project management - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

elevated city train station There are many examples in the field of construction where the final cost of public infrastructure has far exceeded the initial budget. In this article, we will comment on some of the most striking cases of Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and how adequate project management could have solved the budgetary problems derived from poor administration of the resources.

Santiago Calatrava is a Spanish architect born in the early 50's in the city of Valencia. His main creations include large urban structures that redefine the landscape and the city environment. In the beginning, his work begun to reap a lot of success in Spain, especially in his home town of Valencia. Now his work can be seen in European capitals and other parts of the world.

As a result of his brilliant career, he has received awards of international esteem such as the Prince of Asturias Award (1999) or the National Architecture Prize (2005).

However, his career has also been littered with controversial media related to the low functionality and high overhead of his buildings. We will review some examples.

Ground zero station (New York)

After the fateful attacks of 11 of September of 2001, the City council of New York and of New Jersey wanted to construct a new terminal station designed to connect the PATH to the New York City Subway.

The original concept of the project was a structure that evoked the wings of a Phoenix. In the same way a phoenix resurges from its ashes, New York City in particular and the United States would be able to re-construct from the personal and institutional damage produced by the attacks.

Originally, the Valencian architect presented an estimated project of 1.8 billion dollars. After a series of extensions and extra costs, the construction ended considerably later than planned and with an extra cost that almost doubles the original forecasts.

For its final cost, it earned the "honorable" title of being the most expensive station in the world. Compared to New York’s famous Grand Central Station, after taking into account the original budget of this station and adjusted for inflation in the years since its construction began, Calatrava’s station has doubled the cost of Grand Central Station.

On the other hand, if we compare this with other public infrastructures, such as the George Washington Bridge, known as the most crossed bridge in the world in terms of people and vehicles, we see that it presented an overrun of approximately four times more. Of course, for these calculations we have adjusted the cost of the bridge for inflation.

It could be argued that a higher cost might be justified by greater utility or the expectation of obtaining a higher economic return from its use. Analyzing the specific case, the New York station built by Calatrava does not meet this criterion.

Calatrava’s station amasses a daily passage of approximately 42,000 passengers, which is hugely contrasted by the 208,000 that transit through Grand Central Station.

Taking into account the data previously used stating that Calatrava’s station is double the cost of Grand Central Station, we can deduce that the daily cost per passenger ends up being approximately 10 times more.

In short, this project, despite resulting in a spectacular monument, has failed to meet the needs of customers and has not respected the original budgets.

How to solve these problems through project management?

Proper project management has much to contribute in cases such as these. Some of the tasks that a project team can perform through the appropriate systems are:

Construct realistic budgets, that satisfy the needs of the project without extra costs.

Carry out useful projects for the intended end result. Synchronizing the complexity of a project to the practical needs. The correct alignment between the project and the needs of the clients is what guarantees the final satisfaction and allows for entering issues into the budget that are going to imply an added value in the face of customer satisfaction.

Make constant measurements of the budgetary status, to ensure that, throughout the evolution of the project, it continues to be respected. If this is not the case, detecting deviations early will allow the appropriate corrective measures to be taken.

Getting a project to have the desired reach not only in utility and functionality, but over time. Selecting the materials and methods of construction that obtain a satisfactory product for the client, also in terms of its usefulness.

Predict possible difficulties or risks that may arise during the execution of the project, and take the necessary measures to mitigate their effects or to look for alternatives in case they arise.

Provide solidity and reliability for the company during this project and for future projects. A company that fulfills its word in terms of budgets and quality of the final product supplied has guaranteed customer satisfaction and a greater brand image that will in turn attract more clients in the future.

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Throughout the history of mankind, there have been various ecological catastrophes that have shaken public opinion because of the serious effects they have had on natural resources and human health. Surely some of these would come to mind: The Exxon Valdez disaster, which affected the coasts of Alaska, Fukushima or Chernobyl and their respective nuclear accidents; or the depletion of the Aral Sea to 10% of its original size due to canal diversions by the Soviet Union for irrigation purposes.

