In recent weeks, I’ve shared IT Project Management learning that can be gleaned from Crufts dog show and Chatsworth International Horse Trials.

It seems there’s an IT Project Management lesson everywhere you look!

When a colleague heard that I was heading to the RHS Tatton Garden Show in July, she said that even I couldn’t find project management teachings in the topsoil. Like most gardeners, I do love a challenge, so the gloves are, well, ON! Years of experience, and countless IT Projects under my belt, and a passion for plants and flowers! How hard can this be?

Sow, here we grow!

1 – The Value of Planning and Preparation

Lesson from Tatton – A great garden starts with thorough planning, this can include selecting the right plants for the desired outcome, preparing the soil, ensuring you have well maintained resources, and factoring in things like access to sunlight and water.

IT Project Management Lesson – IT projects also require meticulous planning and preparation. For us, this means defining project goals, identifying resources (and any resource gaps and filling them), constructing realistic timelines, and factoring in potential risks. Adequate planning is at the root of all IT Project success. A Business Analyst to define the business case and provide data-led insight and an effective Project Management Office to oversee planning and governance are becoming essential assets.

2 – Patience and Persistence Pays

Lesson from Tatton – Gardeners need patience. Lots of patience. Plants take time to grow, to bloom, and in some cases to bear fruit (and some years bear no fruit at all!!) Gardeners are patient and persistent, they consistently care for their plants regardless of setbacks or slow progress, there’s no point shouting, “Come on, just grown one sodding apple!!!” at a tree.

IT Project Management Lesson – Patience and persistence are character traits of the best IT Project Managers too. Complex IT projects encounter delays, setbacks, unforeseeable challenges, although, come to think of it, I have heard Project Managers scream the words “sodding Apple” from time to time. PMs and their teams must remain resilient, stay motivated, and continue working towards their project’s goals with dogged perseverance.

3 – The Right “Tool” For the Job

Lesson from Tatton – You wouldn’t dig out the hole for a pond and water feature with a trowel, nor would you rake up autumn leaves with a spade. Gardening is an efficient hobby and much of that comes down to selecting the best tool for the job. If you find you don’t have the right tool, that’s a great excuse for a trip to the garden centre or B&Q!

IT Project Management Lesson – Success in our line of work can be dependent on having the correct resources in place too. All too often though, organisations restrict their potential by relying just on the talent they have inhouse. Stoneseed’s Project Management as a Service (PmaaS) model provides access to the right project professionals, resources and tools at the right time (at a flexible, predictable cost), and our services portfolio offers a true end to end service, from IT Technical Advisory, Business Analysis Services and PMO Services through to Programme & Project Delivery.

4 – Nurture and Maintain!

Lesson from Tatton – Plants need to be nurtured and will not thrive without regular care, like watering, pruning, and, of course, pest control. Neglecting these, often daily, disciplines can cause your plant’s growth to be less than you’d hoped for or, worse case, it could even die.

IT Project Management Lesson – Projects are also very needy! Project Managers must actively monitor progress, identify and address issues promptly, effectively allocate resources, prune excess growth (mitigate scope creep!) and ensure that the project stays aligned with its business objectives. Remember, like plants, projects can fail without proper nurture and maintenance.

Project talent needs to be nurtured too, with ongoing training, and project teams must stay up to date with latest best practice and thinking.

5 – Be Adaptable and Flexible

Lesson from Tatton – Your garden is at the mercy of the unpredictable! Heavy rain that floods one day, baking sun that burns everything to a crisp the next! Then there’s infestations of insects, and attacks from slugs, rodents, my colleague Helen’s garden is often under siege from deer!!! Successful gardeners are adaptable and adjust strategy and technique to overcome these challenges.

IT Project Management Lesson – Pests can attack IT Project timelines too, stakeholders requesting scope changes, resource challenges, supply chain problems and technology issues. Project Managers must be flexible, able to adjust plans, and find creative solutions to keep their projects on track, like sourcing talent via Project Management as a Service (PmaaS).

6 – Thorough Understanding of The Life Cycle

Lesson from Tatton – Plants grow at different rates and have varying growth cycles, from seed to full bloom. Gardeners learn and understand these cycles and adjust care routines to suit.

IT Project Management Lesson – Projects go through phases too, from initiation to planning, , monitoring, and delivery. Project Managers must have a thorough understanding of these phases, apply the appropriate methodology, adjusting their management approach based on the project stage. Also, across a portfolio there may be separate projects with dependencies that require the same resources, great portfolio managers are skilled at ensuring dependencies don’t need the resources at the same time, or if they do, that they have a back-up resourcing strategy.

7 – Symbiosis, Collaboration and Diversity

Lesson from Tatton – A diverse garden, with various types of plants, creates a balanced ecosystem. I love learning how different plants (and other garden friends) make their own unique contribution. Some plants attract pollinators, or ladybirds to see off greenfly. Other plants and earthworms improve soil health.

IT Project Management Lesson – A diverse IT Project team, with a range of skills and expertise creates a natural culture of innovation, problem-solving, and operational resilience. Collaboration among team members from different backgrounds boosts creativity, productivity, knowledge sharing and a heightened ability to tackle project challenges. Stoneseed’s PmaaS talent, being experienced across multiple technology solutions, sectors and industries, bring experience in spades! If you work with “external” talent, be sure to become a knowledge sponge!

8 – Sustainability

Lesson from Tatton – Successful gardeners are long-term thinkers, considering factors like sustainability, ecological impacts, soil health and which plants will thrive best in the plot next after what you planted this year has died.

IT Project Management Lesson – IT Projects are often laser-focussed on short-term goals but increasingly also factor in long-term thinking and objectives: eco- and organisational-sustainability; scalability; ongoing maintenance requirements; and post-delivery support needs; etc. Optimising this level of thinking and planning delivers lasting business value.

9 – Risk Management and Contingency Planning

Lesson from Tatton – As well as being adaptable and flexible in the event of risks, gardeners try to anticipate and mitigate risks like weather extremes, diseases, or pests. A sharp frost is not totally unpredictable, so checking the forecast and overnight lows can allow a contingency plan to be put in place, like protective covers.

