The Project Chief

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Organizational Project Management   PMO   Scope Management   Strategy  

Chances are that “project chief” is not an official title in your organization. While there are some companies that do enough project work to incorporate executive-level project managers, it is still unusual—especially in most mid-size or smaller companies.

However, there may be an “unofficial” project chief who fills that role in the organization. It could be a senior project manager or a consultant brought in to assist with projects. The project chief has the responsibility and the impetus to aid the entire organization and the teams by leading the way in the methods used to manage projects to success.

Scope of Work
One of the major failings of many projects is the inability to implement scope, or scope creep that takes over the project. The project chief should work with the project teams to help them understand how important it is to measure the scope accurately in the beginning of the project—and then work to stay within that established scope throughout the project execution.

While customers may add to their wish lists and testers will always see something that could make everything better, the project chief should be the executive in the room demanding that contracts are regulated and processes are followed. Otherwise, scope becomes the problem that brings down the entire project.

Budget Planning
Budget planning is an …

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