Good For Business: Embedding Project Managers in Business Units

  Organizational Project Management   PM Network  

The old silos are breaking down.

Many organizations are implementing new, less rigid business structures that emphasize collaboration across departments. To that end, project managers working within business units can help provide a big-picture view of the organization— one that sheds light on resource allocation, aids portfolio planning and detects risks.

Any disconnect between an organization’s project management staff and its business units causes major problems, says Dave Pratt, PMP, managing partner for DHP Project Services, a project management consultancy in Yelm, Washington, USA.

Mr. Pratt stepped in to help a state agency with a US$15 million project that had derailed after six months. It stalled, he says, because the project manager worked for the IT department—even though the initiative supported the agency’s primary revenue-generating business operations.

“The project manager did not know who the business sponsor was for the project; the vendor hired to deliver the system didn’t deliver; and the users had been left out of the loop,” explains Mr. Pratt, who also serves as an adjunct professor for South Puget Sound Community College’s project management program.

It was a highly technical project, but Mr. Pratt found answers not through the IT department but from the business unit. He says he &ldquo…

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