IT Project Management Lesson – Project Managers must also identify potential risks early in the project lifecycle and, like our green fingered friends, develop go-to risk mitigation strategies, with contingency plans ready to roll into action. For instance, resource issues or talent gaps can be addressed with professionals from the PmaaS market, or Project Management Office advisory services can help strengthen your existing PMO, taking a proactive approach minimises risk, disruption and ensures ongoing project resilience.

10 – Feedback Loops and Iterative Improvement

Lesson from Tatton – Searching Amazon for books on gardening will give you a small idea of the repository of knowledge that exists. This was all collected by gardeners planting and observing, noting plant growth, monitoring health, measuring yield, and recording feedback from their observations to adjust watering, fertilisation, or planting strategies to improve outcomes. Doesn’t this sound familiar?!

IT Project Management Lesson – Project teams must also gather regular feedback from stakeholders, end-users, team members and real-time project data to evaluate project progress, identify areas for improvement, and make iterative adjustments. Continuous feedback loops propel project quality to higher levels and lead to increased stakeholder satisfaction – and that’s the kind of feedback we love!

11 – Optimise Resources!

Lesson from Tatton – This leans into our section on sustainability too, gardeners are great at optimising available resources. Water, for instance, falls out of the sky regularly in the UK and by using a water butt to capture some of it, you have water ready for dry sunny days. Then there’s composting, literally creating fertiliser from decaying organic material from grass clippings to tea bags! Now that’s resource optimisation!

IT Project Management Lesson – IT Project Managers are under more pressure than ever to focus on resource optimisation: efficiently allocating budgets; scheduling time; and allocating talent. Many teams are embracing sustainable practices in project execution, reusing or upgrading existing hardware and resources, adopting green technologies, cloud migration, etc. This approach to find the most cost-effective and environmentally responsible method is even better than composting teabags!!

Talking of teabags, after eleven IT project lessons to be learned at Tatton Garden, Show, I think that’s mission accomplished. A celebratory boil of the kettle for me incoming!

That’s another thing gardeners and project managers have in common … we do love a brew!

If any of the lessons shared have planted a seed, perhaps you need project resources to help you through a difficult season or to maximise your yield, or maybe Stoneseed’s advisory service can help you see the wood for the trees, do get in touch!

Find out more about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed

The post Eleven IT project lessons to be learned at … Tatton Garden Show appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

I always think of this proverb when a project leader tells me about their new, more senior role and the radical plans they have to “shake things up”.

It IS tempting to make a grand, headline grabbing move to justify your organisation’s faith in you, investing in a new portfolio software application or churning your talent, for instance. When new to a role (in many business environments, not just IT Project Management), new managers tend to lean into making sweeping changes, it’s human nature. Often though, hindsight shows that making small tweaks could have been more productive.

Rather than shake things up, it can be quicker, and less stressful to shape things up! If you’re new to a role, instead of slashing or splashing budget and drastically altering project team structure, how about looking at the small step changes you can make that can quickly unlock ROI. Less broom, more polish!  

FOUR ROI, EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY HACKS FOR THE NEW IT PROJECT DECISION MAKER

1 – Governance And Metrics – Improve Your Reporting with a P3mo Platform (Instead of a Sweeping Investment in a New Software)

Often, a new portfolio management software application can feel like the silver bullet, but a new system can bring challenges:

1. Implementation can incur significant costs.
2. Integration of new portfolio management software with existing applications across the organisation can be difficult.
3. Building and refining the portfolio management system can be time-consuming, when you need results fast.
4. Capturing diverse data types across various locations with varied access levels can be complex.
5. Collaboration and communication across different areas of an organisation can be difficult.
6. End Users can take time to adapt, leaking efficiency at a time when you need to be more efficient.

Did you know? You can successfully implement a project portfolio that works for your organisation by utilising your existing Microsoft platform more effectively and improve efficiency and quality of delivery across your portfolio by deploying Stoneseed’s P3MO Platform.

Stoneseed’s innovative P3MO Platform can help:

1. Optimise cutting-edge technologies for unprecedented efficiency and innovation.
2. Provide a dynamic and intuitive platform for project planning and execution.
3. Enable seamless collaboration within Teams.
4. Take project management to a higher level with robust data analytics capabilities.
5. Transform project-related data into actionable insights.
6. Gain a deeper understanding of project performance and facilitate informed decision-making.
7. Use Project for the Web and Power BI to foster a culture of teamwork and shared knowledge.
8. Contribute to a holistic portfolio management approach.
9. Oversee multiple projects with greater visibility and strategic alignment.

Call Stoneseed to find out more about the P3MO Platform and PMO Services on 01623 374056 or click here.

2 – Use A Business Analyst Properly to Improve Stakeholder Buy-In and Make Projects Fit for Purpose and Need.

Using a Business Analyst effectively can significantly boost stakeholder engagement in many ways, here are just THREE:

a) Improving Communication and Understanding

Good Business Analysts act as intermediaries between stakeholders and project teams, ensuring that communication is clear, concise, and, perhaps crucially, meaningful. BAs facilitate requirements gathering sessions, workshops, and meetings to ensure that stakeholders’ needs and expectations are first understood and documented accurately. BAs are great at translating technical jargon into business terms and vice versa, so Business Analysts bridge the communication gap between stakeholders and tech teams.

b) Data-Driven Decision Making

It’s a joy to watch an effective BA analyse data and information, business processes, performance metrics, market trends, customer feedback, etc, distilling it into comprehensive intelligence to help you make big decisions! It’s a talent that should be fully leveraged!

BAs provide stakeholders with valuable insights and data-driven recommendations that support informed decision-making and presented in an actionable manner, they are insights that empower stakeholders to make decisions based on facts and analysis rather than assumption, bias or opinion.

c) Aligning Business Objectives

Business Analysts ensure that project initiatives and deliverables align with your organisation’s strategic goals and priorities. Through business impact assessments and feasibility studies, BAs help you assess the viability and potential impact of proposed IT projects and business change.

By demonstrating how project outcomes contribute to achieving business objectives, Business Analysts engage stakeholders, and the compelling data they create can really hold an IT Project team’s feet to the fire. The more defined a scope is, and the more everyone buys into its alignment with business goals, the less likely it is to creep.

