Carnival of Project Management #30

Welcome to the December/January edition of carnival of project management.  And for this, our thirtieth edition, we have taken a trip to PMTips.net who is guest hosting the Carnival this month.

So – here is the round-up of the best project management articles submitted to the Carnival this time:

My favourite post this time comes from Elyse Nielsen at Anticlue. Her post is called Taming Chaotic Project Management – Dealing with Changing Priorities posted at Anticlue, saying, “Prioritization is the art of choosing what not to do, and it is hard for organizations without good business governance to choose what not to do. If you find yourself dealing with changing priorities, here are 5 tactics you can deploy.”

Gilad Lev-Shamur presents What are the 5 basic rules of project management? at a relatively new blog called The Project Management’s Thinker.  Not a particularly grammatical title, but it’s good that there are new project management blogs entering the field, and this one looks promising.

Here is another relatively new site, aimed at contract project managers: Steve has been putting some final touches to Contractor Project Manager over Christmas, and the site looks great.  He submitted Advice on becoming a PMO/Project Management Assistant, so if any of you are looking for a career change in the new year, this could be a good starting point.

GeekMBA360 presents Is team work overrated in corporate environment? posted at GeekMBA360. A controversial post that I don’t agree with – in a project environment I believe team work is essential. Granted, there are always people who don’t pull their weight, but bad management (or absent/ineffective management) are equally to blame for allowing these situations to continue. Projects are done with teams, therefore teams are important.

SpiKe presents Productivity Down! An Emergency Response Guide posted at Organize IT. A good post on getting going again when you can’t get a grip on what needs to be done.

Finally, here are two posts about public speaking, which I thought were interesting especially as I have just read Scott Berkun’s excellent book, Confessions of a Public Speaker. First, GreatManagement presents How to use the audience for dramatic effect when public speaking posted at GreatManagement Blog, saying, “Many of us would love to start mastering public speaking.  One particular technique that works wonders in any public speaking engagement is to involve the audience.”  He goes on to discuss how this can be done.

Second, CA has The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs posted at Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog, saying, “The glowing feedback after my next presentation indicated to me that following the steps outlined in the book helped. If I can do it, so can you. Here are four tips that, if you adhere to, will ensure your presentation will be a success. To provide some context, my presentation shared the results of a project with senior management.”

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of project management using our carnival submission form.  The next Carnival will be the February/March edition (regular Carnival followers will know that we are down to bi-monthly Carnivals now) and will most likely be back at the Carnival’s permanent home, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management.  However, for this month, we enjoyed the road trip to another host – thanks for your hospitality!

Construction Software State of the Industry from Software Advice

My friends at Software Advice have sent over another interesting original article that they have put together pertaining to software in the construction industry. This one comes from Houston Neal and it kicks off a series of reports the group is doing on trends within the construction software industry. Please visit their site at www.softwareadvice.com for the original report.

Construction Software State of the Industry Report

This is the first in a series of “state of the industry” reports in which we will share our observations on construction software industry trends. While reporting the recessive state of the industry is not breaking news, there are some interesting trends that we can share. Not everything is gloomy, and significant technological shifts are underway.

Our observations are based on roughly 6,000 conversations with construction software buyers over the past year. In these calls, our team listened to buyers’ “pain points” – the business problems they were looking to solve with new software. From there, we recommended what we felt were the best solutions. We later surveyed each buyer to find out if they ended up buying software, what they bought and how it all went.

Estimating and takeoff solutions are in demand

We’ve seen a very healthy level of interest in construction estimating software across all divisions. Over and over we hear contractors saying something to the effect of, “Bidding has gotten very competitive, which means I’ve got to be as accurate as possible.” As a result, we’ve seen a lot of estimators replacing their spreadsheets and manual processes with database-driven estimating systems.

We’ve also seen plenty of interest in on-screen takeoff software. We’ve seen three primary reasons for this:

• Increasing the speed and accuracy of takeoff measurements (see previous paragraph);
• Avoiding the printing costs of paper plans; and,
• Responding to increasing electronic plan delivery and use of online plan rooms.

While demand for onscreen takeoff appears fairly strong and growing, we have seen a considerable amount of downward pricing pressure in that market.

Software as a Service is in the right place at the right time

Software as a Service (SaaS) is gaining momentum in many software markets. In fact, we would agree with other IT prognosticators that SaaS is a major structural shift in software deployment and is here to stay. We’ve seen this model succeed in the project management segment where there is a clear need for the collaborative benefits of web-based software. Moreover, the current recession is making the SaaS model more attractive to contractors because:

• Subscription pricing can easily be added to a project’s general conditions;
• Low up-front costs allow project managers to avoid an onerous approval process; and,
• Faster and less expensive implementation makes the new systems more digestible.

