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Friday, March 05, 2010
Report from IPMA Expert Seminar in Switzerland
Reported by Rudiger Geist in Zurich
The IPMA Expert Seminars in Zurich are well-known as a place, where new ideas and innovative methods in Project Management were created and nursed, since their revitalization a few years ago. The papers as well as a summary of the interactive work will be published in the traditional proceedings as a book.
The
IPMA Expert Seminar 2010 on 18th-19th February 2010 once again was a
unique opportunity to communicate about survival and sustainability,
the reasons for the respective successes and failures, and the project
management actions for contributing to project goals as expected by
stakeholders.
Situation
The investors, customers and organizations who survived well during the last couple of years were not limited to the traditional topics, processes and methods of project management. They cared for the results of their projects. They become fit for the future, again and again, by exchanging their experience in international groups of project, program and portfolio professionals.
During the year 2009
Questions discussed
Actions
Sustainability and survival are hot issues now and for the next future. Contributions were submitted and selected mainly from the following countries: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Iran, Greece, Switzerland, India, Norway, Brazil and Austria.
After
the inputs from the contributors and moderators, participants got
together in moderated discussions, generation of ideas, evaluation and
conclusions, based on the knowledge and experience of the whole group
of participants of the IPMA Expert Seminar 2010.
Participants
Brigitte Schaden (IPMA President) and Markus Stäuble (spm President, the Swiss IPMA branch, pictured left) opened the seminar with warm welcomes from all the participants.
Tom Taylor, speaker (pictured below right), founder of Buro Four and Vice President of APM (Association for Project Management UK), served as the chairman of the seminar. In his opening speech he pointed out the character of the seminar as a workshop and motivated the participants to take part.
He
emphasized that the perception of Boom and "Gloom" are not the same for
organizations, services, Sectors or Nations at the same time, because
their affection is different and deferred. Organizations and their
personnel therefore react different. Some are producing new ideas,
others try to stabilize, and others restart, all the same time.
Of course this is influencing the Stakeholders' perceptions and attitudes.
Crisis has always been happening! But is there anything different this time? Customer confidence, business confidence and official indicators do not point in the same direction.
Crisis also means change, opportunities. So what kind of recovery is taking place? Of course economic recovery, but also cultural, environmental, moral, employment and business recovery are going forward.
Sustainability is part of social responsibility. It should not be reduced to environmental topics, even though projects are dealing with attaching the issues (e.g. wind farms) and dealing with the consequences (e.g. flooding).
And of course we can do a lot as individuals in projects together with our organizations to do more about sustainability.
The
former spm president and co-author of the IPMA Competence Baseline Hans
Knöpfel (pictured left) held a speech about the competence element
sustainability.
From his view sustainability is "survival long term", therefore sustainability in projects relates to the time horizon. Not only for the project life time, but also for the product life time. But sustainability beyond the useful life is not wanted.
Hans started the discussion about, what are the most important survival issues addressed in the IPMA ICB? He asked the participants for helping in the question, how the IPMA ICB Version 3.0 could be optimized in terms of sustainability.
The last speech was from DR. Daniel Scheifele (pictured below right), who was talking about Zurich as a "GreenCity, which was developed by one of the leading construction companies worldwide (BOUYGUES CONSTRUCTION).
Based on this concept several parts of the city, former industrial deserts, were rebuilt.
Nowadays the energy consumption in Switzerland is about 8,700 Watt per person. The plan is to reach 2000 Watt per person in Zurich in the future. End 2013 some areas will already be built on that level. The reduction will be reached by reducing traffic tremendously and by using much more renewable energy.
After a short lunch, the introduction of the three streams started.
Stream No. 1, "The role of the owner/investor in projects", presented by Mehran Sepehri, Ph.D., Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
This group discussed the role of project owners in terms of sustainability in terms of project excellence, organizational maturity and success. What means "success" in the eye of those persons?
