MC Weekly Issue #18, Friday, April 28, 2006
“Now that we can do anything, what will we do?”
Welcome to Massive Change Weekly, an electronic newsletter sharing news about groundbreaking achievements in global design.
Project Management as a Change Agent.
I’m very excited to introduce our first guest author! Josh Polley has taken on the issue of the role of project management in delivering massive change.
Massive Change celebrates the innovative use of materials, science, and design to better the world and mankind. Inherent in every one of the examples are project management tools and techniques that steer the product through its life cycle. The subjective nature of how actual success of the project is measured, and who measures it, is often where the rub lies. The designer may see the creation of the product alone and deem it a success. The actual customer the product is made for probably expects some sort of reasonable return on investment. The project manager decides, organizes, plans, controls, and leads all aspects of the project; ultimately making this person responsible for the “success” of the project. Below are brief accounts on the profession and how designers can shape not only the projects, but the tools to help manage them as well.
Poor project management practices have been identified with the Transrapid Shanghai train (Massive Change example) and although technologically advanced, some consider this project a failure. No actual downtown station due to a change in project scope, limited hours of operation, and high cost of tickets all contribute to the fact that the train travels at only 15% capacity. These and other negative aspects of the project could have been avoided with proper project management, which would have resulted in greater use and therefore greater project success.
Project Management has been around for thousands of years, but in the modern sense is still in its infancy. Concepts such as: Gantt Charts, PERT analysis, critical path method, and work breakdown structures are less than fifty years old. Because of this, the essential tools used are still up for design consideration. The thread below is ongoing and increases the awareness and visual design techniques that can make project management more user-friendly. It may be safe to say there is as much rebellion going on in the administrative level of design as there is at the artistic level.
For more on the history of project management visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/project_management
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu:8000/courses/is208/s02/History-of-PM.htm
Proper management allows projects to be finished on time, on budget, and within the agreed upon scope. Without the essential tools project management sets forth, projects are more likely to not meet one of these triple-constraints. In addition, due to the global marketplace many projects need to reach the market faster in order to attract a substantial market share over the competition. With proper project management tools in place designers can see:
20 - 30% improvement in time to market
25 - 300% improvement in number of projects completed with the same resources
Average project duration cut by 25 - 50%
Over 90% project success rate, with double the profit margin
Source: Kendall & Rollins, Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO, J. Ross Publishing, 2003.
Today, the Project Management Institute is the world’s largest project management association and publishes the PMBOK Guide as well as other resources and reference material. Also, the Construction Management Association of America provides it’s top construction picks in 2005 according to successful planning and execution.
http://cmaanet.org/paa_2005.php
As the world of design evolves so does the field of project management. By incorporating the proven tools and techniques, and building upon them for the specific task at hand, more projects; such as the ones featured in Massive Change, will find there way to the marketplace more quickly, cost effectively, and with greater acceptance.
Josh Polley
MSPM Graduate Student
February 19th, 2008 04:42
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