3.02.2012 - Agile project management

There is an excellent summary of the role of Agile within the project management professsion here; http://aspireeurope.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/agile-is-it-the-new-prince2/

Interestingly, within a day of seeing this, I find myself invited to a conference, the flyer for which claimed the...

"reality of Agile as the de-facto standard for the management, development and delivery of Projects, Programmes and Products in the 21st century, across the Public and Private Sectors."

This claim cannot be justified, and only serves further to devalue the role Agile actually plays in the profession.

20.01.2012 - TPM Newsletter January 2012

20.12.2011 - The role of HR and Procurement professionals in engaging project management skills

For those of us in the project management profession there seems to be an issue regarding engaging project management (“PM”) skills in an organisation.  The hiring of PM skills may of course arise through the recruitment of a new member of staff or by engaging with a supplier organisation – so HR and Procurement professionals have a critical role here.

The difficulty is that the PM profession doesn’t signal well enough the requirements for PM roles in the UK corporate environment.

The UK corporate preoccupation seems to be with the Prince2 qualification.  Whenever you see a PM role advertised, or a service put to tender, the chances are you will find Prince2 specified.   For those people not in the know, Prince2 is a project management method closely aligned with the UK public sector.  It is a good PM method - it has many strengths.  But it also has the (negative) characteristic that it can be achieved by attending a 5 day training course.  Therefore many people seek a Prince2 qualification (Foundation or Practitioner) to enhance their chances of getting a PM job, and hence there is a very well developed body of training companies specialising in Prince2.  The training companies who specialise in this qualification are very keen to see as wide a take up as possible - it is good business.  But - here is the key – Prince2 is just one of many methods.  There are many methods developed by corporates that are not Prince2, but are equally valid – indeed more so when the specific requirements of a particular industry are taken into account.

In fact, there is more to project management than ‘methods’.  There are professional institutes – Association for Project Management, Project Management Institute – who both promote PM best practice but also codify this in their own ‘Body of Knowledge’ and provide their own professional certifications for practitioners.  Some of these certifications are extremely difficult to obtain, and one of those organisations (the APM) is currently seeking the cherished UK chartered status.

So the issue about Prince2 is that whilst it is a good method, it is ‘just’ a method, and not the only one ‘out there’ either.  In my view Prince2 does not provide us with the best way of identifying a high calibre project manager, notwithstanding that it is extremely well known and heavily promoted by many organisations.  My belief is that we need more balance in the appraisal of PM competencies and experience, and we need therefore to be more mindful of the potential information that an APM or PMI certification can tell us about a candidate/potential supplier.

And HR and Procurement professionals have a key role to play in this process.

[See also my Blog; ‘Worrying trends – a rant in 2010’]

19.12.2011 - Developments in the legal profession

The legal profession is facing unprecedented pressures.  The combined impact of the Legal Services Act, and the challenge of providing efficiencies in service delivery through shared service and business process outsourcing (aka LPO) structures is causing ripples in the profession.  Additionally, for professional firms, there is the added challenge of dealing increasingly with in-house counsel, and seeing the scope of services, and margins, come under pressure.

Magic circle firms are responding by applying significant resources to dealing with these issues.  The responses from other firms are more patchy.

Through November/December 2011 TPM has been working with Lighthouse (http://www.lighthouseglobal.eu.com) in speaking to firms in the legal sector, engaging with them on how to deal with these pressures, and advising on how to act to protect both revenues and margins.

19.12.2011 - Presentation to Actuarial Profession 'Life Conference' November 2010

Title: Project Management - A Skill for the Good Times?

 The presentation focussed on the following areas;

• the relevance of project management ("PM") skills to the actuarial profession
• how PM skills can grow the top line as well as protecting the bottom line to professional advisers
• what cultural barriers exist to advisory firms, and how to overcome them
• how to develop the skillset and draw on best practice
• investment issues and considerations of timing, "is now the right time to make this investment?".

Questions raised confirmed that many people in the actuarial profession are already working at developing PM skills, and Solvency II has helped add urgency to these developments.