If you don’t have a Business Analyst, Stoneseed’s BAaaS (Business Analysis as a Service) can help fill this vital role.

Our years of experience inform this next suggestion too…

3 – Benchmark Your Project Team and Your Project Management Office to Establish Where and Why You’re Missing Your Targets.

Especially when you’ve been hired to fix a failing team, it can be tempting to deploy a scorched earth approach, but burning everything to the ground and rebuilding destroys the good, as well as the bad. There might be some things that your new team is doing really well.

Remember, you have a major weapon to deploy here – your fresh pair of eyes! You will see things that your new team and its previous leader have become blind to. We’ve found this too, after years of Stoneseed providing advisory services we’ve lost count of the little tweaks, pivots, small improvements that yield big returns and the “A-ha” moments when a client sees things the way you have with your baggage free perspective.

CASE STUDY: Simon’s promotion put him in charge of a struggling team, and he told me he deployed benchmarking to identify why they’d been missing targets. Here are three ways he conducted benchmarking:

a) Performance Metrics Comparison

First, identify key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the project’s goals, so, schedule adherence, budget utilisation, resource allocation, quality metrics, customer satisfaction, etc.

By comparing the project team’s performance against industry benchmarks and historical data from similar projects within the organisation, Simon could analyse variances and trends in performance metrics to pinpoint areas where the team was falling short of targets. The project team was consistently behind schedule, by investigating factors like task dependencies, resource allocation, or scope changes he was able to identify pain points that were causing delays.

b) Process Benchmarking

By evaluating the project team’s processes and workflows, again against their best practice or benchmarks from market leading organisations in the industry, i.e. measuring his team against the best, Simon quickly identified areas for process improvement and optimisation meaning the team achieved targets more often.

Using process mapping and analysis to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or gaps in the project execution process and comparing his team’s approach to project planning, execution, risk management, communication, and stakeholder engagement with industry standards or recognised frameworks (such as PMBOK, Agile principles), Simon turned this team around.

c) Lessons Learned

Tony Robbins said, “There are no failures, only outcomes. As long as you learn something, you’re succeeding.”

Often, ‘failing’ projects don’t tap this vital resource. Simon conducted “lessons learned sessions” or “post-mortem reviews” to gather insights from past projects.  When you do this, be sure to include both successes and failures – both will provide lessons. Identify common patterns, recurring issues, and success factors, encourage knowledge sharing and cross-functional collaboration to leverage best practices and avoid pitfalls that may have contributed to missing targets in previous projects.

Again, Stoneseed can help by providing a completely impartial, fresh take on your team’s performance with our PMO advisory services.

4 – Recognise The Strengths of Your New Team, Identify and Fill the Gaps with PMaaS.

Your new team will have some top-level performers, an abundance of experience and all the inside information on how things have been going before you took over – listen to them.

When outcomes are below what you expect of teams made of experienced project talent, there is usually a fairly straightforward explanation. Often top talent underperforms when they are stretched too thin, covering a gap or operating out of their field of best performance.

Stoneseed’s PMaaS gives you “on tap” access to project professionals, resources and tools and as our portfolio offers a true end to end service, from IT Technical Advisory, Business Analysis Services and PMO Services through to Programme & Project Delivery, we can help fill most resource gaps.

PMaaS is an innovative on-demand resource model that allows you to dial up and down IT project resources in sync with your delivery needs, giving you the flexibility and control of resources that a new project leader needs and, thanks to the simple, transparent pricing model, you’ll have control of the costs too.

CONCLUSION

If you’re reading this having just received a promotion – congratulations! I hope this post has given you food for thought.

If you’re an established CIO, or key project decision maker, looking for new ways to do what you do, hopefully you’ll have found some insights here too.

Remember, there’s huge value to be gained from a fresh pair of eyes looking at existing operational performance and infrastructure.

Adjusting processes and “how we do things”, shifting mindsets and paradigms, ensuring the right talent is in the right place (or even that you have the right talent to allocate) are just some ways that new managers can boost productivity and maximise return on investment – without having to demolish and rebuild.

It’s all about working smarter not harder!

As always, we’d love to hear from you with any thoughts or discuss how Stoneseed can help you and your new team thrive!

Find out more about PMO Services from Stoneseed

The post New Broom, Sweeps Lean! Four ROI, Efficiency and Productivity Hacks for The New IT Project Decision Maker appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

Crufts, the world’s most prestigious dog show, just happened in Birmingham (as I write) – and I was there.

Now, it may feel like an unlikely source of inspiration for IT Project Management, but as both our worlds are all about “best in class” I thought it might be fun to explore the parallels between Crufts and IT Project Management! It turns out there are many! Which is fortunate, because having thought of the title “Unleashing Success” there was no way I was letting this one go!

1 – The Value of Reward

If you’ve ever trained a puppy, you’ll know the value of a “treat” to reward good behaviour, like sitting or staying on command. I think most dogs know the word “biscuit” before they learn their own name, mind you, I know some PMs who are as partial to a bourbon or chocolate malted milk, she writes dunking a digestive! At Crufts I saw a lot of treats passed from owner to dog with a “good boy” or “good girl”. Rewards are vital to the process.

It’s the same in IT Project Management, often our portfolio is so congested that we forget to adequately celebrate reached milestones or delivered projects. I get it, we’re busy, but I think it’s a mistake! It’s worth having a bottle or two of fizz in the fridge ready for a celebratory glass with the team, this can also act as a great motivator when you stick a post-it note to the bottle bearing the goal that will “pop the cork” – a reminder of the mission and the reward every time you reach for the milk! Powerful! From Friday afternoon beers to Friday morning doughnuts, rewards reap! It doesn’t have to pile on the calories though, a bonus afternoon off or early finish, and extra hour for lunch or a voucher for a spa day are all effective rewards.

Should we ever be too busy to celebrate our success?

2 – Attention to EVERY Detail

Have you seen the level of grooming that goes on at Crufts!? The judges’ pore over every aspect of a dog’s appearance and behaviour, everything is meticulously examined!

