The first step for an organization is to see whether the project manager has the necessary skills.
Skills required managing the project or in any adverse circumstances moving them to a place where they do less damage to the organization. And when we speak about the organization:
Certain things should be kept in mind. Considering the needs of the organization itself is a very important step. Business needs today includes the business to be agile, it should change quickly and as per the need. Adapting rapidly to the changing environment is a key factor. These factors make your business project driven. Which means the business should have a project focus. This means embedding project management into business strategy and making sure the organization understands it.
This includes doing projects right. And that begins with making your team with the cream people who do the things with their best skills, putting your best people. For a couple of years as part of the practice the role of good managers may be stretched and blossom to some additional roles which may take their project to new heights of prosperity. Not just their projects but their skills, knowledge and expertise. Which help them as an individual as well as whole of the organization?
Two of the most important things which should be kept in mind is only those projects that are most critical to the organization takes place and secondly are measured as per actual benefits delivered to the business at the end of the project.
Decisions like these are made by the high level managers, (business executives).
According to some experienced project managers they work on a three year focus with a quarterly review of the portfolio and the strictest rule that nothing is bullet-proof. Business critical projects should always be prioritized and rests of the projects are delayed as per the need of the business. This is the most important way of getting top management support. Worldwide very few organizations have implemented portfolio management support. And among them mostly are suffering from “project amnesia” this term refers to “approve and forget” by some people. Explaining it may include:
“The (executives or top management) approve a project and then seem to forget all about it”.
Reviewing what we discussed in this article, step one was the skills of the project manager, step two were the needs of the organization, step three includes considering the projects that are critical to the organization. But we can’t just stop there even if we take the important of the projects, things might still go wrong. Which can be eliminated using the review technique, which the fourth and most crucial part.
It includes putting processes into place considering all projects are reviewed at set times during the project life cycle.
What is needed is the some kind of a peer review process where a team or an individual carries out a review against a standard check list of the project at hand.
