PMFORUM Breaking News
Breaking News from around the world of project Management
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Report from 9th International Doctoral Seminar on Project Management at ESC Lille
Reported by Olivier Lazar from Lille, France
Since nine years by the end of August, ESC Lille (Lille Graduate School of Management, Lille, France) has organized an international Project Management event, putting together some of the most recognized Project Management experts and academics. Usually known in the Community as the Lille International Project Management Workshop, for the second time this conference has been conducted in the EDEN framework, in relation with EIASM (European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management) to become the ESC Lille EDEN Doctoral Seminar.
This year, the general theme of the conference is on The Attributes of Projects.
This notion of attributes covers an important item of Project Management: Project Categorization. In his introduction, Prof. Christophe Bredillet highlighted this importance as being a key entry point for proper Portfolio Management, as already described previously by Professors Lynn Crawford, Rodney Turner (both present at the conference), and Brian Hobbs.
Then, the first presentation by Dov Dvir, from Ben Gourion University, Israel, allowed the audience to have a first overview of the Diamond Approach that he developed with Aaron Shenhar, who will also base his presentation on Strategic Project Leadership, on Tuesday. This approach, proposed to assess project types or categorization in terms of Novelty, Technology, Complexity and Pace, allows the project responsibles to identify an appropriate management approach. Both Dvir and Shenhar mainly highlighted in their presentations the importance of aligning projects with the organizations' strategy.
Graham Winch, from Manchester Business School, spoke about the project-life cycle in practice, describing the project from an information processing perspective, as stated by the title of his presentation. Describing the Life-cycle management through Risk, performance and delivery measures, going through the concepts of Project Coalitions and Cognitive Models…
From Cognitive Models to Maturity Model, there's only one step, made by Darci Prado describing the interesting results of research conducted with Russ Archibald on the levels of maturity of various companies in Brazil, and the evolution of these levels during three years at this time.
In the afternoon, Shankar Shankaran from the University of Technology Sidney (UTS), raised the audience's emotions with a very sensitive presentation on ROMAC projects, an humanitarian initiative aimed to help severely wounded children to recover dignity and independence after being cared for in Australian hospitals, generally by heavy surgical operations. This was a cure they could not receive in their home countries.
On Tuesday, Prof. Hiroshi Tanaka, from PMAJ (Project Management Association of Japan) described an application of the P2M methodology, which allows to ensure an efficient integration of Projects, Programs and Portfolios, addressing both operational and strategic levels and objectives.
This presentation was followed by Aaron Shenhar, as mentioned earlier, and a presentation by Dr. Edwin Edwards, from PMI, giving an overview and up-date on the current PMI initiatives to support research and academic programmes.
Dr. Monique Aubry, from UQAM presented some of the outcomes of a large study she conducted with Brian Hobbs (UQAM), Tomas Blomquist and Ralf Müller (both from Umea) on Project Management Offices, principally correlating the level of maturity of the organization and project success.
Then, Dr. Roland Gareis, from Vienna Business University, gave a very dynamic presentation about management of Project Oriented Organizations, challenging the audience with a very practical and pragmatic approach.
As summarized by Ralf Müller and Hans-Georg Gemünden (University of Berlin), these first two days highlighted the growing importance of new organizational structures, allowing the corporations to handle more and more projects. Thus, the raising importance of Program and Portfolio Management was also a very strong outcome from the various presentations. More and more projects, more and more inter-relations between the projects (on that point, the Network of Projects concept presented by R. Gareis was very interesting), all of this adding more and more complexity in addition to the natural complication inherent to today's projects being more innovative and implying strong Leadership and Change Management competences (as discussed by Lynn Crawford, from Bond University and ESC Lille). Suitable processes, run by ad-hoc organizational structures, such as PMOs, are becoming really essential to all organizations, be they ran by projects or just owning one or more project portfolios. This has also to be supported by a new flexibility paradigm in Project Management processes and methodologies, as it is clear now that one does not fit all.
Maybe we can see here emerging new Project Management trends, making PM include a larger scope to take into account the realization of Business Benefits in addition to the traditional TCQ triptych of constrains, embracing the higher Corporate and Business Strategy and its objectives and Vision to define finally new definitions of project success. That will need to be supported by more flexible, adaptative structures, fully embedded in the organization and able to handle and manage Change, both internally and externally to their own structure. This kind of PMO (be it a Project, Program or Portfolio Management Office) will have to provide the corporation with enhanced soft skills and competence, with a strong focus on Leadership and Organizational Transformation.
As usual, the Lille seminar is highlighting some the most innovative actual and future trends in Project Management, stating some of the future challenges the PM Community will have to face in coming times. This would come sooner than expected, as in our domain, the change rate is increasing on an accelerating pace, as the expectations of organizations toward Project Management are rising in the context of hard economic times.
