Cybersecurity Program and Project Management

PurposeStandards are written by practitioners for practitioners. It is therefore logical that project managers should comply with project management standards. Benefits management is a domain within programme management. The focus of benefits management is to deliver benefits of initiatives beyond the closure of a normal programme or project. This is not the case with projects within the information systems (IS) discipline, implying that IS programme and project managers are not adhering to standards. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the best practices associated with benefits management are applied to IS initiatives in order to maximise the benefits of these initiatives.Design/methodology/approachSenior and middle managers in South African organisations were interviewed to determine how benefits are managed within their various projects. The purpose of the interviews was to determine adherence to standards and especially benefits management and, second, to determine whether these organisations are achieving any benefits and ultimately value.FindingsThere is an overwhelming non-adherence to benefits management best practices within the IS discipline, and IS programme and project managers do not have the slightest idea how to perform benefits management. Irrespective of this, organisations do believe that they are receiving benefits and value from these IS projects.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was only done in South Africa with the specific focus of IS. The results are thus very specific and opens the door for more comprehensive research that focusses on various industries, countries and standards.Practical implicationsThe results have several implications ranging from how standards are written to the professionalism of IS programmes and project managers. Organisations are not achieving the optimal benefits from investments. The fact that organisations do realise benefits from a broken process, implies that more benefits can be realised when the entire benefits realisation process is followed. Governance controls should also be put in place to ensure that programme and project managers are adhering to standards.Originality/valueStandards are dominating the project management discipline and there is a general assumption that programme and project managers are adhering these standards. This research queries the value of standards as the results indicate that there is limited adherence to standards and best practices.

In article trends in the development of projects and programs are analyzed, characterized by digitization, globalization, transition to Agile transformation, and business projection. The Classifier of Professions in Ukraine does not reflect all positions of today. By searching for the word «project», the Classifier implies a chief architect, chief designer, chief engineer, etc. The disadvantage of the Classifier of Professions is the lack of new, modern professions related to project and program management. The development of the Agile environment has also affected the professional work of project management, giving rise to many professions that need detailed consideration. The list of professions related to project management is considered. The most important ones from today's point of view are Project Manager, Project Curator, Project Coordinator, Administrator, Supply Chain Design and Management Specialist, PR-Manager, Event-Manager, Fundraiser, specialists in various project management fields. The content of the responsibilities for each item is disclosed.Agile specialists allow to use changes to provide the project customer with competitive advantages. At present, there is a need for competent Agile-specialists who must have the ability to sustainably develop, have the motivation to adapt and grow, which drives the project team to these changes. Agile-specialists or agile-leaders are able to deliver project results through the tools and resources available, through systematic and strategic thinking, as well as resourcefulness and a situational approach, that allows any change to be made to deliver the project with a competitive advantage in a dynamic environment.Agile is an outlook on the value of each project participant, people more important than processes and tools. Many teams are trying to implement Agile-today these days, but forget that this approach requires rehinking. After all, Agile-works if each participant is equally important and equally willing to adapt to a dynamic environment and constant change. Unfortunately, there is no universal «recipe» on how to be flexible − there are only some tools that help you adjust. In the future, professionals will increasingly need to replenish their competencies, acquire new skills that will be relevant and in demand in the rapidly evolving world.

The article is devoted to the issues of combination of the most important components of the theory of sustainable development and the principles of project management. The current state of the problem has been analyzed, the lack of knowledge on the corresponding issues in national literature and practice has been indicated, the rare use of sustainable development elements in project management has been identified. The prerequisites for the involvement of sustainable development objectives in the components of project management have been examined. Achieving the defined purpose is possible through the implementation of projects that aim to take into account the interests of sustainable development, as well as through the implementation of other projects that include the objectives of sustainable development. Critical inconsistencies in methodological approaches to the accomplishment of the objectives of sustainable development and project management have been identified. Thus, a more profound specification of the project's priorities and objectives, as well as the elaboration of time scheduling and scope of work are needed. The objectives for minimization of the identified inconsistencies as well as for rationale for the principles of corporate social responsibility provision have been defined. The assessment of the current regulatory documents in the field of project management with the focus on the involvement of sustainable development objectives has been conducted. It is pointed out that the corresponding aspects are poorly elaborated in the most well-known regulatory documents, namely, Individual Competence Baselinet (ICB), International Project Management Association (IPMA), Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Project Management Institute (PMI), A Guidebook of Project and Program Management for Enterprise Innovation (P2M), etc. Methodological approach to the integration of management decisions into the project management, the main components of which must be the integration of the regulations of PM into the main stages of SD, the broadening of time and geography of the project indicators, the identification of the correlations between the life-cycle of the project and product, as well as the expenses on the implementation of these projects and products and significant extension of the requirements of the project manager.

