Service-Oriented Project Management
by Jerry Manas

[Business/Project Management]

Over the last decade, organizations have come to realize that poor project execution is impeding their ability to achieve strategic goals. Projects are still failing at a rate of 75 percent, and have been for years despite standards, certification and project management training. It hasn’t helped that projects are growing more complex with offshore resources, multiple vendors, global initiatives, virtual teams, conflicting stakeholders and the like. But the primary reason most projects fail is because the focus of the execution and the measurement of projects is too narrow and
inwardly-directed.

Typically, most organizations use three metrics to judge project success: on time, on budget, and meets requirements.  There are several problems with this narrow view:

• It often has limited bearing on real value to the client and the organization.
• Simply meeting requirements does not guarantee optimal performance.
• Doing the wrong thing on time and on budget serves nobody, even if it does meet “requirements.”
• It views client satisfaction and total opportunity value as lagging indicators to be measured afterwards when they are, in fact, leading indicators if the project is to be perceived as a success and be a success.
• It directs the project manager’s focus inward toward the project’s requirements, schedule, and budget and away from the client.

Internationally best-selling author and PM guru Jerry Manas has developed a "lean" project management framework that shifts the focus of projects toward client satisfaction and real business value. He calls it "Service-Oriented Project Management" or SOPM.  Service-Oriented Project Management consists of a four-phased approach: Understand, Prepare, Iterate, and Transform.

In this unique approach to project management, Manas challenges the way we currently conceive projects. As an example, instead of beginning projects with a set of requirements, service-oriented project management begins with a set of symptoms or ideas from which the project leadership can work with the client and other constituents - to derive requirements.  

Listen to this audio recording to learn the basics of the SOPM approach.