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| Project Development Disciplines |
AllenWeb Paul Allen's Personal Website since 1995 Project Development Disciplines Management - Finance - Automation Information Site for Learning "What we have here is a failure to communicate." - Frank R. Pierson, Cool Hand Luke, 1967 Project Executive Group Advisory & Execution Services "Welcome to those who are in pursuit of personal 'sustainable mastery' in the disciplines!" - Paul Projects as instruments of change "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." - The Prince, Nicolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527 Project Sponsors, Project Managers, and Project Team Members MUST be courageous! "Courage comes from confidence. Confidence comes from knowledge, skills, and experience that can be applied in a timely manner." - Paul Project Management and Project Finance | Start-up Project Development "Several years ago, the construction market began demanding a change in the way its projects were being managed. There was a shift toward contractors delivering an entire project - designing, building, financing, etc. - and companies began to change their cultures to meet the demands of the market." - Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute, 1997 For historical information you can drill down on the following sites: A History Leading Up to the Beginning of Project Management Early History of Invention and Technology's Role in Projects Origins of Modern Project Scheduling Graphical Tools Used Today "It is best to do things systematically, since we are only human, and disorder is our worst enemy." - Hesiod, 8th century B.C. For project management information in general you can drill down on the following sites: Project Management Institute (PMI) PMI - Houston Chapter "Building Professionalism in Project Management..." WWW PM FORUM - A resource for information on international project management affairs that supports international cooperation, promotion and advancement of a professional and world-wide project management discipline. Project Management & Project Finance HOT Links "In my opinion based on personal research, 95% (or more) of the success (or failure) in projects come from people. Projects are done by people! Therefore, it should be the goal of every project manager to develop and maintain a highly motivated, cohesive, and productive project team, demand that senior management support them in obtaining this goal , and have sincere and genuine commitment to the project work force." - Paul, 1997. "After further research, it is the combination of people and process!" - Paul, 2000 Project Management is NOT a contest! - Paul Allen, 1999 Project Managers - What are they and what must they be? "Project managers bear ultimate responsibility for making things happen. Traditionally, they have carried out this role as mere implementers. To do their jobs they needed to have basic administrative and technical competencies. Today they play a far broader role. In addition to the traditional skills, they need to have business skills, customer relations skills, and political skills. Psychologically, they must be results-oriented self-starters with a high tolerance for ambiguity, because little is clear-cut in today's tumultuous business environment. Shortcomings in any of these areas can lead to project failure." - J. Davidson Frame Papers Presented - up to 2001. For more recent, go to Presentations An Intricacy of Project Financing for Offshore Projects - Expanding a Tool for Better Project Management Presenting author at the 2001 Offshore Technology Conference Project Management Institute (PMI) presentations, 30 Apr 2001 Conference held at Reliant Park in Houston, Texas - April-3 May 2001 Trends in Offshore Contracting Strategies - Project Management in the Offshore Industry Presenting co-author at the 10th Offshore Symposium - Offshore Technology Evolution and Innovation sponsored by the Texas Section of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) Annual Meeting held in Houston, Texas - 20 Feb 2001 Project Management Requirements in a Changing Market Presenting author and panelist at the Workshop on International Competitiveness and Project Management in the Engineering & Construction Industry Workshop held at Rice University in Houston, Texas - 28 Sep 1998 Presentations for Project Management Institute (PMI) members Making Deals, presented at the PMI Houston chapter - Feb 2001 Project Finance, presented at the PMI Houston chapter - Jan 1999 Uncertainty Management, presented at the PMI Houston chapter - Jan 1998 Presentations for Turnaround Management Association (TMA) members Crisis PM in Turnarounds, presented at the Glass & Associates Training Session - Feb 2002 Words of encouragement needed from time to time in the midst of a project. Leading in Projects and Project Development The Art and Science of Leading "The essence of leadership is vision. It's got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion.You can't blow an uncertain trumpet. " - Father Theodore Hesburgh, President of the Univ. of Notre Dame National Management Association (claims to be world's largest society for developing professional leaders) "No man is a leader until his appointment is ratified in the minds and hearts of his men." - Anonymous, The Infantry Journal, 1954 Leaders' Principles & Traits - the USMC way (substitute "project members" for "marines" in the reading) "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." - Lee Iacocca, Chrysler Corporation Unit Leaders Program - Issues (free downloads) "You've got to have integrity to be an effective leader. That's what it all stems from." - Don Shula, former coach of the Miami Dolphins How to Lead When You're Not the Boss "Example is leadership." - Albert Schweitzer The Leadership Architect Suite Integrated Develop & Train Products "Well done is better than well said." - Benjamin