APM - SIR MONTY FINNISTON AWARD

Dr Terry Cooke-Davies, FAPM

Dr Terry Cooke-Davies has influenced project management thinking quietly, consistently, but significantly, for the past 30 years. First known for his innovative work on project management benchmarking in the mid-80s, he was also one of the first to vocalise the need to bring project management within the overall context of general management. He now works steadfastly to bridge the gap between academic research and effective corporate improvement. Throughout his career, Terry has shown a real talent for facilitation and many of his thought-provoking views come from reflection on the results of skilled facilitation.

Unlike many industry gurus, Terry doesn’t primarily consider himself to be a project manager. His strong feelings on the critical business issues associated with successful project management, derive directly from his experience as a Director of Development and Supply for Letraset International. Here Terry recognised that project management could not be successful if it were regarded as a discrete single department discipline, but that it affected the overall management of the organisation. In 1979, he developed a framework for the management of multi-national cross-functional product development projects for Letraset. Linking R&D, manufacturing and marketing through a project based approach produced effective results and Terry saw its success first hand. From that point on, he worked to affect the thinking of the project management industry, through his skills both as an orator and a writer. In a world where project management was largely regarded as the domain of engineers alone, Terry’s strong view that project management was key to organisations’ overall success and the achievement of their ‘bottom line’ objectives was radical, but became recognised when his ground breaking article on benchmarking for Management Today received an award for 'Best Journalistic Article of the Year' in 1986.

A true thought-leader, Terry’s thinking is always ahead of its time. Whilst today, the value of assessment and benchmarking is universally acknowledged, when Terry founded Human Systems' project management knowledge networks, back in 1993, the profession was still young and few had considered this higher level perspective on its value. Terry not only brought together many of the world’s leaders in project management best practice, but he used his facilitation skills to enable these organisations to work together to create new knowledge. Terry realised that what was needed was a critical loop between those at the ‘practice’ end of the industry and those whose focus was academic research: he used the knowledge from his network to feed research that would then help define new directions for the industry.

In the early 90s, when the rest of the world was focusing on software as being the critical guidance needed for successful project management, Terry was trying to focus the business community on the importance of organisational culture. His paper at the Vienna IPMA in 1990 drew attention to the role of corporate culture and recommended that where organisational culture failed to support the needs of project management, then it should be changed. Also in 1990, Terry co-founded Leadership Dynamics Europe Limited, a company created to assist Chief Executive Officers of corporations in transforming the culture of their organizations. Terry’s partners in this venture were Professor James Belasco (San Diego State University) and Ralph Stayer, Chief Executive of Johnsonville Foods (a company that has attracted much international attention for its radical practices of employee empowerment).

Dr. Martin Barnes, President of the Association for Project Management, presents the
Sir Monty Finneston Trophy

Terry Cooke-Davies has contributed to a great many industry initiatives over the years – directing thinking both through his own clearly stated views and through the subtler role of facilitation. He is an expert adviser for the APM, reviewed the then CCTA’s Managing Successful Programmes initiative in the early 90s, was programme manager for PMI’s OPM3 initiative and was a key participant in ‘Rethinking Project Management’, a UK based research network funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Now past normal retirement age, Terry remains passionate about changing and improving things in the world of project management. Despite overseeing the current global expansion of Human Systems where he is Executive Chairman, he still finds time for active involvement in a number of research programmes including analysis of the value of project management, the role of the project sponsor and the relevance of complexity theory (for PMI) and into the UK Project Economy (for ESRC / SPRU / UCL). His aim is always to serve the profession and community of project management by ensuring both the relevance of research and that the results can effectively be fed back into best practice guidelines.

Terry’s passion about the development and improvement of project management is reflected in his abundant and continuous writings on the subject, through which he shares his experience and wisdom with the rest of the world.. This has culminated in the recent publication of his highly acclaimed book ’The Right Projects Done Right!’ which was co-authored with Paul Dinsmore.

Dr Terry Cooke-Davies’ published works include:

Publications

1.     Cooke-Davies, T. J. and Allen, J. C. (1985) Caterpillars, Cocoons and Butterflies. Technology Management 85 - Diamond Jubilee Conference on Technology Management Institute of Electrical Engineers.

2.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (1990) Changing Corporate Culture to Improve Project Performance. 10th Internet World Congress on Project Management Vienna: I. P. M. A.

3.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1990) The Return of the Project Manager. Management Today May London: British Institute of Management.

