I'm sure your resume highlights your project successes, but all experienced project managers have been part of a failed or troubled project at least once in their careers. The Standish Group 2018 Chaos Report indicated 72% of projects were either challenged or failed to obtain business goals. Project failures may have been marketed as successes, yet the project goals were impacted by reduced scope, a strategic "change in direction" resulting in a cancelled release, or just a large cash investment that failed to provide any real business value. Sound familiar? Go ahead and raise your hand — I know you're out there. I'll even raise my hand. When you're part of a failed project, it seems stressful and downright painful, but you have the opportunity to learn a lot of lessons that will help lead you to project successes. Below are my top three lessons from a failed project. 1. The project schedule is your friend A leading cause of project failures and missed dates is the lack Continue Reading
Happy New Year + Life lessons I learned as a pilot
Becoming a pilot changes who you are, even if you don’t realize it at first. Sure, there are the practical lessons about math, physics, and engineering you don’t encounter in everyday life. But as a recent trip through my logbook proved, aviation offers courses in the humanities as well as the hard sciences. I remember my first solo like it was yesterday. I looked at all of my gauges, flipped a few switches, and stared down the long runway ahead of me. I pushed the throttle and as I slowly lifted off the ground in a small single-engine Cessna, it suddenly hit me that I was the sole operator of an airplane. Though terrified at first, I ultimately welcomed the challenge and the freedom liberated me. After being a passenger in a general aviation aircraft a few times as a child, I was always fascinated by flight. Pilot training has been unlike any other endeavor I have ever experienced. Student pilots learn so much beyond the complex rules of airspace or thought-provoking Continue Reading
ERP and and Aviation: what do they have in common?
As many of you with whom I have worked know, I am an active pilot. To be a good pilot means much more than simply developing the skills to control the airplane. It means subscribing to and embracing a culture, processes and procedures that govern how you prepare for, conduct and learn from every flight. Over the years I've often drawn on the discipline that aviation requires and applied this to the work I do in ERP. The inspiration for this post came from a recent experience. A friend and I took our humble Piper Warrior aircraft out for the first time since installing a new avionics package. The Garmin GTN 750. This package combines GPS, COM and NAV functions with powerful multifunction capabilities; it would bring our little airplane up to 21st century standards enabling us to fly any GPS approach, receive real-time traffic alerts and see near-time weather information. There was a lot that went into that first flight. A week earlier, when I was onboard of a commercial flight, Continue Reading
Flying and airplane and disaster management: some insights from a pilot
There is no feeling in the world like flying an airplane. The famous naval aviator Jack R. Hunt said, “For most people, the sky is the limit. For those who love aviation, the sky is home.” “Final check, then apply full power,” says the instructor. I’m hunched over the controls of the Piper, my palms sweating and my head full of figures. The pilot of a 747 couldn’t be concentrating any harder. Final Check means a quick glance over the million dials in front of me to ensure that‘temperatures and pressures’ are normal. Then it’s the Big White Numbers check which means making sure the runway number given by air traffic control matches the huge numbers painted on the runway in front of me – thereby ensuring I’m on the correct runway and not about to meander in front of a 737 on its way to Zurich. Flying is all about logical planning, together with the training and flexibility to deal with any eventuality, which strikes me as the same set of skills you need for crisis management. Continue Reading
Aviation and Business: what can we learn?
In 1993, I decided to start taking flying lessons. Flying had always piqued my curiosity. On one hand, it was an activity I felt compelled to do; on the other, like any exciting pursuit, it required both adventure and risk. It scared me. That mix of emotions is why, when I finally decided to burn some fuel and enter the wild blue yonder in a tiny but nimble Piper Warrior airplane, flying became one of the most incredible and empowering experiences of my life. In the aviation safety is given a lot of attention — and rightfully so. Redundancy and checklists are everywhere and there is very strict regulation where everything is codified. As importantly,there are aviation-related organizations whose main focus is on learning from past mistakes. The business world could certainly learn a thing or two from the aviation industry. I’ve realized that there isn’t much of a difference between piloting an aircraft and running a business. Each opportunity has taught me a valuable lesson about Continue Reading
Project Management and Flying: learnings from the flight deck
Some 50 years since the inception of project management, more than 50% of IT projects still fail because they run out of time, resources, funds, etcetera. If pilots flew aircraft like we run projects, no one would ever fly. However, every day millions of people fly for work or pleasure and flights arrive on time almost 90 percent of the time, delayed mainly by weather. Airline travel is also the safest form of long-distance travel with a fatal accident rate of .022 per 100,000 hours flown. We have been flying for just over 100 years, but project management has been around since the building of the pyramids and the Great Wall. Are there any learnings we can take from flying? I think we can. Aviation has always fascinated me. I’m on a plane almost every week and there isn’t a take-off or landing that bores me. When wheels go up, a slight panic ensues as any morsel of control vanishes completely. I am always thankful for the days when the only major task performed Continue Reading
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