Trends in project management Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Project Management Research Institute

agile, blog post, certifications, gig economy, PMP certification, Trends in project management

Project trends 2021

World over the way people work have changed. Organizations are forced to re-think their business strategies to survive first and then to grow in a new world order characterized by;

Organizations sparing no opportunity to maintain / improve bottom lines
Organizations trying to go-global looking for new markets for existing products and services
Organizations rapidly innovating new products and services for their current markets and beyond
Organizations leveraging the gig economy

In a nutshell, everything in the corporate environment have become dynamically agile, where business owners are trying their best to maximize return on their investments. As a timely coincidence, leading organizations like the Project Management Institute (PMI) started their initiatives long back to converge the Predictive and Agile Project Management best practices, as if they could foresee the forthcoming new world order well in advance. All these have major impact on how we collaborate and work on projects. The concept of permanent employment have already become a matter of the past, as organizations are actively seeking flexibility in resourcing to optimize costs.

People with proven skill sets and the ability to learn fast with good work ethics will be sought after. Professionals with the ability to deliver value at the right time, with almost zero supervision, working remotely will be in demand globally. The geographical constraints of employment will become almost zero for the right people who can proactively identify the new opportunities and gear up. In this new world order, our professional profiles matters a lot to market ourselves. You are a brand, and that brand has to be continuously nourished to be in demand. This is the right time to equip yourself with new in demand skills supported by globally acknowledged credentials. Project Management 2021, is all about highly skilled, motivated individuals, working on their projects of choice as self organizing teams, demonstrating high degree of work ethics.

Get ready and embrace the Change !

PMdistilled PMP fastrack program

Culture, Management, Project Management, Roles & Responsibilities, Trends in project management

Ethics & Career Success

Adherence to the Professional ethics for project managers is a question of short term success Vs long term success in the project management profession.

David B. Fein, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, and Joanne Yarbrough, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, Major Fraud Investigations Division, announced that ROBERT GIULIETTI, 55, a resident of Cheshire and an employee of the U.S. Postal Service, was arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging him with bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering. In association with today’s arrest, the government also executed seizure warrants on three bank accounts controlled by GIULIETTI and seized $630,731.40 in proceeds allegedly involved in the commission of those offenses.

Three senior bureaucrats have been arrested in Assam on corruption charges. Two of the arrests were made by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), officials said in Guwahati on Thursday. “There were lots of irregularities in road construction works carried out by the NBCC in Guwahati and we hope the CBI investigations would be able to unravel the scam and help in punishing the guilty,” said Robin Bordoloi, ruling Congress party legislator representing Guwahati. CBI officials said they have got more leads into the scam and could possibly arrest a few more people.

Asem Elgawhary, the former principal vice president of Bechtel Corporation and general manager of the Power Generation Engineering and Services Company (PGESCo), was indicted by a grand jury in Maryland on charges that he defrauded his former employers, laundered the proceeds of the fraudulent scheme and violated federal tax laws.

In Jharkhand, Prashant Kumar Bajpai, General Manager of Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), Barka Sayal, Ramgarh project located in Patratu block of Ramgarh district and his Personal Assistant Aparna Sengupta were arrested by CBI team late last night for seeking bribe of Rupees Twenty Six thousand for sanctioning of tender for construction of roads.

The Serious Fraud Office has brought charges against GPT Special Project Management Ltd and three individuals in connection with its investigation into allegations concerning the conduct of GPT’s business in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. GPT, Jeffrey Cook, former Managing Director of GPT, and John Mason, the financial officer and part owner of the foreign-registered companies Simec and Duranton, subcontractors to GPT, have been charged with corruption between January 2007 and December 2012 in relation to contracts awarded to GPT in respect of work carried out for the Saudi Arabian National Guard. Jeffrey Cook has also been charged with misconduct in public office between September 2004 and November 2008 in relation to commission paid to him on contracts he placed with ME Consultants Ltd for the Ministry of Defence by which he was employed. Terence Dorothy has been charged with aiding and abetting that offence.

These are the first few cases surfaced out of about 6,28,00,000 results (0.59 seconds) while googling for ‘Project managers who got arrested for corruption’. That shows that corruption is rampant in projects and the key question is whether one should be a corrupt project manager or not. Like hatred cannot be resolved by hatred, corruption can be overcome only by honesty, ethics and professionalism. That is where the significance of professional ethics for project managers become very relevant for project managers to succeed in the longer run.

