Q2-2016 NEWSLETTER Project Leadership

Q1 2015

No. 1

PMI Denmark

Next >>

Dear friends of PMI Denmark

By: The PMI Board

PMI Denmark wish all a great summer, and thank all our members, project enthusiasts and active for a great first half year of 2016. Several good things have happened this spring that are worth mentioning. We have had interesting events with UNOPS about projects in the development sector, with Klaus Nielsen from ITU about the PMI work, and latest with leadership speaker Lars Sudmann about change leadership. These were all good events, but this time we want to put highlight on especially two totally new things that PMI Denmark has done this

spring. Firstly, PMI Denmark entered into

cooperation with DTU by making

an event at DTU Skylap in April

with presentations from Harvey

Maylor from Oxford, and Grant

Sonne-Cliffort from Rambøll. The

event had around 70 people

participating – both project

management practitioners from

PMI as well as Project

Management students from DTU.

A great initiative that we plan to

build further on in the future.

Secondly, on the 21st of June PMI

Denmark arranged its first event in

Aarhus. At this event Aino Corry

talked about the world of Agile

Transformations. With 30 people

showing up for this first event, it

looks like a big success. PMI

Denmark is committed to make

many more interesting events in

Jylland in the future. Should any

of you be interested in helping out

with finding interesting speakers

and arranging such events in

Jylland, then do not hesitate to

reach out to the PMI board.

Remember good things happen when you get involved with PMI

Good things happen when you get involved with PMI

IN THIS NEWSLETTER

Preface 1

DTU Hypathia event 2

Article from Projectplace 4

PMI Educational event 6

Article from TwentyEighty 7

Lars Sudmann event 11

Book review Peter Taylor 12

Pulse of the profession 2016 13

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PMI Event on 28th April 2016 Speakers Harvey Maylor and Grant Sonne-Clifford Written by Gaurav Jain and Allan Mortensen

On the 28th of April PMI Denmark together with DTU and Hypatia organized an event in the DTU Skylab. Focus was on complexity under the headline “How difficult can it be?”

The first presenter on stage was the internationally well-known Harvey Maylor. Harvey is a fellow at University of Oxford, and author of one of the world’s most popular project management text books (Project Management, 4th edition, London Financial Times Prentice Hall) which today is used as the standard text book on project management courses at DTU. Harvey spoke about complexity in projects, what characterize it and how can you work with it.

Harvey presented a framework for working with complexity with 3 main elements:

1. Understand Complexity 2. Reduce Complexity 3. Respond to Complexity

Understanding complexity: To be able to work with complexity, you first need to be able to understand and describe it. Harvey described complexity with 3 dimensions:

· Structural complexity (no. of people, budget etc.)

· Socio-political complexity (politics, power play, lack of commitment etc.)

· Emergent complexity (novelty of project and technology, lack of clarity of vision and goals etc.).

Reducing complexity: Before actually planning you response, then Harvey recommends that one first tries to reduce or resolve the complexities. There is great empirical evidence that a very large percentage of the perceived complexities in projects can be reduced or resolved already early on.

Responding to complexity: When finally responding to the complexities, Harvey related the PMI talent triangle to the 3 complexity dimensions explaining how the skills within each PMI talent area can be used to respond to each of the 3 types of complexity.

When planning respond, Harvey also showed how you very simple can use make a complexity profile of a project using the 3 complexity dimensions above, and then use this profile to match the project with the right project manager profile based on PMIs talent triangle. See the picture in next page.

The second half of the event was presented by Grant Sonne-Clifford, who is the Director of Project Excellence for Rambøll Group.

Grant has well explained the practical version of complexity and project management, that

How difficult can it be? Leading and Managing complexity in projects in today’s world

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occurs during the projects run by Rambøll.

He showed how the Rambøll’s Project Management Maturity model looks like, and how their Project Excellence Life Cycle is very much aligned to PMBOK’s Process Group and Knowledge Area mapping, and considers PMBOK as a Reference model.

Giving more insights of different complexity levels and corresponding characteristics of

projects in Rambøll, he also explained what level of project management experience and expertise is required to run such projects.

