Archive for August 13th, 2008

The impact of Puritan ideology on aspects of project management (Whitty & Schulz, 2007)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Puritan Ideology and Project Management

Whitty, Stephen Jonathan; Schulz, Mark Frederick: The impact of Puritan ideology on aspects of project management; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 25 (2007), pp. 10–20.

This paper roots today’s prevalent ethics in Western project management to classical Puritanism. [Max Weber anyone?] Whitty & Schulz see the doctrinal supremacy, work ethic, and depravity of puritanism as a direct predecessor of today’s project management. They argue that the Purtianism descendants of Liberalism, Newtonianism, and Taylorism are another major influence.

The authors conclude with the remark: „Through no fault of their own, scholars and practitioners like are being driven by powerful memes that not only rive their behaviour but create the very fabric of their society. We owe it to ourselves to break free of the tyranny of these Puritan memes. But first, we must acknowledge that our past and present actions have been determined by them.“ (p. 18).

Posted in Culture, Ethics | 3 Comments »

From Nobel Prize to Project Management – Getting Risks Right (Flyvbjerg, 2006)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Reference Class Forecasting

Flyvbjerg, Bent: From Nobel Prize to Project Management – Getting Risks Right; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 37 (2006), No. 3, pp. 5-15.

I was asked by some colleagues at work to look into reference class forecasting. Along with similarity based forecasting (which I know mostly form the work of Dan Lovallo) both techniques try to eliminate the various heuristics and biases projections of future values usually fall prey to, both methods try to bring an outside perspective into the forecast either by anchoring (similarity based) or by regression towards the mean (reference class).

Flyvbjerg proposes a 3-step approach. (1) Identify a relevant reference class of past, similar projects, (2) establish a probability distribution of the optimism bias for that class, and (3) compare the forecast at hand to the reference class.

The optimism bias is operationalised by populating the density function of historical cost overruns vs. initial budget. This function serves two purposes – framing the forecast with as much un-biased information as possible, and regressing the forecast to the mean. In order to do so, the author recommends to add an uplift to the estimate. The uplift is dependent on the risk the owner is willing to take and can be found by looking up the expected budget overrun for the percentile which corresponds to the risk/confidence level.

In this article Flyvbjerg shows his data on cost overrun distribution on Fixed Link, Roads and Rail projects. He also outlines the required uplifts and discusses first applications of this method.

[I tried to model the distribution for IT Software Development Projects, based on the only publicly available data I could find – the Standish Group’s Chaos Report. Although the data can be seen as flawed (see Jørgensen & Moløkken review of their first report), I modelled the density function anyway and derived the wonderful S-Curve y = e 0.0625–0.38689/x (with R²=99.8%). Following the method outlined in Flyvbjerg’s article the required uplift would be Uplift = 0.387/(0.063-ln(confidence level)), e.g., for 80% confidence the uplift needs to be 135.25% and for 50% confidence the uplift would be 51.18%.]

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Understanding the Value of Project Management: First Steps on an International Investigation in Search of Value (Thomas & Mullaly, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Value of Project Management

Thomas, Janice; Mullaly, Mark: Understanding the Value of Project Management – First Steps on an International Investigation in Search of Value; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 38 (2008), No. 3, pp. 74–89.

Thomas & Mullaly outline a conceptual model for investigating the value project management brings to an organisation. Their conceptual model assumes that three antecedents of value exist – (1) process criteria, (2) outcome criteria, and (3) fit of project management constructs with organisational context.

Furthermore they propose a 5 step evaluation of the value project management brings to the organisation in question

  1. Satisfaction – Is top management happy with project management?
  2. Aligned use of practices – Has project management implemented the processes it planned to do?
  3. Process outcomes – What process improvements have been achieved?
  4. Business outcomes – How did project management implementation impact business outcomes, e.g., customer satisfaction and retention, decreased time-to-market.
  5. ROI

[I am not sure about no. 2. This is quite a marketing/HR argument: ‚We can’t tell you if we achieved something, but we did, what we promised to do and we stayed in budget!‘. Still  I think that a better framework for the value created by project management is a value-oriented management approach.]

Posted in Value | 1 Comment »

Motivation in Project Management – The Project Manager’s Perspective (Schmid & Adams, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Team Motivation on Projects - a Project Manager’s View

Schmid, Bernhard; Adams, Jonathan: Motivation in Project Management – The Project Manager’s Perspective; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 2, pp. 60–71.

What can a project manager do for the motivation of the project team? ‚A lot‘, say Schmid & Adams in this article. Among the powerful tools a project manager has are optimising energy, autonomy, feedback, and rewards & recognition. The authors find further that the most common factors lowering team motivation are the lack of top management support, personal conflicts on the team, and increases of the project scope. Schmid & Adams relate these factors to the project managers communication skills and thus to his/her ability to create a sub-culture under the organisational arch right from the beginning.

What should a project manager do to create intrinsic motivation? The authors conclude that the project manager should do three things – (1) involve the team early on, (2) understand the individual team members, and (3) motivate the team in the first stage of the project.

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An Empirical Assessment of IT Project Selection and Evaluation Methods in State Government (Rosacker & Olson, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

IT Project Selection Tools

Rosacker, Kirsten M.; Olson, David L.: An Empirical Assessment of IT Project Selection and Evaluation Methods in State Government; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 1, pp. 49–58.

Do project selection tools have an impact on project success? In order to answer this question Rosacker & Olson look into the usage of different quantitative and qualitative selection tools. As second step they try to link the tools to different success criteria.
Within their sample of 144 public IT projects (all in different U.S. states) the authors can only show limited correlations, using the F-Value [I don’t know about the distribution of the success variables, but if it isn’t normally distributed, the F-Test might have been to conservative and some effects which exist in real life, a classical example for the Type-2 Error or β-error].

  • NPV/IIR selected projects perform better in cost adherence
  • Projects selected based on ‚probability of completion‘ have a better overall performance
  • Projects selected due to ‚mandatory requirements‘ have a better overall performance
  • Projects selected with ’subjective assessment‘ perform better on their impact but perform weaker

Posted in Project Selection | 1 Comment »