Franklin Project Leadership - Through Experimental Education "Knowing how to handle pressure is necessary for survival." - Admiral James Stockade Leadership Research Center 'Managers are people who do things right; leaders are people who do the right thing.' — Warren Bennis Senior Management's Ability and/or Inability to Lead in Project Turnarounds "The price of leadership is criticism." - Albert J. Dunlap Project Finance A Project Financing - Lessons Learned Project Develop/Manage Svcs Project Finance Perils - Navigating your way through a Project Finance "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844 For project finance information in general you can drill down on the following sites: Global Project Finance Directory & Infosite | Project Finance Monthly Journal of Project Finance | International Project Finance Project Finance International | Emerging Markets Finance Raising Project Seed Funds With Angel Investors Financing Internet Businesses - the Top 10: Who and What They Do Venture Capital Sources for Internet (E-businesses) - not top 10 Supercharging Your Offering Memorandum "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not." - William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616, Macbeth, Act I, line 58 Uncertainty Management in Project Finance "Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth." - Gustave Flaubert World Bank View on "Mitigating Commercial Risks in Project Finance" An excellent paper by Jeff Ruster about developing countries project finance uncertainties and how to mitigate them. Learn and use "project turnaround techniques" for the 'hands-on' manager. These techniques, in combination with very "pro-active" uncertainty mitigation coupled with "thorough" contingency planning, enable a project professional to prevent most, if not all, emergencies 'before' they occur - and competently handle those that may occur. In gaining the 'surgical' skills needed for project turnarounds, one can mitigate uncertainties thoroughly. "Amid a multitude of projects, no plan is devised." - Publilius Syrus, Circa 42 B.C. Decision and Risk Analysis in Projects | Decision Support Packages (DSPs) "The ability to define what may happen in the future and to choose among alternatives lies at the heart of contemporary societies. Risk management guides us over a vast range of decision-making, from allocating wealth to safeguarding public health, from waging war to planning a family, from paying insurance premiums to wearing a seatbelt, from planting corn to marketing cornflakes." - from Against the Gods - Peter L. Bernstein, 1996 PMI Risk Management (RM) SIG "I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge." - Igor Stravinsky, 1966 Project Crisis Handbook - Read to Understand How to Avoid Crisis to Begin With (and how to deal with it if you need to when in turnaround management mode scenario) "For the turnaround project manager/operational manager; someone who is thrust into a crisis situation with a mission to turn things around, make tough decisions under fire, address problems when they occur and prevent them from happening again." - Author (This is the MASH unit approach to project survival. Experienced professional project executives will identify with and appreciate this handbook for saving projects by triage.) For project analysis information and recommended tools you can drill down on the following sites: RiskTrak S/W Decisions Analyses Hot Links Advanced Risk & Decision Analysis S/W "Great deeds are usually wrought at great risk." - Heroduotus, Greek historian "Is uncertainty management a key to getting project sponsors 'neutral' in their thinking?" - Paul RM Plan for Software "No problem can sustain the assault of sustained thinking." - Voltaire Decision Games Fun website for self-training in strategic and tactical decision making. The Prudent Screening of Projects Screening Capital Projects "...we must sail sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it, but we sail, and not drift, nor live at anchor." - Oliver Wendell Holmes "Thou shalt never assume. Realize that no two people see the same situation the same way. Remember that all strategies, yours and your competitors', contain hidden or 'working' assumptions - identify and examine them. Respect other team members' views, for they may see hidden truths that you have missed." - The 8th Commandment, Richard Marcinko, Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior Credit Rating Agencies Some traditional lenders do not believe that a single rating can be used to assess all the risks associated with a project. According to one: "You cannot rate a project with a group of numbers or letters. There are too many risks. A project is only as good as its weakest link. And that will be the ultimate problem. What will they do when the project goes wrong?" - This is right, in my opinion. - Paul Standard & Poors An excellent site with downloadable ratings criteria on toll roads; mining; energy; and infrastructure project finance. Moody's "Ride the horse in the direction that it is going." - Werner Erhard Automation Project Management "There is nothing permanent except change." - Heraclitus of Greece, 513 B.C. The Project Executive and Project Teams in Automation Projects "...being a good partner has become a key corporate asset. I call it a company's collaborative advantage. In the global economy, a well-developed ability to create and sustain fruitful collaborations gives companies a significant competitive leg up." