Ugh, my bones shudder. The whole premise just doesn't sit well with me. I guess a lot of this has to do with my background, experiences and values. After discussing this on my course I felt like the following summed things up based upon Oxford Dictionaries definition of collaboration.

Collaboration to anyone outside the private sector = "1 the action of working with someone to produce something"

Collaboration in the private sector = "2 traitorous cooperation with an enemy"

Perhaps that's why we're beginning to invent new terms i.e. collective impact.

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Fantastic video which we can all learn a lot from in terms of communication, particularly relevant to stakeholder management.

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via lifehacker.com

Great advice. There's often a fair bit of work to be done at the end of a project in terms of communication too which isn't helpful if key members of the team aren't available.

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Great reminder as to why stakeholder engagement is essential from the outset of a project. (PMI, 2008, p.17)

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If project managers/teams are expected to embed sustainability principles into their projects they first need to understand what sustainability is. Here are some definitions I've come across which might be useful.

One of the most referenced definitions of sustainability comes from the Brundtland Commission. It's been adopted (albeit slightly reworded) by the Sustainable Development Commission, the International Institute for Sustainable Development, DEFRA, etc.

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

• the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and
• the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs."

(Brundtland, 1987)

The definition above is somewhat vague. I actually related more to the following definition.

"At heart, then, sustainable development is a way of thinking, of living, of governing, and of doing business. It is also an approach to evaluating plans, programs, and operations. It seeks to guide choices today to preserve choices for tomorrow, based upon the desire to maintain balance among the three elements of the living triangle." (Cooper and Vargas, 2004)

Even that definition builds upon that of the Brundtland Commission. You might at this point be wondering what the three elements of the living triangle are? They are Economic, Environmental and Social. It's interesting to note that the representation of these three elements have also developed over time. Based solely on my reading they started life as a triangle, before being represented as a venn diagram. A more recent definition exists from Prof. Charles Ainger (2011).

"...the correct structure would place society within the environment, and the economy within the society. Society is an interface within the environment through resources and waste. The environment places limits on the society (through ecological and carbon footprints). Society is qualified through the quality of life for people and their communities (human development index, HDI). The economy creates jobs and wealth, and the fair distribution of these by serving the other two components."

Dresner (2008) makes an interesting point when summarising the work of Tim O'Riordan.

"'Sustainable development' is a meeting point for environmentalists and developers."

All in all I'm more at ease with thinking about sustainability (or sustainable development) as a way of thinking and it was a poem by Ray Anderson's (skip to about 13min 50s) colleague that really caught my attention.

Bibliography

Brundtland, G. H. (1987) Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future. Available at: http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm#I (Accessed: 9 November 2011).

Cooper, P. J. and Vargas, C. M. (2004) Implementing Sustainable Development: From Global Policy To Local Action. United States of America: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Dresner, S. (2008) The Principles of Sustainability. 2nd edn. London: Earthscan.

Pitelis, C. N., Keenan, J. and Pryce, V. (2001) Green Business, Green Values, and Sustainability. Oxon: Routledge.

*Please not my referencing might be a little off as I couldn't access the guidance document at the time of writing.

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Ok, so it's been a while. I'm, hopefully, about to add an influx of posts but thought it was worth prefixing them with some context. I'm studying an MSc in Project Management as a distance learning student. I'm currently covering the following modules:

• BE1103 Project Sustainability. Looks at the growing importance of incorporating sustainability principles into projects and across project teams.
• BE1170 Project, Programme and Portfolio Management. Pretty much what it says on the tin.

The following posts will relate directly to my learning from those projects. Oh, and there might be some that explore Enterprise Architecture (EA) as I'm currently involved in a programme of work that has been investigating how further and higher education might adopt EA, the benefits of EA and how best to promote it.

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Oxford University Press (2011) Oxford Dictionaries. Available at: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/temporary (Accessed: 23 September 2011).

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Values - principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life. (Oxford Dictionaries)

Values are important because you're more likely to succeed if you believe in what it is you're doing.

Principles - a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning. (Oxford Dictionaries)

Principles are important because they remove ambiguity when making decisions and help people to understand where they stand within an organisation.

Two pretty good examples of this are Toyota and 37signals, although values and principles are often interwound. I love the way 37signals highlight theirs on the front page of their website!

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A very knowledgeable colleague once explained to me what an expert is...

An 'ex' is a has-been and a 'spurt' is a drip under pressure

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The thing I find hard about project management is knowing it's just a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. Projects can slot into programmes which slot into portfolios, they can slot straight into portfolios or they can just 'be'. The idea is that all of these things combine to meet the needs of your organisational strategy which helps you to achieve your organisational mission. Pop quiz, can you recall your organisational mission? How much is lost in translation throughout various departments?

Messy doesn't even come close, but help is at hand. I've recently been introduced to Enterprise Architecture (EA) and I'm hooked–I know I'm a little late but what can you do. I've never had the opportunity to apply EA but the idea is that it can help senior managers deliver business and organisational change by making sense of everything that's going on. As Tom Graves so elequently puts it:

Things work better when they work together, with clarity, with elegance, on purpose.

Easier said than done of course but the ideas and techniques have proven useful to a range of JISC projects I've been working with. I'm developing a 'briefing paper' style document at the moment to help raise awareness of EA which I'll share in due course but for now recommend the following documents/resources:

• Everyday EA by Tom Graves (as mentioned above).
• Doing EA (TechWatch 2009).
• Unleasing EA (TechWatch 2009).
• If you're thinking about creating an EA you'll need a framework e.g. TOGAF or Zachman.
• You'll also need a modelling tool e.g. Archi (free).

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I recently attended a workshop on 'Influencing and Negotiating'. It was a really good day and one of the topics it focused on was 'Persuasion'. If you've never come across them then I'd thoroughly recommend taking a look at Cialdini's six principles of influence, which all draw people towards making a decision.  The six principles of influence are:

1. Liking.
2. Reciprocity.
3. Social proof.
4. Commitment and consistency.
5. Authority.
6. Scarcity.

I was going to write a summary but David Godot does a much better job across at Chicago Psychology. See 'Robert Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence Cheatsheet' for more information. On a lighter note, check out the video below. Which principle do you think applies here? :-)

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I'll no doubt revisit this question many times throughout the lifetime of this blog. I've already answered it, at length, on my personal blog. For now I'll settle on the two things that immediately jump out at me from that post, 'change' and 'common sense'.

Projects bring about change and project management is recognised as the most efficient way of managing such change. (APM)

…project management is not a ‘black art’, nor does it need to be a minefield of jargon and bureaucracy.  Most of project management is plain, common sense… (JISC infoNet)

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Hello and welcome to my posterous site. I've just received an unconditional place to study Project Management at Masters level and I'm hoping to use this space to record my journey.  By doing this I hope to:

1. Learn, and hopefully pass the course.
2. Share my knowledge effectively.
3. Improve my writing skills.

Let's see how it goes...

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