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Licensed to Drive
Is Project Management a commodity or a craft?
Some days back I visited the Regional Transport Office of Bangalore North district, more commonly called RTO office. For those unfamiliar about my part of the world, RTO issues driving license if you pass their written test and driving test.
Bangalore, and I guess many of the cities in India, is teeming with driving schools. As the name would suggest, these folks teach you how to drive. In Bangalore and again, probably in other Indian cities, driving schools have, in a way, exceeded their brief. They also help you get the driving license. It is not uncommon to see a driving school agent chaperoning young would-be drivers around the RTO offices, filling up forms on their behalf, making them rehearse the driving rules and in general making them feel at-ease. With the passage of time, this has been stretched to such an extent that many would-be drivers go to a driving school, not to learn driving but to get a driving license! Continue Reading
I designed the gear box for this vehicle
Knowing your customer’s business.
I drive around in a Mahindra Scorpio shown here. It gives me unfair advantage on the roads in Bangalore where the right of way is based on the size of the vehicle! Lest you think so, this blog is not about the comforts of Scorpio or the horror called Bangalore traffic.
It so happened, some days back I rode in this SUV with my friend who is a mechanical engineer. As he got down, he looked back at the vehicle for a moment and said “Tell you what, my team designed the gear box for this SUV. Mahindra chose the design from a couple of prototypes we had made. Today, all the Scorpios in the country run on my gear box design.” Otherwise very restrained, my friend had to struggle to hide his sense of pride when he said that. Continue Reading
How long should it take?
Observations on the practice of estimation
I had heard this story long time back. There was this gentleman visiting a historical fort situated in a small village. He was walking his way to the fort but unaware of how far the place was. On the way, he saw an old man sitting on the steps of his house soaking the morning sun and asked him “Baba (loose translation: the revered), how long will it take to reach the fort?” The old man remained silent. Assuming the old man to be hard of hearing, the visitor continued his walk. In about two minutes, the old man called him back and told that it might take him forty minutes. Looking at the nonplussed and almost angry expression on the visitor’s face, the old man added “Son, unless I know your pace, how would I be sure of the time you would take?”
I wish the many of us in the project management community had the same patience and wisdom which the old man had in this story, when it comes to estimating and scheduling.
Through this blog I wanted to bring out some prevalent mistakes in estimation and scheduling.
Improving Project Selection using Appreciative Inquiry (AI)
Changing the looking glass affects how we experience reality and the same holds true while managing projects–project reality continues to be stubbornly affected by blurry assumptions and misaligned goals. Even in the age of program management, selecting the right portfolio of projects continues to be an individual driven process—a process which is largely based on “gut feeling”.
Many organizations today are implementing a strategy formation process with a clear focus on defining metrics for success. But the challenge lies in translating this into selection of investments and choice of projects to achieve the goals. Project and especially Program managers make an important contribution to this process. Given their delivery and execution background, these professionals rely on their problem solving capabilities to meet these challenges. They use the problem solving approach in the context of defining objectives for building effective metrics to demonstrate success.
Continue Reading
Program Management for India development in budget 2009
Program Management for nation building
As a citizen and as a business professional, it’s hard not to worry about the enormous development issues in this country. For me, it’s a challenge about thinking through the big picture. Here’s why you should be worried too: with the government spending over Rs.51,000 crore of taxpayer’s money on national projects, its time someone started asking the right questions:
- Where is the money going?
- How do we know if it’s doing any good?
Dos and Don’ts of building effective Project Management Offices
The common paradox most PMOs face is that instead of being looked upon as enterprises that set standards and lead company vision, they end up being used as a library of rulebooks and procedures. And while companies might be clear about the regulatory role their PMOs may play in terms of defining ‘best practices’, they are seldom clear about the influence and direction that that the office is supposed to exert on projects to ensure continual organizational improvement. Continue Reading
The Growing Project Management Profession in the Indian IT services industry
Ajay Parasrampuria, Managing Director i2m Management and Services IT’S A HOT SUMMER EVENING AND RAMESH HAS JUST WALKED OUT OF HARESH’S OFFICE, THE DELIVERY HEAD OF THE ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS PRACTICE AT GLOBALSYSTEMS. HE WAS JUST BRIEFED ABOUT HIS NEW ROLE REQUIREMENT. NOW IT TURNS OUT RAMESH HAS A MAJOR CAREER DECISION TO MAKE… Continue Reading
Future of Project Management
The future is big
The term ‘project management’ is only a few decades old. Of course many projects were managed before this science was ‘invented’, and nobody had identified a distinctive need for a management process, still less had they decided what that process should be.
Fact is there were more projects managed before modern ‘Project Management’ was developed than have been managed since. And even today, there are more projects being managed with no help from this science than with it. It could be said, therefore, that its influence up to now has been very small but its potential influence in the future is huge. Continue Reading
Fill It, Shut It, Forget It
Long before Hrithik Roshan[1] became their brand ambassador and set hearts “Dhak, Dhak, Go”, Hero Honda used to run an advertising campaign – “Fill it, shut it, forget it”. They were referring to the fuel economy of their bike which was claimed as 80 kilometres per litre. That’s why the line “Fill it …”
This popular ad-line popped up in my mind from nowhere, when a close colleague remarked that his project just goes on and on and on. I began to wonder if the Hero Honda tag line “Fill it …” applied to project management too. I see more people looking at project management as a template filling game. The biggest and most talked about template we fill up is the risk management template. Fill it, save and close it and forget it seems to the practice of risk management.
My observation has been that using standard checklist people do prepare a list of risk or a risk register as described in PMBOK. But the question is, do we move beyond risk identification and manage risks at all? So in-spite of all the great intent with which register and plans are prepared, projects continue to fail. In my view this is perhaps due to two problems
