Navigating Familiar Water: A PM Rookie Draws (Loose) Parallels

*Editor's Note: Guest blogger, Jerry Daniels, Jr., is a newly-minted PM at Robbins-Gioia. Stay tuned in the upcoming weeks for his questions, epiphanies and general musings on his newfound career.

Since joining the project management community and the many would-be examinees preparing to take the PMP examination, I keep hearing it stressed that much of a project manager’s time is spent communicating, an activity I am familiar with in another profession: journalism.

Given this fact, I can easily agree with a colleague having a similar background that newspaper experience qualifies as project management experience. The very nature of any newspaper, magazine, and television news program is to communicate; and, depending on the kind of news reported, each has its own type of audience, or stakeholders, whose interests will be covered. Likewise, a project has stakeholders with whom the project manager must be in constant communication to keep them apprised of the project’s progress.

Yet, still some may argue that newspaper experience does not qualify as project management experience. The third edition of the PMBOK Guide states otherwise, identifying publishing a newspaper or magazine as “a program with each individual issue managed as a project.”[1] Additionally, the PMBOK emphasizes processes as being the foundation for managing and executing a project.

Consider a news team’s editorial process. A news room’s editorial process incorporates sub-processes similar to those of the communication process outlined in the fourth edition of the PMBOK.[2] Some of those sub-processes include:

• Identifying stakeholders impacted by the project and then documenting information relevant to their interests, involvement, and impact on a project’s success.
• Planning communications to determine the information needs and to define the communications approach.
• Distributing information relevant to the stakeholders as planned.

So, a typical editorial team that includes copyeditors, managing editors, and reporters meet to determine what will be covered for the upcoming edition. What an editorial team decides to cover is influenced by the news organization’s readership (or, where a news program is concerned, viewership), which is synonymous with stakeholders. Likewise, a project team will perform only work that meets its stakeholders requirements.

What’s also determined by the editorial team is how the news is reported. So, if it is a story meant to be soft news with a subjective slant, the article will be reported as such. Otherwise, the story will be an objective, hard news story. (“Just the facts, ma’am.”)[3] In this instance, the editorial team considers what its stakeholders want to read or hear just as a project manager considers what information to report to a project’s stakeholders.

Once planning what to cover in the newspaper or broadcast is complete, the reporters pursue their research and sources so they may write their stories and submit them for editing. (The advertising and design people also perform their tasks—which have their own unique processes—to help create a publication or broadcast, but our focus for now will stick to the editorial process.) Granted that there are no missed deadlines from reporters and information reported is accurate, the editorial team is ready to put its contribution to an edition of a newspaper to rest. Similarly, a project team succeeding in fulfilling its stakeholders requirements can deliver the product. In both instances what was planned was delivered.

Will anyone bite on my argument now?

[1] See Project Management Body of Knowledge, 3rd Edition. The fourth edition does not make reference to a publishing an edition of a newspaper or magazine as project work.
[2] See Project Management Body of Knowledge, 4th Edition.
[3] While this quote has been attributed to “Sergeant Joe Friday” a television character from the series Dragnet, an argument has been that the quote is actually a rephrasing of what the character actually said.

Recap: Internet Summit 09

Some 1,200 nerds descended on the Raleigh Conference Center yesterday for the Internet Summit 09 conference. Everyone was wired in; as opposed to the other project management/business analyst conferences that I’ve been to (I’ve definitely gotten funny looks from PM conferences when I’ve told the lecturer that I was blogging). At least half of the conference was live tweeting under #isum09, and there weren’t enough outlets to recharge us all.

The theme of the conference seemed to be that social media is not killing other forms of marketing—blogs, email marketing—but enhancing it.