Similarly, IT Project Managers need a keen eye for detail, all elements of our IT projects are ultimately scrutinised and by the harshest of judges – clients and stakeholders. From project plans to timelines to deliverables, attention to detail is as important to project success. The owners of Viking, the Australian Shepherd that won Best in Show left nothing to chance. By leaving no stone unturned, IT Project Management teams can minimise risk, errors and oversights and ensure that their projects meet all the requirements of the judges.

Interestingly, I noticed many dogs at Crufts were given a “once-over” by someone who hadn’t groomed them, often a fresh pair of eyes can spot something that the person working on the dog had missed. In IT Project Management, Stoneseed’s advisory services can provide you with a fresh pair of eyes that make sure you’re not missing a metaphorical rogue patch of fur!

3 – Clarity Of Communication

It was a joy to watch the handlers at Crufts effortlessly give clear signals to their dogs, who in turn displayed their understanding by executing the command!

Effective communication is essential in IT Project Management but isn’t always in abundance! Project Management communication channels must be clear, open, and transparent and avoid sending out confusing signals. We want seamless collaboration between team members, stakeholders, and clients, but sometimes end up with a dog standing up that you’ve told to sit! Clear communication helps to prevent misunderstandings, aligns everyone’s expectations, and keeps your IT Project on track with regular meetings, accessible status reports, and concise project documentation.

4 – Results Focussed Approach

Ultimately, the goal of entering a dog at Crufts is to achieve success. It’s nice to take part but you want the awards and the recognition – you want to take home a trophy and a rosette.

Similarly, IT Project Managers must focus on delivering successful outcomes for their projects, regardless of distractions! At Crufts, there was a lot of media hype about Sting (yes from The Police and Fields of Gold fame) taking on Chris Amoo (yes from The Real Thing!), this melee didn’t distract their focus (Chris’ wolfhounds beat Sting’s), but both packs kept their eye on the prize!

Whether it’s completing the project on time, within budget, or meeting the client’s expectations, IT project managers also must keep their eyes firmly fixed on their own end goal, regardless of distractions like scope creep or resourcing issues – remember Stoneseed’s Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) can help with those.

By prioritising results and outcomes, project managers steer projects towards success, drive business change and achieve maximum value for stakeholders – better than a rosette or a trophy any day!!

5 – Preparation and Training

The levels of training and preparation that the dogs at Crufts undergo is mind-blowing!! I had no idea! To perform at their best on the day, owners and dogs really put in the hours!!

IT Project Management teams need similar levels of attention to skills and capabilities. Our teams must be well-prepared and adequately trained to take on the challenges of projects, acquiring the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources needed to execute projects effectively.

A well-trained dog is more likely to perform in the show ring, likewise, a well-prepared project team is better equipped to handle the demands of their project, again Stoneseed’s PMaaS can be a one stop shop for any capability gaps and talent from outside your team can be a bonus potent upskilling resource.

As the most successful owners at Crufts continuously refine their techniques and strategies to improve their dogs and performance, a culture of continuous project management improvement will thrive. Learning from past projects and implementing best practices to guarantee future project outcomes, reflecting on experience, and identifying areas for improvement, and seeking opportunities for growth, IT Project Managers evolve and adapt to meet the ever-changing demands of business and markets led IT projects.

6 – Adaptability and Flexibility

A few unexpected situations arose at Crufts, each time both handlers and dogs adapted quickly.

Adaptability and flexibility are the key to us navigating changes, risks, and unforeseen circumstances that arise during a project’s lifecycle.

Stoneseed’s PMaaS is built on pillars of flexibility – you can flex resources based on your delivery needs. So, thinking about it, perhaps embracing adaptability is the best course of action, certainly the response of a dog to an unforeseen occurrence would play well with the judges at Crufts! Project managers who can respond effectively to challenges, adjust their plans as needed, and keep the project moving forward attract the “judges” attention in our world too!

7 – Teamwork

Honestly, the bonds between the handlers and the dogs brought a lump to my throat more than once.

Naturally, effective teamwork and a bond between all team members is essential for achieving IT project goals too. A collaborative environment where team members support and rely on each other to deliver results is among the most powerful forces we can harness. Strong relationships, open communication, and a genuine sense of camaraderie and “we are all in this together” bring out collective strengths of a team.

So, in conclusion, the connection between Crufts and IT project management may not have seemed immediately obvious, but the principles, processes and practices observed in both worlds are many-fold, it turns out.

From attention to detail to clear communication, adaptability, and teamwork, observations from a day or two at Crufts can unleash our full potential and lead our teams to success. So much so, I’m going to ask my boss if my ticket is a claimable expense!

Thanks for reading.

Find out more about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed

The post Unleashing success! What IT Project Management can learn from Crufts appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

In a recent blog, TOP 3 WAYS TO RETAIN IT PROJECT TALENT AND HOW TO REMAIN EFFECTIVE WHEN YOU CAN’T I shared a Director People’s story of how a candidate had flipped this perennial interview question and asked, “Where does the company see me?”

There must be something in the air! This week, another HR Director called to canvass my thoughts – An applicant had trumped this by asking … WHERE DO YOU SEE THE IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS?

Great question! BIG QUESTION!

Like us all, the candidate was mindful about the impact of AI, but there’s an exciting prediction from the “Future of Project Management” (a collaborative “living” thought leadership initiative) about where Project Management might fit within organisations by the end of the decade – read on to find out more!

Meanwhile, and I may have rather given away my own views (or at least my hopes) with the title but, I think, despite turbulence and change, by 2029 our craft will be in the rudest of rude health!

5 REASONS WHY IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT WILL BE THE PLANET’S MOST IN-DEMAND SKILL WITHIN 5 YEARS

1 – THE PANDEMIC SEEDS OF RESET WILL HAVE FIRMLY BEDDED IN   

The decade of the 2020s opened in the UK with the pandemic, lockdowns, furlough, working from home, and lastly that transition into hybrid working that now seems to be the “new normal”. I reckon that three years on, in IT Project Management, we’re all pretty settled into this pattern. Adaptability has always been a strength of ours and many IT project teams were already working remotely, some of the time. Indeed, all Stoneseed’s Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) resources are available onsite or remote, in fact we were experts in Remote Project Delivery even before the pandemic.

