Re: {計畫管理智囊團} 提供一些拙見_譯稿
Rita Raphael
The story: explore how fast-growing economies, such as Taiwan, are adopting project and seeing the value of project management.
The target audience is our general project management readership.
1. Taiwan is currently one of the fastest growing economies in the world. What is driving this growth?
Before the ’80s, Taiwan was the country where international brands manufactured their products. 90% of those were technology products. This changed with the economic rise of China, which was partly based on the kind of manufacturing Taiwan had offered the world.
Taiwan’s response was to convert itself from product manufacturing to product research and development. This was possible because of Taiwan’s close proximity to China. Taiwan was able to develop a competitive yet co-operative economic relationship with China. As manufacturing shifted to mainland China, Taiwan took its experience in manufacturing technology products and transformed that into being able to research and develop products for mass-production in China.
This meant that as China became the second largest economy in the world, Taiwan gained a completive edge in China’s burgeoning domestic market.
This competitive edge could be summarized through several factors favorable to Taiwan;
As China’s domestic economy expands, pay, even for production-line workers, is increasing. China’s previous advantage of having a cheap labor force is disappearing; their cost of manufacturing will increase. Taiwan’s skilled labor force will become increasingly attractive.
After Japan’s earthquake, the supply chain between Japan and the rest of the world, especially for its high-technology products, was broken. To maintain delivery deadlines, many orders may have to be transferred outside Japan - particularly Taiwan. Taiwan will be able to demonstrate the ability to fulfill high-quality high-technology manufacturing orders.
China and Taiwan have developed closer economic and cultural ties which benefit each other politically. For Taiwan, one of the reasons why it has been able to revive itself so quickly from the recent economic meltdown was because of the ‘ECFA’ (Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement) between Taiwan and China.
This has to be balanced against some possibly unfavorable factors;
The Korean-European Union Free Trade Agreement takes effect this July. The Korean- U.S. Free Trade Agreement will take effect at the end of the year. Taiwan has not been given any opportunity by her trading partners of signing any similar kind of ‘Free Trade Agreement’. This is a threat to Taiwan’s economic growth and ability to compete internationally.
However, these need not threaten our advantages if handled correctly;
To respond to these ‘Free Trade Agreements’ – to avoid being over-dependent on exports to China – Taiwan needs to expand its own domestic demand.
Expanding domestic demand is not enough – Taiwan needs to sign ‘Free Trade Agreements’ with other countries so as to diversify Taiwan’s markets and stabilize its economic growth.
2. How is this growth affecting project management?
Taiwan’s current economic growth mainly depends on exports. 80% of those exports involve some form of technology production or technology services. This kind of work, unlike mainland China’s mainly low-technology mass-production, could be said to be revolve around project work. You could even say Taiwan was a project-orientated island. From recent statistics, over half a million Taiwanese workers are involved in project-related work of some kind.
If Taiwan’s manufacturing and services are reliant on a skilled workforce, and that workforce is underpinned by a large number of projects – then project managers are key to Taiwan’s success. If Taiwan is a project-orientated island, then its core industry is project management.
The more well-trained, qualified project managers a company possesses, the more competent that company is. The more competent a company is running projects, the better it will be at responding to market conditions, initiating – or attracting – contracts that can exploit Taiwan’s ability to prepare products for manufacture in Taiwan (for high quality) or China (for mass production).
The more professional project managers a company has, as it completes projects over time, those professional project managers will be better able to create effective, efficient management practices and business strategy. They will be able to consistently improve their ability to complete projects on time, with desired quality, within budget.
As such companies’ professional management culture matures, they are better placed to change their business strategy in order to remain competitive, avoid risks and reduce losses. For Taiwanese companies – the globalization and professionalization of labor means they must compete with the emergence of equally skilled companies around the world. Only a professional management culture can hope to attract clients, or compete with companies, from widely different cultures, working on different time-zones. Only a professional management culture can cope with such non-stop round-the-clock demands.
Taiwanese companies, already employing a large number of professional project managers, are continuing to develop experienced, mature management cultures – and will need to rely on expanding the numbers of managers who become professionally trained to be able to face long-term challenges.
3. Do you believe that organizations in Taiwan are now starting to see the value of project management? How can project management help fast growing economies like Taiwan succeed?
Facing ever-changing market conditions, and with the only certainty that those markets will be ever-changing, traditional business practices and management cannot face those long-term challenges. Companies big or small need to embrace a flexible enterprise culture where resources and personnel across many departments are integrated, accomplishing tasks through groups undertaking project work – directed by professional managers.
For this kind of work, just employing professional managers are not enough. Those managers must also be part of a professional management culture that, for instance, manages knowledge systematically: ‘lessons learned’ are used to help improve projects, avoid repeating mistakes, revises best practice, and contributes to business strategy.
