There’s a new trend evolving in external project management and it isn’t for the faint-of-heart.

Increasingly, companies are relying on consultant project managers to not only deliver their tougher information technology (IT) projects but to help realize value for money.

A recent study focusing on this trend finds that external project managers are moving beyond their traditional responsibilities to fulfill three additional roles: account manager, surrogate sponsor and profession leader.

Researchers Blaize Horner Reich of the Segal Graduate School of Business at Simon Fraser University, Canada and Chris Sauer of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, England, interviewed 25 senior consultant project managers in the USA, Canada and the UK who had managed transformational IT projects.

The researchers discovered that external project managers are often asked to take on account management responsibilities because the client develops a stronger relationship with them than with the appointed account manager.  They also become surrogate sponsors when the business sponsor is unwilling or unable to support a project. And they assume the role of profession leader because it assists in developing the supplier’s reputation in project management.  “Ability to juggle these roles over time,” notes Reich, “enhances  the external project manager’s long-term career success.”

Traditionally, account managers within a supplier firm act as the principal point of contact for the client: to manage the relationship, develop sales and take responsibility for client satisfaction. Today, says Reich, “external project managers are taking on aspects of this role in four ways: they’re winning initial business, maintaining the relationship with the client, selling follow-on business and managing profitability.”

To fulfill this role, external project managers must acquire sales skills to create situations in which clients want to buy new projects or follow-on work.

The researchers also learned that as projects become critical to executives’ fulfilment of their role, external project managers will often take on client responsibilities including standing in for the sponsor at executive management or board meetings to sell the business case and report progress on the sponsor’s behalf. Often the project manager coaches the sponsor on his or her role. In extreme cases, the project manager may take over all of the sponsor’s responsibilities.

Fulfilling the surrogate sponsor role, says Reich, requires both generic business knowledge and specific knowledge of the client’s business. “The external project manager has to rapidly build a network within the client organization that will keep them apprised of internal information and help them access the power structure so that they can stand in when necessary,” she says.

The third role expected of external project managers is that of profession leader. As they become more senior, they are expected to be more visible, produce more knowledge and act as a role model. They need a broader perspective, says Reich, in order to demonstrate thought leadership and to demonstrate the supplier’s ability to handle more ambitious challenges.

So how can external project managers cope with these new roles and responsibilities? Reich and Sauer acknowledge that IT project managers, who typically come from a technical background, are not always equipped to play executive and entrepreneurial roles. Still, they say, by crafting a long-term self-development plan, junior project managers should be able to take on increasing responsibility and visibility within the firm, the client and the profession.

Here are their recommendations for education:

• Take a sales course. Learn how to influence the client as well as identify and seize opportunities.
• Take an MBA or other general business program. If you don’t understand topics such as marketing, finance, strategy and human resources, you can’t take part in discussions about project benefits.
• Take a public-speaking course or join associations such as Toastmasters. Become confident at making compelling points in meetings or as a featured speaker.
• Take a negotiation course. Learn to negotiate from interests and create win-win solutions.
• Take a coaching course. Learn how to understand and inspire great performance in others.

Reich and Sauer also make recommendations for action:

• On long-term projects, take every opportunity to learn more about the strategy, financials and competitive position of the client.
• Focus your career on an industry vertical and become deeply knowledgeable about this sector through personal research, attending industry meetings and joining professional associations.
• Develop a networking plan within the client organization. Get to know the key individuals and the up-and-comers – their goals and constraints, their history and aspirations.
• Establish your leadership within the profession. Reflect on your projects and develop lessons from them. Take opportunities to share these ideas by speaking or writing.

PMPerspectives.org is a website which connects project managers and sponsors with project management researchers. Our mission is to understand and improve project management practices. The research team comprises Dr. Blaize Horner Reich and Dr. Andrew Gemino from Simon Fraser niversity, Canada and Dr. Chris Sauer from Oxford University, UK.

© Reich, Gemino, Sauer (2008)

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Gemino has just compiled results from a 2003 research survey in which two-thirds of IT projects succeeded and just one-third failed, with several projects actually over-achieving their targets.