We have not seen much demand for SaaS accounting, estimating or service management, although we do get asked about it now and then. We also have not seen many vendors emerge to deliver that sort of solution. We would not be surprised to see SaaS accounting and/or estimating solutions emerge over the next few years.

LEED credit tracking creates new demand

Another trend driving the adoption of SaaS project management systems is the increasing demand for LEED credit tracking. LEED certification has grown in popularity; so too has the need to track the detailed documentation requirements related to earning LEED credits. At their core, projects seeking LEED certification need document control and efficient communication. This is the core of what project management systems deliver. Going one step further, we are seeing a number of project management vendors building in specific LEED credit tracking modules within their system. Houston Neal wrote a great post on how to Track LEED v3 Credits in Project Management Software back in July.

Stimulus funds are trickling down, slowly

Government and other civil construction has remained healthier than commercial and residential construction. However, we have not seen the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) have a big impact on software spending. We believe that the temporary nature of stimulus spending is not enduring enough to drive capital investment in software systems. Our hope is that ARRA will help accelerate the economy to a point where traditional IT investment levels resume. However, Chris Thorman recently wrote a quick analysis of the ARRA that showed that stimulus spending has had a nominal effect on putting roughly 1.6 million unemployed construction workers back on the job.

There has been speculation that Stimulus-funded construction projects would drive sales of project management software. The thinking behind the forecast was that ARRA projects would require a higher level of accountability. Project management software – known for strong document tracking capabilities – would provide the audit trail needed for this transparency. However, we have not seen this translate into a meaningful increase in sales.

Fewer accounting & job costing replacements

We’ve seen fewer firms replacing their core accounting and job costing systems over the last year. In prior years, we had seen replacement activity when company growth pushed existing systems to their limits. In the absence of growth, more firms seem to be staying put with their existing systems. Firms that are buying new accounting systems tend to identify one or more of the following three pain points:

• Inability to achieve detailed job cost reporting from “generic” accounting systems;
• Lack of integration to project management or service management systems; and,
• The need to accomplish same amount of work with fewer employees.

Outlook for 2010

As the construction industry begins to rub its sleepy eyes, we agree with most experts who say that 2010 will be a transitional yet slow year for the industry as a whole. Company budgets likely won’t fully recover in 2010, limiting the purchase of construction software. However, so far we’ve noticed more activity this quarter than any other this year. Hopefully this level of interest will carry over to 2010.

This article originally published at: Construction Software State of the Industry Report.

Skills of a Successful Project Manager

In his book, “The Little Black Book of Project Management,” Michael Thomsett identifies his version of the skillset of a successful project manager. I’m providing it here to give you yet another take on some of the key characteristics and capabilities that go into being able to effectively manage an engagement and a team of highly skilled resources.

Mr. Thomsett’s version comes mainly from the viewpoint of a department manager being thrown into the project management role, so understand that this is assuming an experienced manager is handling the engagement, but not one well-versed in project management.

The Successful Project Manager

A successful project manager knows how to bring together the definition and control elements and operate them efficiently. That means you will need to apply the leadership skills you already apply in running a department and practice the organizational abilities you need to constantly look to the future.

In other words, if you’re a qualified department manager, you already possess the skills and attributes for succeeding as a project manager. The criteria by which you will be selected will be similar.

Chances are, the project you’re assigned will have a direct relationship to the skills you need just to do your job. For example:

• Organizational and leadership experience. An executive seeking a qualified project manager usually seeks someone who has already demonstrated the ability to organize work and to lead others. He or she assumes that you will succeed in a complicated long-term project primarily because you have already demonstrated the required skills and experience.
• Contact with needed resources. For projects that involve a lot of coordination between departments, divisions, or subsidiaries, top management will look for a project manager who already communicates outside of a single department. If you have the contacts required for a project, it will naturally be assumed that you are suited to run a project across departmental lines.
• Ability to coordinate a diverse resource pool. By itself, contact outside of your department may not be enough. You must also be able to work with a variety of people and departments, even when their backgrounds and disciplines are dissimilar. For example, as a capable project manager, you must be able to delegate and monitor work not only in areas familiar to your own department but in areas that are alien to your background.
• Communication and procedural skills. An effective project manager will be able to convey and receive information to and from a number of team members, even when particular points of view are different from his own. For example, a strictly administrative manager should understand the priorities of a sales department, or a customer service manager may need to understand what motivates a production crew.
• Ability to delegate and monitor work. Project managers need to delegate the work that will be performed by each team member, and to monitor that work to stay on schedule and within budget. A contractor who builds a house has to understand the processes involved for work done by each subcontractor, even if the work is highly specialized. The same is true for every project manager. It’s not enough merely to assign someone else a task, complete with a schedule and a budget. Delegation and monitoring are effective only if you’re also able to supervise and assess progress.
• Dependability. Your dependability can be tested only in one way: by being given responsibility and the chance to come through. Once you gain the reputation as a manager who can and does respond as expected, you’re ready to take on a project.

