Introducing the Institute of Management Consultancy

For those nterested to get in touch with peers in the Management Consultancy I recomend to visit the Institute of Management Consultancy website at
http://www.imc.co.uk/index.php
They also have some certification programs.

upcoming conferences

14th International Product Development Management Conference10-12 June, 2007. Porto, accepted papers must be received by April 12, 2007 and conditionally accepted papers must be received by April 05, 2007

EurOMA Conference, 17-20 June 2007, Ankara, Turkey http://www.euroma2007.org/
Notification of acceptance of abstracts February 19, 2007 Submission of full papers (final version) April 16, 2007

EURAM 2007 conference , May 16-19 http://www.euram2007.org/ Paris
The deadline for PhD Colloquium February 12, 2007

OR Society Annual Conference, 4-7 September Edinburgh
http://www.orsoc.org.uk/orshop/(f2sy20bdy4imbsrkwzwilm3g)/orcontent.aspx?inc=or49_main.htm

British Academy of Management Conference, 11-13 September 2007, Warwickhttp://bam.ac.uk/conference2007/ 31 January deadline for all submissions

19th Nordic Academy of Management (NFF) meeting August 9-11, 2007 http://www.nhh.no/conferences/nff/ Deadline for the submission of abstract 15 Feb 2007
full paper submission 15th June

Computers & Industrial Engineering, Alexadria, Egypt, 20-23 october 2007
Submission of abstracts and proposals March 1, 2007
Full Paper July 1, 2007

System Dynamics Conference , Boston , USA 29 July-2August
http://www.systemdynamics.org/
Paper submission March 26, 2007

IEEE International Engineering Management Conference, 29 July-1 August 2007, Austin, Texas, USAhttp://www.iemc07.org/index.html 28 February 2007: Feedback on proposals to be provided 16 April 2007: Completed paper submission

22nd European Conference on Operational Research, Prague, 8-11 July 2007 http://euro2007.vse.cz/index.php abstract submission deadline 28 Feb 2007


INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 4-7 2007, Seattle, USA asbtract submission 15 May http://meetings.informs.org/Seattle07/index.html


PMI research Conference, 13-16 July 2008, Warsaw, Polandhttp://congresses.pmi.org/ResearchConf2008/

Terminology

Fuzzy Front End: is the stage in the project wherer still the project team do not know about the scope and the very details of the project

Paper review - project cycle time

The Effect of Project and Process Characteristics on Product Development Cycle Time
Abbie Griffin
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, Special Issue on Innovation and New Products. (Feb., 1997), pp. 24-35.

The paper is based on a research which is aiming to empirically test the theories regarding the influence of complexity and newness to product development cycle time. In addition the paper examines if the use of cross functional teams and a formal product development process would influence the project performance.

The data for the research is gathered from diverse type of industry and companies and complexity and newness are operationalized by measures.

The paper in addition to testing the hypothesis concludesd that the application of cross functional teams in projects with high newness helps reducing product development cycle tme since these projects need more creativity and new ideas. Also the use of formal product development processes helps cycle time reduction when projects reach their physical design.

NASA Project Management (PM) Challenge 2007

NASA Project Management (PM) Challenge 2007 is the agency's fourth annual project management conference. PM Challenge provides a platform for an examination of current trends in project management and offers a forum for knowledge sharing, exchange of lessons learned, leadership development, team building and training.
http://pmchallenge.gsfc.nasa.gov/

SharedPlan releases free project mgmt software

SharedPlan Software has released SharedPlan OpenPlanning, a free “project community suite” for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. While OpenPlanning is free, the company also offers a Pro product with more features.
SharedPlan OpenPlanning lets you create a project plan, find example plans on which to base your new project, share your project with others and receive feedback. It features an online, searchable public repository, and searchable discussion forum that’s linked to stored plans.
http://www.sharedplan.com/

Line of Balance(LOB)

Line-of–Balance (LOB) method is a project planning and control method which in projects with repetitive nature has proved to be more efficient than the network techniques like CPM and Petri-nets. Much of the reason for superiority of LOB to other planning methods is because it considers an additional dimension (unit of production) in the representation of the activities. Unfortunatly this method is not well introduced in the Project Management litrature. The following references are recommended for the readers:

Arditi, D., P. Sikangwan, et al. (2002). "Scheduling system for high rise building construction." Construction Management and Economics 20: 353-364.