The research comprised two independent studies in the U.S. and U.K., in which the researchers examined survey responses from a total of 741 project managers with 15 years or more experience in the IT industry and eight or more years managing projects.

Gemino then used a data-driven clustering method that identified five types of project groups reported in the surveys: abandoned, budget-challenged, schedule-challenged, good performers and star performers.

“The most interesting group we found was the star performers,” says Gemino. “These projects over-performed on budget and scope and were present in both studies. We were the first to report this finding.”

A new benchmark for success

This new research, says Gemino, suggests that we need a new benchmark for what is reasonably achievable in IT projects. Based on his research, experienced project managers should be able to come within small margins (plus or minus seven percent) of their budget, schedule and scope targets on at least two out of every three projects.

“IT projects are as likely to over-perform as they are to fail, but we don’t seem to hear about over-performing projects” says Gemino. “Failures gather more attention, but our economy’s continued investment in IT suggests organizations must be getting good value. The star performers we found provide some justification for this ”

Perhaps more importantly, Gemino suggests that some of the attention placed on budget and schedule targets is misplaced. “The Standish Group has focused on hitting scope, schedule and budget targets,” explains Gemino. “But how much does this tell us about a project’s real performance? We need to place more focus on a project’s benefits and business value when we’re considering performance. Senior managers need to recognize this and organizations need to focus on creating value through projects.

“Simply hitting budget and target schedules does not mean the project adds value.”

PMPerspectives.org is a website which connects project managers and sponsors with project management researchers. Our mission is to understand and improve project management practices. The research team comprises Dr. Blaize Horner Reich and Dr. Andrew Gemino from Simon Fraser niversity, Canada and Dr. Chris Sauer from Oxford University, UK.

© Reich, Gemino, Sauer (2008)

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Yet Dr. Blaize Horner Reich’s research reveals that managing knowledge is important if the project has a high level of uncertainty, is particularly large or long, or is a critical part of the organization’s strategy.

Reich, of Simon Fraser University, and her colleagues have been investigating knowledge management – or its lack – in IT projects for the past three years. They have identified  four kinds of knowledge that are important to IT projects and 10 knowledge risks to manage. They have also  developed practical guidelines and practices for these 10 knowledge risks. (see follow-up PMPerspectives article called Managing Knowledge Risks)

“Many project managers say they routinely face knowledge-based risks but lack a formal process for acknowledging or mitigating these risks,” says Reich. “Our goal is to help project managers identify and manage them.”

During her research, Reich interviewed 15 senior project managers in Canada and New Zealand. She also took her findings on the road, presenting them to several academic, practitioner and CIO groups.

One finding was a lack of common understanding about the meaning of knowledge management within a project context. She suggests that knowledge management has three parts: creating and integrating knowledge, minimizing knowledge losses and filling knowledge gaps throughout a project’s duration.

Reich’s research reveals four types of knowledge that are important to IT project success:

1) Process – knowledge about the project structure, methodology, tasks and time frames. “This knowledge allows a team member to understand his or her part in the overall project, to understand what is expected and when it is to be delivered. It also allows a team or sub-team to self-organize.

2) Domain – knowledge of the industry, firm, current situation, problem/opportunity and potential technical solutions. This knowledge is spread widely within and outside the project team.

3) Institutional – knowledge of the history, power structure and values of the organization _ “what is really going on” – which is transferred by means of stories or anecdotes by organization insiders or observers.

4) Cultural – knowledge of how to manage team members of different cultures or from many disciplinary groups such as web designers, IT architects or organizational development experts.

Finally, Reich’s research revealed 10 knowledge risks to watch for:

1) Lessons not learned.

Few projects, says Reich, use the lessons learned from prior projects.

2) Team selection is flawed.

While project managers may know the kinds of skills they want to hire for, they often have difficulties meeting those requirements. “When the team selection process is flawed,” says Reich, “the project manager will not know what the team knows collectively or, more importantly, what it doesn’t know.”

