Examining the ongoing challenges of delivering high-quality, value-added ERP services in Higher Education.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Two weeks ago I attended a pre-conference seminar at
EDUCAUSE 2011 in Philadelphia on Creating Agile Organizations. during the icebreaking part of the day, the facilitators asked us to huddle at our tables over this question: what is a project? There were audible groans. At least twice I heard "I'm a PMP, I know what a project is." Yet across forty project management professionals we struggled.
Let's examine the
PMBOK definition: "A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."
Out of fairness to the standards boards across the pond, how about the
PRINCE2 definition: "A project is a management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified Business Case."
And now some of the definitions the seminar attendees came up with:
- A project is a set of activities that are time bound (start/end dates) with a specific set of objectives (scope). Should have some minimum thresholds (e.g. how much time it takes to complete). May be of interest as a track-able item from management's perspective.
- A project has discrete scope, defined start/end dates, and meets organizational definitions (hrs, resources, origin) for a "project"; typically outside normal operations.
I look upon these attempts at defining the word and think "Gee, those PMI and PRINCE2 definitions are so much tighter." Their current simplicity reflects untold hours of careful wordsmithing, a painful and unending process as anybody who has ever crafted a mission statement or novel can attest... With such clean definitions out there why is there still so much consternation about "what is a project?"
For some reason (unknown to me) one problem seems to be the lack of precision in the "official" definitions -- they are too broadly applicable, and one must be careful not to treat too many undertakings as "projects" -- thus an interminable attempt to define define "eligibility" for the gravitas-laden title "project".
Consider these thoughts from other groups in the same EDUCAUSE seminar:
- It is usually about something large and new (not incremental). (Anything larger than 80 hours.)
- Needs approval; needs funding; typically align to strategic vision.
- A set of functions to be implemented in a set period of time, that requires more than a defined number of hours.
- A request that takes more than one day to complete. Usually involves more than one person.
We could imagine so many potential gating criteria:
- 8 hours
- 40 hours
- 80 hours
- 200 hours
- 2,000,000 hours
- Has a budget
- Has budget > $X
- Has more than one resource
- More than five resources
- Not involving Group X or Group Y
- Has IT involvement
- Ordained as a project by the governing board
This is beyond wordsmithing; we're talking philosophy now. Every time I find myself in such conversations, i want to tear my hair out. At first I think this differentiation is about reducing red tape--not wanting to burden a small project with the baggage of process and procedure. Sometimes it seems as if the evil root cause is the "cult of project managers" looking at smaller projects as somehow below their station and wanting to maintain the purity of their profession. Other times I think that it is the parochialism of individuals grounding their rules in those witnessed at current or past employers or clients; too often these rules are presented as points of fact. There is no one reason, and no explanation makes the debate all that meaningful to me. More time is sometimes wasted debating whether or not something is a project than just moving on and managing it like one. Why is that such a horrifying proposition for some?
For me, a project is anything that has these characteristics:
- Defined start and end
- Would benefit from a codified strategy mapped on a timeline
- Can be conceived as a series of inter-related actions
In other words:
if it smells like a project, it is probably a project. And this: almost any undertaking would benefit from project management. Yes, even those pesky "operations." Just ask my wife: I basically have a GANTT chart for Monday supper! (And definitely had one for our honeymoon, collected in a beautiful green three-ring binder).
What do you think? Hit me via Twitter (@jasonshaffner) or e-mail with your perspective!
Labels: #PMOT, Conferences, Project Management, Rants
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A lot has happened since 2005, the only previous time I had the good fortune to attend Oracle Open World in San Francisco. Forget about the litany of political, technological, and cultural transformations that may have taken place—I am talking about the fact that in 2005 I had not (re) met my wife and had never changed a poopy diaper. It has been a busy seven years!
Oracle Open World may have changed, too—I won’t really know until I arrive on the ground—but the sheer scale of the event sure hasn’t diminished. I spent the last two hours trying to optimize my calendar and my head is spinning. I can only imagine the condition I will be in after four days of sessions and the closing event when I endeavor (at the last minute) to practice my lines for our
Thursday presentation. Final day presentations are the pits…
Unlike many conferences I have attended in the past, there don’t seem to be dead spots in the program. It helps to have a broad set of interests; this year I want to see EBS R12 upgrade case studies and OBIEE implementation tips and tricks and most anything Fusion. Sessions on GRC, Advanced Procurement, and Exadata would be nice if I can find room. The situation would be worse if two members of my team weren’t covering the PeopleSoft HCM and Oracle Hyperion EPM realms. As it stands, I have packed every slot and wished the system would allow double- or triple-bookings (at least temporarily!).
[Although I suppose if the hashtags are clean and the Tweeps are active then I can probably virtually attend three sessions simultaneously via Twitter, right?]
Consider the first non-keynote, non-user-group session of the convention – Monday at 11am. I was excited about “Finance Modernization: Streamlining Processes and Systems” until I saw one from McDonald’s on Hyperion Planning. I would love to geek-out on technical sessions on ADF or OAF, but that’s just not in the cards… What about the executive session on OBIEE? Or an E-Business Suite roadmap session, an hour on the Fusion user experience, or a cool-sounding session on Oracle’s use of its own hardware and software. Oh, and Tom Mayhew from the Harvard team is presenting his lecture on Approval Workflow Engine (AWE) in PeopleSoft 9.1. Decisions, decisions. There has to be an app for this problem.
My favorite title so far? How about “What If Kramer Were Your DBA and Seinfeld Tuned Your Database?” on Sunday at 4pm. Genius.
When I planned this blog, I expected to spend a few paragraphs talking about the sessions that seemed most interesting, but that is a tall order with 25 sessions on my tentative calendar. Keynotes are not my thing, but I am excited for the Benioff (Salesforce.com) one on Wednesday. Honestly, since the last time I attended OOW they were announcing Fusion and Applications Unlimited, I am excited for every session talking about the long-delayed realities of the grand vision I heard
Before signing off, I must put another plug in for my own talk at 10:30am on Thursday ("Harvard University's Procure-to-Pay Transformation Using Oracle iProcurement"). Now back to writing the PowerPoint deck for it…
Labels: Conferences, OOW11, Oracle, Rants