It was very interesting to know how Rambøll is building their Project Excellence Academy, and promoting trainings and certifications for different levels of projects.

After the end of presentation by Harvey and Grant, the panel was open for questions and discussions. Both the speakers answered the questions by audience, combining the theoretical and practical approach. The energy and enthusiasm shown by attendees, especially the students, during the session and during the panel questionnaire was tremendous.

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Article provided for publication by Projectplace. Written by Karolina Jackson-Ward, Product Manager for Projectplace

The explosion in big data is changing the way companies do business. Thanks to easy-to-use, specialized tools and a rise in businesses’ cloud adoption, today data collection, analysis, and interpretation are accessible in an unprecedented way. Managers are already using that information to better understand their customers, and create new commercial opportunities. However, not many realize that they can also use data derived from work within their organization to support their employees, increase the pace of productivity, and even improve their own leadership skills.

Within a marketplace that demands a fantastic customer

experience and immediate response in the delivery of products and services, teams’ limits are being pushed as workloads become unmanageable.

In modern organizations, it is up to leaders to manage workloads within their teams by mastering the art of empowerment. This can be as inspiring as it is challenging. To meet this challenge, software has been evolving to meet workforces’ needs and tap into the core of leadership.

The challenges of collaborative work

With expectations to deliver products and services faster and adapt as quickly as possible to change, teams are increasingly focused on becoming agile, collaborative and data driven. They are working much more closely together than they did in the past, and are sharing information and data across the organisation in order to achieve their goals. Unfortunately, employees require a multitude of applications in order to do their work- including intranets, applications and social media. Combined with the ever-increasing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Bring Your Own Software (BYOS) trends, new technologies offer

tremendous possibilities to increase the productivity of individuals and the team as a whole. But at the same time,they also means new risks of wasting time and context in the process. As more and more people come together on a single project, and as team members’ work and personal lives become increasingly intertwined, keeping up with the where and when of tasks and deliverables becomes a challenge.

A project manager may plan out the team’s day counting on 100% availability, when in reality they may have crucial commitments related to other projects, meetings, training sessions or holidays which diminish their workload capacity. This leads to inefficiencies, many of which can be blamed on people under pressure, and impacts people’s motivation and the quality of their work.

Recent reports show businesses are paying a high price for inefficient ways of working. Up to 2 hours and 45 minutes a week, equating to 20 working days a year, is wasted. As a result, our research shows employees (57%) and customers (48%) are the areas of the business most likely to suffer. What’s more, the

How Managers can use Software to Turn Their Teams Into Productivity Heroes

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implications caused by inefficient processes can cause problems in the long term, putting company growth at risk, ultimately affecting its bottom line.

One of the reasons is that managers have to look through many sources to find the information needed to understand employees’ workloads and assign tasks in accordance to their strategy and business objectives. While they may be using Excel sheets for planning, they may be communicating with employees over email, so that the context around the work they do is difficult to locate or possibly even lost. Without the tools they need to properly measure workloads, managers can’t determine which team members have the largest amount of assignments and can’t adequately manage team performance. This means they don’t have the guidance needed to identify productivity thresholds when new commitments arise. In other words, while organisations continue to invest in tools from team chat services to project management tools, having them all doesn’t necessarily contribute to making smarter, datadriven decisions. As a result, project managers as well as their teams are continuously searching for engaging, easy-to-use tools that let them keep track of what they’re working on, collaborate with team

members, and provide transparency to leadership about their performance. In other words, they want solutions that work for them, not the other way around.

Working smarter instead of harder

Business leaders, department managers and project managers are instrumental in helping their employees to manage their workloads. Transforming the ways of working so that everyone on a project or team is clear on what everyone else is doing, and what each other’s workloads are like, should be what every leader should aspire to. Here’s where modern technology can help. Collaborative workload management solutions present new capabilities for leaders, to fuel their leadership with greater insights on the current work situation. Instead of using pure scheduling or single-feature collaboration tools, optimised, all-in-one solutions allow managers to plan projects, know who is working on the tasks that make up the projects and share information in a contextual way, all in one place. This means teams can communicate, build awareness about what they’re doing, work and plan workloads more effectively, without wasting time.