3) Volatility in the governance team

During a project, there is gradual knowledge-building among the key stakeholders. The loss of any of these governance members results in a knowledge loss that may severely impact the project’s ability to succeed.

4) Lack of role knowledge among the governance team

Many senior executives do not have the experience or the training  needed to function as project sponsors and champions.

5) Inadequate knowledge integration

Integrating knowledge between the technical and business team members is important because together, they can create knowledge that is greater than the sum of the parts: a new idea, a shared understanding or an integrative model. Often, says Reich, one group may not know what the other is doing or what it knows.

6) Incomplete knowledge transfer

Knowledge transfer, often from vendor or consultant to the internal project members, is critical. Reich notes that although project managers may include in the project plan activities to support knowledge transfer, they often have no objective way to measure how effectively these activities were performed.

7) Exit of Team Members

While all project managers know that losing team members results in knowledge gaps, few create a plan to mitigate such losses.

Lack of a knowledge map

People on a team need to have a “map” of each other’s skills and knowledge, so they can get help and give help when needed.

9) Loss between phases

Team composition often changes from phase to phase. This generates significant risk that knowledge from one phase won’t be adequately transferred to the next phase.

10) Failure to learn

Lessons learned during a project are rarely satisfactorily captured, either during or at the end of a project. This topic is covered in another PMPerspectives article, called Applying Lessons Learned to a Project.

“By sharing this information,” says Reich, “we aim to empower project managers to better manage these knowledge risks and improve IT project performance and organizational project competence.”

PMPerspectives.org is a website which connects project managers and sponsors with project management researchers. Our mission is to understand and improve project management practices. The research team comprises Dr. Blaize Horner Reich and Dr. Andrew Gemino from Simon Fraser niversity, Canada and Dr. Chris Sauer from Oxford University, UK.

© Reich, Gemino, Sauer (2008)

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A new study from the United Kingdom however, finds that there is a statistically significant relationship between the two, and pinpoints the leadership dimensions that most influence a project’s success.

Researchers Linda Geoghegan of Electronic Data Systems and Professor Victor Dulewicz of the Henley Business School at the University of Reading hope that organizations can exploit this knowledge to improve project outcomes.

Using a project-success questionnaire and a leadership-dimensions questionnaire, the researchers set out to examine leadership in a large U.K. company. In all, 52 respondents (81 percent of the company’s project managers) completed both questionnaires.

The researchers divided their study into two groups. They administered leadership dimensions questionnaire (LDQ) to project managers who had worked on projects with budgets greater than £350,000 and gave a project-success questionnaire (PSQ) to project sponsors for projects of a similar size.

The PSQ comprised two key themes: the project and the client, covering 12 common measures of success, such as whether the project was completed on time and on budget, project performance, client satisfaction and the project’s impact on organizational effectiveness.

Leadership traits on the LDQ included seven emotional competencies, five managerial competencies, and three intellectual competencies. Of these 15 possible leadership factors, the researchers found that eight had an impact on project management success:

• Critical analysis
• Self-awareness
• Sensitivity
• Influencing
• Motivation
• Manage resources
• Empowering
• Developing

The researchers compared the results of both questionnaires, looking for correlations between satisfactory project outcomes and good leadership.

Interestingly, they discovered that project managers scored higher than the norm for leadership traits related to conscientiousness, sensitivity and self-awareness. The researchers suggest that these high scores may result from the project managers’ exposure to leadership activities such as influencing difficult stakeholders and their need to obtain commitment from senior management in order to move their projects forward.

The project managers scored relatively lower on vision, strategic perspective and achieving, with the vision score being statistically significantly lower than the norm. The researchers suggest that the project managers scored poorly in this area because they are never involved in setting an organization’s vision but instead focus on implementing projects that fulfill a pre-defined vision.

