The figure shows the growth in the number of publications whose title includes ‘project management’ (the blue line) and ‘program management’ or ‘programme mangement’ (the red line).
Source: Google Scholar
Project lifespan
One of the things I tend to bang on about is that the concept of the lifecycle is key to much of what we do in systems engineering and also in programme and project management. Hence I believe it is important to distinguish between the nature of the lifecycle and that of the process. For example, this document illustrates how the engineering processes associated with system development have differing levels of activity throughout the system lifecycle. I also believe that there are many lifecycle models and that it is a mistake to over-simplify the concept because it then loses its usefulness.This document was an uncompleted attempt to make use of that point, though I scored an own goal (see my comments below) on Slide 6 by showing a typical project lifecycle as Start-up | Initiate | Execute | Close – that is of course quite the wrong way to think about it!
Others such as my friend Dennis and some of my students disagree and are not persuaded by my reasoning.They argue that all lifecycles can be distilled to the basics identified by PMI as process groups, ie:
Initiate | Plan | Execute | Close
However I have chanced upon some support for my point of view. Mounir Ajam and his colleagues have written an excellent set of articles which explain the line of reasoning with great clarity as it applies to project management. They also use the term ‘lifespan’ in preference to ‘lifecycle’, because projects generally don’t re-cycle. It makes perfect sense to me.
Four Dimensions for Measuring Project Success
Trend in publication of articles containing ‘lean six sigma’
Number of articles published each year that contain the term “lean six sigma”.
Source: Google Scholar.
Musings on lean in a development context
What exactly is the concept of ‘value’ in the context of an international development programme? Is it obtained from the outputs of projects, the outcomes of programmes, the longer-term impact of these outcomes, or a combination of all three? What value is there in building national capacity to manage programmes and projects. Who benefits directly or indirectly from these things? Who are the various stakeholders? What is civil society and to what extent is it or its component parts a stakeholder? What value do the various stakeholders perceive in a development programme? How do these perceptions vary? Are some perceptions of value more important than others? Are there any value conflicts and, if so, what effect do these have and how are they handled?
How about the concept of ‘value stream’. What does this look like in a typical development programme? Where is value being added and where is there waste? Where is the evidence for this?
Is it reasonable to think that the value stream might divide into several directions of flow at some point or points in the programme, with subordinate value streams running through the lifecycle of each project? Do these tributaries then rejoin the main flow at the various points of project closure, often towards the end of the programme? Is there also a separate value stream associated with gains in capability during the programme lifecycle? Or does all this completely misconstrue the concept of value stream?
And flow: what are the obstacles to value creation within the value stream and over the programme lifecycle? Which are most important? What are the causes of these obstacles? How can they be overcome?
Exactly how does the concept of ‘pull’ translate into a development programme? What is being pulled at the various points in the lifecle of the programme and its projects and who is doing the pulling at these points?
Resilience – A risk management approach
“The aim of resilience programming is … to ensure that shocks and stresses, whether individually or in combination, do not lead to a long-term downturn in development
progress as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), economic growth or other means.” (Mitchell and Harris, 2012)
Reference:
MITCHELL, T. & HARRIS, K. 2012. Resilience: A risk management approach
Viewpoints on project risk
Krane et al. (2012) explore how “Inherent interest conflicts between a project management team and project owner are often neglected in project risk management. Risk management by the project management team basically focuses on project short-term survival, or project success toward handover to the customer, while for the project owner, strategic success should be more important.”
Reference:
KRANE, H. P., OLSSON, N. O. E. & ROLSTADÅS, A. 2012. How project manager–project owner interaction can work within and influence project risk management. Project Management Journal.
Leverage the greybeards
My emphasis in the quotation below from the review of project management practitioner development by Crawford et al. (2006).
“From a research agenda perspective this review highlights a number of potentially important research initiatives that are needed to support the types of practitioner development initiatives discussed above. First, there is no empirical evidence that project management training of any sort (tactical or reflective) actually improves a practitioner’s capacity to manage projects. Research of this nature exploring what practitioners can get from training vs other development practices is long overdue. Second, given the demographic changes facing organisations today and discussed above, those interested in developing practitioners need to give some thought to how to do this appropriately for the different generations of workers we have today. In particular, how is tacit project management knowledge best developed and transferred and how can we leverage the ‘‘greybeards’’ before we lose them. Cultural research into how to develop a climate and reward system encouraging passing on instead of hoarding of knowledge would also be of benefit. Third, an important foundation for the development of practitioners is the development of a categorisation system for projects or project management roles that would allow training to be appropriately targeted and delivered to relevant audiences.”
Reference:
CRAWFORD, L., MORRIS, P., THOMAS, J. & WINTER, M. 2006. Practitioner development: from trained technicians to reflective practitioners. International Journal of Project Management, 24, 722-733.
Competence-based model
COBO BENITA, J. R., ORTIZ MARCOS, I. & MATAIX ALDEANUEVA, C. 2010. International cooperation for development: Design of a competence-based model for managing programmes and projects. Project Perspectives 2010, 32, 15-19.
Exploring corruption practices in public procurement of infrastructural projects in Ghana
A paper by Osei-Tutu et al. (2010). A couple of quotations from the abstract give the flavour:
“Purpose – While corruption has long been recognized as a destructive social problem, the subject has not yet been given much attention in the literature of the management of procurement of infrastructure projects in Ghana. The purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss corruption practices inherent in public procurement of infrastructural projects in Ghana with the aim of identifying corruption related challenges that must be addressed in order to actualize the expected economic gains of infrastructural projects.
Practical implications – Implementation of sound procurement performance measurements would be imperative in the bid to curb corruption practices. The paper suggested a number of business approaches to combat corrupt practices in Ghana, which are explained in terms of political, psychological, technical, operational and retaliatory measures. In this paper, it is proposed that knowledge about and debating corruption related issues is just as important to the modern public procurement as are the abilities to creatively and logically introduce monitoring systems when planning, executing and completing projects.”
OSEI-TUTU, E., BADU, E. & OWUSU-MANU, D. 2010. Exploring corruption practices in public procurement of infrastructural projects in Ghana. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 3, 236-256.