:AACE CERTIFICATION 2009-2010:

Gaps in our AACE Project
Part I
Reading through “Bridging the Three Gaps in Project Management “on http://www.wrike.com/projectmanagement/03/25/2008/Bridging-the-Three-Gaps-in-Project-Management written by Andrew Filev, co-founder of Wrike, “the best and most intuitive project management software on the market” read Clarke, Business Builder Alliance, Inc., I found that its gaps are quite the same the problems that we’re facing with in our AACE project. However, my writing is viewed from our AACE project’s perspectives you may find the ideas is not totally the same as the author’s point of view.

* The gap between the strategic plans and the daily agenda of project team members
According to the author, the strategic plans, quarterly plans, project plans and the daily to-do list of project team members are separated in many organizations. And our AACE project organization is also not out of the list. Our total project plan (the strategic plan), team governance agreement (the strategic assessment plan), weekly report/plan and the individual working agenda are not fully linked in one master plan but separately placed. That may causes discrepancies, inconsistence in documentation or in some cases we may be off the track. Taking one obvious example in our AACE project, the assessment criteria in the team governance agreement are almost missed in the weekly project report that may lead to our failure in complying with what we commit to deliver to our Customer and Sponsor, then minus credits at the end of project is unavoidable.

The gap between email and project management tool (The project management tool here
Should be understood as our shared website)
In our special project, which is executed by a virtual team, we cannot deny the fact that email is the simplest and the most convenient tool for communicating and connecting the team members from different countries, regions and time zones. However, we’re suffering from its negative side with the thousands of emails receiving from our mentor, our project managers and team members daily and of course, plus thousands of mails in our daily works. Swimming in emails everyday makes us tired and we may lose control of them, missing of the important emails easily happens. In addition, it takes our time to sum up the information from so many emails, then late responses consequently occur. Yet this gap could be closed if there’s a shared web/tool that everyone can access, update and share their information to all team members to reduce communications via emails. With our AACE project team, I think Google is now a good tool but we need find out the ways to organize it properly then tracking and finding things would be more convenient to all project team members. Then getting away from the email burden will be not that difficult.

These two gaps are just parts of our current gaps but by closing them we could mitigate the risks in the coming days of our project. And taking the author’s statement as the summary: “people (managers and/or champions) are much more effective in introducing the process and managing organizational changes. Tools should suit and be there to help and empower”. Changes are really needed in our organization now. Do you agree so, my dear mates?

Hanoi, November 07, 2009
Writing blog at a very beautiful café, in a very nice Sat morning. But then forgot to post it on time.