Overall, the research reveals several leadership dimensions that contribute to successful projects. The most significant dimensions were managing resources, empowering, developing and motivating. For example, project managers who rated highly for ‘solving problems’ on the PSQ also demonstrated leadership strengths in empowering and developing their colleagues, were able to manage resources efficiently and effectively and were also highly motivated. Surprisingly, these project managers did not score highly on critical analysis, although the overall survey group did score well in this area when compared to the norm.

There was also a significant correlation between the leadership dimensions that measured the ability to manage resources, empower and bring a project in on budget. “This is not surprising considering the relationship between managing resources and managing the budget,” says Geoghegan.

She and Dulewicz say their research clearly demonstrates that leadership dimensions that are directly linked to successful projects should be the focus of project manager training.

“It’s important that senior management are aware that leadership competencies do have an impact on the personnel with whom they work and ultimately, on the success of their change programs,” says Dulewicz.  He suggests that project leaders could be selected based on their leadership profile as measured by a proven questionnaire such as the Leadership Dimensions Questionnaire (LDQ).

Because the research study involved relatively few respondents and just one company, the researchers say further and broader studies must be undertaken before transferring any relationships between leadership dimensions and project success to other industries.

Contributing authors: Linda Geoghegan and Victor Dulewicz

PMPerspectives.org is a website which connects project managers and sponsors with project management researchers. Our mission is to understand and improve project management practices. The research team comprises Dr. Blaize Horner Reich and Dr. Andrew Gemino from Simon Fraser niversity, Canada and Dr. Chris Sauer from Oxford University, UK.

© Reich, Gemino, Sauer (2010)

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Here is the list of elements that the group compiled:

1. People who can manage relationships with customers and partners: If you’re going to open up your organization to ideas from the outside, then you need“agile and people who have the soft skills of emotional intelligence” who can deal effectively with the idiosyncrasies of executives from other corporate cultures.
2. A willingness to accept that all of the smart people do not work for your company: At the same time, to be successful at open innovation, your organization’s culture must not only accept this idea intellectually, but also have a willingness to seek out these outside ideas. There’s a subtle difference here: acceptance (passive) versus seeking outside ideas (active). Without this drive, open innovation will end up being nothing more than a platitude and a “nice to do,” but will probably gain little traction within your firm.
3. An understanding that failures are opportunities to learn, and a willingness to reward those efforts and that way of learning. This idea is pretty radical for most organizations. Just think about what typically happens when a senior-level executive in charge of a major strategic project fails to implement it successfully. He or she becomes a pariah, overlooked for future promotions, or worse yet, laid off the minute the economy goes into a downturn. As Stefan points out, “Failure is a way of life for companies that pursue innovation seriously, and a leader’s response has a huge effect on company culture and, therefore, on future projects.” Celebrate failure and learn from it!
4. A willingness to help employees to build the knowledge and understanding of how an idea or technology becomes a profitable business. This can be accomplished via a job rotation program that could incorporate partners and customers, Stefan suggests. The people who develop new ideas and technologies tend to be scientists or technologists, with little idea about the dynamics of modern business. In order to support and extend your company’s open innovation efforts, they need to have at least a basic understanding of the dynamics of business growth, because it’s likely they will be on the front lines as relationships are extended across company lines in the early stages of open innovation partnerships.
5. Dismiss the Not Invented Here syndrome: “If we make the best use of internal and external ideas, we will win. We don’t need to own everything ourselves and keep it under tight wraps. We should profit from others’ use of our innovation process, and we should buy others’ intellectual property whenever it advances our own business model.” This, too, sounds simple, but it requires a major sea change in thinking. Most large companies have legal counsel that is already working overtime on intellectual property issues. These corporate attorneys tend to be of the mindset that the company needs to own its IP, and it discourages openness and sharing. As such, they are like corporate antibodies, and open innovation “looks” like a virus to them. Youe CEO can’t just talk open innovation; he or she must have the cojones to back up that commitment when internal turf wars break out over thorny issues like IP.
6. A willingness to strive for balance between internal and external R&D. “External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value,”Stefan explains. Intellectual property, whether it’s developed internally or acquired externally via open innovation and other forms of partnership, must eventually have a bottom-line payoff for your company. Otherwise, it’s wasted effort that isn’t sustainable.
7. Willingness to be a risk taker rather than being risk averse. Common sense should be used to balance the risk level.
8. Accepting that open innovation does raise intellectual property issues. “Your legal team can choose to either play offense or defense. Hopefully, they’ll adopt a constructive approach that supports progress toward the company’s business development goals.” When I attended the CoDev conference earlier this year, IP was an issue that came up repeatedly in speeches and networking discussions. This is a new area for many companies; therefore, expect that it will take time to work through these issues and gain alignment on how to handle them.
9. Understanding that open innovation requires open communication. “Work around confidentiality and intellectual property issues to create an environment based on trust.” Here, a well-crafted non-disclosure agreement can help to set an agreed-upon body of ground rules so that both partners can be completely open with each other. If one party holds back, neither one wins. As several CoDev speakers pointed out, you need to focus not only upon inter-company communication, but on keeping your own troops up-to-date on what you’re doing and why. It’s an ongoing process which you neglect at your peril. If you don’t proactively communicate to your employees, they will fill in the gaps with their own assumptions – which are more than likely inaccurate and misleading.
10. Not needing to always be first. “Building a better business model is better than getting to market first.”

