Terms Of Reference Model Terms Of Reference Tor: Fill & Download for Free

One of my projects was working with Mongolia’s top agricultural research institutions. We worked fruitfully with them for many years. Some of our successes were introduction of new systems for seed production.During 8 years we had scientists from the US, Western Europe working with them and providing assistance. Even though they were all from top universities and competent bunch there was one scientist who was above the rest.He was a scientist from Russia, one of its top research institutes specialized on seed production. Mongolian researchers loved him, they requested him the most. Some of my thoughts on why the Russian was effective:Most Mongolian researchers could speak Russian. Western and American scientists needed translator.Most of the research methods used in the institute was based on Soviet model so it was easier to teach.Russian researcher was phenomenal. His breath of knowledge was astounding, even comparing to the US scientists. He was also very helpful.the US researchers did work only according to their Terms of Reference. If you want anything extra, we had to do new TOR and invite him again (extra money)plain chauvinism. Example: what Mongolians wanted to learn was creating hybrid seeds. The US scientists wanted to teach just the basic stuff, nothing advanced. When I asked the Western scientist his reaction was very telling. They still have problems with these basic techniques, how are they going to learn advanced ones? Not a problem with the Russian guyAnd the best: We paid the Russian four (!) times less than the US scientist, but he was much more productive and helpful. go figure

Thank you for your A2A.The distinctions people have offered in terms of Projects, Programs and Portflios are correct, so I’ll focus on another aspect of how I read the difference in priorities and operation between these three things.But before I do, a word of caution.Chuck says they are all different terms for the same thing. I hesitate to disagree with Chuck, as he has a lot of experience. But in this case I shall. But, what it does highlight is that, for some people and in some oganizations, the differences are slight at best.Perhaps the most important question is ‘how are the terms used where you work?’ And the only good answers to that question are:What are their terms of reference (ToR)? (ie, how are they supposed to operate?)How do they actually operate, day-to-day? (which is the intersection of the ToR, the PMO leader’s approach, and the pragmatic needs of the organization)That said, how do I read the differences?For me, they are about time-scales and ambition.A Project Management Office, has a day-to-day focus on supporting and governance of short-term initiatives. These are typically 3–24 months. Their services are around training and compliance.A Program Management Office works on one (sometimes more) large co-ordinated program across the enterprise. It will therefore have a time span in years - say 2–5 years. Its focus is on creating a meaningful transformation for the business, and embedding it for the long term. The services are around governance and co-ordination.A Portfolio Management Office should focus on the long-term. It will establish and prioritize a range of initiatives from small projects to vast programs, that deliver the future capabilities of the enterprise. It is an arm of the strategic management function and needs to be overseen at the highest corporate levels. It’s services are strategic planning and co-ordination, integrating the change, projects, and transformation teams with the operational needs. A lot of its governance services are around monitoring the portfolio and periodically adjusting it: culling poorly performing projects and programs and bringing up new ones.Blended ModelsIn the real world of course, the blend of roles and responsibilities can cross these theoretical boundaries. Each organization will found its own PMO or PMOs, with names that work for it, and functions that it needs. These will be modified by the skills, priorities, and preferences of the senior practitioners that run them.The real question is always: ‘how does this PMO operate?’ and not ‘what do I think it’s functions are, from its name?’

