“Projects” are defined as temporary endeavors undertaken to create a unique product, service or result, in contrast to “operations” which are ongoing. Competent project management is generally recognized as essential to the success of project outcomes and the project's ultimate results. Frequently; however, project management aptitude is not commensurate with the spatially integrated and highly interrelated nature of project management. Sixteen million individuals in the United States assert working annually in project management. Nearly $10 Trillion of global GDP ($40 Trillion) is spent annually on projects. In the US, $2.7 Trillion of U.S. GDP ($11 Trillion) is annually spent on projects. The Chaos Report 2004 (Standish Group International, Inc. West Yarmouth, Mass.) notes that among 13,522 information technology projects, only 34% of projects are successful, 15% fail, and 51% are challenged (challenged refers to projects being completed but incurring cost and or schedule overruns and or diminished quality and or scope reduction from planned). Of the challenged projects only 46% incurred cost overruns under 20% of budget, and 54% incurred cost overruns over 20% of budget. The average cost overrun was 43% and this compared favorably with 180% average cost overrun in 1994. Dollar waste due to cost overruns was $55 Billion in 2002 against $255 Billion of project spending. Time overruns have increased significantly to 82% from a low of 63% in 2000. Scope reductions resulted in 52% of projects requiring features dropped in the final product release.
Project management intelligence and its spatially interrelated system activity requires continual acquisition and maintenance of knowledge, formal development of general management skills, and experiential training in project management practices. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, improving project management quality and effectiveness relates to ultimate profitability and even business survival. Formalized pedagogic training materials directed toward project management are produced and published by industry institutes and trade groups, such as: Project Management Institute (PMI)—publisher of an authoritative and comprehensive reference-Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA); and numerous professional authored texts, including; Project Management Professional Study Guide by Kim Heldman, IT Project Management On Track from Start to Finish by Joseph Phillips, Examguide IT Project+ by Kathy Schwalbe; and numerous others.
Commercial computer and networking software products directed to useful project management and its improvement are known in the art, such as: Microsoft Project, published by Microsoft Corporation; Pertmaster (Project Risk Software), published by Primavera Systems, Inc.; SMART, published by Process Integrity, Inc.; PLANVIEW, published by PlanView, Inc.; Project Portfolio Management, published by Welcom US/UK; Winsight—Earned Value Management, published by C/S Solutions, Inc.; and TRAKKER/iPursuit, published by Dekker, Ltd. Other numerous training formats are also known in the art, such as; Project Management Degree programs at universities, PMP chapter trainings, and individual service providers and coaches hosting workshops and pedagogic forums.
Microsoft Project (MSProject), is a specialized 2-dimensional computer software application screen formatted as a Gantt oriented charting tool used primarily for inputting, listing, displaying, tracking and viewing project tasks, time schedules, milestones, work activity status and reports of project work completed and to-be completed. MSProject is a stand-alone project task and cost software application tool that does not interact directly with vast amounts of additional project knowledge, processes and management competencies. MSProject is a narrow specific application tool in that it does not include techniques and methods to merge with other project wide intelligence aspects, such as, but not limited too; core and facilitating knowledge requirements, initiation and closure activities, and the vast areas of project managerial competencies; decision making, consensus building, team development, human resource management, leadership behaviors, negotiation nor hundreds of thousands of other project management techniques and methods.
Pertmaster (Project Risk Software), published by Primavera Systems, Inc. is another specialized 2-dimensional add-in software, that allows users to apply risk analysis to existing MSProject data and displaying risk results. Probabilistic risk and uncertainty can be added to the project schedule for building tasks and related cost risk registries and determine likelihoods of meeting project targets. However, as in MSProject, vast amounts of essential project knowledge, processes and management competencies are not taught with the software application.
A 2-dimensional computer software system, SMART, published by Process Integrity, Inc. is a measurement tool for acquiring, prompting, tracking, validating, and verifying and producing project quality reports. Again, vast quantities of other critical project intelligence knowledge and managerial competency functions and elements necessary for successful project management are absent and left unattended too.
PLANVIEW, published by PlanView, Inc. produces a IT Project Portfolio Management software with capability to; plan project resource assignments, staffing, work scheduling and status reporting, cost and financial forecasting, baselining, and managing project budgets, performance tracking, and change management. However, as in other dedicated 2-D computer software systems PLANVIEW is a necessary project management tool but does not sufficiently include other essential of project initiation and closure aspects and the vast critical areas of managerial competencies, such as but not restricted to; scope and quality definitions, team development, leadership behavior, communications skills, negotiation strategies, consensus convergence techniques, and enormous amounts of other areas of project management intelligence left outside the scope of this method.
