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Special Supplement
published March 30, 2000
Project Management
in an Information Age
pieces fit
that if he built it, they would come. His
advisers figured maybe 200 people would show up for an initial money
losing event in 1997 when Mr. Barrett, president of Solutions Network
Inc. in Mississauga, set out to launch a project management symposium
and workshop event in Toronto.
But signs of things to come accompanied some 400
delegates through the conference doors that year, including representatives
from major banks, insurance companies and telecommunications firms.
Admittedly, those first visitors were tentative.
"The project office wasn't a big thing at the
time," notes Mr. Barrett. "It was very investigative at that
first symposium. There was a lot of tire kicking."
By now, attendees are usually looking to purchase
the entire "vehicle." An estimated 1,400 people are expected
for Project Management 2000: Working Smarter at the Metro Toronto Convention
Centre on May 1 and 2.
"This industry needs this kind of event, and
not as a one shot deal," says Mr. Barrett, who is adding symposia
in Vancouver and New York City to the annual conferences he organizes
in Toronto and Ottawa.
"Project managers are a dispersed lot,"
he continues. "They don't get the networking opportunity that a
conference like this can afford. Very often they also don't know the
training that's available to them."
As valuable as the networking and educational components
have proven. Project Management 2000 features 85 presentations and more
than a dozen workshops over the two days. Mr. Barrett concedes there
was a more rudimentary need for his initial effort.
"We needed to bring the buyers and sellers together
because they didn't know each other," recounts Mr. Barrett, who
describes his own continuing business role as that of a broker of project
management solutions.
Bucking the usual configuration for such gatherings,
Mr. Barrett puts the exhibitors, food and mingling areas all in the
same room so that "the vendors have people constantly in front
of them."
The project management field isn't without other
such professional contexts. Project Management Institute (PMI), headquartered
in Pennsylvania and with a Southern Ontario chapter based in Toronto,
conducts a large international conference each year in changing North
American locales. But Mr. Barrett believes that only
a fraction of people in the field can manage to cross the continent
annually for a costly weeklong confab.
Local access and a succinct, affordable event, coming
first in Toronto, then Ottawa and Vancouver, was the objective, with
key alliances being made in the process.
"We partner with the local PMI chapter and we
make every show a win for them," Mr. Barrett says.
ABT Corp., a major software provider in information
technology and enterprise project management, similarly has its own
successful U.S. conferences, but is also an important sponsor of the
Toronto event. "The Toronto symposium is very good quality,
very good local content and has people networking with their peers,
and I think that's extremely positive," remarks Donna Montminy,
ABT Corp. regional director for Canada in Mississauga. "Because
it's local, it's a great way for people in their organizations to send
a number of people to the forum," she adds.
Other sponsors are headed by Royal Bank Financial
Group and IBM, and include Info Systems Executive, Computing Canada,
Bates Project Management Inc., CDI Corporate Education Services, ESI
International, International Institute for Learning Inc., Microsoft,
Primavera, Schulich School of Business and The Globe and Mail. Carl
Sergeant is one of the presenters scheduled for Project Management 2000.
A director of project services for Ericsson Canada Inc, he'll be speaking
on communicating within the project environment.
Formerly a senior project manager at Bell Canada,
Mr. Sergeant remarks that, "I started practicing project management
before I really realized it was a discipline."
Mr. Sergeant's route to becoming a senior project
manager at Bell persuaded him that communication was vital to anybody
in that position, but particularly hard to stay on top of, given the
complexity of the interactions involved.
Meanwhile, it is at the annual May conference in
Toronto, he notes, that project managers often interact most successfully. "It's
about being able to talk to others in the field, being able to share
ideas," Mr. Sergeant comments. "This is one of the most open
disciplines I've ever encountered. I've even had competitors share ideas
with me to help me develop."
Returning the favour at Project Management 2000,
Mr. Sergeant intends to let attendees know what's worked for him, a
set of approaches generally designed to put the consultant out of a
job after every successful implementation.