The “pandemic seeds of reset” was a phrase used by a friend back in late 2020, and at the time I took great solace from the imagery. The thought that the chaos spread far wide at the time might be seeds of something better was a great comfort.

IT Project Management professionals also only get better and stronger. I remember a PM saying this when first adapting to hybrid working, comparing it to switching from Waterfall to Agile and how that felt “clunky” to begin but soon became second nature and now, years later, is as natural as breathing. Post pandemic working felt rather “clunky” too (even though outwardly we carried out our work with poise and elegance)! All hybrid working that I encounter now is slick and effortless, just imagine how polished it will be by the end of the decade!

We learned a lot during the post pandemic recovery phase, it gave us a chance to rethink, reevaluate and reset many processes and paradigms. By 2029 the “pandemic seeds of reset” will have fully blossomed!

2 – EVERYTHING’S AN IT PROJECT

Given what we’ve just recalled, 2017 seems like a lifetime ago! In its Project Management Job Growth and Talent Gap 2017–2027 report, the PMI predicted that by 2027 “employers will need nearly 88 million individuals in project management-oriented roles”.

Everything seems to be pointing to the PMI being right, it’s a talent-led market, project management professionals are in higher than ever demand and clients are reporting worsening recruitment struggles. As a provider of Project management resources from a single Project Manager, Business Analyst, Technical Advisory or PMO expert for a few days, right through to a large team of fully utilised project professionals for as long as you need them – we’ve never been busier.

My PM friend Malc optimistically chirrups, “Everything’s a project and because everything’s becoming digitised – that means everything’s an IT Project.”

Back in May 2023, The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report predicts a significant growth in project management jobs, identifying Project Manager and Business Analyst especially as “key roles for business transformation”. Looking at the UK’s data, PMs ranked fourth in the league table of roles identified by WEF as growing, behind Business Development Professionals (3), Data Analysts and Scientists (2), and AI and Machine Learning Specialists (1) – in case you were looking to add strings to your bow!

The WEF survey’s data on “Reskilling Skill Focus” makes for interesting and encouraging reading too. Skills most prioritised for reskilling and upskilling in the next five years include: Analytical thinking; Creative thinking; Resilience, Flexibility, and agility; AI and big data; Leadership and social influence; Design and user experience; Curiosity and lifelong learning; Empathy and active listening; Technological literacy; and Talent management. Does this remind you of anyone?

Yeah. Project Managers are going nowhere but onwards and upwards! Talking of which …

3 – 2030 C-SUITE AMBITIONS

Among the most interesting insights from “Future of Project Management”, a collaborative “living” thought leadership initiative, is talk of the biggest companies having a project management professional in a C-suite capacity by 2030.

This would move the IT Project Management profession in the right direction, and organisations that adopt a CPMO (Chief Project Management Officer), or similar, will benefit hugely.

In my career, IT has evolved from supporting the business to IT being the business, it makes sense that the C-suite is increasingly populated with people who understand how the IT projects that underpin the revenue work.

I’ve long argued that alongside the CIO there should be at least one other seat saved for project talent, and it seems that I am not alone. “Future of Project Management” is a living, evolving, interactive pulse of the profession, “a compilation of best practice, emerging trends, and forward thinking”. It’s a pretty cool barometer of sense of the day within our profession and a stimulus for debate and consensus about change in project management.

FoPM is a partnership and collaboration between the Association for Project Management, Arup, The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management at UCL, “with crowd-sourced inputs from the global project management community” – worth checking out.

4 – MERGERS, ACQUISITIONS, CONSOLIDATION

Catching up with clients, project management colleagues and acquaintances, I notice a subtle rise in IT projects that facilitate some form of commercial merger, acquisition, or strategic consolidation. Just this week in my friend circle, one is working on a merging of systems and data following a takeover, another is helping create a global IT approach to replace heritage silo systems across a number of regions and countries (“like ironing a bird’s nest” was the phrase she used), a third is consulting on a proposed amalgamation and the IT systems and processes that will be needed should the merger get the green light.

The business environment is volatile, a company’s market strength and value can rise and fall in a heartbeat leaving it vulnerable, meanwhile governments worldwide seem open to more deregulation and loosening of legislation that may previously have prevented consolidation, so I think that we’re only going to see more need for talented IT Project professionals to create the IT environments that allow manoeuvres like these to progress smoothly and effectively.

5 – PASSION

Clients often feed back to us about how infectious the passion Stoneseed’s PMaaS talent brings to an engagement is. I love hearing this.

Remembering the start of my career, it was rare to display too much passion about IT Projects.

Maybe, it’s just that it wasn’t cool to be overly passionate about work back then, whatever line you were in. The UK’s work culture has changed, it’s now ok to get buzzed about your work, rather than just clock in, clock watch all day and then clock out! You can get really excited during your 9 to 5 without all your colleagues thinking you’re a bit odd! A PM friend, Stu, echoed this recently saying that Project Managers have always been passionate about delivering innovation through IT but recalling downplaying it so as not to look over-keen and a tech-geek. Stu now refers to himself as the “Alpha-Nerd” and wears his self-appointed status like a badge of honour!

Also, as discussed earlier, IT supported the business in those days, whereas these days IT is the business, so maybe the projects weren’t as sexy back then. Another PM friend, Heather, will talk about how her first ever project (integrating her firm’s purchase order, stock control and delivery systems) felt different to her most recent (Enterprise Re-Invention – overseeing root and branch digitisation, reinventing the whole business to be centred around a strong digital core). The first was satisfying, the latest is exhilarating.

Perhaps, it’s a blend of the two – we are doing the most exciting work in an environment where it’s OK to be excited at work. Whatever the reason, the passion for Project Management is growing exponentially, it’s not unheard of for teams to have a bottle of champagne chilling in anticipation of completion of a project! Passion is one of the things that will keep the profession, not just alive, but evolving and booming.

CONCLUSION

How we manage projects will continue to change over the next five years, I am confident though, that we (actual human people!) will still be managing them.

Writing for RGPM (Rebels Guide to Project Management), the brilliant Elizabeth Harrin says, “The role of the project manager has long been shifting away from someone who can tick off tasks as complete on a Gantt chart and towards a strategic leadership position for effecting change.”

