The busi­ness world’s most under­rat­ed superhero

Read the arti­cles on For­tune 100 com­pa­nies and you’ll see com­mon themes revolv­ing around heroes in lead­er­ship, inno­va­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, brand­ing, design and cul­ture. How­ev­er, to bring all of these togeth­er to deliv­er that mean­ing­ful prod­uct or ser­vice to peo­ple requires this “hero” behind-the-scenes: the project manager.

“Projects are often viewed as being fun­da­men­tal­ly root­ed in tech­nol­o­gy. This is because most projects are tech­ni­cal. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this ori­en­ta­tion toward tech­nol­o­gy has obscured the true pur­pose of projects. The truth is that projects are all about busi­ness – not tech­nol­o­gy. The fun­da­men­tal objec­tive for a project is to achieve a busi­ness result, such as improv­ing effec­tive­ness, increas­ing sales, or mak­ing oper­a­tions more effi­cient. No mat­ter what that under­ly­ing cause, the ulti­mate pur­pose of a project is very sim­ple: to make mon­ey or to save money.”

Brief Case Books – Project Man­age­ment, by Gary R. Heerkens, PMP

Dri­ven by the need to change, most busi­ness­es today are plac­ing more empha­sis on project-related rather than func­tion­al work. Repet­i­tive func­tions, like pay­roll, book­keep­ing, data entry and IT sup­port, are being out­sourced so that employ­ees can devote more time to projects that add real value.

These can range from ongo­ing process improve­ment projects to short-term projects such as com­pet­i­tive analy­sis. But in order to run effec­tive­ly, what­ev­er its lev­el of depth or dura­tion, a project needs to be based on a clear under­stand­ing of the dri­ving objec­tives and a sound framework.

Below we’ll out­line nine fun­da­men­tals of project man­age­ment – its superpowers:

1. Man­ag­ing integration

Most projects com­prise a wide vari­ety of activ­i­ties and it’s impor­tant to keep the whole thing mov­ing for­ward togeth­er. This means inte­grat­ing all the dynam­ics involved.

2. Man­ag­ing scope

Projects need to have defined para­me­ters or scope. This should be bro­ken down and man­aged through a work break­down struc­ture (WBS).

3. Man­ag­ing the schedule

Projects have def­i­nite begin­ning and end dates. To avoid delays it’s impor­tant to man­age the time spent on each stage using a project sched­ule, which may need to be reviewed periodically.

4. Man­ag­ing costs

Projects con­sume resources. In order to ensure it deliv­ers val­ue, the invest­ment in it must be man­aged to ensure that the ben­e­fits derived exceed the amount spent.

5. Man­ag­ing quality

Projects involve spe­cif­ic deliv­er­ables or work prod­ucts. These deliv­er­ables need to meet project objec­tives and per­for­mance standards.

6. Man­ag­ing human resources

Find­ing the right peo­ple to be involved, then man­ag­ing their out­puts and keep­ing them on sched­ule are a big part of man­ag­ing a project.

7. Man­ag­ing communication

Every project touch­es a lot of peo­ple, includ­ing par­tic­i­pants, the man­agers over­see­ing it and exter­nal stake­hold­ers who have an inter­est in its suc­cess. Effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion between them is vital.

8. Man­ag­ing risk

Projects are a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery and will often uncov­er cus­tomer needs and crit­i­cal issues you had not pre­vi­ous­ly been aware of. You may also encounter unex­pect­ed hitch­es, such as team mem­bers resign­ing, bud­get­ed resources sud­den­ly chang­ing, new tech­nolo­gies being intro­duced or trou­ble with­in the wider organ­i­sa­tion. There is a real need to prop­er­ly iden­ti­fy the poten­tial risks so they can be managed.

9. Man­ag­ing procurement

Projects may require the ser­vices of out­side ven­dors and con­trac­tors as well as equip­ment and sup­plies. It’s impor­tant to man­age the pro­cure­ment process through­out the project life-cycle.

Tak­ing these fun­da­men­tals into con­sid­er­a­tion at the out­set of any project and through­out is the hall­mark of effec­tive project management.

Through our years of deliv­er­ing projects on-time and with­in bud­get for busi­ness­es across the globe, the Renoir team has gar­nered spe­cial­ized tools to help busi­ness­es imple­ment projects suc­cess­ful­ly. So if you feel your in-house project man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties need a boost or you sim­ply need expert sup­port due to a short time-frame, please get in touch. We’re here to help.