TSI’s Project Management Discussion Blog

This morning one of the alleged US experts on petroleum has been interviewed by one or more media outlets and has predicted that gasoline could reach $12-$15 per gallon in the United States.  While I think this expert is wrong about gas prices in the US; in other parts of the globe there could be some validity to his assertion.

In case you have not noticed, gasoline is already over $10 per gallon – in Britain. 

But this is good news for project managers Read the rest…

Ten Steps for Practical Business Continuity Planning

“A practical methodology for managing your business continuity by applying program management techniques”

By Timothy S. Bergmann, PMP, ABCP

Chief Learning Officer

True Solutions Inc.

Business Continuity Planning is a complicated, sometimes difficult endeavor for an organization. One of the challenges that colors the process is that Business Continuity Planning is still in the formative stages. BC experts who are working today are often the same individuals who performed Disaster Recovery planning on early mainframes and self published their findings. While there is always a definite need for Business Continuity Planning, there are many barriers to success. This paper describes a methodology at a high level that can facilitate success for Business Continuity Planning by applying proven project management, program management and business continuity best practices in a coordinated manner.

Business Continuity Planning superseded the concept of Disaster Recovery around 1994-1995 after the Hurricane Andrew experience in Florida. During this widespread disaster event, some companies found that they had protected their infrastructure (Disaster Recovery), but had failed to protect the company (Business Continuity). This initiated an evolution from Disaster Recovery thinking to Business Continuity thinking.

Simply stated, Business Continuity deals with all of the elements of the company:

- Infrastructure (Buildings, communications and computing)

- Sales

- Fulfillment and customer service

- Human Resources

- Security

- Risk scenarios

To oversimplify, Business Continuity deals with the organization holistically; in the past Disaster Recovery only dealt with a small portion of the organization.

But there are some definite challenges to Business Continuity. First of all, in order to address a problem, the organization has to recognize that a problem or need exists. Many organizations fail to plan for Business Continuity due to various reasons, such as lack of resources, lack of budget and lack of interest. Many organizations suffer from the vision that “It won’t happen here” and fail to take adequate precautions to protect the enterprise.

Think about it: how often have the officers and directors of a company that failed into bankruptcy been criminally or civilly prosecuted for the failure? Sometimes, usually in cases of fraudulent activity there have been prosecutions; Enron, Tyco and Worldcom would be recent examples of criminal prosecutions. But while these prosecutions have been very public events, there are very few corporate leaders who suffer this fate.

Read the rest…

This document is sixth in a series about the Seven Deadly Project Sins.

In this narrative, I will continue to focus on some of the “soft-elements” of the project, some temptations that the project manager needs to be on the lookout for in order to foster success on the project.

The Seven Deadly Project Sins as I have defined them are:

• Elitism
• Project Envy
• Resource Gluttony
• Project Lust
• Personalization
• Over-allocation of Resources
• Best Practice Sloth

The sixth Deadly Project Sin – Over-Allocation of Resources can definitely make accomplishing the project more difficult.

How does Over-Allocation happen?

Project Managers are often encouraged to try and meet unreasonable expectations for projects. Scope is often extended while schedules and budget are restricted. Project managers many times try to meet these constrained schedules by pushing their existing resources to their limits.

While it is an acceptable trait to get the most from people, and it is acceptable to push the project team in times of crisis, it should be unacceptable to routinely over-allocate resources based on perceived need, rather than real need.

Let’s look at some common situations that the project manager might find:

• A project must be completed before the company’s main retail selling season. No one “remembered” to plan for this project in the schedule until 30 days before the season begins.
• A project has an arbitrary scheduled completion date based on the sponsors demand. No real need for this product or service has been established.
• The project scope for a planned company meeting has been changed multiple times during the life of the project; the scheduled due date is next week and the sponsor wants to change the product description again.

All of the above examples indicate a need, real or perceived to make changes to the project. All of the above examples will probably require additional resources and “personal heroics” in order to finish the project on time. But will any of these projects used as examples actually provide a quantified return on investment.

If there is a perceived or real need it is usually the first instinct of the project manager to try and compress the schedule and attempt to meet the new requirement. But is this appropriate in the project management environment?

I suggest that over-allocating resources to meet a perceived need that has no real quantified value to the organization is inappropriate. Many times, the reason that a perceived need is created in the organization is due to “personalization” of some portion of the enterprise. Some manager (director, vice-president, C-person) somewhere in the organization is intent upon making their “mark” on the organization through the project. Whether or not the project will have a positive return for the enterprise is not the consideration, the demand of the high ranking individual overrides common sense and return on investment.

It is the project manager’s job to perform “all the scope and ONLY the scope” of the project. It is the project manager’s job to CONTROL the project and the scope. This extends to the need to control the overall project so that the project is achievable in a reasonable fashion.

So what is reasonable, you ask? The definition of reasonable will be defined by each organization, but I would suggest some guidelines:

1. The project must provide some quantified, real dollars as a payback in order to be accelerated or compressed.
2. Scope changes to the project must contain a real benefit in order to be added. As an example, the idea of changing the theme of the company meeting from red, white and blue to red and gold is just wasteful if it is a preference or a personal decision. The change in color could make sense if there is a return on investment or some actual quantified and agreed upon reason to make the change.

I used to have a supervisor who would answer any resource issues with “you have all the time there is”. He asserted that there were 24 hours in every day and 7 days in every week with which to accomplish the corporate goals. I cannot speak for everyone reading this commentary, but I for one have a life! I intend to pursue happiness in my life and working 24/7 is simply not conducive to my personal goals.

Over-allocation of resources compromises the ability of the resource to have a quality of life. Over-allocation of resources is ultimately a bad business decision. It leads to conflict, burn-out, illness, turnover and loss of subject matter experts.

In conclusion, I would strongly suggest that the over use of resources should occur only under the most extreme circumstances.