140,000)=$110,000

This represents an expected return of 10% on the investment of $100,000. Now we need to remember that a discount rate applies.

We could invest our money in the stock market. With some research, there is a common stock that has the same risk and turns out to be a perfect match. Given a normal economy, Stock X is forecasted at $110. The stock price will lower in a slump and higher in a boom. Stock X and your investment are identical as follows:

Pessimistic:   $80

Most Likely:   $110

Optimistic:     $140

The current price of Stock X is $95.65 and offers an expected rate of return of 15%.

Expected return = expected profit/investment=110-95.65/95.65=.15 or 15%

The 15% represents the company’s opportunity cost for the project. In order to value the project, discount the expected cash flow by the opportunity cost of capital as follows:

PV=expected cash flow/(1+discount rate)=110,000/1.15=$95,650

This is the amount it would cost investors in the stock market to buy an expected cash flow of $110,000 by buying 1000 shares of Stock X. It is therefore the sum that investors would be prepared to pay for your project.

NPV=opportunity cost – initial investment = 95,650 – 100,000 = ($4,350)

The *NPV is negative and therefore is not an opportunity the company should pursue.

* NPV rule: Accept investments that have positive net present values

*Rate of return rule: Accept investments that offer rates of return in excess of their opportunity costs of capital.

Conclusion:

Hopefully this contextual analysis provides insight to how the three phases provide value in the project management arena.  As project managers, we get things done though our influence of those people employed on our projects. The teams’ perception is their reality, so it important to understand as we move forward on project objectives. Also, substantiate our decisions by using sound money management techniques to derive best case scenarios that help our organizations become more sustainable. Finally, the method we use to become successful project managers should indeed be something simple and usable, but thorough at any case.

Source: Elliott Wave International

Source Date: July 23, 2009

Source link: http://www.elliottwave.com/affiliates/featured-commentary/3-phases.aspx?code=33996

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Leadership in an organization and on a project is one of those absolutes that make a difference in the ambiance of which we work. Each person will have a different definition for leadership. During my undergrad studies,*Professor Peter Correa taught me that leadership is comprised of the following attributes:

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