December 2006

Mark Lefcowitz has written an interesting article that has been posted on ZDNet UK titled "How to fix IT skill shortages and misalignments" and also on TechRepublic as "How to fix IT skill shortages and misalignments". The article describes the application of the Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC) to fixing the IT skill shortage. Mark writes:

Consider what would happen if workers were paid on the basis of their demonstrated skill-sets in specific knowledge areas, functional skills, and technological acumen, rather than their title and longevity within the organization? As new skill-set needs became the standard, compensation could be phased-out. As new skills set needs were identified, compensation could be phased-in. What would be the likely outcomes of such an approach?

I think this is an interesting concept and definitely an interesting application of TOC. I think this application would have some issues though and have thought of these questions…there are probably many more issues with the actual implementation of this methodology.

1. How would the skill sets be measured to ensure fairness and accuracy?
2. Using this approach, is it possible to keep those people that are interested in becoming ‘experts’ in certain areas?
3. Using this approach allows for constant growth for employees, but how would that organization reward those employees that wish to move out of technical roles and into management roles?
4. Does this ’skill set compensation’ method apply to the entire organization or just the technical roles?

For those that don’t know about TOC a basic primer can be found at Genuine Curiosity.

Thanks to Frank Patrick for the link to Mark’s article.

[tags] Theory of Constraints, TOC, Goldratt, Management, Human Resources [/tags]

Just finished reading an interesting article by Dragan Milosevic and Sabin Srivannaboon in the August 2006 edition of PMI’s PM Journal titled "A Theoretical Framework for Aligning Project Management with Business Strategy" (#1). Srivannaboon also had a similar article published in the December 2006 edition of the PM Journal titled "Linking Project Management with Business Strategy" (#2).

The articles describe a framework that the authors have created that can supposedly be used to align corporate strategy with project selection and management. The articles both have some interesting insights but I think it would take most Project Managers a few weeks to wade through some of the ‘academic speak’ in these articles to get any usefulness out of them. There was one key point from both articles that I’d like to share:

• Alignment of business strategy with project management and selection is a dynamic process (Milosevic & Srivannaboon, pg. 103) & (Srivannaboon, pg. 94)

I think that most experienced project managers probably have already picked up on this, but it is an interesting point to make. I would expect that most seasoned business people would agree with the idea that the process of creating and managing an organization’s strategy is a dynamic process, therefore it is an easy step to make to say that project alignment should be a dynamic process as well.

I do think these articles have built a base for further research and study, a base that I plan to use to build my own research on. My overall opinion is that these articles cover an interesting topic, are well written and quite a bit of research has gone into them but they are a little too ‘academic’ for most practitioners.

References

1. Milosevic, D. & Srivannaboon, S. (2006). A Theoretical Framework for Aligning Project Management with Business Strategy. PM Journal August 2006.
2. Srivannaboon, S. (2006). Linking Project Management with Business Strategy. PM Journal December 2006.

[tags] Project Management, Strategy, Alignment with Business, Project Strategy [/tags]

Just ran across this great Project Management Glossary maintained by Dave Wagner over at the MBA FAQ website. It has short succinct definitions of the most used terminology and is a good starting point for people new to the PM world.

Thanks for posting the glossary Dave.

[tags] Project Management, Glossary, MBA FAQ [/tags]

Just finished my morning read of some of my favorite blogs and wanted to bring Don Blohowiak’s post from yesterday to everyone’s attention. The post, titled “New Chief” discusses what every new leader must think about when taking on a new role. Don gives three questions that a new leader should ask of their new organization:

One way to get the best of both approaches, ask everyone these three questions:

1. What are three things we should be very proud of as an organization, and why?
2. What are three things you’d change around here if you were me, in what order, and why?
3. What are three capabilities we have that are under-developed or under-utilized, and what should we do about that?

I like these questions. They allow a new leader to understand what the organization is, where it has been and where it wants to go.

[tags] Leadership, Don Blohowiak, New Leader [/tags]

Sorry for using a title that has been used many many times, but it does a good job of capturing the essence of this post.

Erik Mazzone has an interesting post today titled “How to Lead like the Godfather” which got me to thinking about leadership. The essence of Erik’s post is that the old way of leading via the “Command and Control” mentality is dead (I agree). Erik writes that the problem with this type of leadership style is that it is:

famous for its top down approach, which gives the absolute minimum amount discretion to the individual worker. The worker is told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

The better way to lead according to Erik (and I agree) is to lead by using a “Command & Connect” approach. This is done by in the following manner:

Be strong and in command, give the hard orders. But then give your people the leeway to get the job done in their own way. Keep the lines of communication open, though, and keep connecting with them.

Reading this made me think of the show about D-Day that I recently watched on The History Channel (or was it the Military Channel?) about the history of D-Day and some of the reasons for success. In the show, the author Stephen Ambrose was discussing the landings on Omaha Beach and giving his opinion as to why the landing was a success despite the overwhelming cliffs and defenders facing the American’s. Ambrose said (I am paraphrasing here):

The main reason for the success at Omaha Beach (and elsewhere during D-Day) was the ability of the American soldiers and officers to think on their feet. They had been well trained and then given a job to do and they did it. When they saw something that needed to be done they didn’t wait on HQ to give the command, they just did it. The American soldier was (and still is) trained to be an independent thinker and leader.