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management to some degree doesn't mean they
do it well. In fact, "the market research shows that about
79 per cent of projects miss at least one of their targets _ they're
not on time, on budget or on the mark delivering all they've set out
to do," says Les Bell, manager, systems and technology project
office, at Royal Bank Financial Group in Toronto.
Three years ago, the Royal's information technology
division set up a centralized project environment to ensure the best
possible performance from its numerous projects. It has established
a project office to support project managers, brought in standard desktop
tools and provides extensive training programs. Recently, other areas
of the bank, such as wealth management, have moved in the same direction.
Within a year, there will be a centralized database that will gather,
analyze and track information on all projects, a major move to fully
integrated project management.
"We wanted to effectively professionalize
project management, to establish the idea that it is a discipline, not
a haphazard approach," says Mr. Bell. To do it properly, implementing
a project management environment is a project in itself.
"It's a wholesale change in the way a
company carries on its business, day to day, and requires consistent
practices and procedures. You're changing the culture of the organization,
and it's going to take significant time and resources to do it,"
says Bill Bates, CEO of Bates Project Management in Ottawa.
As in any project, there are specific requirements
and steps to follow for maximum results. It must all start with senior
management support, says Mr. Bates.
"Either the CEO or someone very close must be
a visible and vocal champion. It must be seen to be high on the agenda
because there is always opposition to change," Mr. Bates says.
There has to be a clear focus within the company
on the function of project management and the reporting lines, Mr. Bates
says. Whether you need an actual vice-president of projects, or one
or more project offices depends on the size of the company and scope
of its business. At any given time in Mr. Bell's department, there are
about 160 project managers and anywhere from 30 to 40 senior managers
in charge of a portfolio of projects. The project managers have a close
working relationship with whoever is the "sponsor" of their
particular project of the moment, the person who is heading it up and
paying the bill.
No one knows better how to implement a project environment
than IBM Canada, which began work in the area 20 years ago, now conducts
virtually all of its operations on a project basis and is ISO 9000 certified
in project management. Part of the IBM approach is a monthly project
status review.
"It's what I call the dashboard response when
the oil light comes on, you respond quickly," says Mike Bechard,
project management competency leader, integrated technology services,
IBM Global Services, Canada.
IBM also uses six steps to monitor, through its quality
assurance program, each project, no matter how large or small. The process
helps in risk assessment being able to predict what could go wrong and
prevent or work around it.
Also critical is to hire or develop project managers
not just for technical abilities, but who have excellent leadership
skills. They must be good communicators who can motivate others, and
plan, monitor and coordinate all of the numerous details that make the
difference between success and failure.
"Any ambiguity at the start of the project can
end up being disastrous. It's like you're on a yacht and you have one
degree of miscalculation at the beginning of the trip and you end up
1,000 miles out," says Mr. Bell.
IBM's certification program for project managers
takes a minimum of eight years and includes, as do many large companies,
a combination of internal and external training programs and designation
as a Project Management Professional from the U.S.-based Project Management
Institute, which has Canadian chapters.
Part of educating your staff to work in a project
environment is to get them speaking the same language and following
the same procedures. The PMI has defined project management terms that
are now widely used throughout industry and there are numerous software
packages that help you do everything from keeping your project on schedule
to tracking expenditures.
The costs can be considerable, "anywhere from
a few hundred dollars to $15,000 per user," says Mr. Bates.
What can be even more daunting is resistance from
staff to easing their territorial boundaries. To help get around that,
IBM trains its project managers to operate like small business owners.
"Their focus is on the client, they have a contract
to deliver and everybody at IBM is working for them, to help them do
it. It's a paradigm shift that works," says Mr. Bechard.
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pace with change the old organizational model featured
a lot of middle managers riding herd over the workers and a small, secretive
priesthood tending the mainframe.
Today, the organization's work is increasingly defined
as projects, and from major infrastructure changes to this week's tweaking
session in the credit office, they're all using what Alan Boyce refers
to as "big-boy technology."