Project Management for Performance Improvement Teams (or, PM4PITs, for short) provides practical guidance based on innovative concepts for project teams -- especially Performance Improvement Teams (PITs)—and their Project Managers on how to successfully complete individual projects and programs using an ingenious and scalable framework based on an innovative foundation fusing together elements of Project Management, Innovation Management, and Continual Improvement. This book lays out how Project and Program Managers and their teams can do those right projects the right way, one project at a time. It details what continual improvement, change, and innovation are, why they are so important, and how they apply to performance improvement—both incremental and transformative. The authors examine the four types of work and workforce management in organizations, Strategic, Operations, Projects, and Crises, using four common comparative variables: Proactive/Preventive versus Reactive/Corrective, Temporary/Unique versus Ongoing/Repetitive, Innovative versus Maintaining the Status Quo, and Schedule Focus: Fiscal Year versus Short Term versus Long Term. These comparisons set the stage for the uniqueness of the third type: Projects (and Programs) that are fundamentally change-driven.

The management of project management: A conceptual framework for project governance

Sustainability has evolved into being a recognized component of decision making. Also, integrating sustainability in project management has had dynamism in the research field over the few last decades. The absorption and demand for sustainability in the development market are increasing, as the focus of concretizing the idea of sustainability within challenging projects. This research shows how sustainability can be incorporated into the project by a project manager and in the project management process by being more proactive in meeting customer needs and demands. However, we work hand in hand with Program managers to optimize green construction design and environmental protection. Third-party agencies also conduct environmental assessments to know how sustainable the project to meet the demands of the future generation. This paper presents a discussion on which project management roles have what influence sustainability in the process of project management by using the Turner’s Model to investigate whether the assumptions made by Turner are true for the case “Anli Homeland” project. Data were drawn from five interviews administered with the major partners (program manager, project manager, two deputy project managers, and the client) of these five all are valid, analyzed, and juxtaposed to the model. The results show the project manager possesses medium responsibility regarding the holistic approach; he also has a towering responsibility for participation and low control for long term view and risk reduction. This perception is established on the notion that a project leader is internally stimulated to work on a project and attain a more sustainable outcome. Ideally, this research is to mitigate negligence along with raising the confidence amongst project leaders to consistently engage in sustainability work through new methods and routines.

Existing standards for project, program and portfolio management are based on the individual competencies of individuals, teams, managers and organizations based on their creativity. One of the areas of such creativity is the creation of a morphological environment for project activities, against which modern methods of solving optimization design and management problems can be applied. The aim of the work was to increase the effectiveness of project planning and project product quality through the development and implementation of project management dynamic morphological models based on dynamic morphological models of individual competencies. To achieve this aim, the following tasks were solved: to develop dynamic models of competent structuring, which take into account the elements of the three groups of Eye competences and their origin and development in time of project and program management; to perform stratification of dynamic elements of competencies by level of mathematical abstraction, physical essence and functional affiliation; practical tests of the study results with the assessment of their technical and economic benefits before known methods. The proposed morphological models, which are based on the allocation (stratification) of the project space structural components individual competencies in all directions of the latter discretization: individual projects, programs and project portfolios, functional areas of the project activity that can vary significantly depending on the mentality the respective state, sphere of competence (people, practice, prospects), etc. As a result of aim-setting and planning of the project activity, the Protomodel appears as the beginning of the latter, the first edition of the dynamic multidimensional morphological model. With the beginning of the project activity there is a Big Bang Protomodel, which in the future leads to its dynamic expansion. Simultaneously with the development of the main project for waterfall technology, there may be a need for an additional subproject that has its own prototype and after its Big Bang further develops, for example, according to one of the well-known flexible AGILE technologies of PM. The individual competencies stratification (on the level of mathematical abstraction, physical essence and functional belonging) is executed. The morphological models and methods of management of project activity processes have been constructed. Examples of morphological models and methods of project activity management are presented and their adequacy is confirmed. Practical tests of the results of the research with the assessment of their social benefits through known methods have been carried out

