Partial Listing of Upcoming Project Management Events
For a complete listing of events, please visit the December Calendar at allPM.com

John Bartlett - Common Pitfalls in Managing Project Risk and How to Avoid Them-UK
December 3, 2002 10:30am-12:30pm GMT
click here for event details

Planning for PMP(r) Certification FREE 1-hour webinar
December 5, 2002 10-11am ET
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/free_webinars.asp


Quality Improvement FREE 1-hour webinar
December 13 & 17, 2002 10-11am ET
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/free_webinars.asp

ProjectWorld Santa Clara
December 10-13, 2002, Santa Clara California
http://www.projectworld.com

November Poll Results

November's poll question: How is project management viewed in your organization?

As a means to an end 34.62 % (9)
A necessary evil to traditional managemement 3.85 % (1)
A threat to established authority 19.23 % (5)
A method for introducing controlled changes 26.92 % (7)
A better way to motivate people towards an objective 15.38 % (4)

There were 26 responses. As shown by the responses, the vast majority of respondents said that project management was viewed as a means to an end within their organization.

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December's poll question: What is the most significant benefit of creating and maintaining a Project Management Office?

1. Standards for project management are developed for the entire organization
2. Project Managers have a support mechanism in place when assistance is required
3. Project management value is communicated to executive management
4. The project management position is more clearly understood within the organization
5. Project management lessons learned can be documented and communicated more effectively

If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add
your opinion today.

Feature: "Ask the Expert"—Question of the Month, answered by Jerald Kendall, PMP

Question: 

During my assignment as project manager, I recruited a new team member. He was hired from a competitor and offered to share a substantial amount of proprietary information from his previous company. This information could put our company in a very strong position for future business. I know of a non-compete clause in the new hire’s condition of employment. As part of my professional responsibility, what should I do?

Answer:

There are several aspects of professional responsibility that come into play in this situation. The information that the new hire is offering to share is clearly not information in the public domain – it is proprietary. Therefore, it is both ethically wrong to share the information and also it is probably in legal violation of the non-compete clause. 

While it might be tempting to glean the information from the new hire and use only those parts that would help the current project or proposal, this would be a violation of professional responsibility. 

You also have a professional responsibility to develop this new team member and help them become a valuable contributor to your company, in line with professional standards. This implies that you should not simply ignore the offer.

One valid way to respond is to review the conditions of employment and your company’s professional responsibility standards with the new hire, and advise him to reconsider his offer to share proprietary information.

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Jerald Kendall is a PMP with a broad range of front-line senior management and consulting experience. He is an expert in the area of Project Portfolio Management and Critical Chain Project Management. His extensive experience covers both single and multi project environments from a broad spectrum of industries 

allPM Today Tip’s Feature--Top Ten Time-Savers in MS Project 2000, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

Tip #1:
When you have to enter the same value for many tasks, you can save yourself clicks and typing. Select all the tasks randomly throughout the task list by holding down the CONTROL-key and clicking on the tasks. Then choose the menu items Project, Task Information or press the Task Information tool on the Standard tool bar to edit multiple tasks at the same time. 

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Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration; PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certificaton, International Institute for Learning, Inc and author of "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Project (r) 2000." This tip appeared in the 10/2000 MPUG eZine. 

Column: Project Management Six Best Practices, a series by Dr. Harold Kerzner. This month -- Best Practice #3 -"Strategic Planning for Project Management", by Dr. Harold Kerzner

Best Practice Makes Perfect

In this series World-renowned project management expert Harold Kerzner discusses six of the best practices in project management that are now being implemented. This month we are featuring the third best practice "Strategic Planning for Project Management." All of the best practices are related either directly or indirectly to the process of educating project personnel. Best practices are like pieces of a puzzle, when assembled, the picture can be a thing of beauty. And often, the greater the number of pieces in the puzzle, the more beautiful the final assembled picture.

Best Practice #3- Strategic Planning for Project Management

Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of those firms excelling in project management is their belief and commitment that project management should be treated as a strategic competency, necessary for the survival of the firm. With this intent, companies today appear committed to strategic planning for project management excellence using best practices.

Historically, companies mistakenly believed that if project management is used long enough, the company would become good at it. There are two fallacies here. First, companies are not about to wait decades to become good at project management. Second, using project management without continuous improvement to the methodology allows for the repetition of mistakes and poor practices.