Winsight—Earned Value Management, published by C/S Solutions, Inc. is used by US Air Force, Army, Navy, Department of Energy, Defense Contract Management Command, and the Defense Systems Management College to train selective project management concepts. Winsight is a 2-D particular computer based software tool aimed explicitly at financial performance aspects of earned value of project management. Once again, vast areas of other project management intelligence tools knowledge and managerial competencies are not taught.
TRAKKER/iPursuit, published by Dekker, Ltd., is another narrowly focused 2-D earned value management and analysis software tool for merging project cost and schedule performance data, including optional modules providing for project cost, schedule and resource integration into MSProject to produce performance reports. Once more, vast areas of project management intelligence, project knowledge and managerial competency are not apparent implicitly or explicitly.
Kepner-Tregoe, a highly publicized professional management-training firm, provides project manager skill building and training. Kepner-Tregoe project training is particularly targeted to managerial competencies, such as; critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, getting work commitments from team members, art of communication, management styles, workplace motivation techniques, human performance management, and leadership behavior all essential but insufficiently merged with other essential project intelligence domains to present project management as a unified system. Training is conveyed by 1 and 2-dimensional computer displays, voice delivery, and paper media with content presented in a linear-like step-by-step sequence. The specialized project management content takes days to weeks to convey even the limited project management competency content.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,744,026, 4,885,686, and 4,924,386 disclose apparatus and methods specially designed for the efficient allocation of a plurality of resources utilizing the Karmarker algorithm (a linear programming variant) and polytopes in accordance with cost assignments. The narrow disclosures inform the use of polytopes to a limited resource situation involving resources that are commonly found in project management but do not embrace nor embody myriad of broad domains of project management knowledge, processes or managerial competencies either in particular or as a unified system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,630,070 discloses methods for optimization of a plurality of resources or products of differing types with production constraints for manufacturing resource planning. The methods utilize mathematical linear programming optimization procedures within matrices to optimize resource usage times, carrying amounts, inventory quantities, subassemblies, costs, revenues and penalties, demand data, bill-of-resource data, resource availability data, resource constraining parameters, and other related variables. The disclosure relates the use of optimizing resources in constrained conditions that are frequently found in project management but does not claim an advantage linking optimization results with or merging results interactively into the domains of project management knowledge, processes or managerial competencies either in particular or as a unifying system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,391, discloses a device and method for project management for generating a Gantt chart displaying a plurality of work steps, activity schedule bars, schedule start and end points and work-step-divisions. As in all cited prior art said disclosure teaches the specialized useful art of Gantt charting activity but does not present an advantage of conveying or displaying the domains of project management intelligence as a unified system.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,006,978 discloses a method and system for developing an acquisition integration project plan. The systems and methods teach the facilitated integration of one corporate entity into another corporate entity. In one embodiment, a method in a computer for generating an acquisition integration project plan includes displaying a plurality of pre-defined integration events based upon at least one user selected integration area, each pre-defined integration event being associated with a phase in an acquisition process. The systems and methods jointly employ the use of MSProject as previously described herein. Once again, said disclosure does not incorporate advantages of concurrently conveying, communicating, or teaching the unified system aspects of project management intelligence.
The Project Management Institute (PMI)—publisher of an authoritative and comprehensive standards and terms of reference—the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the Computer Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) both standards promulgation and certification bodies provide a common point of reference to the vast body of project management field literature which is conveyed with 1 and 2-dimensional media. These referencing bodies and related publications disclose the domains of project management intelligence in detail by using large volumes of 1 and 2-dimensional written literature. However, these authoritative references present project management intelligence in a step-by-step, and sequential linear definitional format. Such materials lack 3-dimensional qualities and are conveyed mostly as definitional collections or groupings of defined terms that when added together comprise a project management. However, content is conveyed to learners in sequential event ordered fashion with little unifying focus on project management as a system. Moreover, these authoritative sources do not disclose devices, methods, techniques, and embodiments that can be utilized to display project management as a dynamic unified system.
