Your way into the Project Management World

In this part of the interview we ask expert Antony della Porta how to best apply critical systems thinking (CST) in the recovery of projects, and if focusing on sustainability can help troubled projects. We also focus on what the impacts of delaying the declaration of project trouble are, whether that increases the risk of the project being canceled, if there is a way to determine that the project is not worth saving, and when is it time to gracefully execute the termination process. In the end we ask for his advice to project managers that face troubled projects.

PMTips: Antony, thank you for accepting to do a second interview with PMTips. Last time we talked about Sustainability in Project Management and this time we will focus our talk on the rescue and recovery of projects.

Antony della Porta: Well, I really appreciate the invite actually, Ana, and thanks ever so much for taking interest in my passion, as it were, in change initiative delivery, certainly around sustainability issue, an area which is quite a very keen area for me in particular, and has taken a bit of an ebb and flow, but certainly also for this particular part of the interview regarding recovery, which is really my background, so I'm looking forward to putting some meat behind your questions and therefore grazing some of these points for those out there who want to know or have some idea about how they might go about recovering and areas around project issues etc., so that's really good.

Ali Shahsavari began his career as a Scheduling and Controls Manager in 2005 at MAPNA Group. In 2013, he became a Project Controls Manager at Kiewit – one of the largest construction and engineering organizations in North America. He is a certified PMP® (Project Management Professional) and a PSP (Planner Scheduler Professional). During his career, Ali had the chance to work on a number of large projects in the oil and gas industry.

In this interview, he speaks about his experience as a Scheduling Manager and as a Project Controls Manager, his role in the project controls team, the challenges that he has encountered and dealt with while working on projects and what drives him to be his best self in his day-to-day career.