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90 • Green Project Management

to the project charter. As we briefly discussed in the Introduction to this
book, connecting sustainability to the business needs means going beyond
simply paying “lip service” to the environment, or being an “also-ran”
part of the Green Wave. It is good business, and the green project man-
ager is in the best position to provide that information to the organiza-
tion, should further convincing be needed. As the PM Network article of
November 2009, “Green Out,” says, “Sustainable IT projects make your
company look good, but it’s probably the lower energy bills that will get
them approved.” In that same article, it’s pointed out that “six out of seven
corporate officers say that the adoption of green technology is more likely
a result of escalating energy costs than ecological altruism.” The green
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project manager has at his or her disposal the many books and articles
written that say not only that “greenality is free,” but that a high greenality
score equates to significant cost savings and enhanced bottom line.
For the sake of the rest of this discussion, we’ll make an assumption here,
and it is a big one. We’ll assume that the organization—for either altruistic or
economic reasons, or more likely, both—has committed to its projects being
green, ostensibly with an environmental management policy that says this
definitively. The work isn’t done with that declaration. Now it is a matter
of assessing what goes into a planning effort for a project and inserting the
correct green elements in the appropriate spots. What information will the
project manager need to do that? We’ve already discussed the project charter.
Within the charter is a greenality commitment, either commitment verbiage,
budgetary commitment, or ideally, both. Additionally, from the project char-
ter, the goals and objectives are defined, a pro forma time frame and budget
are communicated, and the project’s assumptions and constraints are speci-
fied. For project goals and objectives, the environmental responsibility of
each has been defined using the SMARTeR technique. Those responsibilities
are a direct input to the project’s scope, as supporting detail.
This information, referred to as inputs to define scope (see Section 5.2
of the PMBOK Guide), is analyzed using any number of available tools, as
well as seeking out technical experts and other green project managers to
provide historical information from similar projects and processes to be
utilized. Remember, the field of green project management is relatively
new; therefore, some of the information used will be based on green busi-
ness practices and will have to be adapted for project management. This is
not at all unlike the adaptation PMs make in the realm of quality, where
much of the wisdom comes from pioneers of manufacturing and opera-
tions and is adapted for project management.