These widely used but narrow and selective methods and tools directed toward the project management field aim to solve specialized local and important problems faced by project management. The relevant art is applied to in-depth and highly specialized aspects of a discrete problem of project management that in-turn yield solutions for a small but nevertheless important project area. In this narrow sense, prior art teachings are useful to solve selective and local problems in efforts to achieve more effective project management. However, the project management tools, training and learning material utilized in these prior methods are primarily conveyed by use of spatial 1 or 2-dimensional means and or word of mouth and may require a degree of computer and networking literacy, time away from project work to attend, and are usually costly.
The prior art computer software methods and devices have an advantage for rapid entering, accessing, shaping and conveying highly specialized areas of project management intelligence, but are limited in their ability to effectively and efficiently convey a unified, broad and comprehensive range of project management intelligence as a spatially conjoined and interrelated whole. Prior systems are designed as 1 and 2-dimensional materials providing a sequential manner and means by which highly spatially limited project management intelligence tools and concepts are learned, arranged, conveyed, communicated, utilized and perceptually transferred among people.
Due to their physical 1 or 2-dimensional structure, these prior art methods typically limit information content to a few visually immediate local displays and, by doing so, simultaneously limit ready access to broader useful spatially unifying and essential dynamic interrelated information. Typical 1 and 2-dimensional prior art tools intentionally restrict the range and scope to narrow, immediate and isolated project management information and by such restriction tend to concentrate on limited mental perceptions when more spatially related and comprehensive mental perception is preferred as a unified whole. Thus, such 1 and 2-dimensional tools and methods are generally less favored as a means of concurrently depicting and conjoining a broader range of spatially interrelated project management intelligence components for purposes of display, learning, exhibit and communication.
A critical limitation of 1 and 2-dimensional image systems is revealed in recent brain science discoveries related to human perception and consciousness by Dr. Christof Koch, Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and computation and neural systems, California Institute of Technology. As stimuli impinge on human sense organs, electrical signals are generated and passed along neuronal pathways building percepts (memory) in the brain's neuronal structures. Dr. Koch's work shows that 35%-40% of brain activity is given over to processing of visual images. Percepts formed from visual image stimulation are shaped by a phenomenon called image blindness. In image blindness the conscious brain part alerts on only a few selective stimuli at a time even though multiple other equally important stimuli are concurrently being processed by the unconscious brain part. The conscious brain part will alert more strongly on habituated stimuli even though other stimuli are present and maybe of greater importance to the situation. Percepts in the brain continually via for dominance with other percepts and the more reinforced percepts most always suppress less reinforced percepts. Dominant percepts are more intensely activated upon suggestive recall even though both percepts exist in memory.
Project stakeholders using prior art methods habitually build weakened perceptions of project management systems when better percept strengthening methods could be used. Stimuli from 1 and 2-dimensional spatial methods reinforce only selective and narrowed local aspects existing largely in isolation from its comprehensive and spatial interrelationship to the broad field of project management. Reinforcement with limiting, narrow and selective local stimuli builds inferior percepts that come to dominate over other percepts that are equally important and spatially interrelated to project management but are not easily alerted due to image blindness.
Percept reinforcement and learning effects in educational technology using interactive multimedia training systems in the field of instrumentation technology were measured and documented in a U.S. National Science Foundation study directed toward the Instrument Society of America's worldwide instrument training standardization and Certified Control Systems Technicians certification program (Kenneth J. Sweeney. US National Science Foundation, Project #9454508, 1994-1997). Elements, principals and functions of physics and physical parameter measuring instruments were presented to learners using interactive multi-dimensional sensory object media with (INVOLVE®). The system allows learners to visualize, interact and manipulate instrumentation objects within a spatially unified operating system environment. Subject matter local concepts (single or multiple measuring instruments) are arranged and displayed spatially conjoined in relation to each other and to their broader interrelated operating system environment (ie. a complete chemical process control operation). Instrumentation concepts and aspects including measured input and output data are displayed in spatially unified relation to each other and to the broader spatially interrelated field of instrumentation intelligence applications using multisensory media. Controlled and experimental learning groups were studied by limiting learning episodes to one-time-pass throughs of the subject matter. Time to achieve predetermined test scores and perceptual recall capacity was measured. Control groups used traditional 1 and 2-dimensional learning system presentations (ie, books). Experimental groups used spatially unifying multimedia system presentations.