Professional Ethics of Project Managers

Mind map of Professional Ethics of Project Managers

agile, blog post, Hybrid Project Management, Management, Trends in project management

Areas to apply agile within EPC Projects

The overall duration of the EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) intensive projects can be reduced / controlled considerably by the application of agile best practices during the following phase / activities;

Pre-project phase

Assigning a task force to conduct preliminary studies
Studying the users requirements
Defining the technical specifications
Studying how to secure funds
Estimation of the project cost and duration (budgetary)
Approval of the project cost
Determining the technical specification of the materials
Studying the impact of the project on safety and health
Establishing criteria for the selection of project location
Establishment of milestones
Describing the responsibilities and authority of the parties involved
Establishment of a change control process
Establishment of design criteria for structural specifications
Conducting a feasibility study of the proposed project
Site preparation / readiness
- Getting all the clearances required
- Establishing the construction areas and path of construction

Site preparation

Land acquisition
Re-rehabilitation
Getting all the clearances required
Ensuring site readiness

Project phase

Basic design phase
- Documentation for tendering and contracting
- Specifications for procuring equipment
- Regular design and specification review meetings

Detailed design phase
- Qualifying of design professionals
- Performing technical and financial analysis of offers from competing contractors
- Selecting the design team
- Providing inputs to design on time
- Monitoring and controlling the design progress
- Updating design documents
- Reviewing design documents
- Ensuing design quality and adherence to technical standards
Tendering
- Preparing the specifications and agreement conditions
- Preparing bill of quantities (BOQ) and estimating the contract value
- Issuing tender documents
- Holding tender briefing meetings
- Receiving bids and evaluating them
- Recommendations are made for the successful contractor
- Awarding of the contract
Execution or construction phase
If detailed designs are not provided as part of the tender document, the contractor proceeds with the detailed design and drawings and follows it up with construction
Regular progress monitoring

Closure or completion phase

Snag lists
Punch lists
Completion certificate

As we can see, these are the areas where multi disciplinary communication and coordination is required maximum. The biggest culprit for delay in most of the infrastructure projects is in getting clearances. By bringing in agile project management (APM) best practices to these areas of projects, the overall delay of the projects can be controlled effectively.

agile, blog post, Management, New product development, Project Management, Trends in project management

Lead the change your product is intended to make

You have a brilliant product idea, and you want to go ahead very fast with the product idea, and unfortunately things are not moving as planned. After some time, you are tired, and almost drops the idea. A few years later suddenly you come across a very successful product in the market, similar to the one you conceived years before and dropped half way through. This is a very common shared experience by many first time product owners.

After all, every innovative product is intended to shake the world in a gentle way. It is about changing the lives of many in a gentle way. The internet did it. iPhone did it with the touch screen. The android phone did it in a subtly different way. The covid vaccines are doing it, the medical equipment and the building material segment is doing it…the automotive industry is a veteran in this. ..every successful product changes the way we do things in a subtly better innovative way. More than just product development, what really matters is the long term strategy to manage the change the product is intended to deliver to it’s end users.

Eight steps to manage the change promised by the product of your project

Sense of Urgency – The first and foremost ingredient to change management is creating the sense of urgency. When we are working for others, we are always pressurized by others deadlines. But when you own the product, the risk of complacency is very high. During the initial phases of the product, your investment in the product is low. Your only potential loss is the opportunity cost (opportunity lost if the product fails to take off) which is a futuristic cash flow. You do not feel a crisis at this stage and the ‘sense of urgency’ can take a back seat. This is really risky phase. Consistent ‘sense of urgency’ is one good quality I have observed in every successful product owner / entrepreneur.
Creating the guiding coalition – To see the envisaged change by the product of your project impacting the world positively, one has to create a great coalition who resonates the same excitement and sense of urgency you have about the product. This coalition include technical experts, financial experts, marketing gurus, quality assurance, sales, investors…they are all external entities and getting them as excited as you are in the project starts with the right selection of these partners and getting them work together as a team.
Developing a vision & Strategy – For many reasons, for many the vision and strategy documents are something to decorate the office. Many management books describes vision as something that motivates you to get up everyday and work. The best definition of ‘Vision’ that excites me most is the one by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the late president of India. It goes like this…’Vision is something that wont let you to sleep, till accomplished’. Having an exciting vision and a strategy to support it makes all the partners / stakeholders work together as a cohesive unit.
Communicating the change vision – Nobody lights a lamp and keeps it under the cot, instead it is placed on the lamp stand so that others can see the light. This is true with the change visions as well.
Empowering broad based action – Removing impediments, getting rid of obstacles, encouraging risk taking and innovation.
Generating short term wins – Releasing the minimum viable product (MVP), as fast as possible to the early adopters and then moving fast to address the other segments.
Consolidating gains and producing more change – Incorporating change at a rapid pace to incorporate the feedback and the lessons from the market.
Anchoring new approaches in the culture – After the early successes, profitable cash flows, successful partnerships it is time to consolidate, refine and institutionalize so that you can move on to more exciting products and changes that can impact the world in a better, bigger way.