Elizabeth Harrin’s insights are always worth a read, and as she is casting her predictions not five but ten years ahead, this article is especially interesting!

The young project management candidate, referenced at the start is right, AI is going to influence project thinking more and more, and automation will remove more of the “tedious tasks”. IT Project Management professionals will evolve and embrace though … as we always have. As Elizabeth Harrin writes, “Project managers will need to be the humans on the team. We’ll need to connect with others with the skills that you can’t get from your robot colleague”.

BIG BUT

The greatest challenge for recruiters and those tasked with resourcing IT projects will continue to be the talent gaps fuelled by increasing demand for IT project managers (and other project professionals). AI will take some of the weight, but those human resources, with their ‘soft skills’ (like empathy), natural talents (like creative, strategic thinking), and intuitive aptitudes (like innate end user/customer focus) are going to be more vital to have in place.

Fortunately, you know a brilliant Project Management as a Service resources provider.

Find out more about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed

Sources

https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf

https://www.pmi.org/learning/careers/job-growth

https://www.arup.com/perspectives/publications/research/section/future-of-project-management

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During protracted periods of economic uncertainty, companies always prioritize corporate initiatives and more often than not increasing conversion rate and other revenue generation activities give way to improving operational efficiency, or enhancing customer experience, as the main business drivers for programmes. However, such programmes are continuously put under financial scrutiny to shed expensive resources like contractors and consultants, and replace them with cheaper internal resources. Naturally, the PMO is the obvious candidate department for business managers to raid, and replenish their lost resources.

Here lies the opportunity for PMO directors to turn the situation to their advantage. Rather than capitulate PMO resources for free, the PMO director should charge resources out to the programme concerned. This can be done for instance on a cost plus pricing model. No matter how bitterly business managers complain, a well trained PMO resource equipped with vital organizational knowledge and available at a fraction of the price of an expensive consultant, is too good to ignore. Besides, business managers know they will not get a better deal. Alternative resources take too long to learn programme specifics and become conversant with organizational politics—this includes nuturing sound relationships with executives and senior managers.

A change of mindset is therefore required, if the PMO director is to succeed in the department’s full conversion to a profit centre. Firstly, key enterprise programmes must be identified, where PMO resources not only replace contractors and consultants, but offer services of equal or better quality. Secondly, ensure that the revenue generated from such placements is sufficient to meet all of PMO’s internals costs (including training and staff development) while making a small profit. Thirdly, develop key competencies and actively vie for placement of PMO staff on other corporate programmes, especially those programmes that have proven longevity and business value. Finally, ensure that staff placed on enterprise programmes regularly augment the routine PMO work (e.g. the aggregation of risk/issues, preparation of executive reports, etc) performed by PMO staff left behind.

During this period of transformation, the PMO director is sure to run into a myriad of challenges, out of which, active CFO support and the effective management of staff utilization on programmes, are the biggest hurdles.

In practice, many PMO directors rarely put up a stern defence of their department before CFOs—often fearing the worst. Normally, CFO’s are not obnoxious people and are in many ways open to innovative ideas that reduce costs and assist in the retention of business value. The PMO director must be prepared to convince CFOs that in challenging economic circumstances, there is the potential to generate profit and deliver value to business units. At this juncture, the PMO director should leverage executive relationships to buttress the arguments in the favour of PMO’s makeover from a cost centre to a profit centre.

When the PMO director is triumphant in soliciting CFO support, and the PMO is successful on a few corporate programmes, the utilization of staff becomes the next insurmountable obstacle. Other business units exasperated by the CFO’s moratorium on external recruitment place relentless pressure on the PMO to provide resources. At this point, many executives, and senior managers will go to great lengths to remind the PMO director of their support and past favours. This is a predicament that the PMO director will find hard to fathom, and difficult decisions will have to be made.

Abid Mustafa is a seasoned professional with 18 years’ experience in the IT and Telecommunications industry, specializing in enhancing corporate performance through the establishment and operation of executive PMOs and delivering tangible benefits through the management of complex transformation programmes and projects. Currently he is working as a director of corporate programmes for a leading telecoms operator in the MENA region.

The post PMOs as profit centres appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

Neither are these team members simply people who produce reports to send to senior management – they have an overview of a project that is impossible to achieve when you are closely involved in the detail. They will not lose sight of the original business objectives because they will not get bogged down in the minutiae of the daily tasks involved in being a project team member or indeed, the project manager.

The Project Office has little involvement in planning the project (except perhaps to provide useful templates) or in controlling the tasks, but is likely to become involved in analysing some of the budget and time reports supplied by the project manager in order to present to senior management the broad overview that they require. They are often more adept at doing this than the project manager simply because they are farther removed from the coal-face. However, it is the responsibility of the project manager to ensure that the reports presented to senior management do accurately represent the status of the project. Sometimes numbers and graphs alone cannot portray a full picture of what is really going on.

The project office should not be merely a bureaucratic group nagging over-worked project managers to submit their reports, but rather they should strive to be seen as (and actually be) a supportive group that assists the project manager to report the information that will enable them to accurately provide a representative image of the project. Good reports often take a long time to prepare and a Project Office that work collaboratively with project managers will find that the good working relationships built up will ensure that project teams appreciate their efforts in easing their workload.

So it is not the Project Office’s responsibility to ensure team members report hours worked, tasks completed etc each week. Nor is it their responsibility to analyse the status of the project or suggest any actions to resolve issues. These are the responsibilities of the project manager, as is the project plan – keeping it up-to-date and altering it when necessary. Alterations to a project plan are not an administrative job as they require a detailed knowledge of all tasks in the project, both complete and incomplete, and the skill ad experience to determine what can be changed and how.

No Project Office should be required to discuss the status of a project with senior management – they will certainly have been involved in producing reports based on the information supplied by the project manager but it is the project manager who is ultimately responsible for justifying the status of the project, the actions taken to resolve issues and any changes made to the project schedule. The project manager makes the decisions and the Project Office document the decisions. They then ensure all project documentation is available to anyone who requires it from both current and past projects.