So who's handling the roundup on all those projects,
not least since the newly ubiquitous "big-boy technology"
is notorious for cost overruns and implementation problems? It's now
often the project management office, says Mr. Boyce, president of SOMOS
Consulting Group Ltd. in Ottawa.
"Where you mostly see this is in information
technology," Mr. Boyce remarks. "Projects are meant to bring
about change and change happens where there's new technology."
Fears of Y2K computer malfunctions, for example,
prompted countless organizations to develop new IT systems. When that
kind of upheaval happens, "training has to be developed and jobs
changed _ there is a huge amount of coordination activity," Mr.
Boyce notes.
You could readily demonstrate that point at GE Capital
Information Technology Solutions Canada, which today serves clients
with more than 60 project managers.
"Our business has grown over 200 per cent in
the last two years," says Halee Dick, national director for project
services for the firm in Toronto. Ms. Dick cites a slowdown of
new initiatives in the lead-up to Y2K as a period when companies started
analyzing their project processes and increasingly sought to bring things
under better control.
"In the past, IT project management had a reputation
for tremendous failures in the industry," says Ms. Dick. "Now
there are formal methodologies which have changed that."
Bluntly, the stakes involved have become too high
for any avoidable groping around. The imperative of keeping pace with
change has meant harnessing IT initiatives in an effective and fast
way, and that's the m‚tier of the project management office.
Michel Plouffe, president and chief operating officer
of Bates Project Management Inc. in Ottawa, goes so far as to say that
"projects are becoming so demanding, so sophisticated that project
managers are becoming the change agents of organizations."
The decision making cycle has become much more rapid,
adds Mr. Plouffe, and senior management needs feedback mechanisms that
will allow it to change course rapidly: "Everyone needs to have
a common language of change, and that's what project management brings."
Distinctions can be made between the project office,
a more established entity which may handle a specific initiative in
accounting or human resources, and the emergent project management office
(PMO), which is a corporate overseer of all costing, quality and deployment
factors, notes Charles Sutherland, project director at The RPA Group
in Toronto.
Varied services by companies like RPA may include
an outsourced PMO that manages a client's projects on an ongoing basis;
the mentoring of the client's staff to create an internal PMO; or the
coordination of virtual PMO’s to run international initiatives
across time zones and borders.
RPA Group helps build and then coordinate internal
project teams at a provincial utility that spends about $100 million
annually on more than 200 projects. Conversely, at a national retailer
with 450 information technology staff, RPA is helping create a permanent
project management office for the IT team.
“The project management office there will be
responsible for the technology, for the tools and control on all the
resources," Mr. Sutherland says. "Decisions can be made in
regard to all the enterprise. "Previously, organizations ran their
projects on a departmental basis, adds Brian Sirbovan, president of
RPA. But the complexity of the initiatives today make that approach
inefficient.
"There are going to be time, cost and implementation
difficulties," remarks Mr. Sirbovan. "Because we're an established
company, it takes a lot of the risk out of it. It advances the learning
curve."
Organizations as IT driven as those in the financial
services sector are seeing the inevitability of an ensconced PMO in
their midst. Royal Bank Financial Group, for example, has some 2,500
staff in IT and as many projects in the course of a year.
"Being an IT shop, projects are the core of
our business," explains Les Bell, project office manager in the
systems and technology division of the firm in Toronto. "Every
one of the top 100 projects would easily clock in at over $1million."
E-business is a big part of what drives this engine,
from electronic delivery of services to Web-based marketing initiatives.
Business is the key word, notes Mr. Bell, because IT is not an end in
itself.
"A project does not become a project through
systems and technology alone," he remarks. "It's not a project
until the relationship management team creates a project charter defining
the business needs and securing the funds."
By the same token, the project management office
also responds to the "post-project metrics," that is, the
measured feedback from the people who actually use the new service,
be they internal staff or customers.
While Royal Bank has not modeled its project management
on the heavy control orientation that sometimes defines the PMO elsewhere,
the office clearly bears responsibilities for cost containment and successful
implementation.
"Technology is so crucial to this organization,"
concludes Mr. Bell, "we can't afford to take a passive role."