Every project has a product or service as a primary deliverable. These products and services brings in changes the way people do things. Developing a product with the technical team is easier when compared to sell and manage the change the product offers. While developing the product calls for management skills, managing the change need leadership skills. Behind every successful product, there is a successful product owner who plays the leaders role.

Reference – Leading change – John P Kotter

agile, blog post, Monitoring and control, Trends in project management

Digital and Agile PMO

PMOs are evolving at a faster pace than anticipated. The traditional PMO’s started by providing project delivery support. Soon PMOs became strategic in nature by extending their support to enterprise portfolio management. This was followed by the digital PMO and the Agile PMO.

The future is of ‘Digitally agile PMOs’, which will help the project managers and other key stakeholders to be more agile and predictive at the same time. Facilitating the adoption of agility along with the predictability of the predictive project management.

Here is a mind map on the evolution of PMOs through traditional, strategic, digital and agile to ‘Digitally agile PMO’

Characteristics of digitally agile PMO

Multi disciplinary – They are multi disciplinary. They must be able to support projects in all the aspects of project management covering;
- Scope
- Schedule
- Cost
- Resources
- Procurement
- Communications
- Stakeholders
- Quality
- Risks
- Integration
Value driven – Their primary focus is to maximize the value delivered to the customer in the shortest possible time. They must also enforce a minimum set of ground rules to facilitate effective collaboration.
Agile metrics – Apart from the traditional metrics, they focus on the agile metrics. Most of the predictive project management metrics and measurements are focused on the past performance like schedule variance, cost variance etc, where as the agile metrics combine both past and future indicators.
Balance flexibility & stability – While scope is flexible, other parameters like time buckets, rules of credit, definition of done (acceptance criteria) must remain non-negotiable and must be uniform across projects.
Quick response to changes – As agile projects welcome changes even late in the project, agile PMOs should also align to this character of agile projects.
Flexible reporting tools
- Iteration burn downs
- Release burn downs
- Product burn downs
- EVM for agile
- Cumulative flow diagrams
- Schedule forecasts
- Cost forecasts
Multi device
- Any device
- Any time
- Any relevant stakeholder
- Integration of new and legacy platforms

Benefits from a ‘digitally agile’ approach to project management

Scenario

Project with tight schedule with penalty clause
Multi cultural team with team members from USA and China
Concurrent engineering from 6 different locations

Strategy

Hybrid project management, mixing the best of both agile and predictive best practices. The long term planning was based on the predictive styles where as for execution the best practices of agile were used
Right selection of a project monitoring and control tool with the capability to;
- Support both predictive and agile ways of working
- Provide transparency and accuracy of project progress data to relevant stakeholders almost real time
- Interface with legacy scheduling and document management systems
- Roll up and roll down project status from multiple locations
- Manage risks
- Manage quality
- Manage configuration management of engineering drawings
- Collaborate across multiple teams

Benefits

Project got completed ahead of schedule
85% improvement in project management efficiency
75% less time in reporting
100% quality achievement
80% reduction in deliverable management time
Reduction in review cycle time from 7 days to 1 day

To know more contact us

agile, Communications, Trends in project management

How technology empowers Agile Remote teams – Fernanda Lopez

In the past few months remote work has become one of the most common ways of work. With benefits including reduced travel costs, increased organizational benefits from using the best talent regardless of location, and the greater availability of sophisticated technology to support such distributed work. (source)

This trend is expected to continue, but as we already said, the success of remote work can be supported by technology improvements. Today we are going to learn more about the technological necessities that a remote team has. But even more specific the features that an agile team needs to work remotely.

Project Management, Project management tools, Strategy, Trends in project management

Advanced Work Packaging (AWP)

In construction projects, during the construction phase, the actual time on tools is only 37%. 63% of the workers time is spent on activities like waiting for materials and tools, equipment movement, crew movement, early exits etc. This is primarily due to lack of integration of the pre-construction activities of engineering, procurement and construction.

Advanced Work Packaging (AWP), also known as construction-based planning, solves this problem by beginning with the installation work packages in mind and then working backwards through engineering, procurement and construction. According to Construction Institute study, AWP have helped projects to improve their productivity by 25% along with other benefits like reduction in rework, better safety, better cost control etc.