Here are a few highlights:

• Keynote by John Kosner from ESPN Digital Media talked about the redesign of the site and with input from ad sales and marketers, they saw a 35% increase in ad sales.
• At the Blogging panel, we found out that Twitter has the highest multiplying affect 18x.
• There was a distinct argument in the Social Media lunch panel whether content and conversation were one and the same.
• The Analytics panel was packed. Panel suggested the way to get executives involved in analytics, is to tie it to the bottom line. Another stunning observation: Less than 3% of American companies today are equipped to compete on analytics.
• From the Design and Usability panel: If you’re thinking about usability, make sure that people who are half asleep or easily medicated can complete their tasks. The homework assignment was to do a search on microchunking.
• The Email Marketing panel assured everyone that email marketing still had the highest ROI of any marketing channel.

Thanks to the Internet_Summit team for putting on a good conference. Hopefully next year they can make it a two-day summit and get into more depth.

Who Are The Project Managers on Twitter?

Elizabeth Harrin at PM 4 Girls decided to find out who really is behind the Twitter at this year’s PMI Global Congress North America. Put some faces with those @ signs.

You can follow us all by searching for #pmot on Twitter.

Thanks for sharing Elizabeth!

Reviewed: The Green Guide for Business: The Ultimate Environment Handbook for Businesses of All Sizes

Many authors simply have a comfort zone in which they can write most effectively. John Grisham = courtroom drama. Nick Hornby = 25-34 male angst. Dan Brown = church bating. Chris Goodall clearly is vying for the role of Go-To Guy on Being Green.

Recent titles Ten Technologies to Save the Planet and How to Live a Low-Carbon Life: The Individual's Guide to Stopping Climate Change have gained relevant Amazon ranking traction and solid reviews from the likes of New Scientist and environmentalist author Fred Pearce. Goodall's Green Guide is an up-to-date, recession-conscious follow-up to these volumes, but this time clearly targeted for business executives in both large and small settings.

No stone is left unturned for the responsible eco-businessman to explore: paper ethics, driving practices, office energy use, greening computers and servers, even company travel plans are turned over. But like other works of Goodall, the ideas are not presented to the sceptical without acknowledging the beliefs that source their scepticism. Goodall is pure journalism in presentation of the issues: objective, objective, objective. One chief criticism he is likely to hear is that in presenting both sides of an issue, he leaves the matter open-ended. Now, for someone looking to make the decision on their own, this is objective and sound. For someone looking for answers (or a quick-fix solution), this is frustrating. It’s a tedious nit to pick, but that’s Nitpicking 101 with the modern self-help audience: if a reader only has so much time to be impressed, then Goodall has to deal with the impatient and demanding as well as the thought-provoked and deliberate.

The most intriguing and objective passage for me comes from Chapter 1, when Goodall admits it is important in preparing for green initiatives to prepare also for a world where the climate does not change:

It is conceivable that temperature rises could reverse and wind and rainfall patterns stabilise. No sensible company of public institution should deny this possibility. Perhaps, as some climate change sceptics say, the earth's cloud cover will increase as hotter temperatures cause more evaporation; increased cloudiness might halt temperature change. No careful business-person should run a company on the basis that the future is easily predictable. It may be as dangerous to listen to the most frightened of the world's scientists as it is to ignore them. The right approach is to try to maintain the most flexible organisation - one that can respond quickly to any environmental or policy changes.

Ultimately, the idea here is for you to come to The Green Guide open-minded and ready to explore and determine with thinking, not to cogitate and solve with immediacy. It implores you to think about things going on in your office. Sometimes the facts are alarming: though air conditioning is common primarily in larger offices, it accounts for nearly 15 percent of the electricity supplied to all UK non-residential buildings. Imagine how much it will account for if British summers actually get hotter?

But its in the all important A-to-B goods transport chapter where solutions truly begin to capture the heart of the business executive’s priorities. These days, companies are looking at a variety of ways to cut yearly fuel costs: petrol to diesel, smaller vehicles, LPG fuels, hybrids and electricity are all offered as better company options. Most glaring is the savings of a switch to electric fuel: Goodall reports on the change by Office Depot to electric-fuelled vehicles from diesel. The fuel consumption of an electric lorry over five years totalled a mere £2,600; for diesel, the total was a much more staggering £15,500. Maintenance costs also totalled over £3,100 in savings for electric lorry users over the same amount of time. For individuals who have already explored travel & fuel savings (inflating tires, maintaining lower speeds), even the obvious is given a platform. But this title refers to itself as a guidebook, and the obvious is what a guidebook should include anyway. You can’t punish a writer for living up to the potential of their title.