Arditi, D., O. Tokdemir, et al. (2002). "Challenges in Line-of-Balance Scheduling." Journal of Construction and Engineering Management 128(6): 545-556.

Harris, R. B. and P. G. Ioannou (1998). Repetitive Scheduling Method. UMCEE Report No.98-35. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan.

Lumsden, P. (1968). The line-of-balance method. Oxford, Pergamon Press.

Mendes, R., L. Fernando, et al. (1998). Replanning Method for Multi-Story Building Construction using Line of Balance. International Group of Lean Construction Conference.

Currently I am writing a teaching case study which describes a real case where application of LOB has been proved to be beneficial. The case study is in review and will soon appear in ECCH case study collections. visit http://www.ecch.com/

Unfortunatly the most well known project management softwares like MS Project and Primavera do not provide any feature to develop LOB plans. The most well developted software for LOB in my appinion is Dynaproject from Graphisoft. Visit www.dss.fi

Upcoming relevant conferences to Project Management

British Academy of Management Conference, 11-13 September 2007, Warwick
http://bam.ac.uk/conference2007/

PMI research Conference, 13-16 July 2008, Warsaw, Poland
http://congresses.pmi.org/ResearchConf2008/

EurOMA Conference, 17-20 June 2007, Ankara, Turkey
http://www.euroma2007.org/

22nd European Conference on Operational Research, 8-11 July 2007
http://euro2007.vse.cz/index.php

International Academy of Management and Business Conference, January 28-31 2007, Las Vegas, USA
http://www.iamb.net/lasvegas/2007/index.html

INFORMS Annual Meeting, November 4-7 2007, Seattle, USA
http://www2.informs.org/Conf/

5th International Conference on Construction Project Management, 1-2 MArch 2007, Singapore
http://www.ntu.edu.sg/cee/iccpm_iccem/

IEEE International Engineering Management Conference, 29 July-1 August 2007, Austin, Texas, USA
http://www.iemc07.org/index.html

Free Certificate course in Software Project Management

BLEKINGE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY offers an online course on "Software Project Management for Professionals", starting 28thAugust 2006.There is no tuition fee.Official University transcript will be issued.Limited number of participants. Selection will be made among eligibleapplicants based on application date, only.
Apply here: http://www.bth.se/utb/bas.nsf/Instructions?OpenForm

Winners and Losers in Project Management

A survey of project managers in the UK reveals changing fortunes and pressures, with a massive switch from permanent to temporary/interim employment.
Heywood, Lancashire, UK (PRWEB) July 15, 2006 -- UK Project management recruitment specialists Arras People conducted a survey of over 1,000 current practitioners working in the field of project management, a growing sector in UK employment. The results show how the market has changed since 2000, and the key drivers in the sector today. See www.arraspeople.co.uk/Files/Release/Arras_survey_pressrelease_Final

Scope Creep : The Scottish Parliament case

The Scottish Parliament Building was officially opened on October 9 2004 in Holyrood. The building is a complex of several buildings including Debating Chamber, Tower buildings, MSP building, Canongate Buildings, Queensberry House, Media Tower and public facilities. The total floor area of the complex is around 29,000 square meters and accommodates the members of the Scottish Parliament and the parliamentary staffs. The construction started in late 1997 and its progress turned to a controversial issue from different aspect including the selection of the site, selection of the consultants and the considerable time and cost overruns.The project was planned to be finished in 2001 with estimated £40 million (AGS 2000 p.10). The project was finished in 2004 with final cost of £431 million(AGS 2004 p.1). There have been many reasons behind this escalation of the cost and time overruns which are well documented in the public inquiry reports published by Auditor General of Scotland in 2000 and 2004. Among the many reasons for cost and time escalation the effect of numerous design changes have been considerable. The design changes have increased the project cost and time in two ways; Firstly by the direct cost associated with the implementation of the requested changes and secondly by the ripple effect of the changes on rework and productivity of the project.
An auditor report with very interesting information can be found at the following address:
www.holyroodinquiry.org

This project has very good potentials to be further research for learning lessons for future project management practices.

