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76 • Green Project Management

by an executive? Who else needs to be involved in the decision-making
process? Have we identified any one (or more) stakeholder as critical to the
decision-making process? Have all those who should be heard in the pro-
cess been heard? These questions are all considered with the ER in mind.
The environmental policy of the enterprise, if it exists, should be ever-
present in this process as well.

Changing the Way PeoPle think aBout green

Part of creating a green-friendly decision-making environment is helping
the people in the process understand that there is a new way to think about
green. Once people realize the truth in that statement, the more creative
they will be around green issues, thus the friendlier the environment will be.
One way to do that is to have the facts available to be able to challenge those
who may have made uniformed or misinformed assumptions. See Chapter
14, “Resource Information,” for information on where to find the facts.
Another technique to use to help change the way people think is to reen-
gineer the issue. To decide whether or not a green component exists in the
project, assume the scenario that it doesn’t and explore the issues caused
by not including it in the project. This scenario-based thinking exercise
can be an eye opener. Let’s use the implementation of a new video game
as an example. Again, this is a thinking exercise too. Go to an extreme.
Assume that there is no green planning or consideration for the project,
no thought given to green packaging, the product will be deployed in a
standard way, and there is no greening of the process. What effect will it
have, just on the environment? Start a list of the consequences. On the top
of the list will be the thousands or millions, if it is a very popular game, of
pounds of plastic packaging, tons of CO generated by the trucks deliver-
2
ing the product, to say nothing of the wasted electricity by the develop-
ers leaving lights and computers on over weekends, holidays, overnight.
Also, important to note, have we thought about the disposal of the project
resources when the project is complete? How about the disposal of the
materials of the product itself? The list can be exhaustive, and it will be
plain that there certainly is a green component (or, more likely, a bunch
of them) to the project. Once the green-friendly environment is created, it
is time to get into the actual decision-making process. What tools will be
most effective for green issues?