4.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (1994) Project management and the management of change. Internet '94 12th World Congress Oslo: I.P.M.A.

5.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (1996) Learning in a project-based organisation. "IPMA 96" World Congress on Project Management. Paris: I.P.M.A.

6.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1998) Leading Change Programmes. Project Manager Today X (6):7 to 10 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

7.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1998) Drawing Lessons from the Evidence. Project Manager Today X (5):8 to 10 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

8.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1998) The prize at the end of the cultural rainbow. Project Manager Today X (7):16 to 19 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

9.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1998) Skimping on risk. Project Manager Today X (9):12 to 15 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

10.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. and Wolstenholme, E.F. (1998) Reshaping Project Management Education and Training. Project Manager Today X (4):10 to 12 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

11.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (1999) A community of project managers. Project Manager Today XI (1):8 to 11 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

12.    Crawford, Lynn and Cooke-Davies, T. J. (1999) Enhancing Corporate Performance through Sustainable Project Management Communities.   PMI '99. Annual Symposium. Philadelphia: PMI.

13.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2000) Discovering the Principles of Project Management. IRNOP IV Sydney: University of Technology in Sydney.

14.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2000) Knowledge management in project-based organizations. Congress 2000 London: Association for Project Management.

15.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2001) Project Close-out Management: More Than Just Saying Goodbye and Moving On. In: Knutson, J., (Ed.) Project Management for Business Professionals: A Comprehensive Guide., pp. 200 to 214 New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

16.    Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2001) The "real" success factors in projects. PMI Europe 2001 London: Marlow Events.

17. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2001) Towards improved project management practice: Uncovering the evidence for effective practices through empirical research., USA: Dissertation.com.

18.   Cooke-Davies, T.J., Schlichter, F.J. and Bredillet, C (2001) Beyond the PMBOK Guide PMI ’01 Annual Symposium 2001 Nashville PMI

19.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2001) Thriving during Tough Times. Project Manager Today October 2001 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

20.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2001) Thriving during Tough Times. Project Manager Today October 2001 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

21.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2001) Benefits Management. Project Manager Today November/December 2001 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

22.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Its people who get things done. Project Manager Today January 2002 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

23.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Portfolio management. Project Manager Today February 2002 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

24.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) What is the true value of project management? Project Manager Today March 2002 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

25.    Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Learning from experience. Project Manager Today April 2002 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

26.   Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2002) The "real" success factors in projects. International Journal of Project Management. Volume 20, Number 3. April 2002 Pages 185-190.

27. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Project management maturity models. Project Manager Today May 2002 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

28. Cooke-Davies, T.J. and Arzymanow, A. (2002) The Maturity of Project Management in Different Industries. IRNOP V Renesse May 2002 Erasmus University.

29. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Multi-project management: the key to implementing corporate strategy PMI Europe June 2002 Cannes Marlow Events.

30. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2002) Establishing the link between project management practices and project success. Proceedings of the PMI Research Conference Seattle July 2002 PMI

31. Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2003) Do business change projects really change the business? PMI Global Congress Europe June 2003 den Haag, Marlow Events

32. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2003) Consistently doing the right projects and doing them right. What metrics do you need? AIPM Annual Conference 2003, Alice Springs, AIPM

33. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2003) Delivering change. Project Manager Today November 2003 London England: Larchdrift Projects Limited.

34. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2004) Project success. In: Morris, P. W. G. and Pinto, J. (Eds) Handbook of Managing Projects New York., John Wiley and Sons.

35. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2004) Project management maturity models. In: Morris, P. W. G. and Pinto, J. (Eds) Handbook of Managing Projects New York., John Wiley and Sons.

36. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2004) The right projects done right. What metrics do you need? PMI Global Congress 2004, April 2004, Prague, Czech Republic.

37. Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2004) Maturity and Measurement. PMI Research Conference, July 2004, London UK.

38. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2004) De-engineering project management. IRNOP VI August 2004, Turku, Finland.

39. Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2005) The Executive Sponsor – The Hinge Upon Which Organizational Maturity Turns? PMI Global Congress Europe, May 2005, Edinburgh UK

40. Crawford, L.H. and Cooke-Davies, T.J. (2005) Project Governance – The Pivotal Role of the Executive Sponsor PMI Global Congress North America, September 2005, Toronto Canada

41. Dinsmore, P.C and Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2005) The Right Projects Done Right Jossey-Bass, San Francisco

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