My book review is published in System Dynamics Review

My review about the book : "Modelling Complex Projects" is published in the summer edition of the System Dynamics Review. You can download the review from the journal website:


Terry Williams. John Wiley & Sons, 2002, ISBN 0-471-89945-3, 276 pages

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112680813/ABSTRACT

Project Robustness can not be achieved only by throwing resources to the project

Risks exist in every projects and they can threaten the success of the project. There has been a lot of discussion about risk management in the project management literature and among the practitioners. Overall the objective of the risk management is to identify the risks, analyze their effect and plan for a mitigation strategy for them. Apart from the solution which may exist in some projects to eliminate the source of risk, other strategies tend to add excess resources to the project to reduce the effect of the risk. These strategies could be known by the names: project safeguarding, adding contingencies or creating buffers in the project plans. Basically these strategies are based on designing and planning for a project optimistically and then adding a surplus to mitigate the risks.

However creating Robustness in a project is different. It is not about adding extra resources.

Robust Design which is a method developed by Geneichi Taguchi argues that to develop a product which can satisfy a certain need(function) there are many different alternative designs. Out of the different alternatives one of the designs may provide the maximum value for the function in interest. However this design may not be able to provide the maximum function all the time, under different conditions and in uncertain environment. In other words the design with the maximum function may not have the highest robustness to uncertainties.

The same is valid for projects. An optimistic project(or say project plan) may not be the most robust project. Usually projects(the product, the deliverables) can be designed in different ways or project plans regarding scheduling, organization and many more can be planned in many different way. Robustness is about what project design would create least sensitivity of project objectives to change in the project environment(uncertainties). It may also mean to sacrifize optimality for less deviation from the objectives(robustness).

What I discussed about was the definitions. Still it is a question how project managers can create robust projects.

Is project management content as generic as its name?

Generally giving a definition and boundary for project management is very difficult! Even giving a definition for management is very challenging. I just want to talk about some reflection about project management content as an insider.
The term project management is used a lot for describing the management of activities which are done for assignments and works in the format of projects. But I have recognized that a lot of this area referred to as project management body of knowledge is actually based on the construction industry practices. It does not mean that project management in construction industry is more advanced than the other industries but because of certain characteristics of this industry the project management practices in this industry is more standardized and formalized. For example earned value, CPM, change control systems are very applicable in construction industry than in NPD or software development. This is also recognizable in how PMI and APM is promoting this knowledge area. Both PMI and APM body of knowledge are biased to construction industry. Looking to International Journal of Project management you can also see the large proportion of publications related to construction indutry while other industries are not much present.
In fact the imbalance toward construction industry can only be attributed to differences in types of operations. Construction is low technology, labor intensive and require large capital. It is very difficult for project workers for example in software development to use the same methods used in construction. Fundamentally it is very difficult to plan very rigidly(as it is in construction
) in software development. Software development is high technology, complex and include many uncertainties.
We see in many non-construction industries that the managers demand their employees to deploy project management methods while PM body of knowledge is not actually designed for them. Project management is a fascinating general term but actually it is not in content!

New JOM Editor in Chief Perspectives

The document describe the policy of the new editor in cheif of the Journal of Operations Management. Very interesting methodological discussion about what is in demand in operations management research: http://www.mbs.ac.uk/research/documents/Handfield.pdf

My endnote file

You can find my endnote file with the references I use for project management at the following address:
http://www.geocities.com/yaghootkar/My-references-1-May.enl

New Book

The Business of Projects: Managing Innovation in Complex Products and Systems
Andrew Davies, Michael Hobday

A scholarly book about the contemporary project management, indicating the migration of the ptoject management from th rigid tool based approaches to approaches giving more value to innovation and system integration.

I have not completely covered the book. Keep here posted as I progress.

References:System Dynamics in Project Management

Simulation mehtods have been used to analyse the project management since long time ago. However I think simulation methods has much more potentials for analysis of practices in project management. Below is a list of the academic references for the ones who are interested to investigate in this area:



Abdel-Hamid, T. K. (1988). "Understanding the 90% syndrome in software project management: A simulation case study ". Journal of Systems and Software 8: 109-119.