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In the fast paced world of high tech project management,
the beat is always changing and the leader can never afford to rest.
But in the end, if you do it right, there's harmony.
BRUCE BOND would like to compare himself to the leader
of an orchestra. The Royal Bank project manager enjoys the task
of coaxing the best performance out of members of his team and blending
their individual efforts into a harmonious whole.
But few orchestra leaders have to contend with
so many broken strings. Nor do they have to worry that their instruments
will be out of date, that the composer will change the score or that
their soloists will get bored and move on to another concert hall before
they complete the performance.
In the fast paced world of high tech project management,
the beat is always changing and the team leader can never afford to
rest. "I love the challenge of dealing with all the stuff
that is constantly coming at you and managing it all," says Mr.
Bond, project manger, Internet application consulting and infrastructure
at the Toronto-based Royal Bank Financial Group. And he enjoys
being at the centre of things. Managing projects may seem to some
like a makeshift role, outside the career path of the corporate hierarchy
and handling transient tasks that don't quite fit into the mainstream
of the organization.
But that is an outdated notion that belongs to the
fast disappearing world of departmental stovepipes and hierarchical
structures. Projects are pivotal in today's world of converging
technologies, merging companies and continual business change. By spanning
departments and marshalling resources from outside the organization
as well as from within, projects are the prime mechanisms for aligning
skills and technology to achieve business goals.
The role of project manager is now a clearly defined
discipline with its own professional designation, a career in its own
right and widely recognized as a good path for anyone with ambitions
of achieving senior levels of corporate management. There is a
greater demand for project managers in the information technology business
than for any other area of speciality, according to the results of a
recent survey by the Information Technology Association of Canada. When
companies that belong to the association listed their key staffing needs
over a three year period, project managers topped the list for every
year. "With over $75billion being spent yearly on failed IT
projects, companies cannot afford to hire and retain IT managers who
do not possess effective project management skills," says Ted Smith,
vice president of product development for the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based
Gartner Institute Inc.
The dramatic growth of the profession in recent years
can be measured by the growth of the Project Management Institute (PMI),
a worldwide professional association, which now boasts more than 44,000
members, having increased by 156 per cent over the past three years.
The Academy of Project Management, a professional
development program, based at York University's Schulich School of Business
in Toronto has seen its enrolment explode over the past few years. And
attendance at project management symposiums organized by Mississauga,
Ont. based Solutions Network Inc. have more than doubled in the past
three years.
David Barrett, the founder of the Academy of Project
Management and president of Solutions Network, says he has seen an explosive
growth in the demand for his company's project management consulting
services over the past four years. There may have been a slight
lull in the growth last year, as companies shelved projects in order
to deal with Y2K issues, but now the pace has picked up again and there
is no reason to believe it will slacken, he says. "Projects are
only going to get bigger and companies can only become more attuned
to the need for project management expertise."
The 37 year old Mr. Bond has seen his own career
grow and flourish with the growth of his chosen profession. When he
began working at the Royal Bank 12 years ago, he was already aware that
project management was a promising field, but there was no formal training
or corporate structure supporting it.
So, like many people who have now become project
managers, he joined the bank as a programmer and worked on projects
on an ad hoc basis, gradually falling into his role as a specialist
in managing them. At this time, corporations were just beginning
to see the value of managing projects in a formal way, rather than follow
the time honoured procedure of putting a technology specialist with
no special training in charge of budgets, personnel, resource management
and a host of other issues that have to be handled properly in order
to bring a project to completion on time and under budget.
The Royal Bank was at the leading edge of this new
trend and formed a project office, which took responsibility for training
project managers and providing support to projects with the goal of
helping projects "thrive rather than just survive."
Mr. Bond was given the opportunity of taking
a course at the Academy of Project Management and obtaining a York University
master's certificate. He also joined the PMI and took advantage of professional
development activities, such as Solutions Network's annual symposiums.
