The Internet is perhaps the most transformative technology in history, reshaping business, media, and society in astonishing ways. But for all its power, it is just now being tapped to transform education.
Every industry and every organization performs projects
The biggest single trend we have heard from business leaders is the growing acknowledgement of innovation as the centerpiece of corporate strategies and initiatives. The more senior the executive we talked with, the more likely they were to frame their company’s future in the context of creating innovation.
Today's changing business environment requires organizations to develop strategic business initiatives to sustain or grow the organization. These initiatives end up as a collection of projects. Research has proven that project management can substantially enhance the successful execution of these initiatives.
In spite of research supporting the value of project management, effective implementation of project management within an organization remains elusive. The failure rate is as high as 70% in implementing effective project management practices within organizations. Through dialogue with senior management and project management practitioners, we hear how they are struggling in developing a set of project management practices that work within their organization.
The success of implementing project management in an organization revolves around two fundamental concerns:
1. Establishing a set of project management processes that fit the need of the organization and
2. Training the organization on those set of project management processes.
Tailored Project Management®
Many organizations have developed thorough and rational project management processes to increase corporate value, yet cannot always integrate these processes into a consistent, organizational project management methodology. In response, we have developed a process improvement method designed to help companies close the gap between discrete project management processes and an organizational project management methodology.
Built on ten years of research, we have developed a series of training modules that can accelerate the successful implementation and use of project management within an organization. Tailored Project Management® (TPM) provides individuals and organizations with the knowledge and skills to implement a set of project management practices to achieve an organization’s strategic goals. The TPM program is focused on identifying the essential project management practices necessary for achieving successful projects.
Today's changing business environment requires organizations to develop flexible business strategies. Projects should align with the organization’s strategies and business objectives. There is always some degree of resistance to implementing project management practices within organizations. As with anything new, there is a learning curve and employees tend to revert to what is most familiar. Project management often carries a perception of too much rigor, discipline, and effort. In reality, project management practices can be tailored to fit the needs of any size project or organizational requirement. This helps make implementing project management practices much easier and improves project success by using repeatable processes and practices.
At the heart of the Tailored Project Management® model is the TPM Assessment®. The TPM Assessment® is an attribute-based approach for assessing an organization’s current and future project management practices.
The TPM Assessment® provides a holistic, process approach for implementing a tailored project management methodology by identifying what project management processes provide the greatest value based on organizational and strategic needs.
The Virtual Flipped Classroom
The concept of online learning is not new, but over the past 10 years, the technologies have advanced to where the power of new educational models, such as the flipped classroom, are emerging. Research on this new and exciting educational model is becoming increasingly important as teachers and educators’ interest is increasing. This emerging concept provides a convincing rationale for educational institutions and private organizations to consider the adoption and implementation of this innovative approach to education.
The “flipped classroom” model was adopted to address the training needs of TPM. The flipped classroom model is where pre-recorded videos take the place of face-to-face classroom instruction. It is called the flipped classroom because what used to be classwork (the "lecture") is done at home via teacher-created videos and what used to be homework (assigned problems) is now done in class.
The flipped classroom model represents a disruptive innovation to education. This new model of instructional design promotes learning in an online environment by taking the training content that would be delivered in the classroom and delivers it through a series of ebooks that can be accessed through any web-enabled device. The ebooks will be supplemented with hyperlinks to pre-recorded videos that allow students to learn based on their learning style. The virtual aspect of the flipped classroom is that the learning occurs virtually. Advances in web conference platforms enables learning to occur anywhere, anytime. Using a “narrative learning” approach along with the “leader as teacher” model, the TPM webinars will facilitate active learning rather than passive learning. Working on and solving “real world” problems, participants will incorporate emerging social learning and informal learning methods.
Funding and cash flow
Developing the TPM Program will require 12 – 18 months of development. Maintaining cash flow for payroll, taxes and insurance will require ECI to keep money coming in while we self-fund TPM. The necessary money to sustain business will require billable consulting, conducting training classes and workshops – all of which takes away time of developing the TPM Program.
An ever-changing educational technology landscape
To keep up with web-based technology, such as smartphones, Kindles®, and iPods® will require us to implement various instructional or educational technology. Like most technology, it changes frequently, so it's important to be aware of and understand new products. Based on our prototype, what has become clearer is the act of creating elearning for a mobile device is not the same as creating mobile learning.
The biggest challenge is not the changing technology, but the combination of technology, the learners, and their approach to learning. As a result of this, the pedagogy is completely different. What makes mobile learning different from other delivery channels is that it can happen at any time, anywhere, and in ways that are vastly different from what can be achieved in a classroom or traditional eLearning in which a single learner sits and interacts with a computer. With the use of today’s educational technology, we will combine the best aspects of these educational models with the technological aspects. It is the combination of these areas that makes the future of organizational learning and personal development both unique and exciting.
Go mobile or go home
In 2008, we started developing a working model of the TPM Program. Since then, we have spent thousands of hours developing and testing the first model. We continued revising the model based on knowledge that we acquired from students and clients. In 2010, we conducted online focus group sessions with fifty people from twenty organizations. Approximately one-third responded they were utilizing the TPM model and had many suggestions to improve it. This information provided input into the requirements for the next phase of the TPM course development. In 2012, we conducted our first prototype of the TPM Program by developing and conducting a five-week, online training module. The lessons learned from that experience have helped us shape our final requirements and development that is currently underway.
