Project management to offer critical competitive edge

Our Managament Bureau in New Delhi

A project mindset offers corporates a competitive edge in today’s world, Mr Adesh Jain, director, Centre for Excellence in Project Management, said while lamenting the woeful lack of momentum in the project management (PM) movement in India. He was speaking on ‘New frontiers of Project Management’ at the 10th global symposium on Vision to Reality—the Project Management Way. The three-day symposium is being attended by 240 senior-level managers from 100 companies and will be addressed by 35 international speakers from 15 countries.

Time has emerged as a strategic weapon and globally there is a race against time, he said, making it imperative for companies to move fast without compromising on quality or cost. In the global scenario, where there is turbulence due to technological changes and uncertainties, PM has become the most popular field in advanced economies as it handles change and transition effectively, he said.

Making a passionate plea for Indian corporates to adapt PM in larger numbers, Mr Jain lamented that the PM movement in India was moving at snail’s pace. At present, there are just 39 certified project managers in India, though the movement began in December 2000.

Mr Hiroshi Tanaka, founding father and national senior vice-president, Japan Project Management Forum (JPMF), was of the opinion that the Japanese model can be of help in the Indian scenario. Identifying the problem in India as the need to build professional infrastructure, he said while Indians are smart professionals, they lack holistic integration capabilities. It is here that the Japanese model ‘Project and Program Management Practice Guide for Enterprise Innovation’ or P2M, the result of three years of research, can help. P2M, unlike the existing project management bodies of knowledge or competency standards, offers a holistic approach to management of projects and programmes by placing equal emphasis on the project scheme development model and the value and service model in addition to the traditional delivery focussed PM model centering around scope, quality, time and cost.

Japan is working on a detailed English translation of the P2M model, which should be available soon, he said.