Stream No. 2, "The concept of sustainability and its application to project management", presented by Gilbert Silvius, Professor at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Research Center for Business and Innovation. Sustainability is only possible through innovation, and innovation is driven through projects. And sustainability is also seen as very important by project managers (based on research). Although some standards indirectly refers to sustainability (e.g. PMBOK), still there is room for improvement. The purpose of stream No. 2 is to find ways to strengthen sustainability in standards.
Stream No. 3, "Responsibility for sustainability on projects, programs and portfolios", presented by Rodney Turner, SKEMA Business School, Lille, focused on the benefit of project outputs. But what about the sustainability in terms of use of resources (and here especially persons)? What role does sustainable work processes play here? These are the questions stream 3 discussed.
The first day ended with a typical Swiss Cheese Fondue at the top of Zurich, the Uetliberg.
The second day started with a presentation from Akeel Akbar (Harpum Consulting), London about sustainability and knowledge management. Akeel stated that missing knowledge management in projects is one of the most important reasons for failing projects. He suggested to improved effectiveness by identification and dissemination of best practices. Knowledge is spreaded over 4 areas, which are process knowledge, domain knowledge, institutional knowledge and cultural knowledge.
Akeel presented a case study from a mid size pharmaceutical company, where they improved KM. The biggest challenge there was the change in thinking which is necessary for successful Knowledge Management.
The second presentation was held by John-Paris Pantouvakis from Greece on the topic of sustainable project management. Health & safety is an integral part of sustainability. Successful health & safety strategies need frameworks and an implementation process for the framework. After an implementation, three different rating models can be used to check the maturity of the frameworks. But not all models do reflect the 7 categories of the health & safety concept. Only the German model (GSBC) does reflect all.
All are addressing environmental factors, but have no linkage to operational or working practices, which are key determinants of health & safety standards. And last but not least, the systems do not quantify health & safety standards in economic terms. John-Paris then was suggesting using productivity as the underlying concept. Work methods, resource management and operational efficiency are the measured areas. By matching the conventional concepts he introduced a new framework, which is combining health & safety, sustainability and productivity.
In
the afternoon the groups came together for further discussion and a
final presentation of their outcomes. The results will be published in
a small book, as every year.
The whole conference was closed by a wrap up of Daniel Scheifele as the program manager of the conference.
A very positive feedback of participants to the seminar and a farewell from Tom Taylor as the Chairman concluded the event.
The IPMA Expert Seminars in Zurich are well-known as a place, where new ideas and innovative methods in Project Management were created and nursed, since their revitalization a few years ago. The papers as well as a summary of the interactive work will be published in the traditional proceedings as a book.
Situation
The investors, customers and organizations who survived well during the last couple of years were not limited to the traditional topics, processes and methods of project management. They cared for the results of their projects. They become fit for the future, again and again, by exchanging their experience in international groups of project, program and portfolio professionals.
During the year 2009
- many project managers went through a the financial crisis context
- or had customers who are on their way out of a economically hard time
- or never experienced a real financial crisis situation but were fully occupied
Questions discussed
- Who cares for the sustainability in projects?
- How is the optimum of the sustainability in projects defined?
- What does the project manager contribute to sustainability?
- How much do investors pay for sustainability?
- Is the survival a condition or a consequence of sustainability?
- What are the lessons learned from the external crisis to the projects?
- What are the characteristics of the survivors?
Actions
Sustainability and survival are hot issues now and for the next future. Contributions were submitted and selected mainly from the following countries: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Iran, Greece, Switzerland, India, Norway, Brazil and Austria.
Participants
Brigitte Schaden (IPMA President) and Markus Stäuble (spm President, the Swiss IPMA branch, pictured left) opened the seminar with warm welcomes from all the participants.
Tom Taylor, speaker (pictured below right), founder of Buro Four and Vice President of APM (Association for Project Management UK), served as the chairman of the seminar. In his opening speech he pointed out the character of the seminar as a workshop and motivated the participants to take part.
Of course this is influencing the Stakeholders' perceptions and attitudes.
