At the dawn of a new year, we often take time to reflect on what has occurred in the prior year and to look forward to new opportunities awaiting us.  The reflection time should be one of learning from others, situations, and self.  The future’s brightness often is in contrast to the past’s darkness.  Was there gloom from 2010?  Hopefully, your personal answer to my question is, “no”.  Even so, we have hopes of a brighter tomorrow.  Because we spend a third of our adult life working, we will focus our lens to our profession and its trends.  What was the picture of CM in 2010, and where are we headed in 2011?

I can only speak from my own observations, which, for me, is government contractor support.  My span in this arena is 20 years, so I feel that “multiple annual data points” qualifies me to declare trends.  I will address the fame and practice of CM, the trend of metadata and metrics, and the trend of employer savvy in hiring for CM.

CM is on an upward trend for name recognition and for being a general topic of conversation.  Several years ago, I was asked “what is CM?”  Now, I more often hear discussion of CM and debates about whether to and how to perform it.  The paper-pushing, clerical job that looks like CM is dead.  The paper-intensive CM past is moving toward automation and relational databasing.  Many paper forms have become online forms that live entirely digital existences.  Most processes are automated workflows that validate users and their actions while verifying data as it is created, used, changed, stored, and disposed.  The ease in process performance that good CM provides will continue to place it in increasing favor with those who use it with intent and wisdom.

One area that has been slow to develop is metadata; that is, data about the data.  For example, if I updated a form 14 times in order to accurately reflect the fields needed to support a process, I may not have kept track of those changes in the past.  Now that version control tools and metadata files are more widely used, metadata about how many times that form was checked out is readily available.  Some tools even keep track of the time the file was open, which can provide insight as to how long it takes to make a change.  As the educated use of metadata increases, the ability to prove the effectiveness of CM activities becomes more concrete.  As a manager, I can extract a statistic from 2006 (before CM was implemented here) on how long the lifecycle was to publish a CM Plan.  I can do the same for 2009 (after implementation) and compare.  I can quantifiably state that it took the team 220 fewer hours to create the 2009 CM Plan than in 2006!  If I extract the same data for 2010 (after full automation), I can show quantifiable improvement again with a 50% reduction in time to publish.  In 2011, I plan to find measurements that highlight the organization’s benefits realized from performing excellent CM and to demonstrate relevant metrics to upper management.  As CM leaders learn to utilize metadata to make their business cases, the more effective their communications and organizational contributions will become.

Part of my job requires objective evaluation of how other programs perform CM.  While many businesses are committed to process and product excellence, I am noticing a disturbing trend in other instances of what I call pencil whipping.  For example, someone generates a plan, points to a tool, and lets the processes run as they may.  Typically, pencil whipping is performed by CM “posers” – not true practitioners.  They have the title, but not the expertise to support the complex engineering at hand.  A false CM employee is as detrimental to the CM profession as a charlatan is to the medical profession.  For the sake of program integrity, I encourage employers to ask probing questions of CM candidates before hiring them, and ensure that a real CM practitioner is in the room to see through any façade and protect the organization’s interests.  Competition to be first to market is the motivator for many businesses in the technology field.  Any delay to production is time, and time is money.  Organizations can mitigate the risk of certain delays by employing qualified CM practitioners.  Therefore, I predict that business’ valuation of the bona fide CM professional will increase in 2011.

In summary, I think that CM is on a positive trend with many opportunities to continue improvement.  By harnessing talent and technology, CM benefits will become easier to quantify and realize.  This is a good forecast for CM in 2011.  All the best to you, and yours, and the CM you do!

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