There are many possibilities available which allow managers to look beyond old management

techniques. One key aspect is for them to challenge their own leadership by letting software enhance their workload management skills. They should investigate what tools the organization is using, identify overlaps and find new, unified solutions which will enable the business to get rid of outdated tools and processes. New technologies bring managers closer to the core of leadership and help them provide structure, enabling individuals and teams to focus on getting the right work done at the right time. By using cloud-based virtual workspaces, managers can address the need for modern ways of managing workloads and empower their most important asset- their team members- to become heroes.

Improve your bottom line with smart project Collaboration

One collaboration tool that supports both teams and leaders is Projectplace. It provides everything teams need to set direction, communicate, execute tasks, track progress, and ultimately achieve goals, no matter where they work. Try it out for free here.

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PMI Event on 25th May 2016 Speaker Klaus Nielsen, venue IT-University of Copenhagen. Written by Amit Singh Chauhan

About the speaker

Klaus Nielsen, PMP, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA and PMI-RMP is an external lecturer in Project- and Program Management at the IT University of Copenhagen. He is also a partner at GBD.dk, a Registered Education Providers by PMI.

About the event

The event was mainly aimed towards PMI members and everyone who would be interested

- to know about the world of PMI

- new insights from PMI on the

offerings the organization has to

offer

- introduced to new certifications

- tools and tips to stay certified

(New CCR changes)

- membership benefits, learning,

local or global opportunities

- insights in specific PMI

knowledge areas

Since the IT University of Copenhagen, has used the many resources and research from PMI, as course material to teach

students about Project and Program Management, it made all the more sense that Klaus, a lecturer at the university, conducted the event.

Klaus began by showing us the courses that are on offer at the ITU in the area of Project and Program Management. He showed us how ITU uses the examination content outline from PMI-ACP and compared it with that from IA Agile.

He talked a little about the new / unique PMI certification in Business Analysis and Risk Management, the Pulse of the Profession study from 2015 and 2016. Also what changes PMI have done to their CCR program and their Talent Triangle. We got to understand the various Professional Development Units (PDUs) requirement in each area of the PMI Talent Triangle to continually remain certified.

In continuation with information on how to earn PDUs Klaus informed us about the various avenues. It involved online websites: where one can interact and network with other PMI members (projectmanagement.com), watch webinars and podcasts, wage PM wars, access, review and write white papers on Project Management.

A fairly informative session

where Klaus emphasized how one can identify and use the benefits that PMI has to offer and to maximize the value of being a PMI member.

The event was interspersed with snippets and questions for the audience, to make the presentation fun and interesting. We received an actual case study to work on, which is offered in ITU course currently and is based on PMI educational foundation. At the end of the event, the audience could network with one another and interact with Klaus directly. There were refreshments available too and I personally think that considering the value the session offered, it was a 2 hours very well spent.

PMI Educational Event

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Article provided for publication by TwentyEigthy Strategy Execution. Written by Steve Kirk PMP MBCS MIBC, an instructor with TwentyEighty Strategy Execution (formerly ESI International)

“I’ve worked with my

stakeholders to identify their requirements. I’ve talked to my experts to work out the scope of my project and estimate each task. I’ve painstakingly put together the schedule and budget and documented it all in a project specification. I’ve even agreed on a risk and governance plan with my sponsor. I’ve had the project kick-off and distributed the work packages. So how come nothing is happening? I’m already late for the first milestone and every time I chase up my project team, it seems they are too busy on other work to help me. Why isn’t this

going better?”

Does this scenario sound familiar? Have you rigorously followed “best practice,” only to run into a thick blanket of

apathy and indifference? It just doesn’t seem fair, does it? The solution is to start behaving as a leader, not just as a manager. You see, although it’s convenient to label us as “Project Managers,” behind that title is a number of skills and competencies. And, leadership is one of the most important but probably the hardest to learn competencies. Just being competent at management won’t usually be enough to deliver that elusive, successful project.

Now, before you ask your project management training provider for your money back, let me just stress that leadership without the management skills to back it up is equally likely to fail. You still need to understand how to identify requirements, plan and monitor work, manage change control and close a project. What I’m advocating is the need for the leadership skills to inform and support these project management techniques. I like to think of leadership as the answer to the question “Why am I doing this?” while management is the answer to the question “What should I be doing and how should I be doing it?”

