Gustav Toppenberg - UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley

- what would it take to differentiate yourself and your project from others? What would the value be? To most project managers and professionals my guess is that the word ‘brand’ evokes a certain sense of ‘marketing non-sense’ and ‘showman-ship’. Why would a project or even worse a project leader need a ‘brand’? As it [...]

Tools that product management use that might be interesting for project managers to use. In continuation to our last week’s discussion about lessons that project management can learn from product management, let us examine some of the tools that product management uses that could assist in project management.

In the last 5 years or so, we have realized that comparing these two roles is like comparing Apples and Oranges. Not many companies now overlap these roles. These roles over the time have evolved from being janitors of products and projects to management of them. Product management has learned a lot from project management. Let us examine what project management can learn from product management?

As you start to utilize the idea of game theory, you may wonder about the reality of the environment we live in, the non-sequential and chaotic-at-times nature of projects. How do you ‘play the games’ when nothing is constant? How do you organize your thoughts and approaches when nothing but change is certain. The good news is that the field of game theory is an ever evolving area of research. In 2007 the Nobel Prize for Economics went to a team of researchers interested in what they termed “The design of economic institutions”

So, how can project and program professionals take advantage of the game theory principles in our work? I propose that every engagement with or stakeholders is an opportunity to utilize these principles.

Now, before we explore the way we might use game theory as a framework, let’s remind ourselves that there are different types of games, and that ideally you want to engage in this work to find win/win opportunities and play cooperative games. Remember “use your powers for good”. Although once in awhile the situation might merit an occasional non-cooperative game.

Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others. More formally, it is “the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.” An alternative term suggested “as a more descriptive name for the discipline” is interactive decision theory.

Equipped with a list of opportunities to leverage at each of the conferences, in addition to the information shared in the sessions and the networking opportunities with peers and experts, I was ready to uncover the hidden values of these conferences. Below I’ll share a couple of examples that you might consider adding to your list next time you attend a conference.

If all you are planning on doing at the next conference you attend is to learn something from the sessions and the exhibits, my advice would be to save your money, focus on your work, and ‘get the dvd’. As we all know, attending conferences isn’t just about the sessions, the keynote speakers, or the product demos. The values you attain from attending conferences are all in the periphery, they are about the ‘X Factors’, those that help you , your team and your company get ahead professionally.

“Basecamp’s focus on simplicity, clarity, and ease of use make it truly unique. You’ll love using Basecamp.” – 37 Signals 37 Signals offers a pay-for-play PPM model that is hosted on their site as a SaaS offering. For those of you who are considering a hosted model this is about as good as it gets [...]

“Project.net is a complete Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution designed to capture, display, report on, and resolve the complex interrelationships organizations tackle when planning and executing major initiatives..”- Project.NET According to the creators, Project.net was developed to resolve the major shortcoming of alternatives: weak adoption by teams, leading to minimal data entered into the system, [...]

“Project Open is a comprehensive project management tool, fully integrated within an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.”- Project Open in a Nutshell Project Open offers another alternative to the big-box solutions and presents an interesting integration point that other similar solutions do not have, an integration with your ERP system. Project Open offers two options [...]

Plandora PPM is an Open Source PPM powered by Sourceforge.net and is currently in release 1.10.4, and most recently updated in May 2011. The product can be downloaded and installed on your site. The site has an excellent demo that allows you to see all of the tools you would expect in a PPM tool. [...]

-  If the time has come to implement a PPM solution, what is the correct solution and is Open Source an option for you? “Apparently PPM isn’t so self-evident after all. So what do we do? Business leaders want the business to be successful. They want sound business processes they can depend upon. Project managers [...]

“Companies typically realize only about 60% of their strategy’s potential value because of defects and breakdowns in planning and execution.”- Harvard Business Review

Today’s challenging economic climate forces every company across the globe to keep a laser focus on the bottom line, and executives are under close watch to deliver key strategies. So why is it that so many companies continue to suffer from a strategy-execution gap? And what can the PM do to help close the gap?

-Defining and Driving a realistic metrics strategy – The Risks and Benefits of metrics No matter your role in the project organization and whether you are just starting to define your framework and strategy or have a well developed one in place, ensuring that you understand the risks and benefit continuously is paramount to how [...]

- a case for project metrics. The right metric, driving the right behavior aligned with the right strategy. Think of the last project or program you managed, or the portfolio of projects or programs in your PMO. How successful are they? How much value are they generating for the company? How are they performing against [...]

Now it is time to explore how these services and capabilities are viewed by the enterprise in terms of true business value and competitive advantage. Corporate development concerns itself with the management arm of the enterprise, setting the strategy and priorities, and ensuring that the enterprise wide investments are aligned with future strategic goals.

Now that the linkage between the delivery and operations of the service has been established and the PM understands how the service enables a capability, it is time to make the connection between the delivery team and the organization.

I believe that helping the PM understand EA and its links to Business Architecture (BA) will help to crystallize the role that their delivery team plays in the broader scope of the enterprise.

Linking Project Delivery in the early stages to business value can be challenging at best, due to changing strategic goals of the enterprise. Also, understanding the full life cycle of the delivered service, including the total cost of ownership and the end-to-end life-cycle of the service can be a difficult task to assume and communicate.

To continue to add value to the enterprise, I believe that the PM role needs to continue to evolve more in the direction of a strategic business manager, linking the project delivery to business value. Excelling not only at delivering a project to the stakeholder, the PM needs to understand how the service delivered, as a result of the project, accelerates a business capability and helps the enterprise leverage current services in-place, as well as the life-cycle of these services, skills that are immensely important to the enterprise success.

The utilization of video throughout your project life-cycle is becoming increasingly more important. The ability to capture ad-hoc video of a meeting or conversation to help further the teams understanding of a specific point, risk element or deliverable, can make a big difference.