What kind of picture would you paint if you were asked to see yourself being a project manager in the defense industry?
I work in that industry and I see a culture where the pace of progress is slow due to rigid processes and traditional pyramid organizational structure.
In the same setting, projects are managed through the waterfall process. And although things are changing due to the current economic situation, the planning phase spans multiple years and then you move on to development, testing and deployment. And because these project budgets are in the magnitude of millions and billions of dollars, there is no incentive to "do more with less."
I can recount the theme of the conversations I've had with more experienced project managers. They would tell me that in the old days companies earned their profits by the number of heads they staffed on projects. (Note: Cost plus contract was a popular vehicle for funding many defense projects.)
Fast forward to present time. Cyndee Miller recently blogged on the top 10 project management trends for 2009 from ESI International. I agree with her that Leveraging Communities of Practice To Hone Skills and Navigating Virtual Teams Through Change as being nothing new to project management communities in general.
But in the defense industry, that is not reality. What is happening at the project management frontline for defense industry is as follow:
• Unable to come up with coherent vision and strategy, senior executives believe there is a technology silver bullet to leveraging communities of practices. Inevitably, huge enterprise knowledge tools (i.e., Sharepoint sites, wikis, engineering blogs) sit idly because no one wants to use them.
• The idea of having virtual teams on a project meant for example that this brief work proposal is no more than 6 weeks and the company planned on temporarily co-locating the entire off site team to the main facility to work.
In my humble opinion, there are huge opportunities for project managers to be the change agents within the industry. As long as you don't mind playing catch up, you could be the one managing projects that would safeguard our future.
I work in that industry and I see a culture where the pace of progress is slow due to rigid processes and traditional pyramid organizational structure.
In the same setting, projects are managed through the waterfall process. And although things are changing due to the current economic situation, the planning phase spans multiple years and then you move on to development, testing and deployment. And because these project budgets are in the magnitude of millions and billions of dollars, there is no incentive to "do more with less."
I can recount the theme of the conversations I've had with more experienced project managers. They would tell me that in the old days companies earned their profits by the number of heads they staffed on projects. (Note: Cost plus contract was a popular vehicle for funding many defense projects.)
Fast forward to present time. Cyndee Miller recently blogged on the top 10 project management trends for 2009 from ESI International. I agree with her that Leveraging Communities of Practice To Hone Skills and Navigating Virtual Teams Through Change as being nothing new to project management communities in general.
But in the defense industry, that is not reality. What is happening at the project management frontline for defense industry is as follow:
• Unable to come up with coherent vision and strategy, senior executives believe there is a technology silver bullet to leveraging communities of practices. Inevitably, huge enterprise knowledge tools (i.e., Sharepoint sites, wikis, engineering blogs) sit idly because no one wants to use them.
• The idea of having virtual teams on a project meant for example that this brief work proposal is no more than 6 weeks and the company planned on temporarily co-locating the entire off site team to the main facility to work.
In my humble opinion, there are huge opportunities for project managers to be the change agents within the industry. As long as you don't mind playing catch up, you could be the one managing projects that would safeguard our future.
Neal,
Your comments on the defense industry struck a cord with me after reading your post pasted below:
"But in the defense industry, that is not reality. What is happening at the project management front line for defense industry is as follow:
• Unable to come up with coherent vision and strategy, senior executives believe there is a technology silver bullet to leveraging communities of practices. Inevitably, huge enterprise knowledge tools (i.e., Sharepoint sites, wikis, engineering blogs) sit idly because no one wants to use them."
As a seasoned project management member I am still dumbfounded as to why any large multi-national organization would not aggressively promote the use of "in-house" discussion forums and similar tools to promote better communication between co-workers within functional groups!
What we find in the real world is that each project is geographically squirreled away leaving an invisible wall which tends to leave project team members basically cut off from the mother ship at the corporate office. The feeling of being mothballed until the end of the project is what comes to mind! Once on site all that remains is the memory of the last words heard before leaving for their new project..."Good luck & may the force be with you".
