managers willing to open themselves up to
new locales and industries.
*To prove your
standing as
a project
manager, there
is no better way
than a Project
Management
Professional
(PMP)
SM
credential.
—Sudipto Chanda, d Wise
Solutions and Services Pvt.
Ltd., Bangalore, India
Brazil Defies the Times
Like much of Latin America, Brazil is not just
surviving but thriving in the economic slump.
It may be the only one of 34 major economies
that avoids recession in 2009, according to a
recent study by the Paris, France-based
Organization for Economic Cooperation &
Development. “Brazil is riding the current
crisis better than many developed countries,”
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told Time
in March.
In the telecom industry, Telemar Norte
Leste S.A.’s 2008 takeover of rival Brasil
Telecom Participacoes S.A. is fueling project
growth, says Nelson Rosamilha, PMP, a São
Paulo, Brazil-based senior project manager
at Convergys Corp. and director of the PMI
São Paulo, Brazil Chapter. All the major
players are ramping up development of new
products and services in the fight for market
share, says Mr. Rosamilha, who is also the
South America chair of the PMI IT &
Telecommunications Specific Interest
Group.
The boom in Brazilian projects won’t be
limited to the telecom industry, though.
In 2007, Petrobras, which is 55.7 percent
government-owned, discovered what could
be one of the world’s largest reserves of gas
and oil off the coast of southern Brazil.
Estimated to contain between 9 billion and
14 billion barrels of oil, the reserves are a
little more than four miles (seven kilometers) below sea level and covered by a thick
layer of salt. Extracting all that oil will take
the work of experienced project team members tasked with everything from planning
the laying of the pipeline to assessing risk
and controlling the budget.
Petrobras is developing people who can
carry projects out with “fewer resources, in
less time and increasing project quality,” says
Walter Brito, general manager of Petrobras
University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “For this
to take place, it is necessary to know how to
contextualize the projects according to the
strategies, design realistic goals and execute
them using the best results attained in the
international market as benchmarks.”
And in another major opportunity for
project managers, Brazil is also scheduled to
start on the hemisphere’s first bullet train,
which will eventually link the country’s two
major cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
To make the most of the opportunities,
project managers should hone their skills
by studying methodologies such as Lean
Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints, Mr.
Rosamilha says.