These and other figures will always get the discerning businessman's attention, and Goodall is all too happy to oblige in The Green Guide.

Want a chance to win this book?Let Arras People know in 100 words or less what green project management means to you, email us and you could be in with a chance of winning.

About The Review
This review was originally published in the September issue of Project Management Tipoffs, the project management recruitment news & issues newsletter from Arras People.

PMI Global North American Congress: Day 3

I hauled myself out of bed early this morning for the breakfast keynote speaker--Fredrik Haren--a very funny Swede whose presentation on the need for innovation in the developing world left me laughing, thinking, and self-reflecting. His Idea Book was recently named to the 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

Haren's premise is that we've done ourselves a disservice by differentiating between "developed" and "developing" countries. Developing countries, he says, provide better opportunity to see previously known things and put them together in an unknown way--his definition of an idea. He juxtaposed the transformation witnessed by a 25-year-old girl in China over her lifetime (dramatic) with that of a 25-year-old girl living in Sweden (minimal). Who has seen and been more impacted by change and new ideas? By calling ourselves "developed," have we stopped innovating and growing, assuming we've reached "The End"?

A pleasure to watch and listen to, Haren threw a cloud of silence over the crowd with his final question: "Are you a developed person or a developing person"?

Well, what are you...?

PMI Global North American Congress 2009: Day 2

For me, the most thought-provoking--and controversial--presentation at PMI's Global Congress this week was by Gary Heerkens, President, Management Solutions Group, who took on what he called "The Dark Side" of Project Management, something, he says, we all know exists but no one wants to talk about. According to Heerkens, project managers, as well as the profession of PM, have suffered a significant loss of respect over the last 15-20 years.

Heerkens asserted that many PMs lead a challenging existence, putting in 60-70 hours and it's still not enough. PMs receive very little respect from management; individuals are called PMs when they are less than fully competent in their ability to manage projects. There are PMs who simply want to get out.

He cites multiple contributors to this state of the profession:

• Senior management/execs
• PMs themselves
• Professional Associations
• Training/Consulting companies
• Standards setters
• Authors/textbook authors

Causing eyebrows to rise in the presentation, Heerkens called for PMs to be more assertive--less "soft", and for "professional associations" to focus more on growing the profession and less on driving membership numbers.

Interestingly, the current issue of PM Boulevard has a related article on how/why both project managers and business analysts are in jeoparady of being trivialized. Let's hope Heerkens gets an invite back next year....this was a much needed gut check for the profession and, as I talked with others who attended the session, was one of those sessions that just stays with you and makes you think. We need more of those.

Love to hear any thoughts. Did anyone else attend this session?

PMI Global North American Congress: Peer Networking Challenge

OK, so this was new to the conference this year and nobody really knew what to expect. Personally, I was hoping for a physical challenge of some sort, perhaps a duel? It was not to be, however. Instead, Congress attendees were grouped at networking tables to discuss and brainstorm solutions to challenges submitted by other practitioners. Results will be posted on the PMI Web site. Here are the questions:

1. As a project manager, I am often left to perform some of the work of the SMEs on the team if I want to meet my scheduled deadlines. How can I prevent this going forward?

2. My organization is a functional organization. Our project teams are often made up of individuals from the different functional departments. What are some of the practical ways you have found to help my team members balance both their project work and their operational work?

3. Our department would like to begin using the Agile software development methodology. How can we get buy-in from the C-Suite?

4. On two projects, our project team missed a risk that eventually impacted our project timeline. How can my team ensure that we don't miss any major risks on our next project?

What do you say?