The Value of Project Management

With PMI celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, some nostalgia and sentimentality are in order. So when Randall Black took the stage for his keynote on the second day of the national conference, he took delegates through the milestones that have defined PMI over these years.

Reflecting on the origins of PMI, he spoke about how a handful of visionaries led by Jim Snyder led to the formation and growth of a professional development organization devoted to project managers. He also briefly touched upon India’s evolution as a center of project excellence – from the building of the Bhakra Nangal dam in the border of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh to the series of successful space research programs launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). A number of Indian organizations – the Aditya Birla Group, GMR Group, Larsen and Toubro, and Infosys – are now part of PMI’s Global Executive Council, an elite body that is helping to direct and guide the future of the project management profession.

On PMI’s relevance in the present, Mr. Black spoke with pride about the Global Celebration of Service, a pledge that PMI has taken to devote 100,000 hours of community service. He called out PMI India chapters that have richly contributed toward this pledge by taking up community work that ties in well with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG).

“In the future, when technology disruptions are going to continue to change the paradigm of business, project management will be closely tied to the future of work. Today we live in a project economy where job descriptions are becoming more fluid and 90 percent of the role could be in the category of ‘all other assigned tasks.’ Project managers need to have the skills to manage a portfolio of projects and understand the role of technology in projects,” he said.

He urged practitioners to develop their Project Management Technology Quotient and increase their relevance in projects. “Earlier, project managers took on insignificant operations-related roles. But today, there are chief projects officers and executive directors of projects. This shows the strategic value that projects can bring to an organization,” Mr. Black said.

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 Leadership at the Battlefield

As the former head of the world’s third largest army and one that is actively engaged in defending the country’s border even in peacetime, Gen V.P. Malik is probably one of the most deserving people in the country to impart leadership lessons.

He termed leadership as the art of getting a little more out of people than what the science of management thinks is possible.

Connecting project management to leadership, Gen Malik spoke about leading teams to realize a vision and fulfill a strategy, whether it is in the battlefield or business. “Leadership stands for an organization’s vision, and project management is about connecting the vision with execution. Leadership is 35 percent knowledge and 65 percent attitude; project management is 65 percent knowledge and skills, and 35 percent about planning, people management, organizing, and creating synergies. We also need project management to align the project to the core strategy,” he said.

Gen Malik, who was the army chief during the Kargil War of 1999, recounted events and stories of heroes who sacrificed their lives to illustrate the importance of leadership, teamwork, motivation, and executing a strategy during a war. “The core strategy given to the army was that India will exercise restraint, though we have been intruded. We were told to not cross the Line of Control (LOC). Now, to carry out this strategy or order, I became the project manager,” said Gen. Malik.

India decided to create “strategic imbalance” for Pakistan by maintaining pressure on land, air, and water. This “disruptive strategy” proved critical in halting the Pakistani army. Quoting from the Gita, he said, “Action is superior to knowledge. So never hesitate to act.”

He advised project managers to create an environment for the team to do their job, resist 'back-seat driving' and monitor well.

To demonstrate the spirit of those fighting for the country, Gen. Malik played a short clip of the famous video in which Captain Vikram Batra smiled to the TV camera and declared ‘Yeh dil maange more’ (this heart desires more) shortly before he was martyred. He also read out a letter written by Major Padmapani Acharya shortly before he was martyred in the Kargil War, in which he tells his father that combat is an honor for a soldier.
  

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Project Managers as Nation Builders

Joseph Cahill touched upon the need to nurture project management capabilities at a time of transformative change. As the world gets increasingly projectized, projects managers with the right skills will help organizations successfully steer into the future.

While welcoming the vice president of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu, to the conference, he spoke about some key achievements and initiatives of PMI in India. He highlighted the efforts being undertaken to honor PMI’s Celebration of Service pledge, PMI’s initiatives toward preparing project talent for the future, and its participation in a government-led task force on project and program management. The taskforce, set up by NITI Aayog, is working on developing a national policy framework for project and program management.

Calling project managers the builders of a nation, Mr. Cahill said, “They are a set of professionals who are both doers and thinkers. They are the bridge between policy and action, between strategy and execution, ensuring that the vision of an organization gets translated into reality.”

