Project Management Methodology Development/Deployment Services
Many firms are coming to the conclusion that there must be a better way to:
- Identify a limited number of projects that provide the firm with an adequate rate of return on investment (ROI) with medium risk.
- Concretely define project requirements to avoid undertaking the wrong projects or delivering incomplete projects.
- Develop prosecution techniques to assure that the choosen projects get done on time and as close to budget as possible.
Firms are coming to this realization by sharper competition from within and outside their traditional industries, by the knowledge that projects are becoming more complex, and by a recognition that team based “collaborative” work efforts are yielding more promising results than hierarchical, command and control based efforts.
All firms have methods for defining and prosecuting work. However, most often the methods support production oriented, repetitive work or are disjointed project development techniques borrowed from textbooks, vendor manuals (e.g. MS Project, Welcom, Primavera, etc), or from the experiences of staff members with the PM practices of former employers.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) has found that of all things that a company can do to take advantage of the benefits that accrue from adopting a project oriented framework, the one with the highest payback and shortest implementation timeframe is a project development or life cycle methodology (e.g. work initiation, planning, execution, management and closeout).
Based on Utowna's extensive experience assisting firms in developing successful methodologies, firms should resist the temptation to adopt someone else’s methodology - be it vendor supported or provided “free” from an employee’s file. The risks in the wholesale adoption of someone else’s work initiation, planning, implementation, management and closeout methodology are:
- The organization structure and objectives that supported the methodology may be very different than your firm’s.
- The cultural values embodied in the methodology may not be compatible with those established by your company.
- Likewise, the PM maturity level and organizational learning may be very dissimilar.
- Borrowed methodology may result in a backlash from employees, a wasted investment (too much work is done or too little) and a missed opportunity for organizational development.
Utowna’s approach to creating a project methodology and framework that suits your company’s needs is described below. The team:
- Uses focus group and personal interviews to inventory and benchmark your current work processes.
- Assists your senior management team to develop goals and objectives for the new system.
- Helps you to establish a Project Management Leadership Team composed of your best and brightest staff members from across the firm. This group will identify the problems with the current system and develop the plans for using the new system to achieve the senior management objectives.
- Facilitates the PMLT’s construction of a “best practices” web page that captures what your firm currently does, who does it and the tools and techniques they employ. This webpage assures that the “old ways” are documented, that mentors are identified, and the best techniques are preserved. It also allows your team to show the PMLT the gaps in the current processes and provides a transition vehicle from the old to the new.
- Assists the PMLT to develop a new methodology having the following features:
- Web based.
- Easily updated and maintained – mentors are identified.
- Is integrated – all identified gaps have been addressed.
- Meets senior management goals and objectives.
- Preserves current system’s best practices.
- Has been developed and is “owned” by the firm’s employees.
- Includes recommendations for governance mechanisms (e.g. steering committee to pick new projects and decide the size of the project state) and PM software tools (e.g. will typically recommend low tech, inexpensive options like excel, access, and gantt, CPM and collaboration tools – the idea here is too keep the investment and complexity low until organizational learning justifies more sophisticated tools)