Leadership is about creating a long-term vision of what your

organisation wants to achieve and then getting the commitment of your staff to be part of this vision. It’s about handling the interpersonal issues between staff, teams and other organisations, to keep everyone focused on what’s important. It’s about motivating and inspiring your staff to get past the problems that could derail your mission and it’s about helping them through the changes, both big and small, that will get you to where you want to be. Basically, it’s about people.

Management is about setting short-term, measureable objectives. It’s about defining the work to be done and detailed planning of the resources needed. It’s about working out a budget and managing any risks and changes you encounter. It’s about monitoring what has been done and controlling what you do next. Basically, it’s about processes. Unfortunately, you can’t learn leadership in the same way you learn management. There are very few rules to apply, just guidelines on what should work. And there are different styles of leadership that a good leader will deploy in different situations, with different people. So be prepared to learn and practice different techniques

Forget Project Management…It’s Project Leadership that Counts!

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that you can apply when appropriate. Here are a few key areas to consider and use as a checklist for your own leadership capabilities.

When Is a Team Not a Team?

Every major project has a team. Typically, this will be a cross-functional mix of experts from each department or division in your organisation, plus external consultants, subcontractors and agencies. Usually, your team members haven’t worked together, and each has their own personality and corporate culture.

So how do we handle this? We might have a project kick-off meeting when the project is described and work is assigned before everyone gets on the road back to their offices. That might be sufficient if your objective is just to get people started on their tasks. But if you want to build a team rather than a group of resources, you need to do more.

One definition of a team is that they have a common goal, they

work within agreed ground rules, and they acknowledge that they are a team rather than a group of individuals. If you are lucky enough to have worked in such a team you will have witnessed that rare commodity, team spirit, and the power of the team in overcoming problems and getting things done. But if you rely on luck to achieve this, you will probably be disappointed. Each team goes through a number of team-building phases — the famous Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing phases defined by Bruce Tuckman in the 1960s. And, as a leader, you need to modify your behaviour to get your team to the Performing phase (and keep them there) as quickly as possible.

This means discussing and agreeing with your team their roles and responsibilities and ground rules, and encouraging that they get to know each other (Forming). Then comes dealing with the inevitable conflicts and misunderstandings in the initial stages (Storming), encouraging and supporting as real work starts to get done (Norming) and, finally, delegating and challenging when your team reaches their peak (Performing). Most importantly, you need to take time and effort to work through these stages and reach the optimum stage. If not, your team may become mired in the dysfunctional Storming phase.

Conflict: Is It All Bad?

However well you build your team and engage with your staff, there is always going to be conflict, whether between you and your staff or between your staff directly. It might sound odd, but a low level of conflict should be encouraged. We are talking about debate and different opinions here, not outright war! If conflict is stifled entirely, your team becomes apathetic or frustrated and there is a danger of “group-think” setting in. On the other hand, if you allow conflict to escalate unchecked, you will end up with warring factions that lose sight of what you are trying to achieve, in their desire to destroy each other. Either of these last two scenarios are clearly dysfunctional teams, hence the need for a healthy level of criticism and analysis.

How you handle conflict depends on your concern for the other person as well as concern for yourself. For example, if you want to assert your own position and ignore the other person, you may take a Forcing style. But if you put the other person first and ignore your own needs and wants, you would take an Accommodating style. Or you could delay or ignore the conflict entirely and adopt an Avoiding style.

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Which is right? As always with questions of leadership, it

depends. If you value the relationship more than the outcome of the conflict, then an Accommodating style may be appropriate. But if your project depends on winning the argument, you may adopt a Forcing style. And if you need a delay to get more information about the conflict, then Avoiding it initially may be a good tactic.

Often the best way to resolve conflict is to try and find a solution that is best for both you and the other person. This Collaborating approach is intended to find that elusive win-win outcome and is the basis for modern negotiating techniques. Rather than presenting your position on the topic being negotiated, then having the other person do the same and finally, compromising somewhere in the middle, this approach is about exploring the interests of the people negotiating. It’s about looking at different options that will meet both your and their interests,

and where you really do have to compromise (price is always a typical example), it’s about agreeing on a fair, independent measure. Like the other leadership skills I’ve talked about here, negotiation is something that can be learned and should definitely be practiced, as it’s great for patching up relationships and resolving conflict generally.