He lauded the Government of India for achieving success in projects and programs that have been planned and executed at a scale and pace that the world has not seen until now. These are initiatives undertaken for financial inclusion, infrastructure development, health and sanitation, and building digital services.

“India has won world attention for Aadhaar and its space research program. The honorable vice president had overseen some of the biggest infrastructure development programs during his stints as the minister of rural development and the minister of housing and urban affairs in the past,” he said, urging Mr. Naidu to throw light on the government’s program implementation.

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Customer Obsession Pays Off

The Amazon shopping portal is probably one of the best examples of continuous transformation to meet changing customer needs. What started as a static page with only two products on offer, books and movies, has grown into 12 sites with 170 million products, catering to over 350 million customers.

The relentless focus on customer service has been the key for its successful expansion. “Inventing on behalf of our customers has served us well. Our philosophy hasn’t changed for the last 24 years – of focusing on an awesome customer experience,” said Manish Bhatia.

He said price, selection, and convenience are the three pillars that define customer experience. And it does not end with addressing customer experience issues. The team at Amazon is constantly “listening to customers” and “obsessing about the customer” which help them innovate to meet the said and unsaid needs of the customer.

He talked about implementing “wandering ideas” like Seller Flex that has been introduced to sellers in India alone. Sellers would earlier send their products to the Amazon warehouse for shipment to clients. With Seller Flex, sellers can directly upload details about the product on the portal and ship it to the client. This has led to an increase in the number of products available to customers.

Elaborating on the core principles that drive Amazon, he said that it has embraced the attitude and willingness to fail. He said the culture of relentless experimentation, even in the face of failure, has led to many successes and innovations in the company.

Another mantra that stands out in the company is the thought that each day must be like day one. In other words, employees are encouraged to come to work each day with the same level of curiosity and enthusiasm with which they had started their journey in Amazon.

The other oft-repeated credos are: being relentless in achieving the vision, rejecting the ‘either/or’ thinking (customers do not have to choose between the best price and the best product), and the willingness to be misunderstood (being bold and focused even when the tide is not in your favor).

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Understanding Mysteries of the Universe

When someone’s work is about exploring the mysteries of the universe, you can expect their presentation to sound somewhat like science fiction. But then you realize that this is, in fact, the stuff that inspires fiction, scientific exploration at its cutting edge.

Dr. Archana Sharma spoke about her work and life as a scientist and project manager at one of the most renowned scientific institutes in the world that was established soon after World War II. “One of my projects is about understanding the Big Bang, and how matter got created at the start of the universe. Did more matter get produced than anti-matter? These are some questions that we are exploring,” she explained.

Her team is conducting research at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a giant underground detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. She is the founder and leader of the CMS Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) Collaboration, which is producing a series of research studies using sensitive detectors. Under a controlled environment, her team is colliding matter to recreate matter like the way it might have been created during the time of the Big Bang. Simultaneously, cameras are taking photos at the rate of 40 million times a second to capture each nano moment of the collision.

But for her, the journey to reach the top has been difficult. When she joined CERN, she was the only non-European scientist at that time. She felt she needed to work extra hard to match the competency level of her peers. “In such a situation, working like a donkey is a good idea. We Indians are good at that,” she said.

After she moved to the role of a project manager, she worked with large teams that needed perfect collaboration. She put down some of her learnings from collaborative projects as: clear definitions and agreement on roles, open communication within teams, recognition and respect, addressing problems as they occur, group goals being placed above personal satisfaction and recognition, and absolute willingness to forgive people for mistakes.
  

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Missions to Outer Space

Space missions are complex but to accomplish them on a shoestring budget and using indigenous technologies can be even more challenging. And this is exactly how the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) scored success in many of its missions. So project managers listened with great interest when Dr. V.R. Lalithambika spoke about the factors behind India’s space success.

In a space program, project management skills are put to the test like probably no other. While conventional projects are timebound, space programs have inviolable deadlines. “Suppose you want to go to another planet, you will have to launch on a particular date and time so that you can rendezvous with another planet with minimum fuel and minimum time. If you lose that moment, sometimes it can take a few years to get the next opportunity,” she explained.

