Announcing
A Movement for Strong Management of the New, Massive Program to Rebuild America:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Our Goal
To apply, at all levels of governance, enlightened leadership together with the well-proven, widely-used principles, practices, and tools of modern program and project management to the large, complex, and vitally important Program to Rebuild America: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that soon will be proposed by the new Obama Administration and authorized and funded by the new 2009 Congress of the United States of America.
What Is In This For You – and For Us?
Our motivation in initiating this movement is simply to assure that the money to be invested in this very large and important American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will produce the maximum benefits in the shortest possible time for the United States of America and its citizens.
We have all seen firsthand the remarkable results that can be achieved by appropriate application of enlightened leadership with modern program and project management to the various kinds of programs and projects that will comprise the major portion of the ambitious Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. We earnestly desire that those benefits be obtained from the massive amounts of money and talents that will be expended in carrying out this Plan.
We are not seeking to sell anything – other than the adoption of the ideas presented here -- or otherwise profit from initiating this movement
You are invited to share with us the confidence and satisfaction that will be gained when we achieve our goal of strong management of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
Why This Goal At This Time?
The word recovery indicates clearly that the U.S. is not presently on a desired trajectory. We cannot continue what has been and expect recovery.
Bi-partisan demands in Congress are making headline news every day to require visibility, accountability, and effective management at national, state, regional, and city levels of the money that is to be spent on re-building America within the next several years. These legitimate demands will be completely satisfied when the modern program and project management practices that are the subject of this Project Management Manifesto have been implemented.
President Obama has already pledged to work with and support Congress in legislating tighter controls and better efficiency measures regarding the entire federal budget. He recently stated “We’re not going to be able to expect the American people to support this critical effort unless we take extraordinary steps to ensure that the investments are made wisely and managed well”.
The combination of modern project management with dynamic leaders who are experienced program and project managers will avoid many past mistakes of similar large governmental and private enterprise programs and projects. Past mistakes have wasted large amounts (billions) of money and have caused significant failure and/or delays in delivering the intended benefits to the country and its people. (See past case/project findings details document – page 8.)
We note today that similar losses will certainly be experienced in the new initiatives in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan unless program and project management expertise consistently provides the necessary discipline for tight control and accountability through integrated management systems.
The Time To Act Is Now!
There is an urgent need to accomplish the first important step of including appropriate program and project management requirements in the Congressional Acts and Resolutions during the next 2 to 3 months when our new Administration and our new Congress launch the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. The time to act is now!
What is Modern Program and Project Management?
It is a set of principles and practices that grew out of the defense/aerospace and construction industries over the past 50 years, and is now embraced and used in nearly all governmental agencies and in all economic, industrial, and business sectors throughout the world. Modern project management consists of these basic concepts:
Designated points of integrative, accountable, enlightened leadership responsibilities for each program and project at several levels within all involved organizations, including designation of Program and Project Managers for each and every one of these endeavors. This approach assures that responsibilities and accountability are clearly established, and that the objectives of the programs and projects will be achieved; if they are not the reasons for failure are visible and the responsible persons are held accountable personally for the results.
Integrated planning, scheduling, monitoring, reporting and control of all management and technical information for all phases of the programs and projects, using powerful computer and Internet supported management information systems and tools under the direction of the responsible program and project managers. This assures that achievable cost, schedule and technical goals are established at the outset for each program and project, and that each program and project is effectively controlled during its execution.
Integrated teams working effectively under the leadership and integrated control of the Program and Project Managers. This produces the enormous benefits that result from effective teamwork on any type of human endeavor.
How Will We Achieve Our Goal?
The first, fundamental short-term action will be to convince the key persons within the new Obama Administration and the 2009 Congress that they must include proper provisions in the authorizing and funding acts of Congress to require that these modern project management principles and practices will be applied at every level of this massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
The second important, longer term action will be to assure the Administration, the Congress, and all citizens that these requirements are, in fact, being properly implemented. This will involve an integrated effort with the involved governmental agencies at all levels, industry, business, academia, and professional associations.
In carrying out these actions we will:
- Join our voices with every currently on-going effort to improve the way our governmental agencies operate and do business, including the major efforts in this regard within the General Accountability Office (GAO), The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Federal Interagency Project Management Working Group, and the leading federal departments including Energy, Defense, Transportation (including FAA), and others, as well as their counterparts at the state, county, city, and regional levels.
- Join with existing movements with similar goals in industry, business, academia, and appropriate professional organizations.
- Achieve synergy through building a network of existing, powerful coalitions and networks that will work together to achieve our mutually agreed goals. We will assist in bringing together these movements in government, private industry and business, academia, and professional associations in order to collaborate with all of them on a team basis, since this is a fundamental concept of modern project management.
- Seek to achieve integration of the multitude of related efforts to improve program and project management within government, industry, academia, and professional associations. Integration of people in teams and integration of information are also fundamental concepts of modern program and project management.
- Recruit experienced people within government, academia, industry and business to join their voices with ours to achieve our goal.
- Inform all citizens about this movement in order to develop and enlist grass roots support for our efforts to convince the key members of the Obama Administration and the Congress that our proposals be accepted.
Your Actions Are Requested To:
Read the following Project Management Manifesto, which provides more detail about this movement and our approach, and informs you about who we are.
- Join our sponsoring group of individuals by selecting the Add Yourself link on the menu above, and adding your name. When you do so, you may also provide us with your email address and a brief description of your background and experience, or your comments on this initiative.
- Post a Discussion on our collaboration site, or send an email to any of our Charter Signatories whom you may know. Give them any ideas or proposals that you have that will help us achieve our goal, together with contact information about related movements and other initiatives to enable us to collaborate with those initiatives.
