The TAP-a-PM project and program management cooperative will preview its highly successful project management certification class at a webinar on Tuesday June 28.
Instructors will be available to describe the live online and self-paced work including the team project. The 30-minute information session begins at 7pm. For additional details and to register for the free webinar, see http://project-management-on-tap.ning.com/events/information-session-about
The TAP-a-PM project and program management cooperative will preview its highly successful project management certification class at an information session in Milpitas on Wednesday June 1. Topics will include:
Instructors will be available to describe the live online and self-paced work including the team project. The 90-minute information session begins at 7pm. The location is the Milpitas Library at 160 North Main Street.
The autumn class is fully online for convenience and transportation cost-saving.
Photograph open licensed by Mr_Steinphotostream
By Shuly Cooper
Q. #2: What are the top 3 job functions of a Project Manager?
Following a congressional investigation, it was alleged that BP took a low-cost, speedy approach to deep water drilling, violating industry guidelines, despite warnings from their own engineers and contractors, in order to reduce costs and save time. Even the BP engineers categorized the rig as “a nightmare well.” [http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/category/henry-waxman/]
On 6/18/10, Anderson Cooper (CNN) interviewed a former BP contractor, Mr. Ken Abbott, about safety violations on Atlantis (another BP rig with 56% ownership). The platform is located 190 miles south of New Orleans, drilling about 7,000 ft under the water. Atlantis has much larger oil output than the Deepwater Horizon rig, i.e., a higher risk potential. Mr. Abbott served as a project control engineer on the rig, complained to his superiors about bridges of safety, and was “released from his duties”. [http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x476853]
On January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members. The commission that studied the case found that NASA’s organizational culture and decision-making process had been a key contributing factor to the accident. NASA knew about the flaws in the defected O-rings since 1977, and failed to fix them. They also disregarded warnings from engineers about the damaging impact of low temperatures of that morning on the O-rings. Subsequently, the Challenger disaster has been used as a case study in many discussions about quality, safety and workplace ethics [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster]
It may be difficult to have an open/honest discussion about project’s problems with bosses and sponsors. The reasons may range from workplace politics and culture to personal communication style and skills. One has to think how to change the conversation so it becomes more effective.
Tips are presented below to help start these crucial discussions.
1. Document the facts about the project’s status, weaknesses and strengths.
2. Compare the data to historical data of similar projects. Present the similarities and differences between the past and present projects’ attributes.
3. Distinguish between three different and independent discussions:
4. Share your concerns with your direct manager/sponsor and keep him/her in the loop throughout the whole project life-cycle. If you work in a matrix- management style, share your concerns/information across functional “dotted line” managers, as well.
5. Invite a dialogue, share knowledge, learn and listen to different views.
6. Motivate your manager/sponsor by sharing the consequences with him/her as a team (“I’m on your side”). It’s a team success/failure (not an individual success/failure).
7. Document your thoughts, communication and disagreements. The reasons:
8. Once you’ve registered and documented your disagreements, get behind your manager/sponsor’s decision. On a large project, your priorities may not be the project’s priorities and/or the organization’s priorities.
9. Provide warning signs as early as possible. Timing is an important part of the issue. Projects that move too far down the development path are harder (more expensive) to modify, fix or abort.
by Shuly Cooper
Q. #1 – Who is in charge?
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Who is in charge over the clean up of US shores and reparations?
The answer to this question involves BP (the “top dog” among its three sub-contractors, Halliburton, Transocean and Cameron International); and an additional party – US citizens, who “own” the beaches and are hurt. Their environment and livelihood are being destroyed.
In a contractual relationship, the party that causes any damage, by deviating from the written contract, is responsible for the cleanup work, direct/indirect costs and compensation. This means that contracts have to be clear and at a sufficiently low level of detail, involving the engineers/scientists of both sides of the contract –> I.e., a complex project requires a pyramid scheme of contracts with increasing levels of details. The quality of the contract(s) is the responsibility of the hiring-party. In this case – the US government, which has to educate itself in the subject matter, or better, hire experts in the field of interest, in order to protect its interests.