With proper project management, such accidents or catastrophes in most cases could have been avoided, as we will discuss in this article. By using one of these real cases, you will understand how most of the problems that arise and that we may think are inevitable, can be anticipated, managed and avoided in a more effective way, thereby reducing impacts and their consequences on our environment.

Water pollution in Flint, Michigan

A particular case that may sound familiar recently affected the residents of Flint, Michigan. The economic crisis that has hit much of the planet during the past decade was also felt in Flint, which faced a huge financial debt. To try to reduce its debt, it was decided that a new source of drinking water was to be used. Instead of bringing it from Detroit, it was sourced from Lake Huron, enabling the city to save about $2 million a year, which, considering the situation at that time, would mean some relief. However, to bring it to the city from this new source took time - about two years -, therefore a new source had to be selected so that the residents could continue to have fresh drinking water. It was then decided that the Flint River, which practically crossed the city, would be the solution, which was then implemented in 2014.

However, this was not the solution, but rather the source of their problems. After its first introduction, residents complained of its salty smell and taste. Moreover, the bacterium E. coli was detected and the water analysis determined very high levels of carcinogenic substances and trihalomethanes. As if all this wasn’t problematic already, there was an additional fear that the General Motors factory would have to stop using the water because it was corroding parts of its facility. The water from the river Flint was transferred through pipes that contained lead, which dissolved into the water. This can generate problems, specifically with the nervous and cognitive systems, known as lead poisoning, one of the causes that historians argue to explain the fall of the Roman Empire.

A management possibility for avoidance

Could all of these problems been avoided? It seems that the obvious answer is yes. It is true that the causes were external, with the crisis and the financial situation of the city council. However, a necessary step that was neglected was taking into account the characteristics of the pipes that were carrying the water from the river to the city: these pipes were about a hundred years old and heavily corroded. All of these elements should have been considered and taken into account during the first phase of the risk management process: identification. Focusing only on one element, such as the need to save money, and ignoring the rest was the likely cause of the disaster.

Once this identification process was concluded, both the pipes’ age and lead content should have been observed in the next phase of analysis. In the third phase (evaluation) the magnitude of the risks should have been prioritized.

In Flint, a greater importance was attached to the economic issue rather than to human health, when it should have been otherwise.

Once this process is done, next should be the treatment phase: what can be done to avoid impacts that can be considered catastrophic? And here the process and control of corrosion would have cost between $80 and $100 per day. With that cost and planning they would have saved all the difficulties in the aftermath. If it had been done, it would only be the last phase, the monitoring phase, a simple verification that the systems worked during the time that the works took place.

Due to the consequences of the disaster, for two years Flint’s inhabitants have had to endure non-potable water and between 6,000 and 12,000 of the residents have developed excessive levels of lead in their blood. All this to end up reconnecting the city to the Detroit water network, the same initial situation. This is a great example of extremely serious problems that should be avoided using risk management techniques and tools.

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vector human resource management concept in flat style This is one of the ways to assign a certain task to a worker. Unfortunately, it is among the most frequent, but the least effective.

Imagine that something similar happened in a hospital. A patient who has suffered an accident and has fractured a leg comes to the emergency room. Who should care for this patient? Any doctor, who is free at the time? Or would it be better for the patient to be taken care of by a specialist in trauma and fractures?

In this example, the answer is clear. However, it is not straight forward when allocating resources and workers to projects in a company.

Allocation of resources: key to efficiency

Appropriately allocating tasks will ensure that each worker is engaged in projects for which he or she is more skilled or more experienced. By ensuring appropriate allocation, it is possible to improve the efficiency of the company, obtaining better results in less time. The result is greater profits for the company and for workers at all levels.

Economic benefits. The quality of the results will be greater, since the project has been executed by a specialist. In the example above, there will probably be better patient survival rates and better functional outcomes (less pain, faster recuperation, etc.) if the physician is a specialist.

Increased confidence. The achievement of good results is in itself an outstanding value for obtaining new clients. Returning to the example, if the patient is satisfied, he is likely to recommend the clinic to other patients who present the same problems, which, if they have the possibility, will choose the option they consider the best. Likewise, if a company satisfies its customers, they will become a source of publicity within their professional sector.