Many of Taiwan’s leading companies have either made PMP® training a part of their management training, or are starting training PMP® programs. Not just managers are being trained; project workers are also being taught professional management knowledge and skills. And among our students, the number of high-level managers is increasing.
The impetus for most of this training is influenced by the example set by existing professional managers within each company. When these managers – and their staff – demonstrate the kind of improved performance PMP® skills and knowledge brings, this quickly persuades their company to change their management culture and contact a REP like PM-ABC.
I have found that most of those who come to us for training find project management methods inspiring. Learning this body of knowledge helps them think in new ways about how to manage more effectively, how to learn to use and exchange their previous working experiences with others so they can improve their working practices.
When certified project managers return to their companies, they often affect their working environment in three ways;
l Firstly, through their own use of professional project management knowledge and practices, the workers around them find their own skills are improved. Just having a professional project manager on hand helps improves the company’s performance as they disseminate professional concepts and practices.
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Secondly, efficiency is largely improved as more certified project managers and their project workers a share a common language and approach of professional project management. This is especially true when working with clients or workers around the world – despite any possible language and cultural differences they now share an internationally recognized way of organizing and managing project work.
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Thirdly, as other managers and project workers see how effective such professional management knowledge and practices are – they want to learn more. As more people either study professional project management, and managers get themselves certified, this in turn improves the company’s overall effective. Eventually – this will lead to senior management accepting the need to implement a management culture based on professional knowledge and practices.
If a Taiwanese company is affected in this way by professional project management – they will have fundamentally improved their effectiveness. They need to: China is now embracing professional project management as a way of improving its economic performance. China’s Ministries of Construction, Electric Power, Chemical Industry, Coal Industry, Finance, and Agriculture and Forestry, have all started training their project managers. Taiwan cannot allow itself to lose its advantage in professional management.
This possible loss of Taiwan’s key claim to competitiveness is a real danger – because in a bid to ensure improvements in professional management China has increased the number of exam sittings to gain a Certification Exam of PMP® from twice a year to four times a year. The number of certified project managers in mainland China is growing rapidly. Taiwan cannot be complacent – it has no time to lose in promoting professional project management in all industries, in all companies.
4. What can the negative effects be when fast growing economies fail to adopt project management?
Failure to embrace professional project management for a fast-growing economy, like Taiwan, weakens that economy’s ability to exploit opportunities, and, when those opportunities arise translate them into a positive contribution to the country. Failure to manage properly will mean businesses won’t last long as they continually miss market opportunities. Failure to manage properly will mean what opportunities they do exploit – are exploited poorly.
The failure to embrace professional project management will result in a company that can’t properly identify business opportunities, that doesn’t have a management culture able to respond quickly to opportunities, and, when executing any kind of project to take advantage of those opportunities wastes time, money and resources.
This is why we have been pushing hard to get acknowledgment for what PMP® brings to society – and increase the demand for certified project managers. We want to keep Taiwan competitive, ensure economic growth – work – for our society, so we try to make our government, our industries and academic institutions recognize the value of professional project management.
We do so by constantly holding news events, providing free training for industry leaders, politicians, engineers, experts and academics. We hope to demonstrate how useful professional project management is, persuade key opinion formers of its importance, of the necessity to encourage its adoption throughout the country. And in this adoption – to keep Taiwan successful.
5. How does investing in things like PMI chapters help with project management adoption?
PMI chapters provide a platform for certified project managers to exchange their knowledge, experiences, and receive advanced education in project management, especially with the PDU requirements. However, there are still a lot of project managers fail to renew their PDU, which has always been a big challenge to PMI chapters.
PMI chapters can also serve as an institution to promote the core value of project management to companies, because many companies are still operating on the basis of project life cycle and account management, and ignoring the management of stakeholders. We believe it is through the avocation of PMI chapters that these management concepts can be truly transformed.
Hi 各位PMI Blog的高手：將前面的稿子稍微整理一下，加入大家精闢的見解，再次寄給大家，可請各位再看看有無意見與修正處！謝謝RitaThe story: explore how fast-growing economies, such as Taiwan, are adopting project and seeing the value of project management.
The target audience is our general project management readership.
