 It’s been said there is the visible economy, the large public companies like Apple and Walmart that capture the attention of Wall Street and the media, and there is the invisible economy, the small private companies like the local diner or doctor’s office, which are largely unknown outside of their areas. Contrary to what the publicity would indicate, there are far more small firms in the United States than large firms. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 98% of the country’s 5.1 million business enterprises in 2012 were firms with less than 100 employees. (Yes, that was ninety-eight percent.) And these enterprises accounted for 25% of the country’s total 31 trillion dollars of enterprise revenue. From an employment perspective, the U.S. Small Business Administration reported in 2014 that “small business owners are the engine of job creation and economic growth in this country, creating nearly two out of every three net new jobs in the United States, and employing over half of the nation’s workforce.” With this kind of impact on our economy, small firms are clearly deserving of greater attention and respect in our business communities and in public policy. So the next time you’re dining at your favorite local restaurant or hiring a home repairman, be sure to thank them for their small business service!
 For the program managers out there, you probably know that the sixth edition of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide was released by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in early September. This includes the updated ANSI standard for project management, ANSI/PMI 99-001-2017. I have reviewed the changes and would summarize them as good improvements but modest in nature. First, the introductory sections 1-3 have been rewritten with a cleaner focus on what projects are, the environment in which they operate, and the role of the program manager. I especially like the analogy of the PM to the conductor of an orchestra. Second, new discussion has been added at the beginning of each knowledge area (sections 4 – 13) focusing on Trends and Emerging Practices, Tailoring, and Considerations for Agile and Adaptive Environments. Next, three new project management processes have been added (Manage Project Knowledge, Control Resources, Implement Risk Responses) and one has been removed (Close Procurements), resulting in a total of 49 individual processes in the new guide. Finally, a variety of terms have been changed or refined for clarity. For example, references to Time Management have changed to Schedule Management to be more specific, while references to Human Resources have changed to Resources to include all types of resources and not just people. The knowledge area of Risk Management probably received the most change, with the new process mentioned above, new concepts such as variability and ambiguity risk, and escalation as a new type of risk response. My one disappointment in this area is that we still see no risk burndown plans. All in all, the changes are good and should continue to sharpen the theory and practice of project management.
 Many businesses operate in the world of writing competitive proposals to win their work. Facing multiple competitors and an involved customer proposal process, proposals can be expensive and uncertain in outcome. One way to justify that investment is to consider win probabilities. If there are three bidders on an opportunity, ask your team “what's our win probability?” If the answer comes back around 30% or 1/3, that’s a red flag. There are two things wrong with the 1/N answer. First, it suggests a more detailed competitive assessment is needed. Competitive assessments look at driving factors or evaluation criteria such as features, price, risk, past performance and customer relationship. When the factors are graded and tallied for each competitor, including yourself, the answer is rarely a nice even 1/N. Don’t you want to know where you really stand before making that proposal investment? The second issue is that a win probability of 1/N suggests your offering is just average. You are even with the competition with the same chance of winning as they have. Don’t you want to believe you have an edge, a discriminator, something that makes your offering better than average before making the investment? The more competitors there are, the more valid this viewpoint becomes. For example, you may well decide to bid as the underdog in a two-way race. But if it’s a 10-way competition, would you bid with a 10% win probability? I wouldn’t. I'd ask the team to go back and figure out how to improve our offering to position us better than 1/N. Now all the above applies to industries where major pursuits and proposals are required. If you’re in a business where quotations are generated every day, or the quote is the price tag at the counter, that’s a different ballgame (winning market share) and subject for a future blog.
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