To get the project completed and accepted on time and budget does not make us good project managers in everyone's eyes - at least not necessarily in customers. It's a bit like a supplier - what do you want: 1) what
you requested? or 2) what you need? The last right?Suppliers deliver what you order. Business Partners deliver what you need - or making an effort to do so. The supplier you can rely on the quality, time and cost. Partners are in sincerity, empathy, focus on your business, etc. Suppliers can be obtained anywhere. Partners are more rare. Supplier role is easy. Role is difficult because you often must make unpleasant and provocative questions. You have to ask again and again - even when the customer has had enough - "just to be sure ....". Want to be a good project manager in customers' eyes, you have to cover the whole playing field:
Have you ever thought about why
we say: "we are behind schedule" or "we are not at the plan"? The reality may no longer be as we planned it, but it's not reality that does not fit into the plans. It's always plans that do not fit with reality. We do not change the landscape to fit the map - it's the other way around. Therefore, we should get used to saying something like "schedule is ahead of reality" or "the paln is not where we are"! How strange it may sound, it
makes us all more humbled to reality. We have to respect that reality does not change just because we make plans. Henry Mintzberg has said it very well: "Reality has a tendency to constantly get in the way of the plan!" Have a nice weekend
I think I have finally found the cause of all our problems in projects! Hold on! This is gonna be big! The reason is where nobody has looked. Right at the feet of you. The reason is simply the word Project! That's it! When I say project - ziiiip zaaaaap, then you have immediately a picture of a project in your brains, but do
we have the same? and is in fact one the right image or a real definition? There are lots of definitions - some are even standards (eg. Here at PMI), but common to them all
is that they all come from or fit a certain age - the so-called Modern Social Period - the period governed by reason and knowledge. I think many today feel that reason and knowledge is no longer the most important thing in projects now a day. We are in the Postmodern Social Period - the period ruled by discourse and rhetoric. An appropriate definition of project nowadays might be: A discourse of legitimation and an arena for social games and power tests. The project is an instrument of powerful stakeholders. Yes, it was a little fluffy. Back on earth one could just have fun with defining success in projects? is it: • process terms: managed within time, quality and resources? • product-wise: it can be used and they are
happy about it? • business: was it worth it? - We are allready three completely different views of projects. So do not come here and say that the word project makes sense! So what I'm trying to say is that the word project is a too poor word - and therefore it is dangerous - and therefore we must find another or a different way of talking about 'projects' further on. There are great prizes for the winner!
A few weeks ago the Committee TC236 (which also include the Association of Danish Project Management) completed 5 years of working with this standard. Now follow the polls, translations, etc., etc., in the bureaucracy of all bureakratier. Around august we will perhaps get the new standard!
A new Committee is ofcourse immediately set up - it's called TC258 and should work for many years with: "create a useful and functional set of integrated standards to help improve project management world-wide."
