Joanne Greene-Blose is a repeat speaker at PMI’s prestigious Global Congress and has spoken for PMI Chapters and conferences as well as for other organizations and companies. She is available to speak to your organization on the following topics:
- BP Deepwater Horizon: Lessons in Probabilities. How Cost, Quality, and Risk are interrelated. Described through the context of the Deepwater Horizon case study.
- Abstract: When one analyzes the root causes behind the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that occurred on April 20, 2010, killing 11 people and spilling 53,000 barrels of oil per day, 19 times the volume spilled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, one sees a disregard and lack of proactivity in assessing and responding to potential threats in the offshore oil drilling line of work. In BP’s case, the lack of effective cost, quality, and risk management are interrelated and reflect a general organizational culture of being reactive rather than proactive as well as one that emphasizes cost-cutting to virtually the exclusion of all else. With this culture so long entrenched in the company, disaster was inevitable. This presentation shows the significance that organizational culture has on how a company views and responds to risk through the context of BP’s Macondo well project. Also described is a comparison of how risk events actually played out in the disaster versus how they should have been addressed had they used sound risk management processes. With each poor response to a risk event that transpired, the probabilities of future risks occurring increased showing the importance of continually revisiting and reassessing the project risks.
- Get the PMI published paper (download from PMI).
- Over 112 Million Opportunities to Fail: Communication Challenges on MegaProjects through the context of three well-known failed programs.
- Abstract: The Project Management Institute states (2008, p419) that communication is the most important competency skill that a project manager may possess. With very large projects, or programs, the stakes are very high, and consequently communication, as a significant factor in the success or failure of its outcome, cannot be overemphasized. This paper will show several examples where inadequate communication led to the failure of very large and highly visible programs, including the Challenger Space Shuttle program in 1986, the Columbia Space Shuttle program in 2003, and the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010. In large programs such as these, the ability to communicate the correct information to the correct party at the correct time is hampered by its size, with sometimes up to thousands of team members and geographical as well as hierarchical distance as when multiple companies are brought together to achieve a common objective. This paper will analyze the root cause behind the communication failures and will suggest techniques that can be used to avoid or mitigate such failures. What may have worked at the project level will need to be altered to accommodate program management since the complexities at the program level are many factors greater.
- Get the PMI published paper.
- How to Strategically Align Your PMO to the Corporate Vision
- Abstract: A successful PMO is one that can enable the cultivation of key projects, de-prioritize those that don’t add sufficient value, and track and measure its success along the way. For this to happen a PMO needs to be aligned with the corporate vision correctly and all enterprise functional areas need to in turn complement and support the PMO in this endeavor. This presentation will describe where the PMO should sit in the corporate hierarchy and how corporate strategy trickles down via the fulfillment of projects. To be discussed also will be how Sales, Marketing, and Research & Development contribute and interface to the PMO.
- Rome Didn’t Fall in a Day (and Neither did Kodak)
- Abstract: Kodak, founded in 1889 at one time employed over 140,000 people and had a market capitalization of $31 Billion. Today it employs several thousand and is a faint shadow of its former self. Why did this happen? This presentation, which is given to Boston University masters Innovation program students twice a year, describes the organizational, cultural, and strategic challenges that had this billion-dollar company fall to bankruptcy and almost to extinction. The answers are surprising and beyond the obvious.