Before the contract is signed, the hiring-party is responsible to verify that the sub-contractor can perform the job as described in the contract(s). Following the signing of the contract(s), the hiring-party is responsible to audit the sub-contractor’s work, using its experts, and keeping the lines of communication open.
In this case, the hiring party, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), which is part of the US Department of the Interior, manages the mineral resources of the US shores and collects lease money from companies that drill in the area. The contract between the MMS and BP, especially the Risk Management Plan (which should be an integral part of the contract) was extremely poor [source – CNBC/ Rachel Maddow and CNN/Anderson Cooper]. Note, Elizabeth Birnbaum, the Director of MMS has resigned following this incident.
If the sub-contracting party under-performs, there is a case for malpractice charges and the compensation level directly correlates to the contract stipulation and clarity. One of the reasons that BP has taken lightly the Risk Management Plan and its environment-protection responsibilities is the fact that the US Congress had put a very low penalty-cap on the oil companies – 75 million dollars (!) (about one day total revenue for BP (!) ) [source - http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/06/caps-on-oil-spill-liability-create-incentives-for-spills.html]. Therefore, gaining 20 billion dollars from BP (and probably more) is a “big-win”.
So “who is in charge” on the US shores?
On 5/27/10 President Obama declared a moratorium, stopping all deep oil exploratory drilling, which are over 500 feet deep, in the Gulf of Mexico for six months. 33 rigs are impacted out of >3600 production rigs in the Gulf [source – CNBC/ Rachel Maddow]. On 6/23/10 – the U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman blocked this moratorium. The Interior Secretary Ken Salazar appealed Judge Feldman’s ruling and some of these rigs are still down.
The editorial opinion – six months moratorium is hardly sufficient time to create new safety guidelines, hire new personnel, audit hundreds of “free-reined”, exploratory oil rigs along the US shores, implementing the latest and best technologies available and understanding the impact of such disasters.
What is your opinion?
by Shuly Cooper
Q. #1 – Who is in charge?
Who is responsible for the Deepwater Horizon failures?
During the congressional hearing, all four mega corporations, who have a part in the rig: BP, Halliburton, Transocean and Cameron International were blaming each other. BP has the exploration rights. Transocean owns the rig, leased it to BP and operates it. Halliburton was responsible for cementing the well, and Cameron International produced the blowout preventer that failed to seal the well before it exploded. BP is blaming the operator – Transocean (the sub-contractor); Transocean blames Halliburton and Cameron Intl. (the sub-sub-contractors); and Transocean, Cameron and Halliburton are blaming BP, claiming that they followed instructions coming down from BP (sources – CNN, CNBC, http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10004219/gulf-oil-spill-whos-to-blame-bp-halliburton-and-the-feds-are-all-implicated/, http://www.sott.net/articles/show/208390-Once-Amigos-Now-Enemies-BP-Halliburton-And-Transocean).
The question is: “Who is the final decision maker when this kind of hierarchy takes place?”
The editorial answer: BP.
It is the responsibility of the hiring party (“the top-dog”) to recruit/employ the domain experts; to produce a high quality, binding contract between itself and the next level sub-contractors; to audit the sub-contractor; to collect the relevant data and to make an informed and final decision about the implementation style.
It is, also, the responsibility of the hiring party to keep the communication-lines with its sub-contractors open, relevant, informative and fear-free zone. Good communication is gained when it is both “vertical” (up/down within each organization) and “horizontal” (engineer to engineer, manager to manager, director to director, etc., between the organizations).
The rational: Engineers within both parties understand the meaning and impact of the work they do. It is the engineers’ responsibility to convey this information up their respective organization and horizontally (among parties). Decisions are made by upper management and transferred back vertically and horizontally.
It is the responsibility of the sub-contractors to alert the hiring party about any weaknesses in the contract or specs, unforeseen difficulties and unexpected delays in writing for re-negotiation of the contract.
What is your opinion?
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