Project Management | Project Managers

It's the classic Catch-22. If your organization does not spend sufficient time evaluating requests before projects are formally authorized or executed, predictability of project outcomes decreases. 

On the other hand, time spent in evaluating requests (especially for those that will never be approved) is often perceived as an opportunity cost. The skills needed to perform the evaluation are likely the same skills needed to staff key projects.

As we are beginning to emerge from the recession (and starting to feel as though we've survived the worst of it), executives are beginning to think about "what's next" - how to achieve their strategy and translate it into bottom line results. Yet, they are still tentative about making significant moves and spending precious cash. Thus, I'm seeing a reemergence of the value of project planning. Suddenly, I've seen a significant increase in demand for project planning, as executives want to ensure that their strategy is translated into bottom line results.

In November I wrote about whether or not the roles of PM and BA could be combined into one. I received wonderful responses, all of which broadened my perspective. Although I remain convinced that in most circumstances both roles are preferable, I understand that certain conditions, such as project size and corporate culture, may dictate whether or not one person plays both these roles on the same project. Another factor is that from a high-level view the skills seem similar. However, once we dive deeper into the business analysis and processes, the overlap lessons.

Most of the projects I am involved with nowadays are organisational change projects, many related to the implementation of a true project management culture and all its relevant processes, behaviours and tools.

I use a "user-centric", self-organizing, collaborative approach I call "changeboxing", that I developed specifically for these types of projects. It is a mixture of agile project management "timeboxing" techniques and collaborative implementation approaches. It is based on voluntary work by concerned stakeholders of projects in an organisation, following an internal diagnosis where these stakeholders identify and confirm the organisational change they desire, and then work together to make it happen.

This week I was part of a development program for high potential people in a large European company. They had worked together for about a year on a program with a mix of training and actual project work. And now it was time for a review of the result with sponsors and other key stakeholders. A review of both the training aspect and the project results. It was one of those occasions where normally you listen to a nice presentation with a bunch of obvious statements designed to showcase the participants, the trainers and the program design people. Where you listen for a couple of hours, slightly bored at best, and then walk away remembering nothing of the event.