What if we defined the good and the bad variability within the project?

Juggling A Demanding Career

Knee deep in juggling a demanding career with CH2M Hill (Project Manager, Technical Disciple Manager of Power, Instrumentation, Controls, and Advanced Process Controls, and lastly as a Director over Mining, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceutical Sectors), Graduate School as a Student, and Graduate School as an Adjunct Professor, I was continually awe struck by our species continual God given ability to generate creative ideas. Furthermore, creative ideas on my projects could come from a subject matter expert, a construction manager, a technician, a scheduler, or even my personal favorite a seemingly unrelated comment that stirs a thought. Having earned my PMP, taught graduate students Project Management, and executed small and large projects for a global engineering giant, I felt there had to be a better way to execute a project to capture these creative ideas and generate innovative programs. My PhD research was a statistical journey in Organizational Behavior of Project teams which led me to the following Project Management Plan;

Innovative Project Management

  • Transformational,  engage the team
  • Promote Constructive Task Conflict
  • Minimize Relational Conflict
  • Opportunity Risk Management
  • Built into PMI Structure, Seek Opportunity
  • Other Half of Project Risk
  • Execution and Technically
  • Group Continuous Learning
  • Individual Continuous Learning

Getting a team to drop the resistance, feel valued, and encouraged to discuss bright ideas is the basis for transformational leadership. Our Program and Project plans are all modeled after PMI’s PgMP and PMP plans, however, mine add intentional moments to capture better ideas.  For example, while doing schedule updates we get the basics such as % complete and anticipated delivery date.  However, in addition, we take just a moment to ponder is there a better way to execute, maybe a template, or a software solution, or an extra electrical foreman? This is the basis of looking at Opportunities as part of the risk management plan. Just as a negative deviation is mitigated by Risk Management, Opportunities need to be sought out, captured, and defined as well by Risk Management. Lastly, technology is enhancing every week, the group needs to get comfortable with continuous learning.  There is always something new coming out from Fisher, Emerson, Allen Bradley and the like.