Zimpapers Logo

not just in Zimbabwe but in all developing and developed economies of the world.
According to UK-based project management researcher Maylor H. (2010), some of these attitudes are reflected in the observations below:

“Ready, fire, aim”
A project is started with no clear objectives. The motto is “‘shoot first whatever you hit”, call the target.
While we accept that urgency is a characteristic of projects, and some will be deliberately exploratory (but necessarily limited), this approach to managing projects is not associated with any great success for the organisation.
However, if you do work in such an environment, setting your own targets at the end of project is the easiest method for the project manager, without a doubt!
“It’s all in my head”
The project manager will set out with all the information in their head.
This may work well where the project is very small, but the lack of a system will soon start to tell on the individual and the results if there are any problems or if the scale of the project escalates.
Here, the application of the structures and systems will greatly help, enabling better-grounded decisions to be made avoiding many problems to which this approach will inevitably lead.
It remains a challenge for many individuals and organisations to move away from this usually random approach to managing projects. This links to the next point.
“We work in a nanosecond environment; we don’t have time to do this stuff”
This was a regular quotation from senior managers in fast moving e-commerce firms in the late 1990s, such as phone shops and fixed landline telephone operators.
Given the demise of so many of these, one can only speculate on the impact that the lack of good project management had on those businesses.
Undoubtedly, changes to the basic practices of project managers are required under such circumstances, but this is more adaptation than radical re-invention. This scenario is in contrast to the next one.
“Project management? We have a procedure for that”
Having procedures or a documented set of processes for projects provides a highly structured approach that is favoured in some industries.
Indeed, there are many where the slavish dedication to highly restrictive methods is necessary as part of the requirements of customers (military procurement and areas where safety considerations are paramount are two such areas).
The result is high levels of documentation (the procedures manual for projects at one international bank ran to several thousand pages) and considerable bureaucracy associated with it.
Decision-making can be very slow and the overhead costs associated with such systems significant.
This represents the other end of the formalisation scale from the previous scenarios; it is a challenge for project managers to deal with this high degree of formalisation and yet try to engender creativity into the project and the people working on it.
It is a constant theme among project management professionals just how much formalisation is required in systems.
While some will have the levels specified by the requirements of the project, the vast majority, particularly for smaller projects, requires an approach that is more appropriate to the particular situation.
“It’s all just common sense, isn’t it?”
Well yes, but that depends on what you mean by common sense.
If you mean “the obvious after it has been explained”, then possibly. However, this statement usually just shows that things about which little or nothing is known appear obvious, as exemplified by the bar room philosopher with easy answers to life, the universe and everything, if only they would listen.
This is a great challenge for project management today.
The past 50 years of the subject will be seen to have provided a substantial knowledge base for project managers to use.
The art is in knowing the relevant parts of that base and tailoring that knowledge to the particular environment.
“I’ve got the badge, therefore I am a project manager.”
The card-carrying project management expert is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Short courses, including PRINCE2 or COCPM provide some knowledge, at the end of which participants take an exam.
If they pass it, they have the status of project management practitioner. This is regardless of whether they can actually apply any of the knowledge gained from their course its relevance to their context.
Such courses are valuable as first steps on the way to becoming a professional project manager and many people have benefited from them; however, they are only a starting point.
“We’ve done this lots of times. It never worked then, why should it this time?”
Here we see the experienced project worker showing the exasperation that comes with the application of many different approaches, only to be regularly confronted with the same results – projects running late, over budget or delivering less than was required of them.
This is not at all uncommon, because organisations rarely address the real causes of failure.
The failures deserve more careful study – they are a significant opportunity for learning and are generally very costly: to individuals, the organisation or both.
“It won’t work here!”
Lastly a challenge for new methods that have been developed in other areas of business is to find how they might be applied with benefit to the project environment.
These must overcome this often-heard rejection of anything new as it was “not invented here, therefore it can not be of any relevance to us”.
The pressure for change in most organisations is such that ideas need to be brought in from wherever possible and adapted for projects and then the particular application.
Examples of changes that are having an impact on the project environment include taking operations initiatives (including lean and agile) and applying the principles to the project environment.
There is no longer just one best way to run a project. There are many possible options and it is this choice of processes that the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe (PMIZ) is mandated to mentor Zimbabwe Project Managers in.
l Peter Banda is the Secretary General & chief executive of the Project Management Institute of Zimbabwe. Email:[email protected]. websitelink:www.pmiz.org.zw