Temporary benefits. It is possible that a specialist and a layman in this instance will achieve the same result in the end, but it will probably take a lot longer for the layman. This additional time incurs an expense in the form of opportunity cost: the additional time dedicated to the task by the lay worker could have been used to perform another task, therefore losing both time and money. In addition, the fact that a worker who has no experience is engaged in performing a certain task, increases the risk that they will not be able to complete the work on time. This is another reason why a suitably qualified worker should be assigned to each appropriate task.

Benefits for workers. Focusing on tasks for which you have prior knowledge and preparation, allows you to obtain satisfactory results for yourself, which allows personal self-realization and decreases stress levels.

Assignment of tasks: aspects to consider

What aspects should be considered when assigning a task to a particular worker?

Skills. This is the most important thing. Does the person we are going to assign to perform this task have the necessary skills to be able to execute the project completely and successfully? If the answer is yes, there is no doubt, this is the right person for this task

Experience. Has the person to whom we will be assigning the project carried out similar tasks previously? If the answer is yes, you will have valuable experience that you can use in the realization of this new project. In addition, it will present less uncertainty and more confidence, since they have managed in the field previously, therefore should require less support from management and colleagues. In this instance, experience could be more important than skills. If a worker is qualified to perform a task but has no experience, he or she may still need to receive some support during their first steps, to become fully comfortable.

Interest. Difficult to measure but very necessary for the success of a task. A worker may have qualifications in a particular area and also have experience, but that does not mean that he is motivated. Motivation is fundamental to be able to perform a task properly and be able to respond to new problems that arise during the execution of a project. Therefore, we must talk to the workers before assigning them a project and, not only assess their training and experience, but also take into account their motivation.

Cost. Using overqualified workers to perform relatively simple tasks is to misuse resources and imply an unnecessary expense. Going back to the example at the beginning of the article, it would be like occupying the specialist surgeon in organizing the appointments or the programming of the operating room. They are administrative tasks that can be performed by the surgeon, but it is preferable that the management team takes care of this to allow the surgeon to utilize their skill set and experience in the most effective way. In the case of personnel with less specialized qualifications, their salary will be lower and therefore imply a lower cost.

Geographic location. There are more and more tasks that can be carried out remotely, allowing the most qualified or experienced personnel to be hired for a specific role, regardless of their geographical location and without having to pay transportation costs. However, there are tasks that still require the physical presence of workers. Therefore, the economic, temporary and personal cost of moving a worker to a specific place to carry out a project, or selecting another worker who is already in the location but may be less qualified must be weighed up.

Availability. Obviously, to assign a task to a particular worker, they must be available. However, the fact that they are available does not necessarily imply that the task has to be assigned to the first worker that is present. Checking the availability of workers should ensure that new tasks are assigned fairly, however also making sure that the workforce aren’t being either underutilized or overworked.

In order to keep track of the degree of utilization of the talent of a company or a project, it is essential to have efficient mechanisms for collecting information and reporting. The resource management module of ITM Platform allows you to check the use in a portfolio view, so that you can detect overlaps in the use of resources by different project managers.

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Juan Delgado

Blogger

ITM Platform

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Even 16 years into the 21st century, there is a very common story about companies that are not leveraging the wealth of information on employee performance to their advantage. Typically, these organizations prefer their employees to stay on their desks for longer hours as a measure of productivity, motivation and commitment. In these cases, poor project management is cured by merely expanding the scope with more and more time effort.

Another sign of disrespect to performance information is a killing culture of long meetings, or even of just too frequent meetings for any topic that requires any kind of interaction –it doesn’t really matter whether you have 5 one hour meetings or one deadly, heart-melting 4 hour meeting: your work will be frozen just the same. Sometimes, organizations that try to be agile fall into this trap.

If your company is suffering from this kind of counterproductive culture that kills productivity, there are basically two ways you can change it.

Become a Dane (yes, it’s unlikely)

Your name is Richard Heart? Change it to Rikkard Hjertsen. Move your company’s HQ to Denmark, where people finish their workday regularly before 5 and still manage to get their stuff done. They say the trick is simply trust in the work completed.

