May 2008
Project Manager Today
www.pmtoday.co.uk
Annualised Funding Regimes and Programme Management
An article by Lucidus Consulting in May’s Project Manager
Today talks about the frustration many organisations suffer from
when attempting to manage a programme which spans more than one
fiscal year. Even though you may have an approved business case
for the whole programme, the investment needs to be approved annually
so plans need to be flexible. When scheduling, make sure that where
annualized funding might have an impact, you will be in a place
where you could stop and achieve at least some of the benefits that
you had planned.
This is made easier by following a structured programme management
methodology such as MSP and splitting the programme into sections
(tranches) that represent chunks of change which move the organisation
forward.
Project Management Then and Now
In an extract from an article by Ken Lane interviews Geoff Reiss,
an Honorary Fellow of the APM, author of several project management
books, project management software developer and project manager
for 40+ years on changes in project management. Geoff says the main
change in project management over the last forty years is that 40
years ago no one called themselves a Project Manager. Even today
if you tell someone you are a project manager, they still think
you’re in construction or IT. The idea of project management
as a profession has emerged over the past 20 years. As a profession,
project management is still seriously in its infancy.
Other than that he thinks apart from doing things much more safely
than we did before, we still have a lot to learn. People should
beware of getting certification in a methodology without following
up with the experience. Ken uses the analogy that you need the theory
and the practical ability to be a good and safe driver.
Budget Based Results by Liz Barron
As long ago as 2004, the Chaos Report from Standish Group indicated
that 18% of IT projects failed (up from 15% in 2003) and 53% were
“challenged”.
More recent research by Standish Group suggests that on average
45% of features of IT projects are never used and only 20% of features
are often or always used. This strongly suggests that whilst some
projects may be delivered perfectly on time and to budget, there
is a lack of initial focus on gathering user requirements as well
as possibly omitting to provide sufficient operational handover
and training to end users.
50 out of 100 IT directors interviewed in the UK and Ireland measured
the success of IT projects on whether they deliver to budget rather
than the business value the project achieved. 1/3rd of their projects
over-spend by between 10 and 20% of their original budget which
costs large UK and Irish companies the equivalent of around $1 billion
per annum!
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