Plant maintenance, test and measurement
S
trategic project management has taken centre stage in today’s
turbulent and complex environment and is a core skill for sen-
ior, portfolio, project and programme managers. Successful
projects revolve around four distinct components - choosing the right
project, having the right organisational support, defining goals well,
and executing it all smoothly.
Traditional project management tends to focus on planning and
execution. Strategic project management broadens this to focus
additionally on project selection and garnering full organisational
support and integrates processes, tools and technology, people,
and organisational culture to succeed. It takes the holistic view of an
organisation’s resources and its goals.
The aim is to ensure that allocated
resources are put to the most efficient
use and that every step in the project
processes is executed in a way that has
a lasting impact on the organisation.
Project managers can achieve this by focusing on three key principles:
• Capturing real time knowledge and sharing it across the enterprise
• Streamlining communication for improved collaboration
• Minimising waste to save on resources.
Capturing knowledge ensures organisational learning
Being able to identify and capture knowledge more effectively, includ-
ing channeling organisational wisdom, is at the heart of all project
success. Research by University of Cape Town research student, Terry
van Graan, shows that capturing and sharing the right knowledge
is strategically critical in today’s business environment which is
characterised by increasingly complex operational challenges, more
geographically dispersed teams, more data, information and technol-
ogy, and a hemorrhaging of experienced practitioners across sectors.
According to van Graan, knowledge and wisdom, can be used
to reduce project time, reduce costs, improve quality and improve
customer satisfaction as well as minimise the need for reinventing
the wheel. Van Graan shows that only 20% of an organisation’s
knowledge is explicit, in the forms of documents, procedures, proc-
esses and databases.
The other 80% is tacit, in the form of undocumented, unshared,
untapped know-how. To be effective, organisations have to find ways
to leverage the tacit knowledge that exists in the heads of profession-
als - who experience the projects first
hand and convert it into easily accessible
explicit knowledge that can be used to
guide future projects.
.
Improved communication improves collaboration
One of the indicators that organisations are not capturing and using
knowledge effectively - is the radical growth in corporate emails.
A recent report by technology market research firm, ‘The Radicati
Group Incorporated’, shows that the typical corporate user in 2009
sent and received 167 messages daily. This is expected to grow to
219 messages daily in 2013.
A far more effective use of technology to improve communication
and knowledge flow is social media. AMcKinsey Global Institute study
shows that for 4 200 major companies, social media unlocked 1,3 tril-
lion dollars, two-thirds of which is due to improved communication
and collaboration. Making it easier for teams inside and outside of
the organisation to communicate with each other makes collaboration
seamless and reduces losses in productivity and time.
Reducing waste improves gains
The principle of reducing waste applies to areas other than time. A
notorious example of how reducing the use of electricity, for exam-
ple, translates into monetary gain is that of IBM saving $442 M by
reducing their energy use between 1990 and 2011. By applying smart
3
Key principles
to reduce project failure
By D Comninos, UCT Graduate School of Business
The exact failure rate of projects is difficult to capture, but studies place it somewhere between 40 and 70%. While there is no consensus on the
failure rate, there is consensus about what is needed to improve success - a strategic approach to project management.
T
ake note
It is about capturing what we learn today for
what we’ll be doing tomorrow.
• Projects can and do fail – at an alarming rate.
• Strategic project management draws on a wide range of inputs to
increase project success.
• Project selection, organisational support and integrated tool, technology
and people, are critical ingredients for project success.
Electricity+Control
June ‘13
44