These studies document conclusively that subject matter learners using spatially unified learning systems achieved predetermined test scores in 51% less time than learners using traditional 1 and 2-dimensional learning methods. Additionally important, learners achieving predetermined test scores in 51% less time also showed greater quantities of subject matter recall over longer post-learning intervals as opposed to learners using 1 and 2-dimensional learning methods. Clearly, users of spatially unifying learning methods learn faster and have greater recall and retention capacity over users using less spatially unified learning methods.
Further barriers of 1 and 2-dimensional learning methods may be overcome with learning methods tailored to “system dynamics” by virtue of conveying unified complexity and dynamics of a system's components. System dynamics learning aims at understanding greater degrees of a whole system's interconnected component complexity, dynamics of system components interactions, negative and positive feedback loops, event stocks and flows, and networks of component interrelationships. (John D. Sterman. Business Dynamics Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. MIT, 2000.)
The structure of 1 and 2-dimensional learning methods; unlike system dynamics, thwarts greater understanding of project management system complexity, dynamics, and feedback processes commonly encountered in the field of project management. 1 and 2-dimensional learning methods; in contrast to “system dynamics” learning methods, communicate and depict the discipline of project management mostly as independent collections of definitions to be known. The mere ordering of activities into sequential linear-like events (one event directly following the previous) without emphasizing endogenous interconnected dynamics throughout the systems components and activities, yields inferior learning results. Such idiosyncratic, sequential step-like event-ordered learning, with 1 and 2-dimensional methods, causes project management learners, in-turn, to form similar idiosyncratic event-oriented cognitive models of project management practice. Such cognitive models are subsequently used when actually working in project management environments.
1 and 2-D learning models do contribute in building simple cognitive models for use in cases where there are few dynamics among the system's components. However, 1 and 2-D learning models will create flawed mental models which are not effective when applied to complex project management systems. Simplified learning models create numerous impediments to effective improvement of an individual project manager's performance. Flawed cognitive maps based on simplified learning models render project management practitioners deficient in achieving greater levels of project successes.
With simpler teaching models; for example, target project managers operating with event-oriented mental models will tend to respond to project “disturbances” or “disruptions” as “one-off” events without considering delayed “ripple” or “spillover” dynamic effects upon many other endogenous project events/activities more distant in time and space. Typical reasoning, to wit: “If I encounter an immediate event/activity causing a project disturbance, I will respond to it so as to contain its immediate disruptive effect on the system.” However, limited cognitive models fail to better prepare the target project manager to respond also to delayed downstream ‘ripple’ dynamics that the instant disruption and containment response may impart upon interconnected project system events further removed in time and distance. All too frequently, target project managers find themselves forced to respond in the future to what is widely known as “unintended or unanticipated consequences”.
Substituting flawed mental models for more unifying cognitive guides to project management, leads project managers into making erroneous inferences, misperceptions of system dynamics, under- and over-shoot responses and diminished ability to acquire new mental models from lessons learned. By relying on flawed preformed mental models, perceptions of current experience are bounded by the structure of these inferior models. Target project managers often unwittingly later fall victim to their own unintended consequences created earlier in the project. They frequently resort to just “putting out fires”. Lacking clarity of dynamic complexity in a system slows learning and comprehension cycles and reduces performance opportunity. Simplified learning methods and the resultant cognitive models lead to unnecessary amounts of economic failure, waste and human frustration throughout the global project management industry.
Better approaches to project management learning and practice requires: (1) better tools to elicit and represent the mental models held about difficult project management problems, (2) models and methods to challenge, improve and change existing mental models of project management, (3) designing new rules, and applying new cognitive skills to the practice of project management, and (4) methods to sharpen scientific reasoning skills and improve group processes in project management.
Accordingly, there exists need for methods and systems for teaching, learning, displaying, and communicating numerous and varied aspects of project management systems that overcomes the interrelated spatial limitations and cognitive barriers introduced by 1 and 2-dimensional prior art methods and systems. The present method and system utilizes a spatially unified system of 3-dimensional objects for simultaneously visually displaying separate, immediate and local distinct intelligence while concurrently providing comprehensive, conjoined, and interrelated project management intelligence. The present method and system affords more favored, efficient and ready access to spatially related project management intelligence for the purpose and ease of timely communicating, learning and perceiving comprehensive and interrelated project management concepts and principles.
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USPTO Backgrounds