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter Sustaining Collaborative Relationships & Why They Fail in Projects "The practical measures that we take are always based on the assumption that our enemies are not unintelligent." - Achidamus II, King of Sparta Managing Change and Expectations Learning Curves in Implementing "Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure." - Tommy Lasorda, of the Los Angeles Dodgers Managing Difficult Clients/Customers/Contractors/Suppliers in Projects "An important difference between a military operation and a surgical operation is that the patient is not tied down. But it is a common fault of generalship to assume that he is." - Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart Can You Overcome Resistance to Change "Indeed, if thou hurteth in thy efforts and thou suffer painful dings, then thou are Doing It Right." - The Fifth Commandment in The Rogue Warrior's Ten Commandments of SpecWar Project Planning & Feasibility Studies "I hope you have kept the enemy always in the picture. War books so often leave them out." - Colonel T.E.Lawrence Pro-Sci's Change Management Best Practices Study "The difference in productivity between an average team and a turned-on, high-performance team is not 10 percent, 20 percent, or 30 percent, but 100 percent, 200 percent, even 500 percent!" - Tom Peters, management consultant and writer The Basic Core Competencies for PMs in IT - Do YOU know? PMI Automation Systems SIG (potential) Official Site Automation Systems SIG (unofficial website) worksite - 2002 "The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades." - from Leading Change - John P. Kotter, 1996 Special Project Management for "hyper-track Web projects" Enterprise (ERP) Automation Projects "People persist in believing that what has happened in the recent past will go on happening into the indefinite future, even while the ground is shifting under their feet." ERP Project Management Basics Concerns in R/3 Implementations Enterprise Integration - The Web Site Plan to Succeed in ERP Implementation Who're the Enterprise Systems Players? The ERP Missing Link? Int'l Trade Logistics Successful ERP Implementation Through Work and Master Planning Sales & Operations Integration in ERP with SFA and CRM The Pharmaceutical Industry and ERP-related Issues Business System Software - Selection, Implementation, Maintenance SEE Enterprise Systems Planning & Execution Session @ Rice University BELOW "What is false in the science of facts may be true in the science of values." - George Santayana, 1900 For enterprise systems information in general you can drill down on the following sites: American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) APICS - "The Educational Society for Resource Management" APICS Complex Industries SIG - Information SiteAPICS - Houston Chapter "...to our worship of quantity and indifference to quality, to our unthinking devotion to organization, standardization..." - Daniel Gregory Mason, 1873 - 1960 Business Process Engineering (BPE/BPR) Modeling "We trained hard...but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized, [and] I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing: and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." - Petronius, Arbiter, Greek Navy, 210 B.C. Business Process Engineering - SAP R/3 Business Process Model Technologies "Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions." - Norbert Weiner (1954) For information on recommended BPE/BPR S/W tools you can drill down on the following sites: IDS Scheer ARIS Easy Design - ERP BPE Intellicorp LiveModel for ERP BPE "...everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement." - Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859 Automated Marine Terminals and Marine Systems "O brave new world, that has such people in't." - The Tempest, William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616 Automated Seaports and Marine Terminal Systems Maritime Education & Research Automated Marine Facilities Transportation - Logistics - Supply Chain Management Marine Sites Hot Links for the Offshore Industry, Commercial Seaports, Shipping Companies Marine Systems (latest developments/activities in floating systems - FPSOs & FSOs only) Offshore Contractors - Offshore Technology For related technical organizations and general information you can drill down on the following sites: ICHCA - The International Cargo Handling Co-ordination Association Intermodal Container Panel International Bulk Panel SNAME - Society of Naval Architects and Marine EngineersTexas Section ASCE - American Society of Civil EngineersHouston Branch Texas Section "Designers and Builders of the Quality of Life" ASCE Waterway, Ports, Coastal and Ocean Engineering Division (WW) "What is conceived well is expressed well." - Nicolas Boileau, 1674 Capital Sources for Maritime Transportation Infrastructure Development Mechanized Automation "If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to continuously change." - The Leopard, Thomas Di Lampedusa Giuseppe EIS (Executive Information Systems) Design in ERP Systems Mechanized Automated Systems - Motion Systems / EIS / HRM (people) Motion Systems Technology DesignMotion Systems and MIS Toolboxes for Automation Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) Business-Centered Maintenance (BCM) Modeling Systems for Mechanized Automated Systems Traditional Distribution vs. E-commerce Distribution "Nothing is impossible if you do not have to do it yourself." - Adapted from an A.H. Weiler New York Times memo Critical Information and Business Assessments "A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself." Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947 Critical Information You NEED to Know! Practical Questions in Business Assessment Operations Strategies Checklist Strategic Planning Buzzwords, etc. "Strategy is implemented through projects. Every project should have a clear link to the organization's strategy." Search Engine Tips Major Search Engines "A corporation's culture can be its major strength when it is consistent with its strategies." Training in the Developing Projects Disciplines "The troops should be exercised frequently, cavalry as well as infantry, and the general should often be present to praise some, to critcize others, and to see with his own eyes that the orders are observed exactly." - Frederick the Great Overview on Training for new instructors, learners, supervisors, etc. "Training is all-encompassing and should be related to everything a unit does, or can have happen to it." - Lieutenant General Arther S. Collins, Jr. Allen Communication - services and tools for internet based e-learning "It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one's readiness to meet him; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one's self invincible." