Career and Professional Development (CSD)
Unleashing the Power of Project Management
A Four-Part Series
By Aaron J. Shenhar
Executive Summary
Projects are the engines that drive innovation and change. Yet top management ignored them for a long time. Thus many projects today do not meet their objectives. In order to unleash the hidden potential that exists in projects companies must learn how to manage project in a highly adaptive, flexible, and strategic way. This change can make projects one of the most powerful competitive assets of modern corporations. In this series of articles we outline the potential that exists today in project management and what organizations can do to take advantage of this power.
PART 1: THE PROJECT MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY
Although projects have been around for thousands of years and project management as a discipline about fifty years, there are two reasons why projects and project management are becoming more and more important today to almost all organizations and businesses. First, the share of on-going operations in most organizations is on the decline, while the share of projects is rising. This trend began already in the early 1900s during the industrial revolution, and it is accelerating in almost every organization or industry: Not only do product lifecycles become shorter; today’s customers require greater variety and more choices, forcing companies to offer more products. In addition, market globalization is forcing businesses to respond to local markets and to low-cost competition around the world.
The second reason why organizations need to look closely at their project management is that across the board you may find that most projects today do not meet their time and budget goals and many do not meet their business objectives. Study after study shows that only one out of three projects is really considered successful. Thus, if two thirds of the efforts going into projects do not create the expected value, there is clearly a reason for concern. Continue Reading
Assessing Project Management Capabilities
Separating the best from the rest!
Are you involved in evaluating project management talent for your organization? If the answer is yes, then you are sure to have grappled with the problem of outlining the ingredients that go into determining that a project manager is indeed capable, competent and a professional; and then going a step further, taking a call on which project managers are the cream of the lot!
Across the industry, many others are in the same boat. So, we decided to talk to a number of CxOs, portfolio managers and HR professionals from around the world, to get a handle on what exactly goes into choosing the right project managers. While certification requirements have become de rigour, and assessment of core PM competencies is critical, most of our respondents agree that these alone only take you halfway to your objective. Therefore, our focus while writing this article was more on the qualitative indicators as opposed to developing a rigorous assessment model. 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