Working as a senior consultant with the bank
project office, he helped other project managers with their problems,
at the same time learning from them and passing on what he had learned. Now
in charge of a team that works on several different projects, Mr. Bond
is equipped with a full repertoire of project management skills and
has plenty of opportunity to apply them.
Communications are the key, he says, as he
must be able to relate to senior executives and other customers with
the organization, outside consultants, vendors, his own staff and other
technical specialists within the bank. To communicate and do his job
effectively, he has to understand the technologies that his team is
working with, as well as the business goals and environment of his organization.
Being able to budget, schedule and manage resources
is essential. But also crucial is an ability to assess and anticipate
risks. Mr. Bond says his job is fraught with risk. Vendors may
not come through with what they promise. Glitches and temporary outages
are inevitable with any technology. Business goals may change in mid-project
or customers may change their ideas about what they want. And the biggest
risk of all in a highly competitive job market is that key team members
may get bored with their work or get a better job offer and leave in
mid-project. All these risks can be managed with skill honed by
experience, as well as a sound grounding in the principles of project
management, according to Mr. Bond.
He says he still has a long way to go in learning
all he can about his profession. He plans to spend up to 200 hours studying
the principles of project management during the summer month, in order
to take a tough exam that will give him PMI's formal professional certification
as a Project Management Professional, though he finds it hard to find
the time for study, given the day-to-day challenges of his job.
But, he adds, the challenges are what makes
the work exciting, especially when all the problems have been overcome
and he is left with "the accomplishment of having coordinated the
building of something, the satisfaction of seeing an end product."
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pieces fit
We're seeing a growing trend from personal productivity
to being more involved with everyone in the corporation when it comes
to project management.
Imagine trying to do a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces
scattered in various locations instead of being in one box. Not only
are they not together, you don't know which pieces are in which box,
or even whether you need the pieces in Box C or D before you can connect
the pieces you have in your hand.
That scenario resembles project management before
the latest generation of software tools came along. Projects were often
done haphazardly, with one department within a corporation not knowing
what another was doing, and neither having any way of checking on progress
or making scheduling adjustments. And for the project manager, the bits
of data needed to keep on top of things were stored in many locations,
making it time consuming just to track them down.
Now, however, project management is precise, efficient
and coordinated. The key is to have the proper tools.
The big player in the game is software giant Microsoft
Corp. Many Software development companies tool their own products to
fit Microsoft Project.
And Microsoft plans a new version this spring Microsoft
Project 2000, which ships as a full package with Microsoft Project Central.
"This new version is very flexible for the novice;
it's easy to get started with it," says John Corrigan, product
manager with Mississauga-based Microsoft Canada Co. "There's a
Web-based interface for help and it's easy to navigate back and forth.
The new edition also caters to high scale, heavy duty project management,
so it's really very scalable in terms of the user and the size of the
project."
The latest edition of Microsoft Project before this
one was introduced in November, 1997, he says, and the changes reflect
what the company's clients are doing and demanding.
"We're seeing a growing trend from personal
productivity to being more involved with everyone in the corporation
when it comes to project management," he says. "That's built
in to this new version. That's where the component of Project Central
comes in: It's Web-based and allows people to collaborate on tasks.
It also makes the data more versatile, in terms of storing and accessing."
Andy Welch, a principal with Toronto-based Daedalian
Systems Group Inc., says his company uses Microsoft Tools, Oracle and
IBM software. "We're IBM Best Team partners, so that's how we develop
the systems we set up. These companies have tools for writing e-business
sites, and we use them. We also use Microsoft's or Oracle's built-in
security so that these sites are secure. These are industry standard
tools, and they're the best way to serve our customers."
Daedalian started out with Project Invision, which
stores plans for thousands of projects at the same time and relates
them all back to one database. His company has 200 projects going on
at any one time, and uses the same tool to manage its own work as it
offers its clients.
The advantage to project management tools, he says,
is a single database and how it works. "The Internet is only half
of it; a relational database is the other half. Let me give you an example.
