Project Management Institute (PMI) has a new community that is launching this Friday; the Organizational Project Management (OPM) Community of Practice (COP.) It is a virtual community of project management professionals that will talk about how to integrate project, program, portfolio management practices with the management infrastructure of an organization.

Project work is important. This blog spends a lot of time talking about how to improve the tools, techniques and disciplines around performing project, program and portfolio work. Staying focused on incrementally improving project management domain disciplines is needed to improve consistently and predictably delivering project results. The only problem is that many organizations don’t need incremental improvements. They need big improvements to stay ahead of the big economic, customer, market and external pressures that the market or other stakeholders demand.

So the question to big bang improvements lies in two areas.

1)       Aligning project work with strategic direction

2)       Providing project work that benefits operations or provides revenue from customers

The portfolio domain has identified practices that allow project spending to be identified, tracked, monitored and optimized. The Organizational Project Management COP wants to additionally influence leadership actions that facilitate successful discussions when monitoring the health or re-optimization of projectized spend.

The program domain states that benefits must be indentified. The Organizational Project Management COP additionally wants to discuss practices and philosophies that apply this concept to real project practices.

In your experience, which one is your organizations biggest pain point; aligning to the strategic direction or providing project work that really helps operations or grows revenue? Would love your comments.

There are both human and project planning and execution techniques aspects to project management. Which is harder? Depends. But there are plenty of issues with the human side. In fact, a book that I was recently asked to contribute too names 77 sins of project management. Don’t despair – this book provides solutions. I choose to write about Blaming, Rigidity and Satisficing. Why? I had some great project examples and suggestions for project improvement. My thoughts:

Rigidity is being stiff or unyielding; not pliant or flexible; hard.

In projects it is indifferently or defiantly clinging to policies, practices and behaviors not tailored to the unique project characteristics.
There are several organizational drivers that tend to fossilize project practices.

Large organization: The corporate staff may mandate practices that work across country and functional lines. These practices may sub-optimize your practices.

Financial pressure. When large organizations are not making money, all hands are on deck to get project work done and no resources are dedicated to optimizing the process to gain back time or money.

Low growth organizations: These organizations have limited ability to bring in new staff, new ideas and re-engineer for success.

Heavy reliance on outsource partners: Outsourcing may be legislatively mandated or a cost cutting reality. These organizations may lose the subject matter or domain experts that are the change catalysts or leaders.

What is the solution? Organizations must tailor project practices. Period. If there are not enough project resources, there are too many projects. Challenging times call for courage.

What can project managers do?

- Project managers must articulate when projects are going to fast to appropriately balance cost, time, quality, scope or when project process are too rigid to meet current market or mission needs.
- The organization can’t fund projects without understanding how the scope is delivered. Conflicts between policies and traditions around processes and life cycles vs. need for speed must be escalated to leadership as risks.
- Approach change in an incremental fashion, focusing on one major change idea at one time. Sometimes slow but steady is a stealthy and smart approach.

Reprinted [adapted] with permission from The 77 Deadly Sins of Project Management, © 2009 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. www.managementconcepts.com

I was invited to participate in writing the 77 Sins of Project Management. I had fun looking over the juicy list of sins. It was hard but I choose Blaming, Rigidity and Satisficing. Why? I had some great project examples and suggestions for project improvement. My thoughts:

Blaming is an aggressive and often acrimonious assignment of blame for project failure.

During project execution blaming is a reflexive, speed of light response. It is part of our human nature. We are rational. We want answers. The sound byte nature of guilt assignment is beguiling. Quick and witty assessments resonate with us. The issue is decided; maybe only in our mind. So we blame, dump on others and move on to the other 50 action items that we need to accomplish . . . before noon. But is blame that simple. No.

Many of the 77 Sins of Project Management are organizational or cultural issues. This one is personal. The following solutions will improve project practices and so they look like they are fact based. Actually the solutions are about controlling your emotions. If you don’t control your emotions, when you feel under attack, you will attempt to blame back.

Basic marriage counseling principle is changing yourself before you request change from others. What does dysfunctional communication have to do with project management? Lots!

Dysfunction 1: Recognize when we blame. This doesn’t need to be a weekend offsite retreat event. It is a quick process of self-evaluation. Watch for when your emotions are engaged. There might be a bit of judgment, criticism. Stop and picture the situation from the others perspective or a longer time frame.

Dysfunction 2: Recognize when we are at fault. Great project managers are authentic and genuine. Have a sense of humor and humility if you have publicly expressed an erroneous or uninformed decision. Model humility and fess up to the thought process that got you here.

Dysfunction 3: Recognize a team opportunity for improvement. If you model open and honest communication, you can request that the team does the same. Paybacks in loyalty are immense.

Reprinted [adapted] with permission from The 77 Deadly Sins of Project Management, © 2009 by Management Concepts, Inc. All rights reserved. www.managementconcepts.com