This chapter examines establishing programmes in organizations that have little or no previous programme management experience. A programme organization has to be established above any existing dedicated project organization. In addition to dealing with programmes and their internal management, organizations are faced with external influencing factors. An organization has to decide for itself how to use and handle the entire topic of governance in the context of portfolio, programme and project management. A good governance framework supports the set-up of deliverable-orientated initiatives in the form of projects and also the set-up of benefits-orientated initiatives in the form of programmes. It soon becomes obvious that an organization needs to provide clarity in the use of the term 'programme' and that the term must be defined clearly within the organization. In most organizations the company's enterprise programme management office (EPMO) takes the responsibility for this task. The EPMO communicates the key performance indicators which are necessary for the control of the portfolios.

Creating and Appropriating Value from Project Management Resource Assets Using an Integrated Systems Approach

Although the ability to make right decisions is considered a main indicator of organizational project management professionalism, many project, program, and portfolio managers are unwilling to try to improve the quality of their decisions. This ongoing research aims to develop a substantive theory about the decision-making processes considering four elements: cognitive biases, tools and techniques, emotions and organizational factors in the context of software development project-based organizations considering the three levels of project governance: project, program, and portfolio. This paper presents the first results of the research and proposes to shed light on the susceptibility of IT project managers to cognitive biases and how they deal with them, including techniques and tools they use to minimize their negative effects. This study evaluates eight cognitive biases: anchoring bias, exposure effect, hindsight bias, halo effect, planning fallacy, sunk-cost fallacy, availability-related bias, and Parkinson's law effect. The qualitative approach was based on semi-structured interviews with project managers from IT organizations from Brazil and Portugal. Agile practices and knowledge management activities were cited as good practices.

The Titanic sunk, so what? Project manager response to unexpected events

RISK MANAGEMENT IN THE PROGRAM/PROJECT ENVIRONMENT: The Risk Management process is assuming greater influence in the process of Project and Program Management. The requirements of NPG 7120.5A [NPG, 1998] have created inroads for the results of identifying risk to influence project decisions. Program needs and the interdependencies of risks among projects are receiving increasing attention on major JPL projects. Creating Risk Management plans and requiring risk reporting are beginning to make project personnel aware of the benefit of identifying and mitigating potential future adverse consequences and understanding the trade-offs involved in spending reserves for prevention as opposed to recovery from problems. Risk-based decision-making in the planning phase is allowing risks balancing to be considered, and hard decisions in the cost-capped environment require even reduction in expected mission return in order to provide adequate performance assurance. RISK ASSESSMENT TOOLS USED IN DESIGN AND ASSURANCE: The paper will describe the use of Risk-revealing checklists and compilations of engineering guidance principles as enabling tools for comprehensive risk identification. Also, effective risk assessment methods (such as Failure Modes Effects Analyses (FMEAs), and Probabilistic Risk Analyses (PRAs) will be discussed. Tracking tools appropriate to maintaining cognizance of risk will be covered. INTEGRATING RISK AND MANAGING PROJECT RESOURCES: JPL is in the process of identifying a standardized Risk Management methodology, which is based on the two pioneering methodologies developed on the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) projects. Criteria for assessing risk will be “normalized” with tailoring allowed. Database tools are available now to support this approach for flight projects. The Risk Management team at JPL has developed such a tool, which is in use on many of our projects. An advanced version of the JPL tool has been demonstrated which will provide options for quantitative analysis and resource management trade-offs. Implementation of risk tracking metrics in cost and schedule management systems, and design tools, will allow change to be quickly detected. Also, experience on the MGS project suggests that project management can make effective use of risk impact assessments based on cost, and can therefore gain insight into the effective use of project reserves. Utilizing common risk metrics between the risk management process and design metrics, Problem/ Failure Reports (PFRs), earned value reporting, and other management areas will provide more confidence in the impact of project decisions. INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENTS AND THE SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT OFFICE (SMO): The requirement to balance faithful service to the project customer while at the same time provide an objective assessment of the health of the project to the JPL administration and to the agency will be facilitated through the SMO function. Risk Assessments using criteria common to those that the project uses but identification and assessment by independent “eyes” will allow added possibility for early detection and correction of problems. This will enhance the Risk Management effectiveness on the project, and undoubtedly increase the likelihood of mission success.

