Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Growth of the Project Management Field

As a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI is the professional organization for project managers) each month I receive a copy of PMI Today. In this newsletter style magazine, PMI publishes an updated census of membership and professionals holding one of their six credentials. After reading this month's published results I wondered how much growth they reported over the years so I looked through their archive back to last year and back five years to 2009.

PMI membership grew 7.64% over the past year and 48.84% since 2009. Not only is membership increasing but the number of professionals holding a PMI-related credential is also growing. Professionals holding the PMP credential increased 15.57% over the past year and 83.31% over the past five years while CAPM credentials increased 19.37% over the past year and 236.15% over the past five years. One of the newer credentials, PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner) has experienced the greatest growth of PMI credentials in the past year by increasing 99.81%.

Keeping in mind that membership and credentials expire, these results indicate a growth in the project management field and increased number of professionals holding a certification.


Friday, May 16, 2014

Why I'm Done Using my iPad

Two years ago I purchased an iPad as a type of secondary computing device. I keep the iPad in my messenger bag to serve as my mobile computer. While away from my office I use the iPad with a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard to check and respond to email, to participate in discussions for my online courses, view news and videos, and to write (like I'm doing now for this blog).

During these two years I enjoyed the lightweight and low profile of the iPad. It fit easily in my bag and I was able to carry it around without adding much weight. However, the problem is when I use it for more than simple tasks like email or light browsing. My frustrations began with the poor browser performance and these frustrations grew with apps crashing, inability to capture web content into Evernote, limited features of my web applications through both native Safari and Chrome for iOS, and the slow speed of web page loading in these browsers. The iPad offered wonderful portability but sacrificed productivity when my needs exceeded simple information and media consumption.

This week I have been in Los Angeles with my son's lacrosse team at the MCLA national tournament. I brought my iPad for the week and have been trying to rely on it to check in on my email and stay on top of a few things while I'm away from my office. Throughout the week I have continued to experience poor browser performance, crashing apps, incomplete functionality in my web apps, and the inability to capture content into my Evernote account. I found the iPad to be a very frustrating platform when trying to be productive during my downtime.

After using the iPad for two years I can say that it is a wonder media consumption devise. The display is fantastic and, using my bluetooth keyboard, I'm able to effectively type on the device. I just feel handicapped when using this device compared to my work laptop or my home computer. I think it is time to explore other options. Maybe a chromebook.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Big Data Needs People

Last month I wrote about how we are not quite ready to take advantage of big data. In my post I mentioned that we must first be able to identify new knowledge and have the ability to make changes to capitalize on any new findings. I still stand by these assertions but I want to expand on this further.

Our goal with big data is to find nuggets of new knowledge buried deep within large volumes of high velocity data. We can use big data technologies to better manage the volume and velocity issues and perhaps develop means to filter data to find what we area looking for. For example, we can look for trends in data to discover new product opportunities, detect fraud, determine product anomolies, or predict component failures. All of these possibilities, and many more, represent the payback for big data investments.

The problem is that technology alone is not the solution. As with other forms of knowledge management systems, big data must also rely on people. Organizations must engage knowledgable people to interpret data, determine the patterns to look for in the data, and develop ways to take advantage of any knowledge gained from the data. These intelligent individuals may use big data to discover new information or test a hypotheis about some cause and effect scenario. Regardless of how big data is used, it requires people to realize the benefits. The technology provides the tools and manages the data but it is the people that turn the information into knowledge and enable the organization to capitalize on the new knowledge.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Knowledge Management vs Intellectual Capital

In my previous post I described the relationships between knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC). After re-reading this post I realized some additional insight is needed to better understand these relationships.

First of all, defining knowledge management. Knowledge management can be considered as a system of processes, people, and technology working together to increase the organization's performance through learning (Seleim & Khalil, 2011). This KM system, as Liebowitz (2012) argued, is consists of 80% people and processes while the remaining 20% is the enabling technology. This means these systems are predominantly determined by the organization's ability to engage people and apply the right supporting processes to manage knowledge.

Intellectual capital is considered the next step in knowledge management. IC is the organizational value added when the organization's knowledge assets are leveraged. It is considered the stock of the available knowledge assets (Seleim & Khalil, 2011). Intellectual capital includes human capital, organizational capital, and the relational capital.

If we look at the intersection of KM and IC using the diagram I developed we can say that knowledge is generated, managed, and applied through the KM processes. The available and actionable knowledge is then leveraged as IC to create new value and this IC potentially (if applied correctly) leads to increased performance for the organization.

References

Liebowitz, J. (2012). Beyond knowledge management: What every leader should know. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Seleim, A., & Khalil, O. (2011). Understanding the knowledge management-intellectual captial relationship: A two-way analysis. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 12(4), 286-614.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Relationship between Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital

Last year I developed a new graduate course designed to cover topics in knowledge management (KM) and business intelligence (BI). Understanding that these two topics are related I included both topics in the same course and named the course Optimizing Intellectual Capital. My reasoning for using the intellectual capital (IC) term in the course name was that BI is a component of KM and KM is related to IC. Using these relationships we can consider a study of intellectual capital to include topics in knowledge management and business intelligence. Earlier this year, while teaching the course, I prepared an ontology diagram depicting these relationships.

In order to better understand how KM and IC are related I found an article explaining this relationship. The authors segmented KM into Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Documentation, Knowledge Transfer, and Knowledge Application. The authors also categorized IC into three dimensions of Human Capital, Organizational (structural) Capital, and Relational Capital. Based on this breakdown the authors studied the relationships of the KM processes and IC dimensions.

The authors found that many of the KM processes positively influence development of IC and that each of the dimensions of IC contribute to improvements to certain KM processes. This research shows definitive relationships between KM and IC and not only does KM promote improved IC but also effective IC also promotes improved KM.

Given the complex set of components to this relationship I thought it would be better to view the results through a diagram. Below is my conceptualization on the relationships between KM and IC.


Based on the findings it is clear that each of the processes in the KM iterative cycle contribute to developing some form of IC. Additionally, IC dimensions contribute in developing some of the KM processes but do not promote improving knowledge creation and knowledge application.

References

Herschel, R.T., & Jones, N.E. (2005). Knowledge management and business intelligence: The importance of integration. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 45-55.

Seleim, A., & Khalil, O. (2011). Understanding the knowledge management-intellectual capital relationship: A two-way analysis. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 12(4), 586-614.


Skills to Look for in Project Managers

Today I read a brief article describing the eight skills to look for when hiring an IT project manager. The headlines caught my attention...