The different presentations will be available on-line after the conference closure.
Since nine years by the end of August, ESC Lille (Lille Graduate School of Management, Lille, France) has organized an international Project Management event, putting together some of the most recognized Project Management experts and academics. Usually known in the Community as the Lille International Project Management Workshop, for the second time this conference has been conducted in the EDEN framework, in relation with EIASM (European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management) to become the ESC Lille EDEN Doctoral Seminar.
This year, the general theme of the conference is on The Attributes of Projects.
This notion of attributes covers an important item of Project Management: Project Categorization. In his introduction, Prof. Christophe Bredillet highlighted this importance as being a key entry point for proper Portfolio Management, as already described previously by Professors Lynn Crawford, Rodney Turner (both present at the conference), and Brian Hobbs.
Then, the first presentation by Dov Dvir, from Ben Gourion University, Israel, allowed the audience to have a first overview of the Diamond Approach that he developed with Aaron Shenhar, who will also base his presentation on Strategic Project Leadership, on Tuesday. This approach, proposed to assess project types or categorization in terms of Novelty, Technology, Complexity and Pace, allows the project responsibles to identify an appropriate management approach. Both Dvir and Shenhar mainly highlighted in their presentations the importance of aligning projects with the organizations' strategy.
Graham Winch, from Manchester Business School, spoke about the project-life cycle in practice, describing the project from an information processing perspective, as stated by the title of his presentation. Describing the Life-cycle management through Risk, performance and delivery measures, going through the concepts of Project Coalitions and Cognitive Models…
From Cognitive Models to Maturity Model, there's only one step, made by Darci Prado describing the interesting results of research conducted with Russ Archibald on the levels of maturity of various companies in Brazil, and the evolution of these levels during three years at this time.
In the afternoon, Shankar Shankaran from the University of Technology Sidney (UTS), raised the audience's emotions with a very sensitive presentation on ROMAC projects, an humanitarian initiative aimed to help severely wounded children to recover dignity and independence after being cared for in Australian hospitals, generally by heavy surgical operations. This was a cure they could not receive in their home countries.
On Tuesday, Prof. Hiroshi Tanaka, from PMAJ (Project Management Association of Japan) described an application of the P2M methodology, which allows to ensure an efficient integration of Projects, Programs and Portfolios, addressing both operational and strategic levels and objectives.
This presentation was followed by Aaron Shenhar, as mentioned earlier, and a presentation by Dr. Edwin Edwards, from PMI, giving an overview and up-date on the current PMI initiatives to support research and academic programmes.
Dr. Monique Aubry, from UQAM presented some of the outcomes of a large study she conducted with Brian Hobbs (UQAM), Tomas Blomquist and Ralf Müller (both from Umea) on Project Management Offices, principally correlating the level of maturity of the organization and project success.
Then, Dr. Roland Gareis, from Vienna Business University, gave a very dynamic presentation about management of Project Oriented Organizations, challenging the audience with a very practical and pragmatic approach.
As summarized by Ralf Müller and Hans-Georg Gemünden (University of Berlin), these first two days highlighted the growing importance of new organizational structures, allowing the corporations to handle more and more projects. Thus, the raising importance of Program and Portfolio Management was also a very strong outcome from the various presentations. More and more projects, more and more inter-relations between the projects (on that point, the Network of Projects concept presented by R. Gareis was very interesting), all of this adding more and more complexity in addition to the natural complication inherent to today's projects being more innovative and implying strong Leadership and Change Management competences (as discussed by Lynn Crawford, from Bond University and ESC Lille). Suitable processes, run by ad-hoc organizational structures, such as PMOs, are becoming really essential to all organizations, be they ran by projects or just owning one or more project portfolios. This has also to be supported by a new flexibility paradigm in Project Management processes and methodologies, as it is clear now that one does not fit all.
Maybe we can see here emerging new Project Management trends, making PM include a larger scope to take into account the realization of Business Benefits in addition to the traditional TCQ triptych of constrains, embracing the higher Corporate and Business Strategy and its objectives and Vision to define finally new definitions of project success. That will need to be supported by more flexible, adaptative structures, fully embedded in the organization and able to handle and manage Change, both internally and externally to their own structure. This kind of PMO (be it a Project, Program or Portfolio Management Office) will have to provide the corporation with enhanced soft skills and competence, with a strong focus on Leadership and Organizational Transformation.
As usual, the Lille seminar is highlighting some the most innovative actual and future trends in Project Management, stating some of the future challenges the PM Community will have to face in coming times. This would come sooner than expected, as in our domain, the change rate is increasing on an accelerating pace, as the expectations of organizations toward Project Management are rising in the context of hard economic times.
The different presentations will be available on-line after the conference closure.