Or turn Dane in your own territory. Netflix did a similar thing in 2012 when they abolished the notion of holidays for an unlimited time off policy of “freedom and responsibility”. But there’s a wicked angle to it: after just x months into this major shift, the HR manager who coined the new holiday culture was fired, and many employees are actually taking less time off to prove their commitment. Back to square one. In other words: when unnuanced, major policy shifts are likely to have unintended consequences. And they can be really hard to heal.

Other companies have been more realistic about their Danification: Spanish utility company Iberdrola simply shuts down their offices after 3 pm and forces their employees to stay focused for seven-hour shifts starting at 8 am. For a Spanish company, it’s a big deal, and so far it’s worked well.

Be smart about your people processes

The opposite way is to actually be smart about what I call your people processes.

People processes are all the organizational flows in virtue of which you assign responsibilities, allocate tasks, measure completion and (what is often overlooked) get back to people to make sure they understand what their value contribution is.

You will have to be attentive to all the nuances in your company, and treat people differently corresponding to their personalities, working styles, objectives and effectiveness.

There is no simple treat for smart people processes, but here are some recommendations that can help you find the right path.

People processes start SMART

SMART objectives can align project management and people management processes. Treat your employees with goals that are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-bound!

Recruit objective-oriented talent

Try hard to recruit people who prefer to work based on objectives. Of course, this is easier said than done; but some things that you should be looking at in the recruitment process are resumes that display clear achievement narratives; interviewees who are energized by challenges; and employees who don’t mind taking some work home during high peak but are intelligent enough to prioritize properly.

FIFO, not FILO

Build business dependencies to reward employees who come in first and get the job done. With no surveillance into the processes, it’s easy to transform First In, First Out personalities into First In, Last Out burnout promises.

Identify critical data

This is the essential resource management data for project management:

Allocation gaps: Of the total amount of man-hours estimated for a project, how many of them have been assigned to your resources?
Utilization: How many man-hours are currently assigned to each of your resources? Are any of them currently having a problem of underutilization or overutilization?

An important problem of resource management data is its exhaustiveness and reliability. In other words, you need to be sure that when a resource appears as underutilized, he or she is not actually working on tasks that haven’t been registered.

That’s why you should make sure that the project management software you use meets three conditions:

It allows you to view and compare allocation gaps and utilization stats so you can pivot your assignments and identify bottlenecks
It is properly enforced and used by all project managers and team members
It allows for a program and portfolio vision, so you scale utilization at the organization level

It’s really easy to adopt ITM Platform to meet all three conditions:

Easy adoption. Our SaaS deployment, easy rollout and licensing policies allow to have project managers, portfolio owners and team members on the same platform. Additionally, with the ITM Platform Teambot team members can report their efforts directly from their Slack chatbox.
ITM Platform is an industry leader in Project and Portfolio Management.
Our resource management functionality combines allocation gaps and utilization statistics in a unified vision at the portfolio level.

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Iterate on your data

Of course, you will have to look back at your project management data and ask a few questions, which can be addressed in project post-mortems or at a more strategic level.

You basically want to know why your performance forecasts aren’t met.

For example, you may have an average 35% excess between the estimated hours and the final effort devoted to a project. But unless you look into it with more detail, you won’t be able to know whether the problem lies in:

Low productivity of task and project members
Unforeseen events
Unrealistic expectations
Or a combination of all

You can build several HR analytics into this evaluation process, and the layer can be as complex as you want it to be. However, it’s good to keep in mind that your human resources are people and you will need to treat them with flexibility: beware of decisions based solely on data!

For example, you could start by looking at the estimation accuracy per worker, per type of project or per project manager, and start creating baseline metrics. This could then help you better compile requirements and tune time estimations to how your experts actually work.

Go beyond your usual toolkit: Social Network Analysis and others

Utilization and allocation gap metrics usually allow to identify bottlenecks, but they may not be enough. You may be interested in supplementing them with analysis of how your organization actually communicates. For example, a social network analysis based on your reporting procedures will allow to view who are the formal gatekeepers in your organization; while an empirical study of real information flows will allow you to see who is actually blocking or facilitating the processes.

