by Frank Priscaro

Last month, an article on www.PhysOrg.com, “New methods are changing old materials,” by David L. Chandler, showcased some of the important research being done in the field of computational material science. The article described work being done at MIT to model the composition of concrete at the atomic level, thereby getting some insight into that material’s behavior over time. The people at MIT are particularly keen to understand the properties of cement liner and sandstone overlay of MIT’s Great Dome.

 Good thing, too. Concrete just happens to be the most abundant substance on this planet, after water. And even though we’ve been using it since the Romans invented it thousands of years ago (seems the volcanic pumice in the region made for an excellent binding agent), we still don’t know very much about how it behaves. So knowing how it’s going with all that grey matter lying around is going to be essential to managing its lifecycle and not being unpleasantly surprised when it begins to fall apart.

 I can think of a couple of important applications (at least to me) right off the top of my head. Since I live in California and spend a good bit of my life in the car, how about developing a “pothole-resistant” strain for city streets, or even a “quiet-ride” variety for freeways? Last post, I talked about the condition of the steel in our aging bridges, but I have to believe the condition of some of that concrete isn’t much better. Who doesn’t get a queasy feeling driving over a bridge and seeing an inordinate amount of crumbled concrete at various critical junctures? Although almost all of these bridges and roads were built before the computational material science technology was developed to really understand how they behave, there’s no reason in the world why that technology shouldn’t be applied now. It’s here, and it could be a vital tool for helping inspectors predict and prevent catastrophic failures. That technology is only going to get better, too, as more and more research on more and more materials is done, and we at VEXTEC applaud and encourage their efforts of MIT and other academic institutions. Concrete and steel may have been around for thousands of years, but now that we’ve developed the ability to understand them, it’s time to use it to do some serious remodeling, in every sense of the word.

– Frank Priscaro

All projects have a natural life cycle from birth to death and that changes inherent in the life cycle cause shifting interfaces and broad changes over time which dramatically increase the need for the project management approach. This life-cycle property is also shared by product sales and systems development.

 The product sales life-cycle is probably the best known. Between the point of introduction and the final removal from the market (replacement by another product is more complicated) there are roughly four phases:

a)    Introduction

b)   Growth

c)    Maturity

d)   Decline

 Actually, a product must go through research and development stages before it is introduced on the market. If we add these phases to the product  we would have a larger cycle similar for products/projects/processes.

 Full Products/Projects/Processs Life Cycle:

1. Pre-design phase—The product/project idea is born and given early evaluation. Early forecasts of performance, cost, and time aspects are made, as well as of organization and resource requirements. There is a high mortality rate in this phase.
2. Design phase—A much more detailed design of the project/product is developed and its feasibility and desirability are determined.
3. Pilot testing phase—An actual prototype of the product, system, or difficult prices of the project are made, tested, and redesigned as necessary.
4. Startup/Introduction phase—The product is introduced or the main project is started up.
5. Rampup/Growth phase—Product sales grow, and the product is expanded to its full volume.
6. Mature phase—Sales are full, as is the project effort size.
7. Rampdown/decline phase—Sales decline, phasing the project out.
8. Termination/divestment—The product is removed, the project is stopped, and the system is sold.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

Project managemnt is a broad multi-level activity which involves strategic planning, middle and short-term planning, scheduling and control. A large one-time project is a group of tasks, to be performed in a defineable period of time, to meet particular objectives. It has following characteristics:
a. It possesses unique and one time set of tasks
b. it will have a specific start and end.
c. the work can be broken into specific tasks.
d. Some tasks cannot start until others have finished.
e. It will have a budget, both in terms of cash and other resources.
f. Some resources will be shared with other projects.
g. It will often cross organizational boundaries.
My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–can do necessary planning and hence can draw the modus operandi for any upcoming project of any scale. For details please contact Asif J. Mir

Business Community Management starts with getting everyone onboard, engaged, and working together. Once this is accomplished, many feel they are free to move on. In reality, these individuals are making a simple assumption that the community onto itself is static. As with most challenges, business community management is an ongoing battle. It’s like going on a diet, focusing and working through it, and then going back to the way you were once you reach your goal. It doesn’t work.

Think about the management of a community as a life cycle event. It’s dynamic, and requires attention and focus in order to maintain its efficiency to the extent that if you don’t continue to focus on it, it will become stale and ineffective over time. For example, just thinking about managing who’s in the community. People come and go all the time—especially if you take the concept of a supplier community. There are companies who are being added to the community that fall on their own because they can’t produce, they may be torn out because they don’t produce well enough, they may get distracted with customers that aren’t viable, or there are simply just too many alternatives and they get kicked off a list. There are a thousand companies that come and go, and they come and go every day, especially in a large community. Exit points and entry points are in the top level of managing a community.

Once a company’s in the community: who in that company is the right individual to engage to get things done in that company in maintaining and keeping track of that level of point of contact and keeping it current so that if there is an issue that needs human interaction, the right person is there to react to it? Again, people come and go out of jobs, get sick, and leave the company all the time. You may not need to manage it every day, but if you don’t deal with it, it will bite you because if you try to fix something, the person you need may not be there, or even the company may not be there to correct the issue.

Inside of that, companies usually have to live up to a certain level of goodness in the way that they perform business with you. If you’re a hub, you expect that your partners will perform in a certain fashion. Whether that be to meet your standards, comply with your specs, or return certain documents in the time frame they’re given, a certain level of quality in the data that’s there, etc. You have all of those expectations surrounding that.

With all of the other dynamics going on, it’s highly likely that they may not always maintain the same level of quality. You’re going to see dips, peaks and rallies of performance that at any given point of time may have a bad effect on your company if they can’t deliver on time. So, the concept of compliance, compliance checking, and validation really should be a life cycle discussion. They should always be checked. Whether that’s a spot check on a regular basis or a continuous check is up to the organization that’s trying to meet the overall quality.

You maintain your community so that it’s current, accurate, and complete. You’re validating that what you’re doing meets their standards all the time. You’re not going to find yourself in a dark corner where all of the sudden you can’t do what you’re supposed to do although everyone passed on the test, and even though the last time you checked and they were all there—they’re not there now. Or they’re not performing at the right level. In short, Community management should really be Community Life Cycle Management and it should entail all aspects of the life and death of a community and community members, how you deal with that, and how you deal with everything in between.

Their life cycles are probably different. I would urge people to think of the concept of community management, or compliance, or enablement as a life cycle rather than as an event or a series of discreet events.

Steve Cochran, the Chief Technology Officer at Inovis, talks about Managed Services.

Learn More about Inovis’ Managed Services>>