1. Taiwan is currently one of the fastest growing economies in the world. What is driving this growth?
台灣處於中國邊緣地帶，與中國大陸向來有著合作與競爭關係。如今全球經濟地位重洗牌，中國躍升為全球第2大經濟體。實施十二五規畫，為擴大內需，提升國民生活品質，生產朝全面自動化進行，台灣廠商極有機會進入中國市場。而台灣在幾個利基點上十分有利：
l 中國人力成本低廉已不再，加上缺工，製造成本勢必增加。
l 中國企業規模壯大，就中長期考量，會摒棄過去採用低價設備的習慣，改採高優質價格產品。
l 中國售後保養維修付費概念欠缺，在歐美產品價格高之下，台灣很有機會受彼岸食品加工業者青睞。
l 日本地震，產能大幅衰退，供應鏈斷鏈，今年很有機會轉單到台灣。
l 韓國與歐盟自由貿易協定七月正式生效後，年底韓美ＦＴＡ也將生效，台灣與主要貿易夥伴ＦＴＡ遲遲未有進展，將威脅台灣經濟成長，為避免過度依賴對中國出口，台灣應積極擴大內需。
儘管兩岸簽署ＥＣＦＡ今年正式生效，中國龐大市場，也是台灣經濟能從金融風暴中快速恢復的重要動力，除了中國這個最大貿易夥伴外，台灣還須分散市場，與他國簽署ＦＴＡ，是健全台灣經濟重要指標。
2. How is this growth affecting project management?
而台灣的經濟產業成長全都來自出口，出口又幾乎都來自科技業（80％），可以說是一個以製造業、高科技產業為主的小島，專案密集度非常高。據統計，台灣有幾近50萬人從事專案管理相關的職務，也因此，專案管理師是各產業的核心管理能力。一方面一個公司裡若有越多合格的專案管理師，也越能確保公司專案能如期、如質、如預算的完成，同時也因著成熟的專案管理經驗與最佳實務的演進，公司能找到最好的方式保持競爭力，減少錯誤，避免風險。
二來，在全球運籌與專業分工競爭風潮裡，企業時常需面對跨越地域、時差、文化等差異，以24小時不間斷的協同運作，縮短作業流程，快速整合內部資源。為確保專案能夠達到如期、如質、如預算目標，各企業都不斷在透過專案管理工具來輔助專案經理人，有效的管理專案的執行進度，並且累積企業專案管理的經驗。
3. Do you believe that organizations in Taiwan are now starting to see the value of project management? How can project management help fast growing economies like Taiwan succeed?
企業面對變化的市場，傳統的功能性組織運作不再能完全滿足需求。企業需要有能力整合跨部門資源，在期限及預算壓力下達成特定目標的「臨時性組織」及「專業經理人」及「專案」。另一方面，企業也需利用專案的經驗學習 (Lessons Learned)，避免重導覆轍，利用成功的經驗加速達成組織的願景與知識管理。
在這種情況下，台灣的各大企業已開始進行企業包班式的訓練，以提供專案管理者所需的知識與技能。而我們的高階管理人接受受訓者也增加，他們許多是在我們REP的宣導下來重新學習專案管理智能的。專案管理這套系統給了許多受訓者啟發，引導他們將工作經驗整理、統合，並重新學習，並積極將龐大知識體系應用於工作中，從做中學，進而對個人、公司組織之專案效能與實務環境產生提升效果。當他們把這些知識與經驗帶回公司時，常發生以下三種情況：
l 專案管理師的專案管理與知識的增加
l 在單位內形成共同的語言，共同目標促進工作成果與工作效率，以專案語言取代跨國籍的溝通.
l 讓更多人想學習專案管理，催化大環境對專案管理的接受度。
就連與台灣產生最大競爭與合作關係的經濟體，中國，其建設部、電力部、化工部、煤碳部、財政部、農林部等等，都已相繼展開了專案經理培訓、考試資格證書制度，PMP 認證考試更由每年兩次增加到四次。相形之下，台灣更需加速專案管理的推動。
4. What can the negative effects be when fast growing economies fail to adopt project management?
倘若像台灣這樣發展快速的經濟體沒藉助專案管理的知識與力量，可想而知，許多專案會不能成功，很多生意不能長存，很快地，就會面臨失去訂單、失去研發能力與生產的能力。這點許多企業心知肚明，而我單位多年來也一直不斷在努力擴大PMP 的需求及能見度，讓產官學界都能認同PMP 的專案管理手法，藉著舉辦專案管理成果記者會、無償培育各界有影響力的社團影響力領導人、媒體主管及大企業家等，讓極具影響力的社會人士成為PMP，如立法院委員、政府官員、新聞記者、企業高階幹部，技師、工程師、大學教授等，來催化大環境，以引起各界對專案管理的認同。
5. How does investing in things like PMI chapters help with project management adoption?
對專案管理人而言，PMI分支提供各行各業志同道合人士一個很好的平台，並可因此形成重要的利益團體，同時也因PDU的需求，PMI分支而提供了許多延續教育的可能性，然而仍有多數的PMP放棄與PMI的關係，主因在成為PMI會員並不易感受有同值的回饋，所以PMI要思考如何加強其分會或其它組織的關係。
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International Marketing Manager
PM ABC. Ltd., R.O.C