Change Is Inevitable and Resistance Is Natural

So far, I’ve looked at the leadership skills you would commonly employ with your project team. But to finish with, I want to talk about a technique you could use with your project customers and users.

How often have you been involved in projects where the project team proudly delivered the outputs to the users (a new IT system, a new business process) only for it to be ignored, ridiculed and generally abused? “Why are they so negative?” we ask. “We are only trying to help them.” The reason is simple psychology.

In any business change, the initial reaction is one of rejection. Even if your project is delivering a better system or process, the natural reaction of your users is to stick with what they know and ignore your project as long as possible. Inertia is a powerful force and you need to engage and

communicate early on to help get past this stage.

As you apply more pressure, expect a digging in of heels as people cling to the old ways. Any perceived weakness in what you are delivering will be exploited and no doubt, you will hear that wonderful phrase, “We’ve tried that before and it doesn’t work.” The worst thing you can do is ignore this. However frustrating, you have to tackle this head on and persuade your users that this is in their interests. Of course, if you are expecting compromises to be made, then you have to be brutally honest about this, or it will come back to bite you later.

At last, attitudes will change and there will be acknowledgement that your change is needed (or at least accepted). Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel! Now is the time to draw a line under the old way of doing things and start implementing your change.

During the acceptance stage, the detail of what this change means to each individual is worked out and you need to support them in adjusting and coming to terms with what is going on. Finally, during the support stage, you need to reinforce the change by rewarding success and ensuring your users don’t slip back into their old ways. In other words, don’t take your foot off the gas just yet.

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Who Else Can Help with This Leadership Stuff?

Feeling overwhelmed? There’s a lot to take on and build into your job description as Project Manager. So think about how you could delegate some of these responsibilities to others in your project organisation.

This is where good project sponsors can really make a contribution. If they are the true driving force behind your project, they should be able to spell out the vision and help get the commitment of your staff. They should motivate and inspire them during the project, to overcome the inevitable setbacks. They should be able to support you in resolving conflict and sorting out interpersonal issues with your team. As a minimum, they should acknowledge the importance of incorporating leadership activities such as team building, change management and communication into your project plan and budget.

I’m also a strong advocate of having a good business analyst on your project. Business analysts can act as an “agent of change” and work with your users and customers to progress through the stages of the change process. They can also contribute to the planning of this part of the project, as hopefully they will have experience with other projects and advise on what works and

what doesn’t, in helping users overcome their resistance to change and embrace it willingly.

The Missing Ingredient in Your Project

If your projects aren’t progressing as well as you’d like, and you are already following your corporate project management methodology, is your leadership up to scratch? Are you really taking into account the issues I’ve mentioned above? If not, I suggest you take a good, hard look at some of these tools and techniques because I think I know what you are missing: people power!

About the Author

Steve Kirk PMP MBCS MIBC is an instructor with TwentyEighty Strategy Execution and has more than 20 years’ experience in project management and business analysis. Through his work with major organisations such as International Computers Ltd. (ICL), McDonnell Douglas Information Systems (MDIS), and MAPICS, Steve gained valuable experience in implementing IT systems for multinational as well as small and medium-size enterprises worldwide.

At TwentyEighty Strategy Execution, we deliver learning solutions that help professionals to execute their project-based work more efficiently,

and to improve the alignment between project execution and strategy.

Public Training | Online Training | Tailored/Onsite Training | Consulting

Our course KOMMUNIKATION OCH LEDARSKAP I PROJEKT (Stockholm, Sweden) / PROJECT LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS (London, UK) teaches you how to build, manage, empower and lead your project teams to

success through communication.

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PMI Event on 16th June 2016 Speaker Lars Sudmann Written by Elena Farnè, Patryck Fraczyk and Alvaro Buxens.

