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COVER
STORY
Projects-as-Practice : A New Approach
-- Markus Hällgren
and Timothy L Wilson
As
projects have unique activities, they are inherently
uncertain and this article addresses a challenge to
our present treatment of projects. Instead of treating
them as a managerial form the organization does, they
are seen as something that people do. Consequently,
project management requires the management of the unexpected-the
deviations from plan that occur in the real world.
© 2008 Markus Hällgren and Timothy L Wilson. All Rights
Reserved.
PROJECT
STRATEGY
Strategic Project Management towards Competitive Advantage
--
V Venkateswara Rao
World's
leading project management organizations have taken
major initiatives to advise their executives about the
strategic importance and benefits of project management.
By inducting strategy into the project management, the
focus is shifting from individual project management
to organizational project management. In the end, organizations
maintain a strategic advantage in a competitive world.
© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved
PROJECT
STRATEGY
Project
Management in 21st Century : Challenges for PMs
-- N Vijaya Lakshmi
Managing
projects in 21st Century successfully requires good
people-management skills. However, the new generation
project managers have few people-management skills and
usually they are not really trained in managing people.
© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved
PROJECT
STRATEGY
Wisdom
of Building the Project Manager-Project Sponsor Relationship
: Partnership for Project Success : LTC Nanette Patton
and
-- Allan Shechet
The
project sponsor can promote Information Technology (IT)
project success in several ways, yet many projects either
have no formally designated project sponsor or the project
sponsor is confused about his/her role. The project
sponsor's role traditionally includes project approval,
funding, and staffing, but can include much more. This
article discusses conventional roles and responsibilities
of the project sponsor and then discusses strategies
a project manager can employ to define boundaries to
reduce role confusion and promote partnership to facilitate
project success.
© 2007 LTC Nanette Patton and Allan Shechet. This article
was first published in the November 2007 issue of Crosstalk
Journal. Reprinted with permission.
PROJECT
TOOL
Unified
Portfolio Management Model : A Full Model for Portfolio
Management
-- Stanislaw Gasik
The
Unified Portfolio Management Model (UPMM) describes
the way of managing all types of project portfolios:
investment, commercial and mixed. It may be applied
in operational as well as in project-based organizations.
The UPMM consists of five process groups: Strategy Development,
Portfolio Governance, Portfolio Management, Directing
Components and Component Management. The model has been
developed on the basis of author's own experience in
the domain of project portfolio management and Project
Management Institute (PMI®) documents describing portfolio
management: Portfolio Management Standard (PMS) and
Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®).
© 2007 Stanislaw Gasik. The article was first published
in December, 2007 issue of PM World Today (www.PM WorldToday.net).
Reprinted with permission.
PROJECT
ENVIRONMENT
Project
Management : Understanding the Cross-cultural Issues
--
Annam Anand
Managing
multiple projects can be a daunting task of project
managers. However, proper understanding of human interfaces
is crucial and the development of a project-specific
culture is an important approach in the management of
the project complexity.
© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved
IT
PROJECTS
Measuring
the Software Engineering Productivity : Accounting for
the Qualitative Aspects and Pitfalls
-- Suresh Malladi
IT
organizations collect different metrics to measure the
engineering productivity. Such measurements can be insightful
based on the proper definition of metrics and the discipline
in the implementation process. Metrics will be meaningful
only if they are analyzed and used towards continuous
improvement. Right metrics have an inherent meaning
to identify the efficiencies and deficiencies and should
be supplemented by proper mechanisms to correct the
deficiencies. While organizations at higher levels of
process maturity employ mechanisms like the Personal
Software Process to measure and manage the individual
employee productivity, such mechanism should be robust
to account for the qualitative aspects that encompass
the employee performance. A well-defined measurement
system should accommodate the qualitative aspects and
should target countering the pitfalls and continuous
improvement.
© 2008 Suresh Malladi. All Rights Reserved.
CONFLICT
MANAGEMENT
Conflict
Resolution in Project Environment
-- GP Sudhakar
In
project environment there are chances of conflicts among
team members, project managers and stakeholders. What
are the reasons for such conflicts? What are the techniques
to resolve these conflicts? What kind of conflicts can
take place in software development teams and cross-functional
teams is explained in this article. The different stages
of team development are also explained.
© 2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved
CASE
STUDY
Kalpataru
Team
-- Gautam V Desai
As
a leader of the project team, the role of a project
manager is to ensure that the entire project team works
effectively and efficiently as a coherent unit for project
success. Therefore, it is as much important for him
to pay attention to managing human relation aspects
of the team as focusing on the project-related specific
major issues. The project manager has to pay close attention
to selection of key team members with complimentary
skills and mutual compatibility in day-to-day working,
excellent communication-listening and persuading, developing
empathetic relationship with the team members and inspiring
them with the project vision which will lead them to
subordinate personal agenda in favor of project objectives.
Above all, he should be able to lead by his own example
and project himself as a true leader of his team. The
case study describes the formation and working of a
project team in an engineering consultancy organization
and in the process highlights the relevance of these
issues to the project success.
© 2008. Gautam V Desai. All Rights Reserved.
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