Stay tuned for next month's featured best practice "When to Bring the Project Manager Onboard"

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Article reprinted with permission from PM Review Magazine, November 2001. For information about PM Review magazine, please email: info@richardlangrish.com or call +44 (0) 20 7434 1159

Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. and Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College. He is an expert in the areas of project management, total quality management, and strategic planning. Dr. Kerzner is the author of the best-selling textbooks: Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling, now in its sixth edition, In Search of Excellence in Project Management, and Applied Project Management: Best Pratices on Implementation.

Column: Thinking Positive About Risk Management
by Frank P. Saladis, PMP 

Most sources of information about Risk Management focus on the need to be proactive instead of reactive. The old saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is right on target when it comes to planning for risk. To put Risk Management in its simplest form it means learning to expect the unexpected. It means that you, the project manager, must start your team thinking about risk situations, prevention ideas and “what if” scenarios at the start of project planning, not when an incident occurs. According to the PMI® PMBOK® Guide, Risk Management includes: Risk Planning, Risk Identification, Qualitative Analysis, Quantitative Analysis, Risk Response, and Monitoring and Control. The process procedures, tools, and techniques provided in the PMBOK® provide the project manager with the essential framework for a Risk Management Plan and are well worth reading. However, as the project manager, you must take these principles and convert them into understandable and usable tools for your project team members. You have to make sense of the PMBOK® for the project team member and non- project manager. Keep in mind that (generally speaking) all project team members want their projects to turn out great. It’s an inherent desire. Emphasize to your team that “hoping” things will work out is not the answer. What the project needs are contingency plans. We need to adapt to various situations quickly and initiate alternatives that have been considered and are ready for implementation.

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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the former President of the NYC PMI Chapter.

Column: Project Management – A Stress Reduction Method: Handling Uncertainty, by George Pitagorsky

Challenging. Stimulating. Fast moving. These are some of the words we commonly use to describe our experience of project management. Unfortunately, we also use these words. Chaotic. Stressful. Anxiety-inducing.

Perhaps, by cultivating and concentrating on the descriptions from the first list we can minimize the number of times we use the words on the second list to describe our process.

“If you actually apply this PM stuff well, it takes the stress out of project work.”

Project management as a stress management technique? Recently, I had workshop participants from two very different PM seminars, which dealt with opposite ends of the PM spectrum, express this theory to me, surprising us all. I had never acknowledged project management (PM) as a stress management technique and decided to give it some thought. It became clear to me that by applying the basic principles of Project Management, the anxiety, chaos, blaming, anger, etc. that creates stress during the life of a project, can certainly be reduced, if not eliminated.

To use PM techniques as a stress reduction method we will identify some of the typical causes of stress in projects. We will then examine how different aspects of PM, if applied effectively, can eliminate the causes of stress or temper its effect on the well being of the project managers, everyone else involved and the project itself.

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George Pitagorksy (PMP) specializes in project management, information technology, productivity and quality improvement, systems requirements and organizational change management. He is listed in Who’s Who as an expert in Quality Operations & Quality Improvement.

Column: How to Market the PMO within your Organization
by Steve Rollins, PMP, Chief Project Strategist, EPM Solutions, Inc.

As I meet with people involved with their Company’s Project Management Office Organization, I consistently hear questions about how to acquire buy-in from within the Enterprise for the services provided by the PMO. The frequency of this question indicates to me that other PMO Leaders might be seeking this answer. In the content that follows, I will present an approach that you may find useful. My intent is to help you get started. I do welcome your feedback.

At the risk of sounding philosophical, I suggest to you that every business, profit and non-profit alike, are unique in how they approach project delivery. Sure they may follow standard methods and policies and sure they may have credentialed and talented project management professionals leading the important project initiatives. We need to focus first on why your business is a business in the first place. It is usually because the business model is unique and/or mature enough to maintain a competitive advantage within the market space your company sells and/or provides services too. Current market conditions have a way of changing, influencing, dictating projects and people within any business model. We all know that when the market conditions are great, project work and the people working them, seem to have less stress than the opposite market model where market conditions are so tight that new product and service revenue opportunities have become significantly less frequent – this is where we are today.

So how does a Project Management Office or a Project Office market their services in today’s business market environment? I suggest the answer lies in internal customer need for any help they can obtain towards improving project delivery and reducing costs associated with delivery time or what I label as the “PMO Throughput Model”.

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Steve Rollins, PMP, is the Knowledge Vice-Chair for the MetSIG. Steve is a leading international authority on Project Management Offices. He is currently the Executive Chair of the PMO SIG Mid America PMO Regional Group Chapter. Steve has written more than 25 articles with many of these articles published including his recent article on “How to Get Value From a PMO”. Steve can be reached via email at Steve@PMOUSA.com