Darrell Taylor
InfraScience

Today with the economic climate surrounding industry, companies are faced with a dilemma when developing products or delivering services as to how to the keep the project on track, on schedule, and within budget.  It is an age old problem, and unfortunately many companies tend to cut back in the wrong areas.  While it is easy to target areas such as project management, it is also very costly.  This is exactly where companies should focus in order to move projects forward in a cost effective manner and maximize the investment in development or service delivery.  All too often we are forced to justify the existence of the project management discipline and the value it brings to an organization.  By allowing project managers to lead the charge, we are cognizant of keeping proper alignment between work effort and requirements.

Whether it is the beginnings of a formal methodology or a fully executed Project Management Office, benefits both tangible and intangible can be derived from the EPM solutions.  According to a recent study by the Project Management Institute, it is clear that project management delivers value so long as the organization adapts the discipline to their needs.  In this newsletter, we will explore only two key benefits and their value proposition to the organization.  These two areas are often neglected and although one is tangible and the other intangible, they hold the key to the success of many projects.

One of the greatest returns on investment for project management is the proper utilization and planning of resource requirements.  How many times have each of us been assigned a project and launched full steam ahead into a work breakdown structure complete with resource assignment, only to find that we did not have clear and succinct requirements?  We will expend the effort.  It is up to us whether we do it on the front end or by backtracking and doing it over.  It is critical that the project manager facilitates and drives quantifiable and concrete requirements.  Without understanding project requirements, deliverables, and capacity, companies experience inefficient cycles, resulting in higher overhead, lost knowledge, and poor employee morale.  By providing visibility into overall work commitments and resource capabilities, project management helps you create resource plans to align work efforts with project requirements. Without proper project management representation, companies often assign resources incorrectly, whether they are generic or personnel, to a project resulting in inefficient utilization and inaccurate deliverables.

In the challenging markets of today, we are all looking for, "That Thing" that will set us apart from our competition.  "That Thing," that sets the successful projects apart, is the sharing of knowledge and the tearing down of silos within an organization.  By utilizing a cross functional project team and a formal methodology, we provide an incubator for creative solutions helping to disseminate information.   It has been proven that when team members have a forum in which to collaborate, they thrive rather than struggle as an island.  The widespread acceptance and implementation of collaboration portals and knowledge sharing, fosters the team environment.  No longer are teams holding the information to themselves, but they begin to brainstorm and develop out of the box thinking.  It improves growth within your team by generating positive results. These results not only command respect, but more often than not, inspire your team to continue to look for ways to perform more efficiently.  For many today struggling to find that competitive edge, this alone is worth the price of admission.

It is not about what it costs to implement and maintain a standard project management methodology, but about what it costs to not implement the methodology.  Unfortunately, too many companies think that project management is pure overhead, when in fact project management is a cost reduction and control vehicle.  It helps drive projects to completion without all of the scope creep, helps with accounting so we know what our development or delivery costs really were, and it gives us a tool by which to scope and measure upcoming endeavors.