Project activity sometimes encounters problems that cannot be solved using existing methods and models used in project and program management. This, first of all, relates to the management of interested parties in construction projects. The peculiarity of special construction cargoes (heavy road engineering, large-sized constructions and equipment, pipes, oversized capacities, complex elements of architectural compositions, etc.) is that, due to their technical characteristics, they cannot always be transported on public roads using conventional transport. In the implementation of such "transport" subprojects in some cases it is necessary to overcome the paths, raise the power lines or even change the landscape. All this requires the creation and development of fundamentally new approaches to managing interested and non-interested parties in projects whose participants are subject to mutually antagonistic decisions and actions. Therefore, the creation and implementation of an effective system of support for the adoption of optimal design decisions in the process of project management and programs in the construction industry, in which there is a conflict of interest between the various interested and unwelcome parties, is very relevant. The problems of management of the interested parties of the construction projects in the presence of special resources supply operations are analyzed. The basics of planning of the processes of management of interested or uninterested parties in the construction projects are developed. Methods of prevention and compensation of counteraction to uncertainty in the processes of management of the interested parties of construction projects are developed. The system of decision-making support in the proactive construction management "SOLINTR" has been developed. The practical tests of the "SOLINTR" system in the enterprise, which specializes in the transport of large-sized cargoes, with a positive technical effect are carried out. The possibility of efficient use of new project-oriented methods and models for successful proactive management of the construction process using operations of transportation of special cargoes in conditions of internal contradiction between groups of people from among the project implementers has been confirmed.

The article is devoted to the comparison of tools for analyzing innovative ideas, such as “design thinking” and the modified “seven hats” method. Both methods are actively used in project management at the initiation and planning stages. Thetechnology of generation, analysis and selection of creative ideas of projects based on the combination of these two approaches when working in a team is considered. The article is a continuation of the authors' research in the field of creative thinking prob-lems, both in the field of education, and in the field of professional project and program management. The results can be used to develop a theoretical framework for project management at the stage of generating ideas and initiating projects.The logic of the process approach of the design-thinking method echoes the logic of using the modified seven hats method. Therefore, the authors propose to use in the work of project teams at the stage of project initiation a modified “seven hats”method together with the “design-thinking” method. At the stageof consideration of the project idea, it is proposed to approach the devel-opment of the idea step by step, since this is required by the “design-thinking” method, and at each stage all team members wear the same “hats”. The paper presents the methodology obtained by directly transferring the methods and tools proposed for the “seven hats” method in the logic of their consistent use in conjunction with the “design thinking” technique. A table has been developed for the correspondence of the stages of creating a project idea using the “design thinking” and “seven hats” approaches, for example, the “green hat” is assigned to the “generating ideas” stage, and the “blue”, “white” and “black” hats to the “prototype testing” phase. Developing the ideas of Edward de Bono, it becomes possible not only to effectively generate ideas at the stage of project initiation, but also to develop prototypes that have the value the customer needs. Namely, this is the result of a successfulproject activity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is significantly impacting modern project management (PM) nowadays, especially as it begins to be integrated into business applications. This study focused on evaluating the readiness for AI implementation and the maturity level of PM in selected project-oriented organizations in Pakistan. Data from 12 such organizations were gathered through focus groups to examine the status of AI readiness and PM maturity and to explore their association. The methods used included exploratory data analysis and research on extreme cases. The findings indicated that AI readiness was relatively high in areas of governance and legal aspects but lower in solution development. Conversely, PM maturity was found to be higher in PM but less developed in program and portfolio management. Analysis of extreme cases suggested a positive relationship between AI readiness and PM maturity, supporting the idea that AI can enhance PM. These findings are crucial both for theoretical understanding and practical application.