The Manifesto for Effective Management of The
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
We are a community of project management experts and leaders who are experienced in delivering results. As seasoned professionals, we know that there are three key elements to achieving the successful completion of projects that all Americans want and our country desperately needs.
We urge that these elements be part of all projects launched through The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
1. Systemic use of a set of proven best practices for project selection, planning, budgeting, oversight, and reporting.
2. Recruitment of experienced, responsible project leaders who are accountable to the American people for project results.
3. Selection of project sponsors at Federal, State, County, City and multi-authority levels that ensure strategically sound, transparent accountability at every level.
This combination of enlightened leadership and the discipline of modern project management will allow Americans to work together efficiently to meet our country's goals.
We have all too often seen money, time and effort wasted on large public projects. It will happen again unless proven modern project management principles and expertise is used to provide the discipline, controls and accountability needed to ensure that these new projects are successful.
You can join us in this movement by contacting your Senators and Congressperson and insisting that these elements be part of any project that is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
If you would like more information about our movement and the value that project management can bring to the intelligent effective management of our national recovery and reinvestment, please visit the other links and pages of this website.
It’s our money and our time –– and we need to spend them both wisely. Together, we can make a difference this time.
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Why this Manifesto and Nationwide Movement?
- To Minimize Waste: Unless these programs and projects are managed with accountability using proven, mature PROJECT MANAGEMENT principles, practices and tools, history has demonstrated that the projects will not achieve their aim or will come in over budget and behind schedule.
In particular, over the past decades over 80% of government capital projects have required major changes and have thereby lost about 30% of their estimated value. We cannot afford this level of waste and delays in the future.
- To Re-Build Trust, Confidence, and Respect: Our citizens must regain their belief that government and private industry and business can work together for the common good of the country. The approach presented in this Manifesto will significantly help to achieve this goal.
- To Apply Proven Management Methods that are Widely Available: Project management methods are mature, well-known and used throughout the USA in government at all levels and in all industries. Executives at all levels in the Obama Administration, the U. S. Congress, all affected Federal, State and Local Governmental Agencies and every industrial and business sector must demand that all of the Rebuild America major programs and projects follow this set of best practices and that all project teams are led and staffed by seasoned experts with proven track records. Many hundreds of project management experts are now available throughout the country.
- To Require Accountability: In addition, each project within each program must also have at least one qualified, committed executive sponsor who is held strictly accountable for the benefits and costs of the project, and who will hold the project teams accountable in turn!
- To Institutionalize Accountability: This will require that a career path be set up for project professionals within government at all levels, that appropriate incentives be set up to reward those who take the risks, that industry government partnerships be strengthened, and that mentoring and oversight by GAO, OMB, and private professional organizations be increased.
There is no defensible reason why these proven methods are not applied
to this vital effort of Re-Building America to assure that the massive amounts of money that will be expended are spent prudently and efficiently in the shortest time possible with accountability and visibility at every level.
Who We Are
We are a community of project management leaders who are experienced in delivering results:
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Executives, managers, practitioners, professors and teachers, consultants and coaches, authors,
- From government, industry, business, universities and non-governmental organizations,
- With global experience and credentials.
Signed:
Wayne Abba
Russ Archibald
John Cormier
Gary Christle
Stacy Goff
Ed Hoffman
David Muzio
Michael O’Brochta
David Pells
Bob Rovinsky
Miles Shepherd
Larry Suda
Ron Taylor
Bob Youker
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And Barbara Archibald, Communications Consultant
Appendix: Past case study findings
For example, OMB reviewed their largest IT programs and found that over 80% of them required more than 10% more money and more than 10% more time than promised at the time the project was started. One large civilian agency with many infrastructure projects conducted a study in 1998-1999 that looked at 10 of their largest programs (with total life cycle costs approaching one billion dollars or more). It compared the costs and schedules "promised" at the time the program's baselines were approved versus their actual costs and schedules when the projects were finished. It found that actual cost was 2.5 times the promised cost and schedule was 1.5 times the initial estimate. These are large numbers and indicate that the cost benefit ratios significantly decreased and that the promised benefits considerably shrunk.
When the office that did the study dug deeper, they found that project managers and others felt that they needed to claim low costs, quick schedules, and high benefits to "get the agency pregnant" before the total cost and time were actually known. By this they meant that to successfully receive the funding needed to start a program they needed to sell the agency on a lower price and reveal the total costs only after the program was too late - with commitments to customers and the Public - to stop. They also noted that there was no accountability for any project manager for this practice, which was tacitly accepted. Finally, they discovered that there was a lack of trained, independent cost estimators within the project offices and that led in many cases to the development of close relationship with contractors, and as a result there was no real "government cost estimate" - even if they brought an outside person in to develop an estimate, they were hampered by the lack of cost estimation expertise within the program offices.
As you can imagine, this set of factors led to a total loss of agency credibility with the Hill and OMB. To counteract this, the agency began to establish more credible and adequate budgets, and to implement a risk management approach, whereby they would assess major risks and then make a deliberate attempt to determine what level of resources were required to mitigate each risk to the baseline.
As a result, the agency was able to report (2003+) that they were meeting our cost and schedule targets about 90% of the time, and have sustained that record to this day.
The lesson here for the new Administration is that controls must be put in place to counteract the natural tendency of Program managers and other claimants on the "Rebuild America" initiatives to overstate their costs and understate their schedules, and that we must institute rigorous cost estimation, adequate budgeting, good risk management and good reporting such as earned value management - and above all, require that program teams contain expertise in these areas and use these tools.
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