This is an important task – complex projects may have hundreds of documents (all with a number of different versions) which need to be controlled and made easily accessible so the knowledge contained within them can be shared to improve future project delivery. A project office does not consist simply of good administrators but also individuals who have completed professional training, such as APM PFQ, APM PMQ (previously known as APMP) or PMP Certification and use the knowledge and skills gained on these project management courses to support the project manager.

The post The Project Office and What It Is Not appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

In 2020, the Project Management Institute (PMI) Pulse of the Profession reported that less than half (36%) of organisations achieved high alignment of projects with their organisational strategy.

Projects that are not aligned to your business strategy are wasted investment.

Reflect on that for a moment and then re-read the opening statistic. 36% of organisations reported high alignment of projects with their organisational strategy.

So why were 64% of organisations wasting capital?

Lack of governance? Lack of capability? Lack of Project Management Office (PMO)? Lack of will?

It’s hardly likely that there’ll be a lack of desire…

So governance? Capability? A lack of PMO?

Although many organisations have some project management practices in place, many also have no way of measuring them against the achievement of strategic goals.

• Many are struggling with business case prioritisation of projects.
• Many have limited or no impact analysis.
• Many projects suffer a loss of momentum because of poor resource management.
• Many find maintaining best practice, governance and process a real challenge.
• And many projects fall just as they go live due to poor closure and transition into service?

Any of these sound familiar?

So what is your business strategy and what part does Project Management and your Project Management Office need to play?

Grab a blank sheet and jot down some thoughts.

It’s a worthwhile exercise, either to carry out on your own or even better with a fresh pair of eyes that are not blinkered by your organisational fog, internal politics and back story. In fact, taking advice from an outside source who routinely works with best Project Management practice can have massive benefits across your whole operation.

When you ask this question of your business and Project Management facility, focus on these five key areas.

i) Your Business strategy
ii) Your current project organisational structure
iii) Your current processes, procedures and governance
iv) Your current information and reporting
v) Your current tools and technologies.

In my experience, much leakage of project value occurs not just through bad practice but poor forecasting too. Managing of stakeholder expectation – accurately estimating how long each task will take – is vital. You can reduce risk of over-run and eliminate the risk of over allocation of time and resources by taking time to forecast based on data, relevant experience AND business case priority rather than (as often happens) a gut feeling.

When you start measuring your PMO performance against your business strategy you will find that Project Management talent within your organisation becomes rejuvenated and creative. Discover new metrics to measure success beyond the traditional constraints of time and budget, for example, solicit feedback from project sponsors, customers, end-users and stakeholders and use that satisfaction data to lift you higher.

CONCLUSION

Many organisations have a Project Management Office to help deliver their projects successfully. Some are working efficiently, however, many are underperforming or are not delivering the desired outcomes. That’s simply not good enough.

Set some time aside for gap analysis, measure how well your projects are helping achieve your business strategy and act to close the capability gap by re-focussing, refining or redesigning YOUR PMO.

Find out about Stoneseed’s PMO Services

Source: https://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/pulse

AUTHOR  BIO

David Cotgreave MBA, BSc (hons), PRINCE II, is Professional Services Director at Stoneseed, with over 30 years’ experience in IT Project Management & Consulting. David has worked with organisations such as BT Engage IT and KPMG, before founding Stoneseed in 2009 and has gained considerable business experience whilst working with a wide range of organisations across the UK and Europe carrying out a range of strategy, review and implementation projects. David is currently responsible for leading the Programme and Project Management Services  PMaaS offered by Stoneseed.

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The PMO Competency Framework is a guide for PMO professionals interested in assessing and developing organisation-wide, team and personal competences within a PMO environment.

The guidance within the PMO Competency Framework can be used by any PMO professional to assess their current knowledge and experience; to identify skills gaps and development needs and to benchmark themselves against a professional PMO standard.

The PMO Competency Framework is a career companion guide, to assist PMO professionals through the rewarding, challenging and continuously evolving profession that PMO has become.

Lindsay Scott, co-founder of House of PMO said:

“The PMO Competency Framework features the different types of PMOs that exist today which makes it a really useable career resource regardless of what type of PMO you work in. It’s also applicable for anyone at any level of their career – for Administrators, Analysts, Managers and Directors. We really have focused on making it accessible to all.”

The PMO Competency Framework has been created by PMO professionals for PMO professionals, developed over a three year period by the volunteer PMO community at PMO Flashmob.

Drawing on collective experience from a wide range of PMO professionals from around the world, the new Framework was developed to improve standards in PMO professional development and support those wishing to develop in their roles.

The first edition of the PMO Competency Framework has been edited by Eileen J Roden, Carol Hindley and Lindsay Scott:

Today Eileen Roden, co-founder of House of PMO said:

“We couldn’t have done it without the community support, it’s been a long journey and sometimes difficult journey to pull it all together, and a real example of standing on the shoulders of giants to get to today’s launch.”

The PMO Competency Framework is now available to purchase from Amazon.

With the release of the PMO Competency Framework, the House of PMO is also launching new professional development standards based on the Framework.  Examination body, APMG International – a global accreditation and examination institute – will be assessing learners and providing the examinations for the new certifications. Successful candidates will be awarded a digital badge which can be shared on social media and email signatures. The courses, which accompany the certifications, will be available for Accredited Training Organisations (ATOs) to deliver from May 2021.

Richard Pharro, CEO APMG International said,

“For too long the PMO community have been poorly served with no direct recognition of their capabilities and contribution to the successful delivery of projects and programmes. The House of PMO changes that with a clear focus on their professional and career development. APMG are delighted to help them realise this ambition.”

Eileen Roden added,

“With this new body of work, the PMO profession can take another step forward to maturity by providing clarity on the requirements and expectations of the key roles within the profession, both now and as they continue to develop and evolve.”

The House of PMO, headquartered in the UK with an international reach, creates a home for PMO professionals where they can develop themselves, support the development of others and contribute to the development of the PMO profession. Further information about the work the House of PMO are carrying out can be found at www.houseofpmo.com

About the editors –
Eileen Roden – Eileen is the author of Portfolio, Programmes and Project Offices (P3O), co-author of Managing Knowledge in Project Environments and The PMO Principles. As well as being an experienced PMO Manager, she is also a respected PMO trainer and consultant.