22JUNE2018. Edit. Attempted to address the comments to date at the bottom of the original post and will update again if needed. Cheers and thanks!Whomever answers Norway is completely living with their head in the (tar) sands.The very short version is: what is a stock valued at? Its the future perceived value. If they were bonds then: Sweden is AAA, Finland AA, Denmark A, Norway B- with a cautionary warning of slipping further. Keep in mind those ratings are based on the performance of the global economy, as well as a few other caveats and disclaimers that are out of scope for the question. Those ratings are determined by a countries ability to export a diverse range of complex things produced under increasingly sustainable conditions.If we go back 450 years we see Spain bringing galleon after galleon of silver and gold back from the new world. Why is Spain not the wealthiest nation in the world today? Well, the gold mine is not the gold mine, it is manufacturing. Read Reinert’s work in economics for details (First few paragraphs summarize it).Spain de-industrialized when it was resource rich. Guess what? Norway has also de-industrialized. Between 1991 and 2011 Norwegian on shore industry has been cut in half as a reflection of GDP and what does remain is increasingly dependent on the oil industry.Norway today is serving the 2nd industrial revolution by primarily exporting oil and fish. Sweden is serving the fourth industrial revolution by exporting advanced knowledge packaged into things produced under increasingly sustainable conditions.Don’t believe me, then look at the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) used for predicting future GDP growth developed by professors from Harvard and MIT. Its one of the most accurate measures we have!Being at the top for a decade or so is not the same as being at or near the top for a century or so, with some pauses in between. Do not the people who tout Norway understand the magic of compound interest?Sweden was wealthy enough to start a sustainable transition a few decades ago and is a world leader in moving towards a carbon net neutral society, Norway has a lottery winner mentality, whom have let the money go to their head and are as arrogant as any other nouveau riche. A key example (of many), Sweden has GUST, the Governance of Urban Sustainable Transitions, its a cornerstone of national Swedish policy for a sustainable future and is funded by millions of euro from the EU. In Norway, there is FOLK, a private initiative that fails to harness the living lab mindset and fitting into national level goals…its a petit private act, that does not fit into a national strategy that does not exist sad to say…as if it did then FOLK may scale quite nicely.In Norway there is no clear strategy for a post oil future. There is a massive malaise that exists in the country. They are the lost tribe of Scandinavia, I can back this up with a great deal of data if push comes to shove. Meanwhile, the Swedes are exporting their ideas and connecting with the world while Norway remains insular and impotent.Unless there are radical changes in Norway, it will go back to being poor or at least highly marginalized. Wealth is grounded in a robust manufacturing base supported by intensive academia and a complex and robust financial infrastructure…Sweden has all that, they have been banking for hundreds of years, have some of Europe’s oldest universities, and have a worldview that they must export advanced goods…this is what investment in the future is all about and Sweden hits the nail on the head by being in the top three most economically complex economies for the past few decades (the length the ECI has been measured, but even before would rank high) whereas, Norway ranges from 24th to 45th over the same time..Finland trails closely behind Sweden for the last 20 years regarding economic complexity. The following figure is from a master’s thesis I wrote related to the question.Figure 1. Source : Sustainable Innovation? Addressing challenges and finding opportunities in a rural region of Norway.Denmark is in third place and this could be due to two factors: Large agriculture sector squeezes out some innovation and Danes being like Americans are a bit more short sighted and better skilled in brinkmanship and sales then the other Nordics (usually). In short, Danes are living more while live less than the other Nordics, they are easy to like due to such a relative devil may care mentality.To reinforce, Norway has an unwritten policy of explaining to the world why they are different. They make excuses for producing 1/4th of the important patents per capita as Sweden and stating they are innovative in other ways…this is part and parcel with reinforcing the worldview of being a resource extractor rather than a resource value adder…its socially and culturally engineered belief systems to maintain an untenable way of life as a worst case.In sum, there will come a day (unless the worldviews shift radically in Norway and people actualize towards those worldviews) where it’s trading partners take a greater stake in the country due to their knowhow will outstrip Norwegian knowhow…I could go on about this for ages and if you read my past posts well, guilty as charged. It’s sad though as I fell in love with a different Norway, the Norway of the Brundtland Report, of Tor Heyerdahl and Arne Næs, that Norway is on life support at best.Addendum : This is an attempt to answer some of the comments.Quality of Life and Competitive Advantage.There is often confusion (in Norway) between a nation improving quality of life for its people and improving a nation’s competitive advantage.Norway has used the oil money primarily to improve most everyone’s quality of life living in Norway and to provide a security blanket of capital. What Norway should have done when the Brundtland report was published was use the oil money to transition to an economy serving the 3rd, and now the 4th industrial revolution with advanced things produced under increasingly sustainable conditions. The resource curse is : waiting 27 years to get started to build the 35 to 70 companies each capable of exporting 10 Billion NOK in goods to make up for oil revenues.See Image 2 for