Have you ever used other type of analysis and metrics? What’s your smart approach to HR analytics, and how does it contribute to improving your project management processes?

Jaime González-Capitel

Senior Content Strategist

ITM Platform

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ITM Platform has just released a brand new app for Slack focused on collaborative work management. With ITM Platform Teambot, ITM Platform users can:

Recall their projects and tasks
Report their hours
Report follow-ups in percentages
Add comments to tasks and projects

We really believe ITM Platform Teambot is an interesting case study on how to promote SaaS adoption with smart integrations targeted at improving the experience of our user base.

Enterprise software is the toughest of choices

One of the most common challenges for CTOs and enterprise technology owners lies in how to select a software vendor. Experience says technically great products do not necessarily perform better, while employees tend to stick to what they know.

I don’t think there’s an easy roadmap for choosing good software, nor even an adequate personality that solidly indicates a good decisor: the insightful CTO that evaluates dozens of options before selecting his technical champion can be exactly as wrong as the SME CEO that chooses a vendor based on his guts and contacts.

The secret is in the users

Very often, when a product doesn’t deliver what it promised the problem tends to lie in management, not in the technology: workers, workflows and technology are disconnected.

This is particularly important for project management solutions, that tend to have an asymmetrical use among different stakeholders: while project managers use the most advanced features, team members tend to be bugged down by boring and allegedly unnecessary reporting procedures that don’t add any value to their work. In that context, any friction will kill you. I can’t tell you a more common failure story in project management governance.

In other words: in a software-centric organization, you can’t escape treating your employees as users. The second step is to address user needs as that of internal customers: calculate software adoption as a major component of your technological ROI, as many experts are already doing:

72% of CTOs consider adoption as the main driver for successful SaaS implementation (Sandhill)
43% of CTOs recognize the threat of “shadow IT” and the use of non-validated software (Forrester)
80% of users abandon enterprise mobile apps after a single use. (Boston technology)

So here’s our own experience for treating users as our major customers.

How to get your employees to use project management reporting tools

As any other SaaS company, at ITM Platform we know that if we rely solely on user’s good will for internal reporting purposes, any friction will disengage them. Neither we nor the company admins we work with want that to happen.

How ITM Platform Teambot solves the problem

Go to where the user is

Instead of forcing the user to log into our system merely to report hours or progress, we have chosen to go where our users already are. In other words, we are choosing to support our standalone product with our own app for Slack, because we believe that it may turn into THE tool for enterprise communications and productivity.

Make life easier

Once ITM Platform Teambot is authenticated, a team member will not need to enter into ITM Platform regularly: he or she will be empowered to execute all reporting actions directly from Slack.

By merely typing “/itmplatform list projects”, anybody can see what projects they have been assigned to on ITM Platform. The action takes abot 4 seconds and no browsing action.

What’s more, if you want to log in to ITM Platform to do more complex actions you can do so by merely clicking on the project or task names: they’re all functional hyperlinks!

Productize user experience

The workaround that we have developed with ITM Platform Teambot has allowed us to productize user experience. In fact, what started as an improvement for our existing customers has become the most powerful project management app for Slack that we know of.

Visit Slack’s app directory to add ITM Platform Teambot now or request a demo to find out more on how to make ITM Platform work for your company!

Jaime González-Capitel

Senior Content Strategist

ITM Platform

Ground zero station (New York)

Other monuments by Calatrava with similar problems

How to solve these problems through project management?

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A management possibility for avoidance

Receive the latest blogs directly into your inbox

Allocation of resources: key to efficiency

Assignment of tasks: aspects to consider

Receive the latest blogs directly into your inbox

Become a Dane (yes, it’s unlikely)

Be smart about your people processes

People processes start SMART

Recruit objective-oriented talent

FIFO, not FILO

Identify critical data

Iterate on your data

Go beyond your usual toolkit: Social Network Analysis and others

Receive the latest blogs directly into your inbox

Enterprise software is the toughest of choices

The secret is in the users

How to get your employees to use project management reporting tools

How ITM Platform Teambot solves the problem

Receive the latest blogs directly into your inbox