RNC Global Projects

Stories from the front line – a Biotech industry study

I’m truly excited to publish this case study which is to be the first in an occasional series entitled ‘Stories from the front line’.

Case studies are useful reference tools for PMs. They allow us to examine and better understand a project path, in effect, what happened and why.  They also allow us to analyse and identify real-life, real-time problems, and in doing so,  the how, why and ’what the?’ questions are more easily isolated &  unravelled.  Of course no project, program or portfolio follows the same path, but the hindsights of thoroughly researched case studies enable us to implement effective solutions and  improve best practice strategies.  I encourage you to comment on this biotech study – send me your thoughts!  read more

Projects – Have They Become Too Operationalized?

Not surprisingly, this is one of my favourite topics of thought at the moment, and I was recently inspired to put forward some of those thoughts to a new “members only” service offered by the Academy of Management.  It’s an innovative online tool called AOM Connect, allowing members from around the world to “connect, collaborate & contribute”. read more

Rise Of The Sponsor & Fall Of The PM

One of the things that has baffled me of late is the increasing demand PM’s are placing on sponsors. Yes, we’ve always needed sponsors and word travels really quickly when we find a good one.  read more

Spinning My Webinar – It’s All About the People

I recently hosted a webinar presentation for a Pharmaceutical Special Interest Group of the Project Management Institute.  It was well-received by the 122 people across the U.S. who logged in to attend.  The popularity of this form of web conferencing is fast growing and it was a fabulous experience to be able to present live audio alongside my powerpoint visuals. read more

Paying It Forward

Throughout my life many people have helped me – too many people to name and most not needing any help in return. So when I started RNC I decided to follow the principle of ‘paying it forward’. read more

Market Update

It’s been an interesting year for us, some projects have been cancelled, some slowed down but others have been escalated.

I’ve seen a striking increase in demand to turnaround projects and programs where no one wants to report failure, and boards have started to show more interest and appetite for project and program activity. It’s a brave executive who fronts their board with repeated delays, cost overruns and closing windows of benefit realisation. read more

Multiple Suppliers – A Common Culture

A few years ago the conversation around cultures associated with multisourcing would not have arisen. Instead the conversation would have revolved around the policy of the day and its supporting reasons/rationalisations such as; cost saving; moving cost from the spreadsheet; increasing scalability; transfer of refresh responsibility; risk management; and, very occasionally, as a vehicle for changing culture.

But today, we’ve learnt that the very best intentions came come unstuck, or at best consume too much management time and effort. The only way to make it work is to get people from all parties to do things you want them to do, how, and when you want them done.

And that brings us to the culture. The question is – why do we look at culture? read more

The NASA Experience

I simply must give you an update on the conference I have just returned from. It was s-o-o-o-o good! If you’ve read my previous summaries of conferences (who could forget the UN BAWB conference of 2006) you will know that I’m hard to please – but this conference achieved it.

Imagine if you will, 1,300 project, program and portfolio managers from the one organisation seated in a very large ballroom ready to listen to the head of their organisation (not the PM Head, the head, head if you like). That was the atmosphere at the start of day one of the NASA Project Management Challenge, the annual gathering of NASA project, program and portfolio managers/directors. read more

The Destination

Hi, I hope you are having a great Easter and please forgive me for spending some of mine thinking about my favourite subject – project management!

Now as I promised I’m about to give you the summary of the answers to the questions I asked a few weeks ago. Firstly about what a project is and secondly about what a project manager does. Thanks for your contributions.  I also canvassed some of our clients and some people who don’t work for RNC – poor souls. read more

Rocky Flats – A Lesson in Excellent Execution – Working in the ‘Abundance Gap’

Some Clearing / Cleansing Emotions

I just have to have a bleat about people who espouse project management approaches when in fact they ‘know nothing’ (said with Hogan’s Heroes accent).  I have decided once and for all that there is a massive difference project management and project execution.  Once upon a time, management could expect that a PM would deliver an outcome; now it seems all too often that PMs are simply mystified when, having done everything by the book, the project is a mess. Perhaps there’s something wrong with the book?

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