PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Recognizing the value of project management as a key strategy for achieving business objectives is important. But before jumping ahead and talking to project management training providers, and certainly before you schedule that training --- stop and take the following quiz.

Unless you can answer "YES" to these questions, please pause and consider the impact of training project leaders or team members without first establishing a foundation. Your training investment may, in large part, be wasted. Such general project management training usually fails in the long run because it is unsupported by the organizational culture. A project management process should drive the training. A consistent project management culture and project management process to support the types of projects in a given organization are needed to provide ongoing reinforcement and consistent use of project management tools and approaches. Without it, individuals continue to do things in many different ways. His way, or her way, or my way prevails without a clear approach. There is no "Our Way." Therefore, individuals with differing levels of experience and training are likely to rely on approaches from the past or to sporadically incorporate lessons from project management training programs.

Training alone provides no guarantee of a well-run project. Even Project Management Professional (PMP) certification is not sufficient when it is independent of a well-defined, company-specific project management approach.

Begin by developing a comprehensive approach to project management in your organization. This will multiply return on training many times. This happens in a number of ways. Development is an iterative process. Key project managers and organizational leaders are part of an initial team to assess existing project management approaches, terminology, and processes and to develop a consistent, agreed upon approach for their projects and their organization. They not only own the overall process with recognized milestones, documents, approval points, etc., they also understand a well-defined process. Subsequent training using this process as the foundation around which key elements of professional project management are taught reinforces and broadens project management applications in the organization. As associates return to work after attending training, they apply what they learned in an environment where there is both support and consistency in expectations and approach. The time savings can be considerable, especially when people begin executing the project plan without arguing over organizational ambiguity. Internal fine-tuning of the project system is ongoing as individuals and teams apply the training.

Such an approach is important even in organizations with many different types or sizes of projects. If the project management model and terminology are consistent throughout the organization and implementation is "locally" adapted to the nature of the project, people across the organization speak the same language, making communication easier.

Once you have such a process in your organization, there are other elements to consider as well. Project management tools are often equated with project management training. This is equivalent to considering someone a carpenter because he has mastered the use of a hammer. Also, much project management training stays on an abstract level, with numerous tools and applications and no approach to link them. Therefore, the overall integration, the "how," is missing, making application back on the job considerably more difficult and less likely to occur.

Project management training is often not linked to the types of projects and the project management system at the organization. Organizations with projects containing significant uncertainty (this includes many software development projects, pharmaceutical or other discovery and development projects, and most research projects) need to use project management approaches appropriate to an uncertain environment. Creating a project management model that supports these types of projects is, again, essential.

As one project manager said several weeks after his division created a project management process and then provided project management training: "I have managed projects in other organizations, but we now have a clear project model for a consistent approach and we are living by it. It makes a world of difference!"

If you answered NO to any of the questions from the quiz, please contact The Learning Key.