Case Studies and Project Briefs - March/April 2004
The APM BoK Update Project
The Association of Project Management bases its project management development
in both practitioner and academic fields on its “Body of Knowledge”
(BoK). The BoK underpins the range of internationally recognized qualifications
offered by APM. Indeed the BOK is widely seen as a leading descriptor
of the discipline and is used by many organizations as a core reference document.
The current 4th edition was last updated in 1999-2000. Since then there
have been developments in several significant project related sectors, particularly
in government (OGC, MOD and NHS.), construction, defense, ICT, pharmaceuticals,
and other sectors. Further, programme management and portfolio management
now have higher profiles and the literature has changed. In addition,
it’s now clear that certain 4th edition topics are missing, could be
added, or would benefit from revision. Thus APM recognizes the need
to revise the BoK.
APM considers it essential that its BOK be based on properly researched information
on current practices and trends within the profession. Thus it has decided
that the 5th edition will be based on a research programme to be conducted
in 2004, leading to publication of the new BOK in 2005. APM has asked
Professor Peter Morris of the Centre for Research in the Management of Projects
at UCL to research and redraft a 5th edition. Peter will be supported
by a small research team led by Ashley Jamieson.
The research team will report to a review board comprised of senior representatives
of the profession. The primary source of information will be interviews
and surveys on how professionals manage projects and programmes. APM
members will be contacted during the year for their input: the quality and
availability of this will be an important factor in determining the final
quality of the revised BOK. It is also planned to invite comments on the APM/PMI
BOKs from the whole project management community between April and June, using
the web, and your views on these are very important.
The research will comprise five major stages.
Stage 1: Planning and preparation
Stage 2: Updating the literature and preparing the data gathering instruments.
Stage 3: Interviews/ questionnaires/ surveys
Stage 4: Analyzing the questionnaire, survey, interview and literature findings.
Stage 5: Preparing and reviewing drafts of the revised BOK – with the
APM review board and with the membership via the APM website.
It is hoped that the BOK will differentiate practice between certain industry
sectors and project types, distinguish between programme (and portfolio) management,
and possibly even by project roles.
The APM Body of Knowledge forms a bedrock of many of the Programmes run by the APM including the Certification Programme which is aimed at assessing an individual's competence in managing a project; the Course Accreditation Programme geared toward reviewing the content of training courses run by both commercial private training companies and higher education institutes and the Project Management Capability Test aimed at assessing an individual's knowledge in Project Management. For further information on the APM Body of Knowledge.
The Telecommunications Optimization Project
Jon W. McKenzie
Reducing Cost Pressures: A Three-Phased Approach
Since 1995, Raytheon Company looked inside for areas of improvement and identified a potential $4.6 million budget overrun in its telecommunications cost center. The carrier services Raytheon employed included Wide Area Networks, Metropolitan Area Networks, Internet Services, remote access services, voice long distance, audio teleconferencing and video teleconferencing. Faced with increased demands within the company, market consolidation within the telecommunications industry and the reality of inefficient processes in the wake of the company’s reorganization, Vice President and Chief Information Officer Rebecca Rhoads utilized Six Sigma projects for its manufacturing divisions to reduce rising costs and to improve cost visibility without impacting service levels.
Phase 1: Increasing Cost Visibility and Eliminating Waste
In Phase I, Rhoads assembled a company-wide team to address the disparate viewpoints of telecommunication service providers and customers — a fixed-budget cost versus a demand service. The twin goals of the first phase were to establish the baseline for the following phases and to mitigate the projected budget overrun. The telecommunications team developed a value-mapping tool to examine each of the processes and behaviors of the telecommunications system while the finance team reviewed budget issues and brainstormed cost-reduction strategies.
Results from the value-mapping showed that there was an average delay of 31 weeks before business managers saw the cost impact of their telecommunications decisions. The finance team held a Company-wide blitz to eliminate waste and developed a new telecommunications financial management system as an initiative to reduce costs. The team identified twelve tasks including the effective use of teleconferencing to reduce travel, contract negotiations with major suppliers, and optimizing toll-free connectivity for telecommuters. Business leaders led the week-long blitz that spanned the entire organization. The initial goal of the first phase was to redefine the process of cost distribution in order to drive better use of telecommunications resources and to provide increased visibility into the costs associated with the budget.
Phase 2: Reverse Role Playing
The goal of Phase II was redirected to address the polar opinions of team members who came from different areas of the business. The team applied a unique adaptation of Raytheon’s Six Sigma to overcome this obstacle. In this approach, company-wide and business-level team members took on the roles of their counterparts and underwent a hypothetical year of budget and service planning. As part of the exercise, participants agreed to the objective criteria that would drive their decisions. The result was mutual understanding, a new ability to manage disagreements using a broad company perspective that eliminated parochial concerns and resulted in an agreed-upon budget.
Phase 3: Optimizing Processes and Cutting Costs
Energized by the role-reversal successes in phase two, the team’s goal for the final phase was to ensure budget problems would not happen again. To meet this goal the team spent two weeks redesigning processes in four key areas: provisioning, billing, engineering/request management and asset management. In addition to lowering costs as a result of identifying unneeded inventory, some of the major successes from this phase included a significant reduction in provisioning cycle times—from 130 days to 70 days—and slashing the time it took for service costs to appear from 31 weeks to two weeks or less.
Critical Success Factors
The results of the project far exceeded expectations: $2.5 million of pure waste was eliminated and real year-over-year costs have been reduced by approximately $800,000. But the long-lasting benefit and critical success factor in achieving the projects goals was the change in relationships with service providers. Raytheon embraced its suppliers as active participants in the process and engaged them to help problem solve and share best practices in addition to providing service-rate reductions. Further, this Six Sigma project enabled the team to learn a new way to explore problem solving with the role-reversal strategy, which has been deployed as a new Raytheon Six Sigma methodology.
About
the Author:
Jon W. McKenzie joined the corporate staff as the Director of Raytheon
Six Sigma in October of 2001. Prior to this assignment Jon was the Raytheon
Six Sigma Champion for Raytheon Missiles Systems in Tucson Arizona..Jon
has a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University
of Kansas.
(1) Reference [ PM Library Organizational Audit Reports ]