PMI Denmark Chapter had the pleasure to host Lars Sudmann who delivered an engaging and pragmatic seminar Change Leadership and Strategy Execution. The event took place on the spectacular top floor of the Ferring building in Ørestad.

About the speaker

Lars is an advisor, keynote speaker and executive trainer on leadership, strategy, change and communication for global corporations and their leaders. He is the owner of Sudmann & Company, a consulting and management training network. Lars is drawing from his business experience (e.g. as CFO Belgium of Procter & Gamble) as well as consulting expertise with Fortune500 companies to help them improving business and organizational results. Lars is also a lecturer at the universities of Braunschweig and Aachen (DE) and is frequently invited to speak at major conferences and organizations such as TEDx or the ProjectZone Congress, among many.

About the event

Lars’s motivating talk involved numerous examples, inspiring quotes, historical perspective and practical tools applicable within the change and strategy management areas. Furthermore, we were introduced to Pecha Kucha, a simple presentation format where one is limited to 20 slides- each lasting 20 seconds. Using this presentation format, in pairs we changed management proposals that followed four steps:

1. Intro and background

2. What?

3. Why?

4. How?

The exercise has shown how difficult it is to keep one’s change proposal and argumentation simple, precise

and understandable.

Lars has also presented his Six Elements of Change Leadership, i.e.:

1. Envision

2. Explore

3. Engage

4. Enable

5. Energize

6. Execute

The presentation of each element included its general background, accompanying set of tools and best practices. Lars’s talk was concluded with refreshments and networking, where we could engage in further discussion with Lars and other participants. This gave an opportunity to exchange our ideas in a relaxed atmosphere, while enjoying the view over Copenhagen.

Change Leadership and Strategy Execution

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Author; Peter Taylor. Kogan Page Ltd. Published in the UK and USA in 2015, 248 pp.

Written by Elena Farnè

This quarter thanks to Peter Taylor’s last work, we will get the chance to take an in-depth look at the challenge most of the project managers experience in running projects in today – and tomorrow – environment.

Peter Taylor is an experienced project manager professional, who has devoted the past 4 years in lecturing and writing across the world. In 2015 he lectured PMI Denmark Chapter delivering a presentation on The Lazy Project Manager.

Setting the scene

Peter Taylor sets into perspective the theory from PMBOK and other theoretical works to understand what it means embracing project management in the current working environment, where new generations with different background and experience are

called to work and shape together the future Project Management.

Current and future challenges

Through a major survey effort, the author deals with the main burning challenges identified by over 500 project management personnel across industries and geographies. Supported by vivid examples and case studies gathered from project managers across the globe, Taylor identifies strategies, tips and coaching help to cope with these challenges.

Understanding the working environment

Besides the complexities dictated by continuously evolving projects, the diverse working environment interfacing four generations of PM’s requires additional consideration. The future demands a way to smooth the transitions from an older and more experienced generation of actual Project Manager, grown gradually into the role through a process of on-the-job-training, to a younger wave of professionals who deliberately chose this career path.

A tool to turn learning into working environment

I personally loved the book structure which has a sharp chapter structure easier to navigate through and to go back to specific items.

Particularly useful are the:

- “Chapter Summary” recapping

synthetically the chapter and

wrapping up each topic

- “Virtual Mentor” corner, which

,in the form of a direct dialogue

with Project Manager reader,

offer a self-assessment and

coaching tool

- “Real project management tips”,

also conveniently summarized at

the end of the book, providing

advice on how to turn the

learning into practice.

Taylor’s work is without doubt a valuable tool for rethinking the current and future approach to project management, there are some areas which from theoretical standpoint might require some re-assessment. In particular the reader might wonder if the survey was conducted scientifically when selecting a representative sample of the project management professionals in term of age, geography, industry and experience or more on a volunteer base.

Book review: Real Project Management. The skills and capabilities you WILL need for successful project delivery

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Review: PMI´s Pulse of the Profession 2016. Organizations waste US$122 million for every US$1 billion invested due to poor project performance — a 12 percent increase over last year. That’s what the latest, Pulse of the Profession” 2016 report from PMI finds and you guessed it right – It does not bode well for project execution. Written by Amit Singh Chauhan Since 2006, PMI’s annual global survey of project, program and portfolio managers has charted the major trends in project management. This year’s report “The high cost of low performance. How will you improve business results?” which is the 8th such Global project management survey makes for interesting reading especially if you are someone who focuses, as an individual or organization, on executing projects to meet strategic initiatives.

