April 2008

PM Network

www.pmi.org

How can project management help in strategic planning?

Sabre Holdings is a Texan software development company which employs around 3000 people and runs over 2000 projects per year.

Their Director of Portfolio Management, Greg Bronon, says that Sabre has a planning process that drives alignment between projects and market needs. Through it, business initiatives that help meet strategic objectives, such as growth in a specific market, are identified since all projects are linked to business initiatives, and business initiatives are linked to strategic objectives.

Sabre uses project management to bring visibility to their investment in developing software products by making sure they know all the details of all projects in the pipeline and what resources are required to develop the portfolio.

"The Trend Toward Multisourcing" by Sarah Fister Gale

As a Project Manager you are probably used to handling multiple Team Managers with diverse skills and methodologies, but are you ready for the next trend in outsourcing? In order to reduce risk in delivering large projects, some organisations are now employing several delivery and sourcing scenarios simultaneously particularly on IT projects where skills are at a premium.

To avoid the Project Manager either losing control of multiple vendors or being hands on in managing each vendor, the role of “vendor guardian” has been established.

Work Packages or Statements of Work continue to form the contract between vendor and project manager, but the Vendor Guardian is there to avoid any aspect of the end-to-end services falling between the gaps of service responsibility and ensures that the final product of the project is a combination of the work of all the vendors.

Some of the strategies to make this governance role work include
• creating clear and common reporting requirements and structures;
• regular scheduled meetings with all vendors with the same agenda;
• integrate a common project management structure into all service agreements and negotiating the same expectations with each vendor;
• Have some or all of the vendor employees on site; and even
• Publically ranking the performance of each vendor team against its rivals.

The latter, whilst somewhat controversial, provides guidance on how vendors are doing, where they need to improve and who their biggest competition is.

The multisourcing solution, if handled correctly, is allowing organisations to diversify their risk and motivate vendors to deliver quality work on time and to specification.

"Project Management Opportunities Abound in Melbourne" by Sandra A. Swanson

According to KMPG, Melbourne looks set to take over from Sydney as Australia’s largest city within the next 20 years.

The need to accommodate all those residents has triggered a spate of new projects in everything from infrastructure to IT and with it comes the demand for project leaders. Despite the shortage of available project leaders, organisations are showing a more refined appreciation of the profession, requesting the need for specific skills and certifications. According to MetaPM Pty Ltd, a Melbourne-based project management consultancy firm, “good project managers are in hot demand and salaries and contract rates are abnormally high.”

So if we’re in demand, why bother with certification?

Organisations are requesting certification such as PRINCE2 more than ever in order to avoid the “accidental project manager” syndrome where subject matter experts are handed a project to run without any knowledge of the steps involved to achieve success.

Also the types of projects needed to accommodate Melbourne’s population growth, are going to be under major public scrutiny as there are increased public expectations around sustainable growth. Projects therefore become more complex as they try to meet the needs of government, environmental standards and the concerns of the community.

The current environment marks a continuation of the fairly strong value the Australian Market places on certification. So what are you waiting for?