If you run a company selling products or services to your clients, you surely have two main concerns in mind: “run the business” and “change the business”. “Run the business” means manufacturing, transport, sales, procurement, HR, marketing, training, defect repair, dealing with angry customers, etc. All these repetitive day-to-day operations are managed under the operations management paradigm. Thanks to operations management, you can submit invoices and pay salaries. However, in such a competitive economy as the current one, operational excellence is no longer enough to grow and translate value to the shareholder. You need also to “change the business” to beat your competition, to open new markets, to launch new products, to innovate and improve processes, etc. “Change the business” means project management.
Poor Project Management
Many companies manage projects as operations. This is especially painful in companies that sell projects to clients and manage those projects just by counting how many working hours are submitted or pending.Many companies sell projects, but manage hours ?If there is a person in charge of a project, he or she is usually focused on tracking team members’ tasks. This “project manager” does not have a fully updated plan for the project, does not report periodically anticipating risks, does not measure deviations and forecasts, does not propose preventive or corrective actions, does not manage stakeholders’ expectations, etc. Top managers of these companies regret when projects do not meet their business goals, do not deliver the value, fail to achieve the expected profitability, finish late, deliver poor quality, have scope creep, etc. What did they expect? If there is no professional person responsible for the project, why did they expect professional project management? With the knowledge globalized, there are no longer differences in the way companies apply best practices or employ the best professionals to manage day-to-day operations. Differences arise when it comes to changing the business, that is, when planning and executing projects.
Projects make the difference
If we think about the world’s best companies, we can almost always point to a few projects that made the difference. Perhaps the best example is Apple, which achieved its leadership position thanks to 6 successful projects (and the learning from failed ones like Lisa or Newton). The iPod project changed the music business. The iPhone project transformed the smart phone and photography industries, and also mobile applications, social networks, etc.
Professional Project Management
Top company managers do not need to be experts in project management. Just a basic knowledge should be enough to know if a project should follow a predictive or agile lifecycle approach, if a project should be decomposed into subprojects to be managed as a program, what to expect from a project review meeting, what to read in a project status report, etc. Controlling tasks is needed in any project, but it is not enough. Projects don’t usually fail for technical reasons. Projects usually fail due to poor management of risks, requirements, quality, procurement, communications, etc. Any project professional should know how to manage a project to finish on time, and on budget, how to divide the project in manageable packages, what tools help the team keep focused on what is important, how to manage project status reviews, etc. Professional project managers can take accountability for meeting the business goals and delivering value, beyond the triple constraint. They are supposed to have the necessary skills to manage predictive and agile projects, to lead teams, to manage stakeholders’ expectations, etc. Projects include more and more stakeholders. Project complexity is so high that centralized management is not efficient. Value projects are managed under a network of people actively collaborating using different roles. In PMI we know great professionals to manage portfolios, programs, and projects. Not being a guarantee for success, the recommendation is that these professionals be certified as PfMP®, PgMP® y PMP®, respectively.Organize Projects Professionally
Companies may have hundreds of projects running in paralel. Projects can be organized in various groups called Business Units managed by Functional Managers. Inside the business units, functional managers have a number of projects included for some business reasons.
In the Project Economy, projects are organized in organizational structures to enhance specialization.
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