In this article we have summarized what the report contains and what is required to strengthen conversations about the quantifiable benefits project management delivers to organizations.

The report begins with a note from the PMI President and CEO, Mark A. Langley. He begins by saying that what customers expect from enterprises in terms of quality of products and services, is what employees and executives want. At the same time, they realize how tough it is to deliver consistently positive results and maintain progress, if not perfection, in an uncertain and continually shifting global marketplace.

He further mentions that organizations that invest in project management waste 13 times less money because their strategic initiatives are completed more successfully. We know project management is essential for any organization’s success, yet the message is not being realized.

He believes that until leaders throughout organization hierarchies trust that projects deliver strategy; we will continue to see stagnant progress. And that means organizations will be less successful than they should be. It will take some work, but it can happen if we take a collective approach to help shift the thinking.

The report initially establishes the summary findings from the Pulse research. It identifies the major cause of failings in a

project, and points out some of the issues which need to be addressed. It then goes on to indicate that strengthening the conversation around those issues, which need addressing, is essential to improving both project and business results.

The listed issues from the report are: -

Look beyond technical skills

Recognize the strategic role of an Enterprise-wide project management office (EPMO) and align it to strategy

Drive success with executive sponsors

Executive and PMO heads perceive project management differently

Executive and PMO leaders are both optimistic about the future

On one hand where the report identifies the aforementioned issues, it also names a number of key capabilities such as; Value, PMO, Strategy alignment, Maturity, PMO, Training and Development, and Benefits realization where the Pulse research finds little or no change at all. This it believes acts as the primary challenge the organizations need to address and those who embrace project, program, and portfolio management practices.

Project Management Institute - Pulse of the Profession 2016

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Furthermore, the report tracks the global and social trends that impact project management, and that organizations and project professionals can capitalize on—not merely react to—the outlined trends. This coupled with hiring appropriately skilled project managers and understanding the value of project management should help organizations.

Consider a few facts and observations from the report

“Projects are 2.5 times more successful when proven project management practices are used”.

“Project management has been one of the linchpins of our turnaround over the last couple of years. The discipline has made our product and technology deployments faster yet less impactful to customers.”

This provides an interesting angle to what one should perceive and keep in mind as an organization. This focus on what factors could affect global project trends is entirely new in my opinion and perhaps the most exciting aspect of the entire report.

The report also pinpoints the elements that distinguish more mature organizations that achieve better results from the average ones

They look beyond technical skills

They recognize the strategic role of an Enterprise-wide project management office (EPMO) and align it to strategy

They drive success with Executive Sponsorship

Lastly the report concludes that sparking and strengthening the conversation to improve value and success is the way forward for organizations.

It also indicates that its research reinforces both the tangible and intangible value project management delivers to an organization, including risk reduction, cost saving, and, of course, more successful projects and programs.

In addition, it implies that the Pulse research continues to show that when proven project, program, and portfolio

management practices are implemented, projects meet their original goals and business intent far more often and suggests appropriate recommendations, which can be found in the report.

Summary Conclusion

Overall the report is a reasonable read but seems a bit long at 32 pages. The document comprises of text content, graphs, survey results represented graphically.

The text content is made up of in fact 20 pages and the last 12 pages is the Appendix section which exclusively features survey results carried out by PMI on Project Management practitioners, senior executives, PMO directors among others.

The Appendix makes for interesting analysis if one wants to analyze numerical data rather than read gleams of text.

To end the summary, it is amply clear that the report’s findings reinforce the critical need for strategic and strong project management in producing better business outcomes, despite a changing world. Thus reinforcing the importance of project management to reduce costs and improve business results and to achieve the desired outcome in an organisation.

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PMI Denmark Chapter

www.pmi-dk.org PMI Denmark, Copenhagen Chapter, er en del af Project Management Institute (PMI®). Chapteret afholdte sin stiftende generalforsamling i

december 1999, og fik sin ...

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