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Lesson
15

"Festina Lente" vs "Time is Money"

Inflated or fake project´s ROIs (Return on Investment) can finally lead to inflated corporation´s ROCEs (Return on Capital Emloyed) and to the red ink bottom lines. Too many inflated corporation´s ROCEs finally can succesfully pin down to the touch pad the Adam Smith´s unvisibe hand by well known Quantitative Easing visible hand. Such devil race can usually bring well known market and monetary bubbles which historicaly represents a full manifestation of global financial crisis. Above mentioned two wisdoms or rather approaches, are famous quotes of two wise men. The “Festina Lente - Make haste slowly“ quoted by Octavianus Augustus, Roman Emperor and the „Time is Money“ quoted by Benjamin Franklin, US President. Two wisdoms seems to stay in oposition one to another. But are they really? And even more important question, what are their implications to the global financial crisis?

Lesson
22

Hiden risk of a waterfall

Multi-million USD capital project in execution phase of the piping part dismantling and installation while normal production process. An interference with adjacent duct system had been disclosed in an area inaccessible during project planning phase. After evaluation of the adjacent system backup I have decided to switch the adjacent system water supply to the backup ducting located out of our area of concern. Since it was a "standard" operational practice manipulation, I had decided to keep available contingency of project schedule and do not ask project sponsor and company management for an unplanned outage. When we had commenced to open the backup duct and simultaneously to close the interfering duct located at buildings roof, an immediate rupture created at the closing valve causing a huge waterfall almost jeopardizing adjacent valuable special refractory technological facilities with potential of explosion upon contact of water with produced liquid steel. Arisen situation tested maturity of our team. I had instructed my deputy to manage not standard water closing activities at the building roof while myself with two supervisors and couple workers hurried up to ground zero level to prevent accumulated water spilling into the valuable special refractory furnaces or to get into contact with liquid steel. Upon arrival under the waterfall I had directed one supervisor to monitor and report situation at the adjacent valuable furnace refractory technology and liquid steel operation. Observing more detail the site I had discovered a very old manhole. I sent the another supervisor to check its potential connection to the adjacent sewage. Upon his confirming of interconnection of this old manhole to the functional sewage I directed the workers to create a little temporary dam-like earthwork confining the further spillage of water and driving the water spillage into the discovered manhole. While our drainage activities at zero ground level, my deputy together with operators and contractors had successfully managed redirecting of whole water discharge comparable with Deadwood Idaho river into the backup duct-line located out of our workplace and stop the unwanted waterfall.

Lesson
15

"Minimum" for Project Cost Management

PM ask themselves about ‘the minimum’ for any given project management process – as if the rest of the process is somehow superfluous and anyone who does those extra bits is wasting effort. Ultimately, if stakeholders are happy and the work is progressing and under control, then I’m winning!

Lesson
39

Slightly more decentralized online video meeting

An easy solution that does not require any usernames or passwords can lower the barrier of meeting people online. Privately. There are many commercially successful video conferencing platforms but in many articles you can find online the open alternative is not even mentioned. So I chose to not mention the others here. Just open alternatives. And when I say open, it means anyone is free to run an instance as part of their infrastructure or even use any of the available publicly-running instances.

Lesson
15

Bottom-up estimating

The project managers confident in their experience with similar projects are often using top-down estimating based on analogous projects. The problems arise if the results need to be adjusted to a new project. The bottom-up estimating leads to greater accuracy.

Lesson
10

Cost-Benefit Analysis

How is it possible to analyze successful the economic effects of the planned project especially in the public sector where no markets exist to provide this information "authomatically"? In the private sector this problem exists also, especially if there are grounds to mistrust the signals provided by market prices: for example in the case of competitions were the inputs are underpriced or outputs are overpriced.

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