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War Training Community Center "Whatever does not break my back makes me stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche Big Dog's Human Resource Page "The man who spends more sleepless nights with his army, and who works harder in drilling his troops, runs the fewer risks in fighting the foe." - The Emporer Maurice, The Strategikon Individual Communication Discipline by Team Members - Train Yourself in the "NEVERS" Rice University Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management Department of Executive Education Advanced Project Management (APM) Program (for Professionals) "I have never known a battle plan to survive a first contact with the enemy." - 19th century general Financing Projects (FP) Program (for Professionals) Financing Projects Program Focuses on the advanced skills necessary to successfully finance projects by understanding the various options, project risks, their allocation and mitigation, and various deal structures facilitating a successful financing while maintaining emphasis on "project finance" discipline. Bulletin Board "Plans are nothing; planning is everything" - Napoleon Bonaparte "How does a project get one year late? ... One day at a time." - Frederick P. Brooks "He who fails has no friends." - Turkish proverb Failure and How to Avoid It "Every advantage...is judged in the light of final issue." - Demosthenes, 384 - 322 B.C. "Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed." - Peter Drucker "Knowledge is of two kinds: We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it." - Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784 "In the long run, the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is your organization's ability to learn faster than its competition." - Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline "The core of learning organization work is based upon five 'learning disciplines' - lifelong programs of study and practice: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and system thinking." - Peter Senge, et al The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." - Admiral Hyman Rickover, U.S. Navy "I couldn't wait to be the manager of my own project and run the project the way I thought it should be done. Boy, did I have a lot to learn!" - first-time project manager "Unhappiness is best described as the difference between our talents and our expectations." - Edward de Bono "Crafty men [despise] studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them." - Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) MGMT 719 Business Recovery (for MBAs) Syllabus Corporate Restructuring and Renewal An introduction to and appreciation of management skills required to lead a company through a recovery or restructuring. The course will also address recovery and restructuring from creditor and equity investor points of view. This course is co-taught by three adjunct professors and a visiting lecturer* - all with real hands-on experience from major firms involved in this disciplined area of business. All are members of the Turnaround Management Association (TMA). Dean Swick (partner, Andersen Corporate Finance & Restructuring - Houston), practitioner Rebecca "Becky" Roof (principal, Jay Alix & Associates - NYC), practitioner *Anthony "Tony" Schnelling (managing director, Bridge Associates LLC - NYC), practitioner Paul Allen (CEO, Project Executive Group, Inc. - Houston), practioner/project turnarounds . Bits and Pieces "Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child" - Delaine Gately, Gig Harbor, Washington "A man who buys what he does not need will often need what he cannot buy." - Collise Brown, Waterville, Vermont "Take time, make time. There might not be another time." - Janet Powers, Pulaski, Wisconsin "Every day may not be good, but there's somthing good in every day." - Maxine Bourgeois, Wyaconda, Missouri Paul's Personal Stuff "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." - Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865 "Those people who learn rapidly and solve problems quickly need a constant supply of new challenges and new problems with which to exercise their abilities." - Chuck Russell, Right Person - Right Job: Guess or Know "Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you." - Aldous Huxley "Life is what happens when you are making other plans." - John Lennon "And one man in his time plays many parts." - from As You Like It - William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616 "I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who." - Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936 |
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| Disclaimer: This is Paul Allen's personal business library. Articles and papers contained therein are for his use and reference. While this information is being made public by being published on the internet, any use of any material or guidance contained herein is at one's own risk. Neither the author Paul Allen nor Project Executive Group have any responsibility if anything is taken from this website and utilized. While we believe these articles and papers make a significant contribution to learning, beware that anyone who uses this information does so at their own risk. We make no representations to accuracy or completeness. |
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