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Modern project management focuses on delivery of solutions

by Kathy Hagood
Brevard Technical Journal

Project management, which began to emerge as a discipline in the 1950s, is going through a major evolution on the Space Coast and across the rest of the country.

Its techniques are being refined and organizational discipline tightened to better follow them.

That's because both business and government leaders have come to understand that to compete globally, it's essential to follow modern project management best practices, said Dr. Tim Kotnour, an associate professor in the University of Central Florida's industrial engineering and management systems department.

"What's driving the trend is a tight labor market and tight budgets," Kotnour said. "There's not a lot of cash out there."

Kotnour teaches in the on-site graduate engineering management program at Kennedy Space Center, and is considered a project management guru by mid-level managers and senior level executives at the spaceport and beyond.

In addition to educating graduate degree students, Kotnour provides research, technical assistance and training to commercial and government organizations. During the past 10 years, he's partnered with NASA KSC, the U.S. Air Force, The Boeing Co., Harris Corp., SAIC, Siemens Power Generation and Walt Disney World.

While NASA has taken hits by federal auditors and the media for its project management and accounting practices, the organization's failures are not uncommon both in government and industry, Kotnour said. Most businesses, even industry leaders, have trouble spots.

"When it comes to project management, we're struggling with success rates," Kotnour said. "We're still learning how to instill accountability and discipline. Businesses still haven't figured it all out yet."

It's only been in the past few years that many organizations have created project management departments.

According to national studies only 30 percent of projects meet cost, schedule, technical performance and customer satisfaction measures, Kotnour said. Part of the problem is growing pains, because budgets were not so tight in the past and organizations were less inclined to look at the big picture when planning.

Today a more holistic view of business budget strategies is taking hold.

"There's a move to focus on the delivery of solutions versus the delivering of technology," Kotnour said. "It's not just about the phones and the computers, it's about solutions to problems and achieving outcomes."

And organizations are also coming to focus on creating a synergistic portfolio of projects vs. an assembly of hodgepodge projects. And projects chosen must be directly tied to the business strategy.

It's a challenge for organizational leaders to sift through worthy projects being proposed to determine which will provide the right mix.

"There are scarce dollars and resources. It's about strategically allocating them," Kotnour said. "It's not just that we can only afford 20 projects, they need to be the right 20 projects."

While that sounds easy enough in theory, letting a popular pet project fall by the wayside because it doesn't fit the mix is painful. It can be difficult for scientists, engineers and technicians to turn their hearts and minds from projects that don't fit the overall business strategy.

"You have to have the budget to do a project," Kotnour said. "Negotiating which projects are chosen can be a fine art of conflict resolution."

When business strategies undergo major changes, numerous projects may have to be dropped. But when projects are dropped midstream, it tends to demoralize workers by making them feel they have wasted their efforts. That's why it's important for organizational leaders to carefully consider their business strategies.

And once business strategies and projects are decided upon, some leeway must be built into the process.

"We have to be driven toward outcomes and following in the direction the organization is seeking to go," Kotnour said. "But at the same time, we don't want discipline to push aside creative innovation. It's a difficult balance."

For more information on project management, visit the Project Management Institute at
www.pmi.org.