Carol Hindley – Carol is an experienced PMO Manager, currently engaged at the Houses of Parliament as the Head of Digital PMO.

Lindsay Scott – is the co-founder of the House of PMO, editor of the People in Project Management Handbook and creator of the PMO Conference.

About APMG – APMG International is a global examination institute that offers a portfolio of professional certifications for knowledge-based workers. APMG certifications are designed to provide professional career development for individuals, equipping them with the skills, knowledge, tools and techniques to help them and their organizations perform more effectively.

In addition, APMG provides accreditation services for individuals and organisations around the world that provide high-quality training and consultancy services in support of our certifications.

Committed to quality, APMG’s certification and accreditation processes are developed and managed in accordance with a robust quality management system accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). www.apmg-international.com

The post New PMO Competency Framework Launched by House of PMO appeared first on Project Accelerator News.

The House of PMO (HoPMO), headquartered in the UK with an international reach, creates a home for PMO professionals where they can develop themselves, support the development of others and contribute to the development of the PMO profession.

The House of PMO is launching new professional development standards based on the forthcoming PMO Competency Framework and the redeveloped Project and Programme Support Office (PPSO) Essentials and Advanced Practitioner certifications acquired from the British Computer Society’s (BCS) today.

Eileen Roden, co-founder of the House of PMO said:

“It’s great to be able to further develop these respected certifications in line with the continuingly evolving PMO profession, and broaden their availability to a wider audience.”

The new professional body will continue to provide a membership based community platform, arranging networking opportunities through the already established PMO Flashmob. With over 7000 members today, PMO Flashmob is an informal networking and learning community, bringing professionals together to help develop themselves. The House of PMO will also continue the annual conference, The PMO Conference, now in its seventh year.

Lindsay Scott, co-founder of the House of PMO said this today about the new professional body:

“There are a lot of PMO professionals out there in the workplace who are doing great work supporting projects, programmes and portfolios and we wanted to do something to help them develop effectively, such as having a recognised standard and training programme; having access to the latest research studies and the sharing of success stories. Today is the first step, with lots planned to help us realise our vision of establishing PMO as a profession.”

The House of PMO is committed to annually reinvesting a minimum of 30% of pre tax profits into the development of PMO as a profession and with a new membership structure, it will be the members who decide how this money is spent.

“It’s crucial that PMO professionals continue to shape the future of their own profession and the House of PMO provides an inclusive and organised way to do just that” Lindsay Scott said, adding “We can’t wait to get started in making it happen”

The new professional development standards are launched in April 2021 with the PMO Competency Framework being launched mid-February 2021.

www.houseofpmo.com

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This was the working title of a blog post that I started writing in early March 2020.

Looking back at it now, it was a wonderfully optimistic piece about how IT Project teams were inspiring, facilitating and delivering business change in every successful business that I could think of.

Sadly, I never finished the article. The UK was put into lockdown on 23 March in an unprecedented step to attempt to limit the spread of coronavirus. All our priorities changed in that instant, as business growth forecasts were side-lined, and we all focussed on business survival.

What if my belief, that behind every successful business was a successful and dynamic IT Project team, was still true? What if it were even more important for businesses after Covid-19 and lockdown to have an innovative IT Project team?

Consider the changes that your business has been forced to implement since that announcement on 23rd March – the ones that have kept your lights on and your business wheels turning. The Zoom calls, the Microsoft Teams, the remote working, the streamlining of systems so that fewer people can manage the workload of furloughed colleagues, etc, etc. What do they all have in common? They are all IT initiatives.

At the heart of every surviving business is an IT or IT Project team that is still inspiring, facilitating and delivering business change.

Remember survival is the new success! It is a story that we should be rightly proud of.

So, what’s next for IT Project Teams?

Most major business IT Projects are on hold. This makes perfect sense. Most major business IT projects were designed to help create or deliver business growth, and thanks to the recession caused by Covid-19, there’s not a lot of growth to be found. Economies are contracting, businesses that were spending on their future are cutting costs just to survive their present.

Smart IT Project leaders identified this early on, they had the best handle on where efficiencies could be made and where processes could be improved – and they found that business leaders were more open to hearing about them than ever. There are lessons for the rest of us to learn.

In his book ‘Management Challenges for the 21st Century’, Peter Drucker wrote that, “Continuous process improvements transform the business. They lead to innovation. They lead to new processes. They lead to new business.”

Drucker wrote these words in 1999!!! BUT they feel even more appropriate now.

Given the current, post Covid-19, economic conditions, organisations need to be more innovative. Not just to survive, these IT Project led initiatives can actually drive new business. One of the ways that proactive IT Project teams are doing this is by focusing on, identifying and recommending improvements within their infrastructure. These improvements, many borne out of necessity, are streamlining business processes! They have the capacity to transform the business, leading to innovation and opportunities, perhaps even relative growth as everyone else stagnates. In some cases, they are even identifying new business deliverables that can be monetised.

IT Project Teams are driving competitive advantage

Companies must strive to achieve greater operational effectiveness. It is a prerequisite for innovation, it is a basic reality survival, it is a traditionally acknowledged business instinct – but it’s also something many businesses are not fully leveraging in the enduring firefight that is our business environment since March 2020.  Much business success has been built on improving internal processes and this has never been more important than now.

In times of growth, this enables businesses to remain competitive, while providing quality services and products. In a harsher climate, like now, it’s more vital than ever that we have streamlined internal processes to allow us to be more efficient and, consequently, more competitive.

IT and Business leaders can (and regularly do!!) point to their proven track records of performance improvements and how, within their organisations, these have driven growth. It’s easily demonstrated how new methodologies or improved approaches can fire companies onto greater success, we’ve been articulating and measuring this as a part of key corporate business initiatives for years!

This is a skill set that is about to become a vital business asset as firms look for further efficiencies – IT Project teams are masters at it.

In conclusion, IT Projects are perfectly placed to shape the future of business as we emerge from this pandemic.

Businesses need to be leaner and more innovative.

It’s time for IT Project teams to say, “Hold our coffee, watch us do our thing” – this is our moment.

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