TPM Course Development
Project Milestones / Date / Status
TPM Course Prototype / March 2012 / Completed
Creating a 5 week course based on the Flipped Classroom model
TPM Technical Requirements / January 2013 / In-Progress
Developing software & hardware requirements
TPM Content Development / May 2013 / In-Progress
Developing course content, pre-recorded videos & webinar development
TPM Marketing / September 2013 / Not Started
Conducting direct email campaigns, social marketing campaigns & promo videos
TPM eBook Series / March 2014 / Not Started
Producing ebook publications of the 15 TPM modules with pre-recorded videos
TPM Online Course / May 2014 / Not Started
Including 15 modules with full training videos, case exercises & webinarsWebinars of the TPM Program based on a narrative learning approach
Standing on the shoulders of others
To get to this point in time of my life requires me to acknowledge others who have contributed so much to help us achieve the success and happiness I have in my life.
To Diana - my wife, best friend, and business partner
Her process-oriented mind is what drove us to develop the process-oriented approach to Tailored Project Management®.
To our family and friends
With their love and support, we would have never made it through the “tough times” when Diana and I were both diagnosed with late-stage cancer.
To our former adult students
Your high expectations caused us to reach deep within ourselves to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
The Tailored Project Management® model is the TPM Assessment®. The TPM Assessment® is an attribute-based approach for assessing an organization’s current and future project management practices.
Adaptive/Flexible Project Management. Essential! You two are probably too young to remember the Polaris nuclear submarines + ballistic missiles development project of the1950s. To coordinete the many complex component parts produced in separate manufacturing facilities scattered over the USA, the Navy's Special Projects Office, charged with developing the Polaris-Submarine weapon system and the Fleet Ballistic Missile capability, developed a statistical technique for measuring and forecasting progress in research and development programs. This Program Evaluation and Review Technique (code-named PERT) is applied as a decision-making tool designed to save time in achieving end-objectives, and is of particular interest to those engaged iproject development programs, especialy those for which time is a critical factor. It is essentially flexible and adaptive. It builds on Critical Path Method and is a powerful management tool, provided management can analyse and describe the elements of the project or projects.
Grace Hopper, the computer genius, worked in the Special Projects Office. She ended her navy career as Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper, USN, Ph.D.
I used PERT in the late 50s to coordinate a London borough's architectural design and building projects rolling programme.
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Hello My Name Is Nekea Davenport, You Guys Came To My Job, Culvers Located On East 96th And Handed Me A Flyer About This. I Think This Is A Fantastic Job. You Get My Like! I Will Pray For You Both That You Get To Make This Journey Successful. GoodLuck, I Will Spread The Word To My Employees!!
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I love the idea of Tailored Project Management. Even within one organization, there is often no one size that fits all needs. Having something flexible, but within a solid framework, is very appealing!
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Diana and Steve you are spot on with this! In innovative business environments, adaptive Project Management is key to consumerization of the services - - which in turn drive results….
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Thank you Dave for your comment.
And thank you, thank you, thank you for using the phrase “adaptive project management” rather than “agile project management”.
All we see today is agile. We believe in the principals of agile, but the language and practices seem to be geared more toward software development rather than managing projects.
For us, adaptive project management is more in tune with organizational agility. I know this sounds semantics, but ask an pure agilest how much the total cost of their project will be and see what you get. I would be happy with high-level analogous estimate.
My beef about the overall the agile movement has to do on how good ideas go wrong. Warren Buffet called this the “three I’s” Innovators – Imitators – Idiots.
First come the innovators, who see opportunities and create genuine value.
Then come the imitators, who copy what the innovators have done. Sometimes they improve on the original idea; but often they tarnish it.
Last come the idiots, whose avarice undermines the innovations they are trying to exploit.”
How this applies to agile?
There has been a large influx of agile imitators as the market for agile services and tools has expanded rapidly. Many of these imitators added improvements while some have tarnished the agile brand.
Then there are the idiots, people and companies who barely know how to spell agile hanging out their agile shingles, often giving agile delivery a bad name in the process.
We like your phrase “adaptive project management”.
Stephen & Diana
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I love how this leverages smart thinking with practical application!
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Thank you Lora for your comment.
After nearly nine years in the doctoral program I came away from that experience with a feeling of frustration and a heighten sense of determination.
The frustration was the result gap I experienced between scholarship and applied practice. It took two additional years for me to receive approval on my research. My determination to push forward through the academic BS was driven from my blue-collar heritage. Thanks Dad. Diana and I both walked away with a feeling that the road to scholarship needs a major overhaul.
I believe the primary mission of scholarship is to conduct research that both advances a scientific discipline and enlightens the practice of a profession. But the gap between theory and practice remains an elusive ideal.
What I learned from this crucible was a new form of scholarship. Engaged scholarship is a participative form of research to obtain different perspectives of researchers, users, clients, sponsors, and practitioners in producing knowledge about complex problems.
Engaging the different perspectives in the kind of knowledge that scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds can bring forth on a problem is more penetrating and insightful than when scholars or practitioners work on the problems alone.
For us, scholarship is a contribution of knowledge, but if that knowledge cannot be put into practice – what value does it bring?
Stephen & Diana
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