I’m just starting to read The Open Innovation Revolution, but am already impressed with Stefan’s thinking. He’s not some ivory tower prognosticator, but a relentless networker who gets out there and develops relationships with key open innovation movers like Thoen and encourages discussion on his Linkedin group. In other words, Stefan’s approach is very inclusive; by seeking out many voices, he has developed a deeper understanding of the emerging strategies and practices of open innovation than anyone else I know.

If your company is thinking about implementing an open innovation strategy, then The Open Innovation Revolution is a must read!

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Why innovation is the key component for dealing with the new economy. Six out of ten new businesses fail. Unemployment isn’t getting any better. The housing market is bracing for another bump in the road next quarter. And, as if the cake needed icing, the FDIC reports that about half of America’s banks — including the four largest — are on the bubble, and may fail by the end of the year. As serious people, at equally serious companies, search for ways to prosper — or just survive — in this bleak economic environment, I urge organization leadership to focus on a principle that is often overlooked in hard times: innovation. The equation is simple: innovate or perish. At every major crossroads in the history of American business, innovation has been the driving force behind the companies that made it through the bad times. After all, as we all look for the hot new product or the ‘killer app’ in our respective industries and professions, we tend to overlook the fact that someone has to create or invent it first. Whether it is a multinational corporation or an entrepreneurial startup, innovation can help a business launch, recover or overcome even the greatest of competitive pressures. If you are a manufacturer, distributor, service provider, supplier, retailer or even a not-for-profit, the pressures of today’s new economy are worse than anything the business world has seen for decades. So, how do you get through it? Look at the companies that are prospering, despite the economy. Apple, Ford, Microsoft and others didn’t stand pat as the economy crashed. They reinvented themselves and their product and service lines. After falling behind to Japanese competition amid the GM bailouts, Ford went back to the drawing board on their line of cars and emerged stronger than before, having one of their best quarters ever. It wasn’t layoffs or the mitigation of risk that accomplished that. It was innovation, creating something new to satisfy its customer base. Companies need to expand their notion of what, exactly, is meant by “innovation.” When people think of innovation, many of them think of simple brainstorming for ideas. This is a fallacy. Brainstorming is just one small element of a much larger process. Innovation is NOT a tactic. Rather, it’s an ongoing process and “if businesspeople follow the right steps, they can achieve innovation regularly — not just when someone slips on the soap in the shower and the next killer app just comes to them as they put ice on the bruise on their head. But, how does one develop that process. That’s the key. It’s all about building sustainable innovation — not just to come up with the big idea to pull you through the next quarter, or year, but on into the future. I recommend 10 rules, or imperatives, to govern that process. These are not only doable, but necessary for survival in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Whether you represent a brand owner or supplier you know that recessions cut into budgets, and often the first thing to go is the R&D budget. Sure, patents are a controllable expense. But remember this: innovation is the secret to outperforming the competition.  When the going gets tough, cutting innovation for the sake of short-term expense control erodes our competitive edge and only our competitors stand to benefit. As stated in Robert’s Rules of Innovation, the key imperatives to creation of a successful, lasting innovation strategy are:

1. Inspire
2. No Risk, No Innovation
3. New Product Development
4. Ownership
5. Value Creation
6. Accountability
7. Training and Coaching
8. Idea Management
9. Observe and Measure; and
10. Net Result and Reward

These 10 rules are the cornerstone of innovation programs that deliver profitable growth through innovation, he said. “Like the original ‘Robert’s Rules of Order,’ understanding ‘Roberts Rules of Innovation’ will help you intelligently create order from the chaos imposed by today’s misguided slashing of R&D budgets. But where to begin?  Start with the question: How inspired is your organization? From the CEO’s suite to the rank and file, does your company encourage inspiration and welcome vision across the organization? Sustainable inspiration is vital to continued growth of the organization, but you must first identify its source within your organization and channel and nurture that wellspring. Where does the inspiration exist within your organization? In my experience, inspiration extends from the CEO to the customer service help desk, from the factory floor to the retail showroom, from the longest-tenured employee to the newest hire and all the way to the customer visiting your web site. No one in the organization deserves a pass from thinking creatively about how to improve the company, its products or its processes. Seven Steps for Inspiration that Builds Innovation Inspiration remains the spark that drives the creative process. As your organization works towards its goal of profitable, sustainable innovation, I suggest these seven tips: Make Inspiration An Imperative In Robert’s Rules of Innovation, Brands wrote that successful innovation in an organization is fueled by many imperatives: leadership, ownership, accountability, risk and reward and value creation, for example. None is more important, though, than inspiration. An inspired leader engages the team, and heightens chance of success. Identify and Empower a Chief Innovation Officer The processes of inspiration and innovation need a champion, someone who helps develop the ideas, fosters an environment that encourages creativity, camaraderie and esprit de corps, and steers the organization toward greatness. The CIO-not to be confused with the chief information officer-is the inspiration quarterback, the team leader who has the authority to drive projects through the pipelines. Set Shared Goals Where do you want your organization to go today-and tomorrow? Though the CIO is the leader (after the CEO or other top executive), the team must embrace the challenge as a shared goal to be met together. Create the Culture Inspiration is bigger than an individual; it permeates the organization. Successful inspiration that fuels innovation transcends hierarchy and silos. It’s not “just” the CIO’s job. It needs to be embraced by everyone. Together, the team enjoys success and learns from the lessons of failure. And Not Just for the Near-Term Life and business are littered with uncompleted tasks. Inspiration that leads to innovation is a project that must be seen through. Observe, Measure and Know Inspiration-like innovation itself -must be measured to gauge performance and ensure success. Each project team must have a leader who shepherds projects to their respective waypoints and end goals.Create processes and milestones and establish checkpoints to weigh accomplishments. Never Relent Inspiration is a life-long calling. My old boss, Herb Kohler, the inspired, ingenious chairman of the plumbing fixture company that bears his name, still heads his company’s monthly new product development meetings-that is, when he’s not collaborating with legendary golf course designer Pete Dye. At a time when his peers are kicking back and enjoying the fruits of their labors, Kohler remains committed to his company’s NPD and the inspiration behind it. Inspiration and Your Culture of Innovation The importance of inspiration in creating and/or enhancing your culture of profitable, sustainable innovation cannot be underestimated. Remember, that inspiration is but one of the imperatives that serve as the foundation of your innovation initiative. said Brands. These rules must be understood, implemented, maintained and fiercely protected in order for your innovation program to succeed — even in the face of tremendous economic pressure to cut costs. For your business to out-maneuver the competition — like winners such as Apple, Ford and Microsoft continue to do — we must challenge ourselves to value and foster sustainable innovation. Source

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