PM Network - March 2009

affect risk-management strategies, says Pablo Rojas, PMP, project director for the San Jose, Costa Rica office of global information systems company Unisys.

“Technology risks are higher when you are in a cutting-edge project,” he says.

And it often takes a bigger budget and more advanced project team to handle project challenges with speed and secrecy. But with great risk comes great reward—sometimes.

“When you enter in a new technology niche you have the opportunity to create a new market or be the leading edge in that area,” Mr. Rojas says.

And although being first can deliver a powerful competitive advantage, coming in second gives project teams a chance to scope out the market reaction. That data can then be factored into their own project decision-making criteria. It’s a piece of competitive intelligence that may cause a team to alter their project goals—or reinforce that they’re on the right path.

Lui Sieh, PMP, sees every rival’s project as an opportunity to pick up competitive intelligence. “I look at our competitors’ projects as a way to learn more about how other companies look at solving similar business issues through a project approach,” says Mr. Sieh, IT director for British American Tobacco’s Taipei, Taiwan branch. “In very large projects especially, we research other companies to learn from them how they’ve approached similar large-scale projects.”

And sometimes the competition can raise the bar on your own projects, says Damon Larkin, senior category marketing manager for cleanroom apparel at Kimberly-Clark Professional, Roswell, Georgia, USA. Mr. Larkin’s team creates gloves, masks and sterile suits worn by workers inside high-tech, pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology manufacturing environments to prevent any contamination.

“Cleanroom apparel is a competitive industry,” he says. “If I come out with a product that the competition has

already delivered, the only way I can compete is on price.”

That’s not a good place to be in— especially with the universal push to cut costs.

Instead, Mr. Larkin would rather wait, spend time with his core audience and respond to their needs with a product that adds more value. “If I can make a product that solves problems, avoids reworks or helps our customers to be more efficient, that’s a better value regardless of when it comes to market, even if it has a higher price,” he explains.

Before launching a recent project to develop a new cleanroom garment, Mr. Larkin’s team devoted hundreds of hours to interviewing and observing cleanroom workers. Along the way, the team also made an important discovery watching the workers struggle with cleanroom garments.

“It was the kind of consensus where the team members look at each other and realize we can address that issue,” he says.

The team added snaps in the sleeves and legs that hold the garment up as the worker steps into them.

Kimberly-Clark wasn’t the first to market with a cleanroom garment, but it was able to set itself apart from the pack by adding an element its rivals hadn’t. The new garment was released in late 2008, and Mr. Larkin says early