Abdel-Hamid, T. K. (1990). "On the Utility of Historical Project Statistics for Cost and Schedule Estimation: Results from a Simulation-based Case Study". Journal of Systems and Software 13: 71-82.

Abdel-Hamid, T. K. (1992). "Investigating the impacts of managerial turnover succession on software project performance ". Journal of Management Information Systems 9: 127-144.

Abdel-Hamid, T. K. and S. E. Madnick (1991). Software Project Dynamics: An integrated approach. Prentice Hall. USA

Ackermann, F., C. Eden and T. Williams (1997). "Modeling for Litigation: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches". Interfaces 27(2): 48-65.

Ford, N. D. (1995). The Dynamics of Project Management: An Investigation of the Impacts of Project Process and Coordination on Performance. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. PhD dissertation.

Ford, N. D., D. M. Lander and J. J. Voyer (2002). "A real option approach to valuing strategic flexibility in uncertain construction projects". Construction Management and Economics 20: 343-351.

Ford, N. D. and J. Sterman (1998). "Dynamic Modeling of product development processes". System Dynamics Review 14(1): 31-69.

Howick, S. (2003). "Using system dynamics to analyse disruption and delay in complex projects for litigation: can the modelling purposes be met?" Journal of Operational Research Society 54: 222-229.

Howick, S. (2005). "Using system dynamics models with litigation audience". European Journal of Operational Research 162: 239-250.

Levary, R. R. and C. Y. Lin (1991). "Modelling the Software Development Process Using and Expert Simulation System Having Fuzzy Logic". Software-Practice and Experience 21(2): 133-148.

Levary, R. R., D. J. Synott and C. Y. Lin (1988). "An Intelligent Dynamic Simulation Model for Designing Software Development Processes". OMEGA 16(6): 569-575.

Love, P. E. D., G. D. Holt, L. Y. Shen, H. Li and Z. Irani (2002). "Using system dynamics to better understand change and rework in construction project management systems". International Journal of Project Management 20: 425-436.

Lyneis, J., K. Cooper and A. E. Sharon (2001). "Strategic management of complex projects: a case study using system dynamics". System Dynamics Review 17(3): 237-260.

Repenning, N. P. (2000). "A dynamic model of resource allocation in multi-project research and development systems". System Dynamics Review 16(3): 173-212.

Roberts, E. B. (1964). The Dynamics of Research and Development. Harper and Row. USA

Roberts, E. B. (1974). "A Simple Model of R&D Project Dynamics". In E. B. Robert (Ed). Managerial Applications of System Dynamics. Cambridge, MA, Productivity Press: 293-314.

Rodrigues, A. and J. Bowers (1996). "The role of system dynamics in project management". International Journal of Project Management 14(4): 213-220.

Rodrigues, A. and T. Williams (1998). "System Dynamics in project management: assessing the impacts of client behaviour on project performance". Journal of Operational Research Society 49: 2-15.

Williams, T. (2002). Modelling complex projects. Wiley. Chichester

Williams, T., F. Ackermann and C. Eden (2003). "Structuring a delay and disruption claim: An application of cause-mapping and system dynamics". European Journal of Operational Research 148: 192-204.

Williams, T., C. Eden, F. Ackermann and A. Tait (1995). "The Effect of Design Changes and Delays on Project Costs". Journal of Operational Research Society 46: 809-818.

APM student memberships is free

Good news for students in project management. Student memebership to APM is free. visit their website at http://www.apm.org.uk/

References

It is very difficult to find good references for project risk management. Here I post some of the them which I can recommend to readers:

Chapman, C. B. and S. Ward (2003). Project risk management : processes, techniques and insights. Wiley. Chichester

Flyvbjerg, B., N. Bruzelius and W. Rothengatter (2003a). Megaprojects and risk: An anatomy of ambition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge

Loch, C. H., M. E. Solt and E. Bailey (2004). Managing Projects with Unforeseeable Uncertainty: How a Learning Project Management Approach Can Improve Venture Capital Returns. Working Paper, INSEAD: 1-22.

Pich, M. T., H. C. Loch and A. D. Meyer (2002). "On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management". Management Science 48(8): 1008-1023.