Norway’s economic structure today. Followed by Image 3 of an economic complex nation (Sweden) and what Norway will need to look like if it wishes to maintain the same standard of living. There are some caveats, Norway does not have to copy the Swedish economy in terms of specifically what it makes. The important points are that 1: It exports a lot of complex things, and 2: Of the complex things it exports the more diversity equals the better. The reason being for diversity is, if one industry collapses other industries shore up the economy while resources are re-allocated. In sum, both provide for resilience and competitive advantage.Figure 2. Norwegian exports 2016. Source : Products exported by Norway (2016)VS.Figure 3. Swedish Exports 2016. Source: Products exported by Sweden (2016)Will add one more point the Economic Complexity Index (ECI) does not measure for, and that is sustainability. Sweden is producing under increasingly sustainable conditions, to me this is another leg of resilience and competitive advantage and the ECI should be amended to reflect this. There are leadership advantages that the ECI does not directly reflect derived from sustainable thinking. For example, Sweden will enact environmental legislation that makes its industry more competitive and cleaner, then push for that legislation to be adopted in the EU and elsewhere, giving Swedish industry an even further competitive advantage. This is exactly the type of competition we need in the world!It is not surprising, that Norway as a nation whose voters want security and predictability most of all and that the main exporting companies are state owned, that Norway took the safe route. Increasing competitive advantage takes risks and the right mentality. Whereas, in Sweden the major exporters are privately owned and there is relatively very good command and control between industry and government collaborating to ensure Sweden stays a strong exporter. There is a point when too much democracy is a bad thing and this has to do with Norway’s industrial and agricultural policies that are often driven by political rather than merit based drivers. This is a very long topic of discussion in and of itself, the short version is Saudi Arabia and Norway have both protected traditions and institutions that should come under question in the modern world, they have inflated their nations but not added so much new material to the balloon. Of course, the negative global impacts of supporting an extreme form of Islam compared to subsidizing unproductive farmers or focusing on 1814 (Norwegian constitution inception date) rather than the future of 2214 could be considered less. However, it is still harmful to the development of the nation in terms of becoming competitive.What I am explaining to you is what Norwegians call the oil “sovepute” or “tvangstrøye”, which is a sleeping pillow or straight jacket. Norwegians use the term but when I interviewed many could not describe what it meant, so I did on pages 11 to 15 of a thesis I wrote however, this has evolved over time and the condensed version is this:In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development produced “Our Common Future” aka The Brundtland report, named after Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Norway, could have been inspired by the report and set the table for a sustainable transformation of its economy, as Sweden has for some time. That is, Sweden is serving the fourth industrial revolution with knowledge packaged into things that are attractive to the rest of the world, produced under increasingly sustainable conditions. Whereas, Norway is serving the second industrial revolution with its two primary exports, fossil fuels and fish. Norwegians are living in an echo chamber of how great things are fueled by dreams which the sleeping pillow offers, and being kept from waking up by the straight jacket which binds them to their group think fueled by comfort and hence complacency.2. Why is the Economic Complexity Index a Useful Tool in Predicting Future GDP growth?When Spain started receiving galleons of silver and gold from the Americas in the middle of the 16th century why did most of that silver and gold end up elsewhere?In various forms, the statement that manufactures were the real gold mines, much more valuable than the actual gold mines themselves, is found all over Europe during the 1600s and 1700s, from Giovanni Botero (1588), Tommaso Campanella (1602) and Antonio Genovesi (1770s) in Italy, to Anders Berch, the first economics professor outside Germany, in Sweden (Berch 1747). The Spanish mercantilist Geronymo de Uztariz (1724/1752, and foreword to Goyeneche 1717), whose main work was translated into both French and English, commented from a particularly good vantage point, being a Spaniard and having lived in Holland and Italy for 23 years. Uztariz’ conclusion is in line with the contemporary mainstream: ‘[Manufactures] is a mine more fruitful of gain, riches, and plenty, than those of Potosi. (Potosi, at about 4,000 metres above sea-level in present-day Bolivia, was the richest of all mines in the world. At the time, it was the second largest city in the world after London). (Source : Reinert, Erik S. “How Rich nations got Rich Essays in the History of Economic Policy”, P. 6)There should be an emphasis on nations with a diverse or complex manufacturing base as a likely end point for the wealth of nations with a less complex manufacturing base. Reinert* was just kind enough to give us the perspective of economic history over 100’s of years to support the conclusion.Reinert’s summation is expounded upon, in the 2000’s by Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann and MIT physicist Cesar Hidalgo with their Economic Complexity Index (ECI) , which is a model that has determined the more complex a nation’s economy is in relation to the products it exports, the greater the likelihood of future GDP growth.The Economist conveys in two articles from October 27th, 2011 and February 4th, 2010, “Complexity Matters” and “Diversity Training”, respectively, that the ECI is better at predicting growth by a factor of 10 compared to The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, and commonly used