A customer in Chicago owns three magazines. The magazines have 80,000
subscribers. And they're about furniture making, and the magazines are
funded by advertisers, with free subscriptions. The advertisers manufacture
tools used by cabinet makers and furniture makers and upholsterers.
"So the Web site that we've developed builds
on those relationships. It knows about every magazine, every issue,
every piece of editorial, every advertisement. Everything has reader
response cards that you can access over the Internet. You can ask for
additional information; you can communicate with the authors of the
articles; you can communicate with the manufacturers of the products."
Using this tool, he says, the site becomes a portal,
a means of communication among a whole community of interest. "We've
got the vendors, the buyers, the advertisers and they're all tied into
one database. Everything everybody does relates to that database.
"The Internet is a communications revolution,
but it's also an integration revolution. We have a way to tie everything
back to one source. We're trying to create effective, two-way communication."
Some tools are quite specific in terms of what they
can do and what market they are geared for. Chris Vandersluis, president
of Montreal-based HMS Software Inc., says his company's flagship product,
Time Control, is a timesheet system designed for medium to large sized
organizations
"It extends beyond just tracking how much time
people spend at the company for payroll purposes. It goes down to the
task level and says, `Here's what I did with my time.'
"It's usually the cornerstone of what's referred
to as activity-based costing. That says, `We're going to track our budget
and our actuals by task instead of just by person.' "
Another company that keeps its focus narrowed is
Indigo Technologies of Toronto. It originally was a consulting company
and developed a tool to help it manage its own projects. That tool ended
up being very successful when it was marketed, so the company repositioned
itself as a software development organization focusing on this product.
"It's called TimeTiger for Work Groups,"
company president Gene Goykhman says. "It goes across the board,
but we find our biggest success is with IT companies and with smaller
design and development companies.
"It's actually very tightly focused. It's a
time tracking package, so it helps people keep track of how much time
they actually spend on their project activities and compare that with
what they thought they were going to spend."
TimeTiger also ties in with Microsoft Project. "Our
package is really great in the fields where people don't want to keep
track of their time, where they don't like the additional costs and
hassle of tracking where they spend their time," he says.
"The software is always running on their computer,
so it's great for people who have to do multiple things, who have to
switch tasks a lot. It's all running in the background and it's very
quick."
TimeTiger has been on the market for 18 months, and
the company plans to release TimeTiger for Work Groups 2.0 on April
3. "The great thing with this one is now you can log your time
over the Web, and that's what a lot of clients have been asking for,"
Mr. Goykhman says. "So if they're working offsite or anywhere in
the world, they can log their time."
ABT Corp., whose Canadian operations are based in
Mississauga, takes a broader approach. Donna Montminy, regional director
in Canada, says: "We're a software development group. Our only
focus is project management. We umbrella everything under our Results
Management Suite, with various components.
"One is a Web publishing component called ABT
Publisher. Then there's a planning and estimating tool called ABT Planner,
and a scheduling tool called ABT Workbench, which used to be called
Project Workbench."
Her company sells its products by component or as
a package. Also among those components are ABT Connect, which is Web-based
time capturing software. Clients can track their time, how long they
spend on each task and enter the data.
"Another of our tools is ABT Resource, and that's
for capacity planning and resource utilization," she says. "The
last one is ABT Integrator, which allows you to take that project management
information in the repository and integrate it with ERP systems or third-party
applications."
ABT has its own consulting group that assists organizations
in selecting the tools and implementing them, helping them to define
some of their standards and doing training and mentoring. And there's
also a technical support hot line.
"We are a Microsoft Solutions provider, so instead
of using our scheduling tool, a client can use Microsoft Project. If
the client's already invested in that tool, they may as well keep using
it. We have a team devoted to ensuring the integration of Microsoft
software with our tools, so it's not an afterthought with us.
On April 1, ABT will release a new issues management,
time tracking, Project collaboration tool, and expects to have new Web
products available in the third quarter of this year.
