Project Management is Dream Engineering

Dr. Terry Cooke-Davies, a global thought leader in project management, addressed aspiring project management professionals in a series of events held by PMI India office in April. Dr. Cooke-Davies, who has over 30 years of experience in project management, addressed professionals in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and New Delhi as a part of the PMI Knowledge Forum.

Dr. Cooke-Davies has been working to bridge the gap between academic research and effective corporate improvement through project management. He spoke on the need for senior management to recognize that project management can bring about business change management.

“We face a few fundamental challenges in managing projects. Businesses underestimate project management basics and do not recognize that project planning is different from risk management. Project management is dream engineering; we do not plan a project from a known present but from an unknown future. In risk management, we plan from the known present,” Dr. Cooke-Davies explained. The other challenge that project managers face is in embedding and aligning a temporary organization (the project) into the permanent organization.

“Recent studies have shown that project planning has not improved in the past 15 years. Organizations do not have specialist planners. Plans are made with the help of estimators who lack the skill of planning, and hence decisions based on these plans have a high possibility of failing,” he added.

Managing director, PMI India, Raj Kalady pointed to last year’s Flash Report of the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, which said that the amount of money spent on projects in India due to delays is Rs 3,70,000 crore. “We need to bring about a change in attitude if projects have to succeed in this country. Plan your projects well, be proactive, base your decisions on facts, observe and measure work progress, introduce best practices, and conduct root cause analysis,” said Kalady. He spoke about the growth of PMI in the past 40 years, and the value that PMI has brought to businesses worldwide.