Crisis has always been happening! But is there anything different this time? Customer confidence, business confidence and official indicators do not point in the same direction.
Crisis also means change, opportunities. So what kind of recovery is taking place? Of course economic recovery, but also cultural, environmental, moral, employment and business recovery are going forward.
Sustainability is part of social responsibility. It should not be reduced to environmental topics, even though projects are dealing with attaching the issues (e.g. wind farms) and dealing with the consequences (e.g. flooding).
And of course we can do a lot as individuals in projects together with our organizations to do more about sustainability.
From his view sustainability is "survival long term", therefore sustainability in projects relates to the time horizon. Not only for the project life time, but also for the product life time. But sustainability beyond the useful life is not wanted.
Hans started the discussion about, what are the most important survival issues addressed in the IPMA ICB? He asked the participants for helping in the question, how the IPMA ICB Version 3.0 could be optimized in terms of sustainability.
The last speech was from DR. Daniel Scheifele (pictured below right), who was talking about Zurich as a "GreenCity, which was developed by one of the leading construction companies worldwide (BOUYGUES CONSTRUCTION).
Nowadays the energy consumption in Switzerland is about 8,700 Watt per person. The plan is to reach 2000 Watt per person in Zurich in the future. End 2013 some areas will already be built on that level. The reduction will be reached by reducing traffic tremendously and by using much more renewable energy.
After a short lunch, the introduction of the three streams started.
Stream No. 1, "The role of the owner/investor in projects", presented by Mehran Sepehri, Ph.D., Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
This group discussed the role of project owners in terms of sustainability in terms of project excellence, organizational maturity and success. What means "success" in the eye of those persons?
Stream No. 2, "The concept of sustainability and its application to project management", presented by Gilbert Silvius, Professor at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Research Center for Business and Innovation. Sustainability is only possible through innovation, and innovation is driven through projects. And sustainability is also seen as very important by project managers (based on research). Although some standards indirectly refers to sustainability (e.g. PMBOK), still there is room for improvement. The purpose of stream No. 2 is to find ways to strengthen sustainability in standards.
Stream No. 3, "Responsibility for sustainability on projects, programs and portfolios", presented by Rodney Turner, SKEMA Business School, Lille, focused on the benefit of project outputs. But what about the sustainability in terms of use of resources (and here especially persons)? What role does sustainable work processes play here? These are the questions stream 3 discussed.
The first day ended with a typical Swiss Cheese Fondue at the top of Zurich, the Uetliberg.
The second day started with a presentation from Akeel Akbar (Harpum Consulting), London about sustainability and knowledge management. Akeel stated that missing knowledge management in projects is one of the most important reasons for failing projects. He suggested to improved effectiveness by identification and dissemination of best practices. Knowledge is spreaded over 4 areas, which are process knowledge, domain knowledge, institutional knowledge and cultural knowledge.
Akeel presented a case study from a mid size pharmaceutical company, where they improved KM. The biggest challenge there was the change in thinking which is necessary for successful Knowledge Management.
The second presentation was held by John-Paris Pantouvakis from Greece on the topic of sustainable project management. Health & safety is an integral part of sustainability. Successful health & safety strategies need frameworks and an implementation process for the framework. After an implementation, three different rating models can be used to check the maturity of the frameworks. But not all models do reflect the 7 categories of the health & safety concept. Only the German model (GSBC) does reflect all.
All are addressing environmental factors, but have no linkage to operational or working practices, which are key determinants of health & safety standards. And last but not least, the systems do not quantify health & safety standards in economic terms. John-Paris then was suggesting using productivity as the underlying concept. Work methods, resource management and operational efficiency are the measured areas. By matching the conventional concepts he introduced a new framework, which is combining health & safety, sustainability and productivity.
The whole conference was closed by a wrap up of Daniel Scheifele as the program manager of the conference.
A very positive feedback of participants to the seminar and a farewell from Tom Taylor as the Chairman concluded the event.