These project management qualifications read like a list of evaluation points for every department manager. If you think of the process of running your department as a project of its own, then you already understand what it’s like to organize a project—the difference, of course, being that the project takes place in a finite time period, whereas your departmental tasks are ongoing. Thus, every successful manager should be ready to tackle a project, provided it is related to his or her skills, resources, and experience.

Phases of a Construction Project Life Cycle – Part 3

In Part 3 we’ll look at the next two phases of a construction project as described in F. Lawrence Bennett’s book entitled “The Management of Construction – A Project Lifecycle Approach.” In this article, we’ll allow Mr. Bennett to take us through the contractor selection and project mobilization phases.

Contractor selection phase

In anticipation of selecting a contractor, the owner must decide whether an open invitation will be issued to all possible vendors or whether only certain contractors will be invited to submit offers and whether any sort of pre-qualification process will be invoked to limit the number of tenders. On the other side, contractors will have to consider a number of factors in deciding whether they will make the effort to assemble a proposal for a particular project. If a contractor finds the prospective project attractive, two major tasks will be required. First, a series of planning steps will be carried out, including studies of various methods and equipment that would be employed and the development of a preliminary project program setting forth an approximate time schedule for each major activity. Second, a priced proposal will be prepared, including the direct costs of labor, materials, plant and subcontractors, various overhead charges and a sufficient added amount for profit. The last step in this phase is the submittal, opening and evaluation of tenders, the selection of the successful contractor and the finalization of the construction contract.

Project mobilization phase

After the contractor is selected, a number of activities must be completed before installation work can begin at the project site. Various bonds, licenses and insurances must be secured. A detailed program for the construction activities must be prepared. The cost estimate must be converted to a project budget and the system for tracking actual project costs must be established. The worksite must be organized, with provisions for temporary buildings and services, access and delivery, storage areas and site security. The process of obtaining materials and equipment to be incorporated into the project must be initiated and arrangements for labor, the other essential resource, must be organized. With the completion of this phase, it is finally time to begin the actual field construction.

Next

We will conclude this series on Construction Project Management Phases in the next article – Part 4. In that final installment, we’ll review of Mr. Bennett’s description of the project operations and project closeout and termination phases. If any of you have experience with construction project management and wish to comment, I would definitely like to hear your feedback as this is not an area where I have any prior experience.

Phases of a Construction Project Life Cycle – Part 1

Having almost exclusively only dealt with and led IT software projects throughout my career, I’ve always been intrigued by the area of construction project management. Though with my background, getting in the door – even on a consulting basis – to gain that experience just hasn’t happened or the timing was just never right – either in the Midwest or in Las Vegas during the housing boom.

So running across F. Lawrence Bennett’s book entitled “The Management of Construction – A Project Lifecycle Approach” peaked my interest. I’ve written about project lifecycle and methodology phases at great lengths in my articles and would like to present here Mr. Bennett’s parallel segments on the construction project lifecycle. Due to the length of the material, this will likely need to be shared over multiple parts starting with his general overview for the purpose of this article. The following text was derived from Mr. Bennett’s Management of Construction book.

Overview

Every project, not just those in the construction industry, goes through a series of identifiable phases, wherein it is ‘born’, it matures, it carries through to old age and it ‘expires’. A software development project manager, for example, might define the following phases in the project’s life cycle: initial proposal, process engineering – requirements analysis, process engineering – specifications, design, development, testing, deployment and support. Likewise, a project that results in the development of a new product might contain the following phases: conceptual, technical feasibility, development, commercial validation and production preparation, full-scale production and product support. Although there may be some overlap in the phases, the work generally flows from the first phase to the last, with the outcome of one phase providing the basis for efforts carried out in the phase that follows.

So it is also with construction projects. We will be identifying six phases in the construction project life cycle, each with its own purposes and characteristics. First, the owner must make certain pre-project decisions. Then the planning and design of the project is carried out. Next, the contractor is selected, after which the contractor mobilizes in order to carry out the field operations. The field work that the lay person often considers to be ‘construction’ can be considered a separate phase. Lastly, the project must be terminated and brought to a close; because these activities are distinct from the installation work, we separate them into a distinct, final phase.

To attempt to understand the management of construction by organizing the study on the basis of the project life cycle may be somewhat arbitrary, because there is admittedly some overlap between phases and thus some duplication in the presentation. However, this deliberate design of this text will provide a logical basis for tracking the project’s activities and understanding the roles of the people responsible for those activities, from the time the owner first conceives the idea for a construction project until that point when the contractor has vacated the site for the final time.

Structured in this way, each section provides a description of one of the project’s phases. The result should be an understanding not only of the importance of each phase individually but also of the way they interrelate to form an integrated whole project.

In Part 2, we will present an overview of each of the six phases of the construction project life cycle.