PROJECT Management explored

So the Project magazine arrived this morning including a big spread on the winners of this years awards and there are many interesting and worthwhile projects featured, but it is the article on the Sir Monty Finniston Lifetime achievement award which draws my particular attention.

I have to admit to a personal interest here as I won the Sir Monty Finniston award in 1999, oh dear ten years ago! Back then it was given for a significant contribution to the art and science of project management and wasn't a lifetime achievement award but a competition like the other awards.  That format encouraged organisations to promote where they were pushing the boundaries of the 'science' and hopefully helped new ideas to spread.  I can't speak for others but in my case it certainly resulted in explaining what we had done and the reasons underlying this to other organisations.  Whilst I don't think it started a revolution, the pattern we created which was fairly novel at the time, I now see in many organisations.

Tom has without doubt done lots to promote and professionalise project management as well as being a very capable PM in his own right and easily deserves a lifetime achievement award. However, I think the change in emphasis to giving something for what people have done over a lifetime, rather than how project management is being taken forwards now, is a backwards step by the APM.  Perhaps there should be a new academic/practical award for developments to the 'science' of project management?  A worthwhile winner of such an award might be Sue Vowler or the OGC for the P3O publication; having a standard and a guide to setting up support offices is a great development in Project and Programme Management and long overdue.

Finally as someone who has been an APM member for nearly 12 years I reflect on the awards event itself on two levels.  Firstly the professionalism with which the awards are now managed.  In 1999 we were at the Brewery as well and although it felt glitzy at the time it wasn't a black tie event and the promotion was nowhere near as good as it is today. Notice the backdrops and quality of the photography in this years publicity.

Secondly having dug out my copy of the 2009 APM awards material how narrowly focussed the awards and membership was on 'traditional' engineering project management with lots of civil and mechanical engineering type of projects and a few categories of awards.  The awards today reflect the much broader application of project management to business life in both the categories of awards and the subjects of the successful submissions

Perhaps this is a good indication of how far we have come, how pervasive and essential PM is now seen as being and how Project Management deserves Chartered Status in the shape of the APM.

Last week I was able to report a massive month of Community Edition downloads boosting the number of PRINCE2 software users.

This week it is the turn of my PRINCE2 2009 primer video on You Tube which has now passed 2,000 users.  It is the most viewed PRINCE2 2009 clip and racing up the overall PRINCE2 lists as well.

It is just under ten minutes long and provides an introduction to PRINCE2 2009 for Practitioners experienced in earlier versions of PRINCE2 rather than a complete introduction to the method.

We also have a more complete set of free PRINCE2 information including on PRINCE2 2009 at our PRINCE2 Primer.  Hope you find it all helpful.

I'm still amazed to see people selling PRINCE2 templates when they are available for free.  I'm the author of the OGC official PRINCE2 template pack for the 2005 version of the method and PRINCE2 2009 and this template pack can be downloaded for free in a zip from the OGC web site.

PROJECT in a box Community Edition also provides all the official PRINCE2 templates (under licence) packaged for ease of use along with some additional ones for health check and role appointments which are not in the core pack.  Of course Community Edition also provides full configuration management on these templates and lets you add your own files as you progress through your project, making it the perfect little project support office tool.  Rather surprising then that Community Edition is also free PRINCE2 software...not a trial but truly free and you can use the PRINCE2 templates it provides on as many project as you want for as long as you want.  Community Edition also provides a full free set of DSDM Atern templates.

The PRINCE2 templates pack provided in Community Edition are fixed in the method template  at launch so each new project gets the same set of PRINCE2 templates and guidance information.  Of course you can edit them as you progress through the project and these changes are configuration managed and displayed in the audit trail.  In the Commercial PROJECT in a box products the approach is more sophisticated and although the core official PRINCE2 templates pack is provided there are more enhanced templates including the Registers which become more sophisticated tools.  Most importantly though the default template packs can be duplicated and varied to match the requirements of different projects.  Each of these Method Templates is able to be tailored for process, scale, language, branding, culture, commercial arrangements and other environmental factors to ensure a good match for the teams delivering the project.  This capability is a major plus for customers when implementing.

It seems now that everyone is aware what a good job Community Edition does at providing you authentic PRINCE2 and DSDM Atern templates in the right order, at the right point in the project.  This is clearly very helpful if you are studying for your exams or wanting to understand the flow of information and standard documentation in a project.

But what if you are using Community Edition to deliver your PRINCE2 or DSDM Atern project?  In these cases the templates are just a start and you will generate and accumulate much more documentation as the project starts and picks up speed.

Community Edition lets you either load all this additional information or store links to it if it isn't appropriate to store it directly.  Essentially there are two approaches: store it (bring the file into CE where it is configuration managed) or link it (where the link is stored and configuration managed but the master file remains in it's original location).

You can use drag and drop to add new files from your desktop environment including other applications or locations which support D&D.  Simply select the document in CE you want to add your file to, go to your file and drag it into the file explorer area in CE (until the cursor changes) then release the drag to drop it.  This will prompt you with the add file form so you can change the file name or add a description if you want.  Do this with absolutely any file type including emails which are very popular (note with outlook you have to drop elsewhere then pick up again).

To store a link in CE again select the document you want to store it in then click the add file button and select the Shortcut tab.  Here you can store a URL for a webpage or a windows shortcut for a local location.  If you already have the address you can paste it or type then provide a display title and a description (optional).

With these two simple intuitive approaches you can use CE to store and reference all the documentation you need to successfully deliver your project.

I am often amazed by the way commercial organisations can put a lot of assurance around the process of delivering their projects but not apply similar standards to managing the proposal process which generated the work.

Especially in larger organisations where these are often different teams of people and in these circumstances it isn't uncommon for the customer to know more about what has been proposed than the project team because comms haven't flowed through from the sales team effectively.

Even if it the same people bidding the work and then delivering it there is often a significant elapsed time between the activities and the bid is invariably conducted with in sufficient time and information and lots of assumptions being made and communicated so having a process framework to guide, store and enable things to be found later is a big help.

I have introduced a formalised proposal process into a corporate and dealt with it as a standard and integral part of the PM process and it was very successful, which is why we ship our PPP (Proposal Preparation Process) method template alongside PRINCE2 and DSDM Atern as part of the default pack with all our commercial products.  In the commercial packages docs can be live linked (shared) between projects so materials from the proposal can become integral parts of the delivery project making the process completely joined up and we also support a Sales Funnel report to allow you to group and total up figures on all the proposals you are working on.

If you are a Community Edition user don't worry you can still get access to PPP and use it on Community Edition....for free.  You just need to download the PPP method template and add it to your method library on CE.  You can get the PPP Method template from here.