{"id":1496,"date":"2009-01-29T06:58:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T13:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/2009\/01\/29\/opposites-attract\/"},"modified":"2019-08-07T14:32:24","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:32:24","slug":"opposites-attract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/?p=1496","title":{"rendered":"Opposites Attract?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I would like to cover two categories in the survey that are nearly opposite.\u00a0 The first is Reduced Quality. The second is what I classified as an Increased Demand for Good Project Management.<\/p>\n<h3>Fire<\/h3>\n<p>Most of these actions appear to me to be short-sighted ones that solve a current financial problem at the expense of long-term viability and competitive advantage.\u00a0 It looks to me like a lot of unnecessary fire-fighting will ensue as a result.\u00a0 Here are some sample comments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; <strong>quality resources have been let go<\/strong> despite efforts to let go of &#8216;poor performers&#8217; first.\u00a0 The survivors are left with too much to do, and v<strong>ery low moral which both lead to quality problems<\/strong> and schedule slippage.\u00a0 There is definitely more of a focus on the balance of achieving schedule versus burning people out.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve got my PM&#8217;s spending more time on the care and feeding aspect of managing the resources on their teams to keep morale and productivity up.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Europe<\/strong> &#8211; Making day to day <strong>methodology &#8216;enforcements&#8217; lighter<\/strong>, meaning that eventually the company will need only a part time or associate project manager.<\/li>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; <strong>Training budgets cut<\/strong>, companies asking people to play <strong>dual roles<\/strong> &#8211; i.e. PMO Director and PM,\u00a0 PM and Business Analyst, etc.<\/li>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; I have seen <strong>project management processes eliminated<\/strong> due to resource reductions or skipped to try and get more done.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Asia<\/strong> &#8211; Engineering teams left to wonder where they&#8217;re going next.\u00a0 <strong>Hard to put out quality software<\/strong> as a result.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Europe<\/strong> &#8211; search for cheaper pm, which results in <strong>worse control<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; The need to implement <strong>more projects at once<\/strong> and complete them done more quickly.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Europe<\/strong> &#8211; I am expected to <strong>do more with less<\/strong>:\u00a0 both money and people.<\/li>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image1495\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"fireandwater.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/svapm.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/fireandwater.jpg\" alt=\"fireandwater.jpg\" width=\"173\" height=\"233\" align=\"left\" \/><\/p>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; Theme common to most economic downturns&#8230;<strong>do more with less<\/strong>, which generally means <strong>more projects than number of PMs to manage them<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Europe<\/strong> &#8211; willing to <strong>spend less money than before on professional education and training<\/strong> on project management in their attempts to cut the costs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Water<\/h3>\n<p>Good project management and support systems can help put out fires, and if done right prevent most of them.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s see what comments there are for this focus:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; Companies are <strong>requesting more qualified professionals<\/strong> and it traslates in a PMP requirement in the case of project managers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Australia<\/strong> &#8211; <strong>Reduced tolerance for ineffective project managers<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; If anything, a much <strong>stronger emphasis on project management<\/strong> especially in terms of budget management. Granted, this has always been the case, but even more so now. One thing I am <strong>*not* seeing, is a decline in real demand for true \/ experienced PM&#8217;s<\/strong> who can manage very complex enterprise projects.<\/li>\n<li><strong>North America<\/strong> &#8211; I work across the US.\u00a0 Impacts vary by industry and geography.\u00a0 There are <strong>always positions for great project managers<\/strong>.\u00a0 More needed than ever.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Photo by <a title=\"Link to peasap's photostream\" href=\"http:\/\/flickr.com\/photos\/peasap\/\"><strong>peasap<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I would like to cover two categories in the survey that are nearly opposite.\u00a0 The first is Reduced Quality. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[557,555,556,554],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","tag-competitive_advantage","tag-morale_and_productivity","tag-project_management","tag-quality_problems"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14179,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/14179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/svapm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}