It doesn't take much to find someone/somewhere talking about how their project improvement process failed to take hold in company x....and wonder why. Easy answer - when you jump on a crashing plane to try to save it - you often end up one of the victims. PM's are often brought in to help stabilize and address failing projects and often the root cause of the failing project is a corporate wide issues. While it's easy for the PM to focus on the specific project, group or 'specific' improvement area, the rest of the overwhelming issues remain, lurking, building up pressure until the PM and all the nifty tools and powerpoint communicated process changes get crushed. So - what should the PM do? ..... stay tuned
A nice comparison, although when you crash a project (and end up as a victim) you usually get another one to deal with. It's more like a game than a real life.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, PM won't change corporate approach in a single move but usually there are a lot of areas which can be improved step by step. You won't get well-oiled machinery unless people up there won't clean their mess but overall the difference can be significant.
I believe that order (same as chaos) tends to extend as far as it's base is well-defended. If your team works good you start expeting quality work of teams you cooperate with. With a bit of luck they'll birng some order in their actions. Sure it's easier to be a chaos-bringer than an order-bringer but no one said it's an easy job to do.