PM - a new skill for business success

Rohantha N.A. Athukorala

In the recent past at many a board meeting-be it in the private or the government sector, a word that keeps popping up is setting-up cross functional project teams to work on specific business initiatives that are critical to an organizations’ high growth agenda.

Project management is all about delivery of pre agreed objectives like the launch of a brand in a company

Last week when I was invited by the Project Management Institute of Sri Lanka to address their membership, I was forced to read on the science of project management and what I discovered was that what we refer to as cross functional teams in a company in fact falls under the mandate of ‘Project Management(PM)’.

Hence unless one masters the skill of project management in this new business environment the career path can be stunted.

PM - defined

It must be mentioned that Project Management(PM) is a discipline and not a profession. The logic being in today’s competitive business environment it does not matter if you are a marketeer, accountant or legal expert you are called to sit on project teams in a usual daily routine at work.

Which means that PM has today cut across professions and become a general management skill than a business function in the commercial world. I guess that’s why PM is defined simply as allocating money, time and people in a way to achieve a pre-determined objective.

The pre determined objective can be the launch of a new brand like Kik Cola or acquisition of a company like what Cargills indulged in last week when they purchased a brewery.

Which means that there is a need for this new business skill be mastered by a modern day executive if they are to fast track their career path. However, it must be pointed out that in a typical project management organization there are functional experts called project managers that are called upon to manage specific projects that are somewhat different in nature.

Let me confine myself to a conventional business organization that I discussed earlier.

PM - way of life

When a stock market has been doubling every year in a country, I guess there is no option but an organization of today has to be very competitive to survive and thrive in a economy that is buoyant like today in Sri Lanka.

This demands a company to set up project teams which is why PM is fast becoming a way of life in the modern Sri Lankan business world.

However what we see is that in many of these project teams we extend our current skill set that we have mastered in our chosen profession without understanding that PM requires a new skill set in this fast track environment that we currently live in.

PM - skill set

Apparently the first stage in this discipline is called the basic level. Here a typical project management team has an initial understanding of what the project is about and what the contents are which is where many project management teams operate in.

Then comes the advanced stage of project management when risks are identified which are associated with the project and also the team recognizes that complex techniques like change management are required for the successful implication of the project.

For example a 360 degree customer care program that you want to launch in a company. If one wants to really master PM then it must come up to Expert Skill stage where the team gets involved in negotiating business conciderations, factors in legal implications and also uses sophisticated estimating and tracking mechanisms to drive key projects in an organization.

Finally comes the speciality skill stage of project management where most meetings happen electronically and usually the team members are scattered across different areas geographically.

I guess the challenge is for an organization to determine at what stage each project is in and to what extent of complexity does a typical project team needs to function is in for the timely delivery of results.

Hence the onus lies in the senior management of the company to make this call and infuse this new skill into a company.

PM - business skill

But a point to note is that many organizations might not actually be using technical terms like project management in the day to day business operations. They might be calling them cross functional teams that keep sprouting up across the organization in this fast track business environment that Sri Lanka has entered into. Which means the first task of the senior management is to instill this technical change to teams are sensitized to the discipline project management eventhough working in teams is a way of life in today’s business world.

Once PM becomes an integral part of the organization then comes the challenge of how one can master the required new skills set that can drive a business executive of today to higher performance in a company. Which is why PM is today termed a business skill.

If PM is accepted as a business skill in some organizations we see that in certain key projects, board members are appointed into the project team and the team directly reports to the board on the progress made. This is where one can say that project management has achieved a very high degree of maturity in a company.

But for this to happen a sense of appreciation by CEO’s or MD’s must take place that will drive the team to practice this new business skill that is coming into play in Sri Lanka.

Certain blue chips and multinational organizations practice this already which infers that to some extent there has to be a structure of operation if one is to use project management as a competitive skill.

Agility of PM

Given the many economic shocks that Sri Lankan organizations are getting exposed to, from financial crisis to the war on terror and then to the recent catastrophe that has devastated the east of Sri Lanka, we see a emerging development called agile project management taking form.

This is essentially when a company is operating in a highly volatile environment and a typical PM team will demand special skills which are technical in nature. But speed happens to become a key factor that is essentially a multiplier.

Some of the key skills which are required are managing frustration in the delivery of projects due to bureaucracy and the teams having to demonstrate a high degree of maturity given the political environment that country operates in to name a few.

In some situations an agile PM team might be required when working in unsafe environments which means that the environment plays an important role in this kind of structuring of PM teams which I guess we must be aware of.

PM - how to master Now that one has a fair share of knowledge on this science of PM I guess it’s important to understand how this new business skill can be mastered.

When examining organizations that practice such skills effectively, how they have reached this degree of excellence has been by on the job training and also combining some off site education training which is of a technical nature.

The key goal of an organization is that PM must evolve from a basic skill to possessing expert skill so that it can reflect a better chance of predicting obstacles and then working around them so that delivery of the project happens at targeted time lines.

This is the most important aspect to remember. There is no point mastering the skill set of the delivery if the project is off the time target.

Why PM fail

This takes us to the area of why PM fails in a company. According to Standish Group that conducts global surveys on this area it has been revealed that only 17 percent projects ultimately gets delivered on time. Almost 50 percent of the projects are forced to change their targeted delivery dates whilst 33 percent of the projects gets cancelled. In the United States alone last year it has been valued that the cost of non delivery of projects on time has been a staggering 80 billion dollars that gives us an idea on how important this skill is in today’s environment. I guess its important for organizations in Sri Lanka to do a similar exercise so that it tells us how important it is that every business executive of today must be project management savvy.

Some of the reasons why projects fail is due to the clear demarcations not been agreed at the outset, Poor leadership when one has to be clearly appointed formally and finally the non availability of funds at the right time.

I guess in Sri Lanka the latter is very real specially in the public sector but in the private sector it’s more to do with non allocation of funding for core activity.

The logic being until a project is completed there is no revenue coming into an organization. Say for instance the project team that delivered the new brand Kik Cola as an example. Until the brand was launched to the market place, the revenue mechanism was not in operation which means that every activity is a cost.

Hence the only way out is to accurately budget the planned expenditure and stick to this cash outlay so that it does not become a stumbling block for the project team’s performance.

PM - ethical issues

Ethics is all about morality. Sir Francis Bacher refers to morality as a trait that tells an individual if a certain activity is right or wrong. Given that most projects are to do with large values there has to be a high degree of delivery on integrity.

Some argue that corruption and development goes hand in hand but that does not hold ground in the strictest sense of PM.

It is also important to note that ethics do not change with time and the society that it operates in. Which is why the selection of the leader plays an important part in the overall delivery projects in todays world.

Next steps

* Organizations must identify all the project teams that are operating in a company.

* An audit must be done on the current performance based on delivery of tasks based on time lines agreed.

* Identification of training gaps and careful skill training must be invested by the company.

* The delivery of projects must be broken down to responsibility of the team and this must be included into the performance appraisal of the individual.

* Highlight the importance of PM as a business skill for a new age business executive.