The launch window can actually be unimaginably tight, of just one hour. Three factors then become most critical – quality, reliability, and seamless teamwork. Sometimes, the last factor means perfect coordination among geographically separated teams.

India’s space program is also about optimization to cut costs and conduct research to develop indigenous technologies.

She spoke with pride about ISRO’s vision and its work ethos that aligns each person working on a project to the larger goal. Leadership plays a big role in not just fostering the right work culture but also in taking mission critical decisions under extreme pressure situations when the whole world is watching.

A factor that often gets ignored is succession planning, but ISRO has always placed great importance to it. The organization focuses on nurturing third and fourth tier leaders who can take the vision forward. Interestingly, there is also a strong guru-shishya (teacherstudent) relationship in the organization.

“We work in a gender neutral place. A work environment where nobody considers your gender, and decisions are not influenced by gender, is the best working environment for women. However, it must also be a safe environment for women,” she said.

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Relief to Parched Lands

With recurrent droughts taking a toll on farming, the Government of Telangana undertook the challenge of building the world’s largest irrigation project in a record time. It aims to irrigate 45 lakh acres of land and provide 30 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) of drinking water to Hyderabad and Secunderabad, and another 10 TMC to villages en route.

“It is a combination of 28 projects. A barrage takes 5-10 years to be completed but we completed three barrages in 24 months. In total, we have 85 gates,” said Nalla Venkateshwarlu, amid loud applause. In one instance, they poured 16,722 cubic meters of reinforced cement concrete for 24 hours at a stretch to construct a barrage.

Mr. Venkateshwarlu credited the leadership from Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and effective project management to the success of the Rs. 80,499 crore project on the river Godavari. Through a network of barrages and canals, the dam will irrigate 60 percent of the state.

Since the land being irrigated is at an altitude higher than the river, the project has employed innovative lift techniques to work against the gravitational force. Several obstructions have been built to reverse the flow of the Godavari and enable efficient drawing of water.

The project faced many challenges through its lifecycle, be it land acquisition, clearances from various departments, or the lack of storage capacity. Yet a dogged pursuit of the end goal and dedication helped the team keep up to the timelines.

Chief minister Rao took a lot of interest in the project, which helped in expediting approval processes. The team often met at the sites to save time and resolve issues quickly.

The project leadership brought in workers from 27 states to meet its requirements. The peak workforce was 58,454 on a single day. Workers and machinery were managed through internet-based systems to improve efficiency. Efforts were also made to provide the workforce with good amenities for their well-being. They got chilled buttermilk and oral rehydration salts twice a day during peak summer. A dedicated medical team, sanitary and filtered water facilities, and day shelters were some of the amenities.

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Bold Ambition Meets Commitment

Over the ages train journeys in India have inspired elegant prose and poetry from travellers but rarely does one hear such eloquence from someone working in the dirt and grime of a train factory. But this is precisely what Sudhanshu Mani of the Indian Railways treated the audience to.

His keynote on the project management behind the making of Train 18, or the Vande Bharat Express, was a combination of insights from managing a highly complex and sensitive project to inspiring thoughts from literary greats. Train 18 is a first-of-itskind, made-in-India, semi-high speed intercity train. Mr. Mani had only 18 months to complete the project.

The Train 18 project was a test of the capabilities of the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai that enjoys a Limca Book of Records entry for manufacturing over 60,000 coaches. In the beginning, Mr. Mani encountered scepticism, derision, and turf wars among different departments for undertaking a mission to manufacture India’s first engine-less, computer-operated, self-propelled train set. There were questions about the technical expertise of ICF to manufacture such a train.

In a talk peppered with quotes from William Shakespeare and verses from Urdu poetry, Mr. Mani laid out the factors that led to the success of the project. Organization culture and people practices played a big part in it. “I follow some simple credos such as being generous in giving people the credit due to them and being wisely foolish in setting goals,” said Mr. Mani.

Since ICF had only 18 months to deliver the train, he decided to call the project Train 18, which served as a constant reminder to the teams to keep to the tight schedule. A big decision was to not go for any technology transfer and instead make it an entirely indigenous project.

“The Vande Bharat Express was inaugurated on 17 February 2019 and it has been trouble-free ever since,” said a proud Mr. Mani to loud applause from the audience.
  

