Even when we don’t mean to, human nature coerces us into viewing the world through our own experiences - sometimes removing the notion that our piece to the puzzle is smaller than first considered. This is also true in Project Management.
This article is the first within the knowledge series called Project Management Prisms. We’re going to open the conversation around projects and how they impact all aspects of our lives - business and personal.
When considering the impact that project management has on our individual touch-points, we usually consider our jobs, but not our health factors. Specifically, our food.
It’s time to broaden our scope - our food needs us, too. Today, let’s consider our citrus crops.
The July 2019 edition of PM Network speaks to Florida citrus crop production and its reduction in output. On the surface that sentence doesn’t mean very much, but consider that Florida produces 80% of the world’s orange juice. Now, that sounds like a problem and we as project managers solve problems. When the issue was first uncovered in 2015, it was projected that Florida citrus production would experience a steady decrease of 75% by 2017. It’s now the summer of 2019. What has been uncovered?
A project was launched in 2015 with a 2020 projected completion to solve this riddle and mitigate the losses to the Florida Citrus industry. Let’s frame it within the established project phases:
Define - Disease called citrus greening, first discovered in 2005, is killing crops.Root cause - disease transmitted through bacterium by an insect called the asian citrus psyllid.
Planning - Project teams have been organized to search for ways to slow or stop the disease entirely.
Execution - Givaudan funded a US$3.5 million project to build a protective screen as a barrier to more than 1,000 variations of citrus. The U.S. National Institute of Food and Agriculture has funded a US$7.3 million project targeting psyllid so they cannot reproduce.
Monitor and Control - This project cannot yield success in a silo. Outreach and communication teams have been developed to maintain an educational website about the project and will be meeting regularly with the Florida Citrus Growers.
Completion - Project is still underway.
The interest in the success of this project is far reaching. It impacts our health and sustainability of one of our food sources. We’ll keep an eye on its progress and are wishing the project team success in their endeavors.
Authored by Veronica Lane, CEO, Project Manager Guru, Inc.
Source: Fruit Fight, PM Network, July 2019
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