Having a web based tool to circumvent a road block such as this would be a huge benefit. Not to mention that by utilizing a tool of this type sharing tribal knowledge and lessons learned would shorten the learning curve for "up and coming" younger team mates.
Just my two cents,
It's very political Ron. You want to see the big picture! (caveat: Not high-definition resolution and the reception with my atenna is a bit fuzzy)
In my opinion, it all comes down to two things: 1) Information gathering techniques and 2) the politics of military funding processes.
VTCs came about quite a while ago as the perfect solution to being able to reduce travel costs and speed up the overall purpose of meetings/conferences in the first place. Come to find out, the virtual participants were at a severe disadvantage because they were not privvy to the discussions occuring after the meetings and face-to-face conversations. It is amazing the amount of useful information not shared in the public forums.
As a communications/administrative specialist, it always fustrated me that open, honest and free-sharing of information is so difficult to obtain.
Extracting information from people is an art-form more effective in small, intimate settings. Doesn't work as well in the virtual world.
The other, just as crucial factor boils down to money.
The oversimplified explanation is if an organization does not struggle to make ends meet on a fiscal-year basis (those massive travel costs are included in overall operating costs), the Pentagon will gladly reduce future year operating budgets. Every budget planning year, organizations are directed to prepare a budget with a target of X% less than current year budget. Dollar amounts over and above that target get added to a big list of unfunded requirements--from there politics take over.
Unless the entire machine is disassembled and retooled, thought processes shift, and there is real consequence to deal with such as severe reduction in allowable travel for meetings and conferences, the change you seek will be a difficult sell. Don't give up yet. You may very well be out in front if/when current administration gives jolt to positive change.
Neal Shen is right on target in this article. I have no idea where in the defense industry he is currently associated with but he could have worked side-by-side with me from the position I just retired from while active duty military. I was a project manager for a command-wide initiative to reduce waste; improve efficiency; and standardize tools, technology, and processes. Great idea right?
From my personal experience, it is painfully apparent the defense is very rigid and set in their ways. One of the biggest challenges was breaking down some extremely thick walls between various functional areas. Organizations are very proud and possessive of their internal projects and people. Even as we matrixed teams of talent and stakeholders to advance capabilities and efficiencies, the tendency to "just play along and eventually they will go away" was the game of the day. Influencing change with no true overarching cross-functional objective consumed 99.99% of my day. Each function truly believes they have the best plan to keep their functional mission alive or in the limelight and resist outside involvement and take offense to the possibility of something better that originated outside their organization. They will fight tooth and nail to justify why nothing else will work for them. And this is within one organization--imagine the challenge to attempt to integrate the larger defense industry; service-wide or defense-wide. At a very basic level, competing needs, promotion opportunities, and the race to those precious budget dollars are at odds with logic and common sense.
I, for one, am a vocal advocate for establishment of a new organization within the Department of Defense with as much, or more, influence as all other functional communities, made up of project experts from various areas of functional expertise that would truly be the final stop for analysis and approval/disapproval recommendations for integrating projects towards one ultimate end product.
In theory, these agencies exist in small pockets throughout the Air Force anyway. In reality--it is small, generally not extremely visible, and has limited power or influence, assuming the organization even has access to/knowledge of what is going on all around them.
In my opinion, these organizations are self-defeating. They don't believe they can affect change and approach efforts with this mentality. Lack of marketing and communication rank high among the reason for minimal successes.
This was the best of and the worst of my experience. The challenge was exciting and rewarding and fustrating and stressful all at the same time.
I continue to have hope the day will come when there is real effort and change that will truly improve ability to meet the needs of our national defense.
I have to agree. I have tried to use virtual work spaces with geographically seperated units to cut down on travel costs - still leaders will not use, teams will not use. Then we complain we can not afford face-to-face meetings.
Any idea how to incentivize virtual teaming in a way to get leadership attention. I thought saving time and money would do it - didn't happen.
Cheers
Ron