measures such as human capital and governance.The ECI is one measure, Reinert is another measure. Keep in mind Reinert is one of the founders of “The Other Canon” and unlike most economists Reinert was the operator of his own successful business for a few decades. Considering mainstream economics does not sufficiently account for the externalities it creates and is a driving force for humanity exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet, other ways of explaining human economic activity and valuing it are needed. Therefore, I think that Reinert and other members of the other canon are relevant and pair well with the ECI. Two examples, their opening line and a comparison of differences between the other canon and the standard canon, aka orthodox economics (Figure 3).The Other Canon is 'Reality Economics', the study of the economy as a real object, not defined in terms of the adoption of core assumptions and techniques. A production-based economic theory where economic development is an intrinsically uneven process, The Other Canon provides tools for political economy, economic development and industrial policy. Source : The Other Canon.Figure 4. Starting points of the standard and other canons. Source : Documenting The Other CanonTo reiterate, ECI and The Other Canon thinking to explain or illuminate Norway’s mess when the standard canon often does not do so too well. For example, the OECD has stated Norway has avoided the resource curse. Yes, it has avoided the resource curse of massive corruption however, it has not avoided the resource curse of transitioning to a more advanced and sustainable economy. Sure they primarily use hydroelectric for onshore power however, that does not solve their economic challenges emerging.3. Fleshing out differing worldviews and norms that lead to or detract from competitive advantage.Too many Norwegians will regurgitate the propaganda their nation has been feeding them and talk about how rich they are with the oil fund. Keep in mind the oil fund is owned by the state, a state which has had no problems throwing minority cleavages without significant political power under the bus. A bit of an aside, but, Here is a post that mentions those minorities and frames of how discrimination works in Norway.The oil fund as of today is worth about 175,000 EUR per person in Norway. However, Norwegian households have limited resilience if house price corrections or significant economic downturns were to occur: Households in Norway as compared to other OECD countries are the third most in debt, and rank second to last in financial assets (Cheptea, Mordonu and Kazuko, 2013).This is the example of the lottery winner mentality but one standard deviation more exuberant and naive, that is the lottery money is not in their bank account but the states.People who understand money and wealth know it is the employment of resources into configurations that generate wealth which is the real wealth. Most Norwegians do not know that or if they do are too complacent to act and change things as verifiable by what makes the Norwegian economy tick. Norway is a fairy tale land in many ways both naturally and by construction, ranging from the embellishment of Viking culture and Norse mythology to the specifically chosen and cultivated National Romanticism that still exists today, and is even re-surging with the increasing popularity of the Bunad and such things.The fairy tale of today is that of Snow White and The Emperor Has no Clothes. That is, Norway believes it is the fairest of them all, even when the mirror says someone else is fairer Norway just undermines the mirror as if it were Cassandra. It is in few trading partners interests to tell Norway the honest truth, and instead tells Norway how fine its outfits look…they want Norway to keep exporting raw resources and buying their finished goods. Norway is not any better in terms of making horrible mistakes for developing its competitive advantage as any other resource wealthy nation.Norwegians do refer to their oil as a “sleeping pillow” or “straight jacket”, but they keep on sleeping on it and wearing the jacket. If they did not then there would be clear evidence of a sustainable transition to a complex and diverse export enabled economy. However, there is not. What is very simple and straightforward for me to see and explain is very difficult to get across to a people who have been fed a great deal of propaganda and not enough have the critical thinking skill set and/or the ambition to challenge the status quo (many cultures and nations suffer from this as primarily a result of states holding onto antiquated educational systems and failing to gear their societies so people can truly self actualize).This is a couple of years old:“With a variance of a few years, its estimated the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, currently worth over 7 trillion NOK, will peak in value in 2030 at an estimated 265 percent of mainland GDP. While the elderly population is set to double by 2060 (Cheptea, Mordonu and Kazuko, 2013). Thereby, potentially requiring annual budgets that would likely have to be supported by increasing withdrawals from the oil fund over levels that interest alone might be able to support”.The interest dividend from the oil fund is not enough to cover the short fall in oil revenues for very long. Many Norwegians believe the money in the bank will save them. This stems in part from the austere lifestyles of many families after the poverty ridden years of World War II and to an extent the early post war era. That is, Norwegians saved and many passed on significant fortunes to the baby boomer generation. So, a cultural phenomenon has turned into a folktale.To reiterate again for the third time,Money should have been going to convert Norway from a resource extraction economy to a resource added value economy, an economy with complexity, diversity and the inherent resilience that comes with it.Read here for further details on the impact of oil revenues dropping.Shane Murray's answer to Can Norway sustain the state spending if the oil revenue drops?Soruce: Cheptea, C. Mordonu, A. Kazuko, S. (2013). International Monetary Fund Country Report No. 13/273. Norway 2013 Artcile IV