I have heard mild protests from clients when I suggest setting up a project office. They seem to feel that I am suggesting having huge staff numbers adding to overheads and adding little to the business. Far from the truth!
I have seen people in organisations who valiantly help in developing the overall project culture within the company without actually realising it. Some of the work done by these unsung heroes and heroines has been really useful:
* helping to develop an overall project management system - written and put onto the intranet for people to use
* encouraging people to attend training events where the new way of working is explained
* advising individual project managers or teams how to start a project and walking them through the approach needed
* collating statistics about the number of projects in the organisation, risk profiles etc
* influencing others to adopt project management approaches
* advising how to compete forms e.g. risk logs, project initiation forms etc
* developing intranet solutions for the whole business so that projects can be mapped all their way through the life cycle
I stress, the above have all been seen by me in working directly with clients - this is not all one client and more to the point, the client has done this themselves, yes with a bit of encouragement from me.
It is some list AND it has all been done by one or two people who have their day jobs to perform as well. The key is that they are making a difference; a positive difference with very little management support.
They can help make a huge leap forward if they had senior management backing, a formal title - such as Project Office or Programme Office and had some money to support the drive for developing a strong project management culture. But better than that some authority to push project (or programme) management within the organisation.
One final point; many organisations fail to have any real project governance (accountabilities and responsibilities for decision-making at a strategic level or project level). Having a project office helps enormously however it will not replace a well developed governance process.
Good luck to you if you are one of those unsung heroes or heroines pushing project management. Keep up the really great work!
Ron Rosenhead is an author, trainer, consultant, coach and public speaker - all in the area of project management. He has vast consultancy and training experience and you can read his blog at www.ronrosenhead.co.uk
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