"New Age Project Management: Objectives and Execution as One"

Event Report

The PROMS-G meeting held on Wednesday, 2nd February, 2005 at BCS Centre, London, was a presentation by Jim Warren, managing partner of JD Warren Associates.

Jim delivered a challenging paper on "New Age Project Management: Objectives and Execution as One" to more than 40 participants. Jim had a huge amount to say, which he compressed into a short evening meeting. Jim enthused on his topic which was reflected in the feedback from particpants who commented that his delivery and content were of a very high standard and volunteered comments such as ‘Excellent, more please’ and ‘Thought provoking, honest, refreshing’.

The evening started with everyone introducing him/herself to the participants, involving everyone and giving Jim a number of threads which he used to direct the emphasis of his delivery. Jim encouraged questions which he tackled enthusiastically. Jim posed two questions: ‘What has changed?’ and ‘What is the first thing that we may change?’. But change should be seen within a context. Finding the right context is a prerequisite and this may be reached by searching using ‘Why?’ to successive answers, up to five times, Jim reckoned.

A further thread is selling the avoidance of and the fixing of pain. He addressed the emotional aspects of negotiation through the use of numbers and in particular the understanding that many of the costs are sunk costs which will not be able to be recovered. At the same time he felt that project management tools remove understanding of problems as users are too close to the tools and need to stand back and get a good view of what is going on. This will allow the PM to gain a view of the context in a wider view. PM is a subset of context executing strategic intent.

Jim suggeseted that the PM should adopt the view of the CEO and should be able to understand the business finance issues. The board will need to know WHY and WHAT, not HOW. HOW is just a detail. Delivery should be focussed on the short term, not long. Keywords were peer pressure, golden parachutes to encourage good CEOs to try to rescue ailing firms, shareholder managers, differentiation, cost leader and focus.

Jim talked about the languages of discourse. In particular Jim said that the language of accounting should be used to explain benefits: discounted cash flow, net present value and RR.

Jim wrapped up the evening by answering some final questions before testing local hospitality.

You can find out more about Jim on his website: www.jdwa.biz.

The slides (2264k) from this presentation are now available