Related Web sites
The following sites provide information on project
management and related products:www.abtcorp.com
www.daedalian.com
www.hmssoftware.com
www.microsoft.com/project
www.solutionsnetwork.com
www.indigo1.com/timetiger
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absolutely
everything in the working world was turning into projects, word was
out that a heck of a lot of project management training was going to
be needed.
Peter Zarry, director of executive programs at the
Schulich School of Business at Toronto's York University, knew it was
coming.
"More and more, this is the way it's happening
in business, it's all a turnout of teams," says Mr. Zarry. "When
you're working with teams, you've got to project manage all the time.
And the bigger companies are developing people who do nothing but project
management."
Schulich's three day project management course was
already among the most popular of its executive education offerings,
but Mr. Zarry knew a more substantive program was also needed. Now,
the school houses the Academy for Project Management, which offers a
master's certificate in the field, 17 days of training spread over six
months.
"Canada had nothing between the two year master's
degree programs and the three day courses," notes David Barrett,
program director for the Academy, who characterizes the certificate
training as in-depth and fast-tracked.
"Now, we see the huge level of demand for this
program and certainly there's room for plenty more," he says. "We
are selling out and we have waiting lists."
Although leadership ability, organization skills
and communication skills can't entirely be taught, Mr. Barrett believes,
program management training can ground attendees in what the Project
Management Institute terms the nine critical knowledge areas in the
field: Management of scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communications,
risk, procurement and integration.
The Academy at York has already started making its
program available in such cities as Halifax and St. John's, its cross-town
educational rivals in Toronto are also busy in that major market. Leslie
Dolman, director of the Professional Development Centre at the University
of Toronto, is seeking to create a project management centre of excellence
that will be a North American leader in the field.
"Especially with software companies today, you
get workers hired right out of university, but then they have to go
and execute in the workplace," remarks Prof. Dolman, herself an
engineer and a campus dynamo who has tripled the size of her centre
in the last three years.
Among postsecondary institutions, University of Calgary
got off to a head start with North America's first graduate program
in project management as of 1982.
"It was based on demand from the oil and gas
industry in Alberta and we still have industry support," says George
Jergeas, associate director of the Calgary program.
While the university has long offered a specialization
in project management for engineers and science grads, a standalone
Masters degree in the discipline has been added, one of only two in
the country together with that offered by the Universite
du Quebec.
Industry in the form of a dozen local companies has
also been a direct supporter of project management studies at the University
of Calgary through the Organization for Project Advancement and Leadership
(OPAL).
Judy Williams, OPAL director, describes the industry
group's mandate as providing access to research and development and
direction to graduate students on issues of business interest.
The relationship with the University allows OPAL
members to gain advanced access to knowledge and research results that
can be applied within their companies. A current goal is the creation
of an important learning centre for new and seasoned project managers
to increase their knowledge of the discipline.
"Several OPAL member companies are already experiencing
substantive savings as a result of their association with the organization
and participation in the project management specialization (at the university),"
Ms. Williams remarks.
Founding members of OPAL include Computing Devices
Canada, Ltd., Imperial Oil Resources Limited, KPMG, NORTEL Networks,
NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd., PanCanadian Petroleum Limited, Reid Crowther
& Partners Limited, Shell Canada Limited, Syncrude Canada Ltd. and
VECO Engineering Ltd. The pace of business today and of technological
change within it has made project management training vital in the view
of Keith Farndale, president of Procept Associates Ltd. in Toronto and
one of the working world teachers engaged by University of Toronto's
Prof. Dolman.
"A larger and larger portion of what we do as
managers and professionals today is projects," says Mr. Farndale,
whose firm provides project management consulting and training. "There
are pressures to be fast, good and cheap, and there's a recognition
that project management can help us do this."
Recognizing that project management has developed
a particularly strong following in the information technology sector,
CDI Education Corp. has developed two distinct graduate level courses
of study, one a comprehensive or core curriculum and the other designed
expressly for IT project managers.
But while the explosion of IT as a central supporter
of the discipline is a relatively recent trend, notes Mona Mitchell,
vice-president of sales and operations at CDI Corporate Education Services
in Toronto, the knowledge involved is hardly being sought for the first
time.
