March - April 2004 Featured Papers
The Program Strike Zone: Beyond the Bounding Box
Russell Martinelli and Jim Waddell
A challenge historically plaguing business management has been the ability to convert comprehensive strategic objectives into effective execution and tangible results. It is all too common for programs to complete “on target” with respect to time, cost and quality, but fail to achieve the business results anticipated.
This article introduces a powerful tool called the Program Strike Zone which is used to identify the critical success factors of a program, help the organization track progress toward achievement of key business results desired, and set the boundaries within which a program team can operate without direct management involvement. The value of the Program Strike Zone to both executive and program managers is explained, as well as how it is used by Intel and Tektronix.
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We define program management as “the coordinated management of interdependent projects over a finite period of time in order to achieve a set of business objectives”. In the high-technology, aerospace and automotive industries, program management is a critical business function that provides the means by which new products are conceived, developed and brought to market in order to achieve a major share in the profit. Outside of these core industries however, program management is not well understood. In fact, there is much confusion between the disciplines of program and project management.
Abstract on the entire 6 part Program Management Series
About the Authors:
Russ
Martinelli, Manager of Program Management Methods at Intel, has many years
of experience in System Engineering, General Management, and Project and Program
Management in the high-technology and aerospace industries. Russ is the chairman
of Intel's Program Management Community of Practice, and an Adjunct Professor
for IT Business Systems at the University of Phoenix in Portland, Oregon.
russell.martinelli@intel.com
Jim
Waddell, independent consultant and former Director of Program Management
for Tektronix, Inc. Jim has held a wide spectrum of managerial and operational
roles ranging across engineering, marketing, systems and manufacturing in
the high tech, energy and construction industries. Jim has taught classes
at various universities, and has been a speaker at numerous conferences nationwide.
james.w.waddell@exgate.tek.com
The State of the Art in Project Management 2003 - Part 2: PM Applications, Tools and Practices
Russell D. Archibald
The practice of project management (PM) has evolved over half a century and permeates all industries, institutions and governments throughout the world. This paper conveys a picture of the state of the art in this management discipline near the end of 2003, and provides some predictions of the direction of its continued evolution over the next five years.
Four topics are discussed in this part:
Part 2-1 Project Driven and Project Dependent Organizations
Part 2-2 Project Life Cycle Models
Part 2-3 PM Planning and Controls, Systems and Tools
Part 2-4 Managing Risks in Programs and Projects
Acknowledgement: The author wishes to acknowledge with grateful thanks the contributions of four colleagues to parts of this paper: David H. Curling, Alan Harpham, David L. Pells, and R. Max Wideman. Please see their references for brief information on their qualifications.
About the Author:
Russell
D. Archibald , PMP, Fellow PMI and APM/IPMA, M.Sc. has held engineering
and executive positions in the defense, aerospace, refinery construction
and operations, automotive manufacturing and telecommunications industries.
He has consulted in project management to companies and agencies in twelve
countries on four continents, and has taught project management principles
and practices to thousands of managers and specialists around the world.
russell_archibald@yahoo.com
http://www.russarchibald.com
What is Culture in Organizations?
Robert Youker, Retired, World Bank
We must first define and agree on what Culture is before we can deal with cross culture and networking. Like many other behavioral science terms like Leadership, there are many different definitions (or lack of definitions) of culture used in management today. This paper will try to present a very clear and “operational” definition of culture as used by sociologists and behavioral scientists. By operational we mean understandable and useful in analyzing human behavior.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines culture as, “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a community or population.” The sociologists define culture as “the social heritage, all the knowledge, beliefs, customs, and skills that are available to members of a society.
“The grand total of all the objects, ideas, knowledge, ways of doing things, habits, values, and attitudes which each generation in a society passes on to the next is what the anthropologist refers to as the culture of a group.”
The famous Dutch behavioral scientist, Geert Hofstede defined culture “as the collective mental programming of a people in an environment”. His later definition was “that culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another”
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Editor's Note: Bob Youker's paper What is Culture in Organizations? will be presented at the 18th IPMA World Congress June 2004 in Budapest, Hungary.