This is in sharp contrast to the German defenders who had been trained to be obedient and ask for orders before striking out. As an example, a German General had an entire Panzer division under his command but wasn’t allowed to insert this division into the battle at Omaha beach until late in the day because he had to wait for orders from German High Command before moving the division.

I think this is a perfect example of the “Command & Connect” leadership mentality and the success it can bring. The American forces had a “Command & Connect” mentality while the German forces were stuck in the “Command & Control” leadership style.

[tags] Leadership, Omaha Beach, Godfather Leadership [/tags]

The Center for Business Practices (CBP) released their “State of Project Management 2006″ survey (view PDF version here) or go to this URL: http://www.pmsolutions.com/experts/research_smry06.pdf). The survey is worth taking some time to read. I think the results show that implementing PM Methodologies and PM offices provides value to an organization…although organizations should also ensure that common sense is applied to all methodologies that are implemented.

Some interesting tidbits in the survey include:

BIGGEST CHALLENGES TO THE SUCCESS OF PROJECTS facing organizations today are inadequate resources (for 70% of organizations), shortage of time for thinking and planning (50%), unrealistic expectations from senior management (43%), and the overwhelming pace of change (41%).

Positive news from the survey includes:

…enhancing portfolio, program, and project management practices has resulted in considerable value to organizations, including performance improvements of 20% in overall project success, customer satisfaction, meeting schedules, project quality, and project alignment to business strategy.

The CBP survey asked organizations questions relating to projects, Project Management (PM) methodologies, project offices, resources & people, PM tools, culture within the organization and project challenges. A few highlights from the results are:

• Only 14.5% of organizations are without a project office (compared to 55% without project offices in our 2003 survey)
• On average, 3.7% of an organization’s employees work full time on projects
• Work breakdown structure was the most used tool, but even then, 23% of organizations don’t use it at all or only limited use
• Microsoft Project Standard is used by 68% of organizations and Microsoft Project Professional/EPM Solution by 33%, Primavera by 14%, and all others by fewer than 5% of organizations
• 44% of organizations outsource project management functions (compared to 23% in our 2003 survey)
• Of the 16,110 projects closed in the past 12 months, 63% were completed successfully, 25% remained troubled, 7% were terminated with reason, and 6% failed outright.

[tags] Project Management, Program Management, PMO, Leadership [/tags]

Just ran across a report on MS Vista’s DRM and content protection system by Peter Gutmann at the University of Auckland (read entire report here). What I read was pretty scary if it is true. The most troubling is that Vista supposedly disables technology on a computer to keep “premium content” (i.e., HD, Blue-ray, etc) from being played on a computer powered by MS Vista. An excerpt from the report:

Disabling of Functionality

Vista’s content protection mechanism only allows protected content to be sent over interfaces that also have content-protection facilities built in. Currently the most common high-end audio output interface is S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format). Most newer audio cards, for example, feature TOSlink digital optical output for high-quality sound reproduction, and even the latest crop of motherboards with integrated audio provide at least coax (and often optical) digital output. Since S/PDIF doesn’t provide any content protection, Vista requires that it be disabled when playing protected content [Note D]. In other words if you’ve sunk a pile of money into a high-end audio setup fed from an S/PDIF digital output, you won’t be able to use it with protected content. Similarly, component (YPbPr) video will be disabled by Vista’s content protection, so the same applies to a high-end video setup fed from component video.

In addition to the disabling of “premium content”, it appears that other strange things are occuring in Vista. A few examples:

• Elimination of Open-source Hardware Support
• Elimination of Unified Drivers
• Denial-of-Service via Driver Revocation
• Decreased Playback Quality

If the information is accurate, this is rather short-sighted on Microsoft’s part and somewhat scary. The report lists some fairly well-written sources (including one from hardware vendor ATI) that help to legitimize this report.

Read the entire report here.

[tags] Technology, Microsoft Vista, Vista Problems, Vista [/tags]

I’ve been reading Eliyahu Goldratt’s book Critical Chain and am quite intrigued with the application of Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints (TOC) to Project Management. The book has some excellent ideas for possible improvements to Project Management methodologies. I am currently about halfway through the book and am very interested in finishing. After starting the book, I began searching the internet for other Critical Chain and/or TOC Project Management topics and have found quite a few interesting websites and books and plan to continue to delve deeper into this topic.

An interesting website for Critical Chain/TOC and other Project Management topics can be found on the Focused Performance website.

Interesting stuff…..look for more on this topic in coming days/weeks/months.

[tags] Project Management, Program Management, Goldratt, Critical Chain, Theory of Constraints, TOC [/tags]

Don Blohowiak has a new post on his “Leadership. Now.” blog titled “Endurance Reward” where he discusses the ‘old-timer, high salary’ issue within organizations. The main question of the article is:

If you exclude assessments of merit and value from determining the worth of longevity, why pay a premium for tenure?

I used to see this issue quite often within organizations, but haven’t run across a lot of the old-timers who are getting paid high salaries mainly because of their tenure….most of the highly paid, long-tenured employees have been sent into early retirement (or fired or let go in a lay off) in cost cutting measures.

I wonder, though, how organizations did (and still do?) justify paying someone a much higher salary just because they have more ‘time in the saddle’ than other similar employees. Anyone know the reasons behind this?

Technorati Tags: Human Resources, Compensation, Management