Best practice project management strategies

How To Implement Project Management Procedures and Develop Skills

Why: Companies implement project management procedures and develop related skills in their personnel in order to improve project performance and thereby achieve critical business objectives.  An important goal is to do so in such a way that the organization gets value from its project management processes as quickly as possible while also laying a foundation for long-term consistent project performance.

How:  Introduce key PM techniques quickly for new projects or projects already in progress.   Identify projects that should receive immediate attention using those techniques.

Also consider the “skills and experience” state of your current project management staff. Identify approaches you should use to develop their skills and PM knowledge.

Plan your project management procedure and skills development as a project.  Set a timeline with specific goals for implementing the techniques.

• Getting new procedures created and into use quickly and effectively to benefit current projects, rather than having to wait for a long “improvement initiative” to be executed.  Every “best practice” new procedure does not have to be deployed for you to start achieving significant project benefits.
• Spreading the new approaches to multiple projects quickly, and widely developing project management skills even among inexperienced project managers, to create a foundation for long-term consistent project performance.     Many organizations manage to improve PM in one area but can’t replicate it widely, falling well short of the overall business performance they need to achieve.

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1. Identify a management champion

The role of the management champion includes articulating the reasons behind the new project management procedures and skill development, and removing obstacles to their achievement.

Going forward, the management champion must support the project teams’ efforts personally and through their influence with other executives. They will also support the importance of the project manager role, making sure that skills development opportunities are available and that project managers are selected judiciously.

Select a management champion and announce the role and its purpose to other management and to project managers and their teams.

2 . Determine the best focus for initial PM procedures

The goal of this step is to start with areas of past project problems and pain.  Aim your first procedures at the areas that will have a significant positive impact on current projects.  You’ll not only improve those projects’ chances of success, you’ll also demonstrate PM value and enable faster buy-in to changing “how we do things”.

For example, a typical project killer is scope creep – as the feature activity list for a product or system grows and grows it increases the project work and the risks threatening the schedule and costs.  Scope creep is a leading cause of project failure. If scope creep typically threatens a company’s projects, initial efforts should focus on implementing Project Vision or Charter statements and change control processes.

3. Create first versions of the new PM procedures

Next, decide how you’ll create new project management procedures quickly to address your top issues.

Create a  ” project framework” document that summarizes your organization’s PM approach.    It should capture:

What project phases you will follow – that is, how your projects will be divided into major activity blocks such as Concept, Development, Implementation, and Finalisation.

What reviews should happen during each phase of the project, including their timing and purpose and who should attend.

The specific new processes you’re introducing within the framework, with appropriate step-by-step instructions, detailed guidelines, and related document outlines.

The goal is to quickly provide an overview of your new PM approach, with basic orientation to key new processes, deliverables, etc.    It should make it easy for a team to understand and use the new PM techniques.

4.  Create a simple “infrastructure” for growing project management skills

This step shifts attention to the longer term and broader use of the new procedures and development of project skills.  The goal is to establish some initial mechanisms to spread the procedures and skill development beyond the initial project(s) that were kicked off in step 3.

What drives a company to specifically invest in this support?  One driver is the presence of multiple new or inexperienced project managers, or part-time or occasional project managers, none of whom will have fully developed PM abilities.   Another is the need to spread new PM practices through an organization rapidly with high assurance that they’re being used consistently.

Whatever form of “staffing support” you choose, decide what should be provided initially and get it going.    Options include:

• • Training: Survey project managers and team members for what training they’ve had and what they feel they need. Recommend/locate/create training they need.
  • Process and procedures: Own the company’s PM process framework document and procedures, monitor teams for issues, make updates to the process, champion it and communicate about its benefits.
  • Project assistance:  Perform end-of-phase project check-ups to show project managers how to apply the process to their project – and make sure they are doing so.  Assist with projects in trouble- help with project recovery.
  • Coaching: Provide project managers on-call advice, document reviews, meeting facilitation, to provide just-in-time “how-to” help.
  • Knowledge Sharing:  Foster knowledge sharing via monthly PM forums or other means.  Facilitate Project Lessons Learned meetings and generate and distribute reports
  • Resources:  Create and maintain online and physical resources such as a project management systems or an electronic project office and process / guidance documentation.

Champion: Inform executives about company PM issues and needs.

5.  Provide multiple venues for PM education and knowledge sharing

Project managers and team members learn from traditional training courses, but they gain critical hands-on, company-specific PM skills from knowledge transfer from their colleagues.  Here are common forms of project management peer-to-peer learning to consider implementing:

• Hold weekly, fortnightly or monthly sessions where project managers and functional leads are taught the company’s PM procedures and able to ask questions “just-in-time” as they’re preparing to use them on their project. The objectives for these sessions would include:

1. Understand why our PM techniques are important – what benefit they bring
2. Understand the elements of our process and procedures
3. Understand your role in these projects and what skills you need
4.  Understand how to adapt our procedures to different types of projects

• During standard project management skills training, have experienced project managers attend and give brief presentations on how they use the PM skills on their projects

• Hold periodic forums where all project managers gather in one location and a number of them present project case studies, or teach workshops to new managers.

6. Hold lessons learned meetings for every project for continuous improvement

This step takes us back to individual projects. The goal is to “close the loop” to ensure we have feedback about what is being tried, what is working, and what is not.

7. Acknowledge, recognize, and celebrate successes

The management champion bears major responsibility for this step. The goal is to continually reinforce the importance of the PM improvement efforts and acknowledge progress to-date.

Make sure to regularly acknowledge the bottom line benefits the new procedures are delivering through the projects to the business.  Your PM procedures effort is not only about creating process infrastructure and documentation per se – it’s about project performance, which benefits everyone in the business.  Keep that “big picture” at the forefront.

Be sure to reward individuals for their PM skills development.  Ensure the company is providing adequate career advancement for project managers.   Recognize individuals publicly for spending time on training and on knowledge transfer activities as outlined in step 5.

Conclusion

Well-targeted new project management procedures can be introduced quickly to deliver recognizable project benefits.  Fast improvements breed energy for further efforts, and additional new procedures can be developed and deployed over time. Project managers’ and team members’ skills develop simply from understanding and utilizing the new best practice techniques.

Practical hands-on support for project staff, plus opportunities for peer knowledge exchange, complete an environment that is set to foster continued growth in project management capabilities and skills.  Positive impacts on project performance and business objectives are sure to follow.

You can rely on the team at Project Advantage to provide you with expert project management consulting Melbourne-wide and in other capital cities and regional centres across Australia.

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