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Customer Engagement in the Digital Age

Meher Afroz, who leads a team at Microsoft for the company’s own digital transformation, shared her experience from this journey. The most important takeaway from her session was the need to prioritize customer engagement in any transformation initiative.

Ms. Afroz took the example of online shopping to explain how customers need to be engaged through the entire sales lifecycle, including using historical data, to help customers make decisions. Empowering employees is also crucial in enabling this. For example, provide frontline employees customer data and interaction history so that they can deal with customers in an informed way. The third factor that plays an important part is optimizing operations. Taking the same example forward, she explained how digital transformation will be important in maintaining a realtime view of inventory in order to ascertain and prevent any bottlenecks in the supply chain.

She spoke about how artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the way businesses operate. Tonnes of data is being fed into AI models that generate key insights into buying patterns and customer profiles. The use of chatbots is changing the whole customer experience. Companies are discovering new ways to enhance the value they bring to customers through the smart application of these technologies. Uber drivers can click a selfie at the start of a journey and through a cognitive API, get themselves verified as indeed the same driver that the client booked, which is an added security feature. Microsoft, in collaboration with the International Crop Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics, has used AI to help farmers in Telangana improve crop production. Farmers now have access to data that tells them the best timeframe to sow seeds.

She urged project managers to spend time to know what their customers want. “Sometimes, you mistake a stakeholder with a customer, but remember that your customer is the end user. You need to know how he or she is going to use your product,” she added.

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Digital Makeover of a Bank

Srikanth Mopidevi presented the transformation story of DBS Bank, a Singapore-based financial institution with presence in India. The bank, that ranked in the bottom 60 in terms of customer satisfaction, is now the only bank in the world with three awards at a time to its name – the best bank in the world, the most innovative bank in the world, and the most digital bank.

Banking is not an activity that excites people; it is about tasks that need to be done. Hence, CEO Piyush Gupta’s vision is to make DBS “invisible by 2020,” or in other words, make banking easy and effortless.

DBS is using digital technologies to change the way its customers conduct banking transactions. Mr. Gupta has urged his team to get inspiration from organizations known for their stellar customer service, such as Singapore’s Changi Airport.

Mr. Mopidevi spoke about the bank leadership’s drive to encourage open-mindedness and risk taking within the organization, which could mean looking for out-of-the-box ideas from organizations from other industries.

“Like any other bank in the world, we didn’t own any of our technology but outsourced it through our partners. Slowly, we started to bring them in. That’s the journey we took,” he said. DBS took learnings from Facebook, a company who made massive investments in building its own tech infrastructure.

The management team coined an acronym, GANDALF, that stands for Google, Amazon, Netflix, DBS, Apple, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It shows where DBS wants to be – in the company of the tech giants of the world.

Mr. Mopidevi spoke about five pivots to base an organization’s transformation: focus on what the customer wants; be cloudnative; know that the customer journey keeps moving; keep an open mind to learn; and look at employee journeys.

He left the audience with five key learnings: be customer obsessed; be data-driven; take risks and experiment; be agile; and be a learning organization.

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Revamping Public Sector Projects

For a country with an economy of US$ 2.8 trillion and an ambition to reach US$10 trillion by 2032, India needs to pick up the pace at which it is currently building its infrastructure.

Earlier this year, PMI, in association with KPMG India and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), Government of India, published a report on the state of infrastructure projects in the country and ways to improve project performance. The report, Revamping Project Management, is a follow-up to a similar report in 2012.

Giving an outline of the report, Mr. Singh said the report looks at the project management practices and technology being leveraged by leading infrastructure developers of the country.

“Our study that covered 25 public sector units from nine sectors has shown that project performance in sectors such as power, civil aviation, and shipping is declining, whereas it is improving for sectors such as roads and highways, and oil and gas,” he said.

The report points toward India’s poor rating in the global benchmarking of project management maturity. Areas in which Indian companies need to improve maturity are cost, risk, and schedule management. “Some of the areas in which we are doing well are the use of technology, value engineering, and procurement,” he added.

The report lays down the enablers for successful delivery of infrastructure projects under the categories of process and capability building, change in culture and mindsets; and external factors such as faster regulatory approvals and land acquisition.
  

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