Month: February 2015

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How to be a Value Driven Project Leader

FIRE values

Recently I attended a school function where the head master passionately explained the school’s values. It made an impression on me and I wanted to share them with you as I believe they will help you become more value driven as a project leader.

FAITH

You need to have faith in yourself. That means you need to conduct your business with confidence, creating trust with the client that you’re serving, and trust with team members and stakeholders on projects.

People need to know that they can rely on you. You have a sense of loyalty, you show commitment to what you promised and you work with dedication to achieve your goals.

INTEGRITY

Good leadership demands commitment to ethical practices. You show integrity and set the standards for ethical behaviour. That means conducting your business with honesty and truthfulness in all circumstances. You take honour in the service that you deliver and you are completely reliable.

RESPONSIBILITY

You can be held accountable for duties that are your responsibility. People see you as being trustworthy and dependable to take charge and complete the tasks that you set out to perform.

EXCELLENCE

You strive to excel in all you do. Over time it will show in the quality of your work and people will perceive you as being competent and even brilliant in your field of expertise. That distinction will differentiate you in the market and make your services sought after.

When serving our customers and stakeholders we need to strive for good values, otherwise we will lack F-I-R-E! People want to follow leaders with enthusiasm and a can-do attitude. As Timothy Barry puts it in this article: “Top 10 Qualities of a Project Manager”, ‘Enthusiastic leaders are committed to their goals and express this commitment through optimism’.

Let the FIRE burn inside us in 2015 and make it easy for others to follow you as an inspirational leader.

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Project Management: Pulse of the Profession 2015

Capturing the Value of Project Management

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has conducted the Pulse of the Profession study since 2006 to provide evidence that implementing strategy successfully is inextricably linked to an organization’s capability to deliver successful projects and programs.

The Report explores the Pulse findings and it demonstrates a clear path forward by focussing on fundamentals of culture, talent and process.

High-performing organizations are demonstrating that adhering to proven project, program, and portfolio management practices reduces risks, cuts costs, and improves success rates of projects and programs. This focus emphasizes the need for all organizations to get back to basics: By embedding a project management mindset in their culture, they will be better able to create a sustainable competitive advantage.

High-performing organizations drive project management and deploy related competencies with a goal of maximizing organizational value. The Pulse study shows that projects within these organizations meet original goals and business intent two-and-a-half times more often than those in low-performing organizations (90 percent vs. 36 percent).

High-performing organizations also waste about 13 times less money than low performers. No increase in the number of high-performing organizations was seen since 2012. This number remains steady at 12 percent.

Project Management Basics

What helps an organization build and sustain its growth capacity and become a high performer?

The Pulse research shows a number of factors contribute to this success, including a focus on what are considered the basics:

  • Fully understanding the value of project management
  • Having actively engaged executive sponsors
  • Aligning projects to strategy
  • Developing and maintaining project management talent
  • Establishing a well-aligned and effective PMO
  • Using standardized project management practices throughout the organization

 

Foundational practices for high performers

Research shows that high performers are likely to focus on:

  • Greater knowledge transfer effectiveness
  • More rigorous risk management
  • More frequent use of agile/incremental/iterative practices in project management
  • Higher benefits realization maturity.

 

To read the full report, visit Pulse of the Profession 2015

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Project Success Story – Let the Ships Sail

Success Stories Shared
Success Stories Shared

Another project success story from an experienced project manager about the development of a new Forecasting system for the international Shipping giant, Maersk.

The project goal was to provide an electronic system to forecast and plan Maersk’s shipping schedules and cargo loading. The development team needed to understand a myriad of information for the cube to be developed. This included international port laws, time-zones, currencies, and the algorithms required behind the scene to create system intelligence that would enable Logistics Managers to accurately forecast, plan and schedule.

The project achieved its objective within two years of reducing the time spent on forecasting and making it more accurate. A centralised system, called Forecast, could be accessed from different countries and ports to streamline all forecasting processes in a fairly complex world.

To read more about the project challenges the team faced, what worked well and the lessons learnt, click on Success Stories Shared.

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