"Project management has been around forever,
but as technology has evolved and the deployment of technology is more
central to meeting business objectives, project management is becoming
more crucial," says Ms. Mitchell, whose programs have ties with
the University of Ottawa, University‚ du Quebec … Montreal
(UQAM) and George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Even a solid grounding in the methodology is far
from the whole story today, argues Dale Wilcox, president of Waterloo
Management Education Centre in Kitchener Waterloo, Ont.
"It's the people skills that can have a pretty
big impact on the bottom line," says Ms. Wilcox, the majority of
whose project management courses emphasize communication, leadership
and other people interaction abilities.
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people are key requirements of
the new project manager. Engineers and architects have been managing
projects since the building of the pyramids, but today's project managers
are a breed apart. "It's a different mindset," says Gina
Paul, director of project solutions at Toronto-based Bay 3000 Consulting
Inc.
Flexibility, business savvy and ability to deal with
people are the key requirements of the new project managers, whereas
their predecessors were preoccupied with technical issues like scheduling,
planning and budgeting, according to Ms. Paul, whose company acts as
a resource centre to help organizations manage projects.
The current boom in project management is mostly
in information technology and telecommunications, fast-changing industries
with a young, restless workforce and complex interconnections with many
different aspects of the businesses in which they operate.
"These projects are moving at a hundred times
warp speed compared to bridges and buildings," says David Barrett,
president of the Mississauga-based project management consulting firm
Solutions Network Inc.
Like the traditional construction project manager
working out of a trailer at a job site, the new project managers need
to know the industry they are in and be well grounded in the technologies
they are using. And they must also know how to set schedules, manage
resources and follow budgets. But all these skills are just the starting
point for the new project managers, who must deal with another set of
issues unique to the new economy in which they operate, Mr. Barrett
says.
An ability to anticipate risks and roll with the
punches are key attributes of the new project manager, according to
Ms. Paul.
As technology is changing so quickly, project managers
may find that new tools become available just a few months into their
projects, which force them to change their methods and assumptions.
They may also find that the business assumptions change midway through
the project.
Ms. Paul gives the example of a software application
development project at a bank that is focused on developing a business
intelligence tool aimed at creating a better marketing strategy than
a rival institution. A merger between the two institutions could suddenly
make this original aim redundant. The project therefore has to be refocused
and the software application adapted so that it can play a role in integrating
the two organizations.
Today's business environment creates pressure to
complete projects quickly in order to bring products to market as soon
as possible and a constantly changing environment is continually generating
a need for more and more projects, says Ms. Paul.
At the same time, a highly competitive job market
means that there is a shortage of project managers and the managers
are constantly struggling to find and keep the skilled people they need
to complete the job, she adds.
As a result, project managers are usually in charge
of many different projects at the same time, constantly juggling resources
and trying to coax the best performance out of a thinly spread staff.
Not only do they need to be familiar with the technological
tools that will help them communicate and collaborate efficiently, but
they must also possess the human skills that will help them motivate
the people they work with, says Ms. Paul.
Royal Bank project manager Bruce Bond says keeping
his staff engaged and involved in a project can be particularly challenging.
Other opportunities are always beckoning for many high tech workers
and the grass may seem greener on the other side of the hill, particularly
when the current project involves performing tasks that are "not
particularly flashy but nevertheless need to be done."
In today's highly complex business environment, project
managers are often required to deal with end users and executives in
many different departments, while supervising staff who report to various
different bosses. This involves having the political skill to stickhandle
potentially conflicting demands and priorities, as well as the ability
to communicate with a wide range of people at various levels.
"You have to become a negotiator," says
Ms. Paul.
It is an environment in which everyone is judged
by results and it is essential to understand the business needs that
underlie each project and the outcomes that are expected of it. Large
projects are therefore being broken up into manageable stages, each
of which will have a clearly defined goal, she says. "People want
to see return on investment and they do not want to wait five years
to see it. So you have to phase projects in order to be able to show
some quick wins and prove their value."
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