What's the Most Effective Contractor Strategy for Organizations?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Organizational Project Management  

As a greater percentage of operating budgets in many industries and organizations gets spent on discretionary investments rather than stable operations, the number of projects being undertaken is expanding. That obviously means more project managers, and as we know there is a global shortage of that expertise.

As a result, it’s not always possible to maintain sufficient permanent employee PMs to meet those needs, and organizations have to look at the highly competitive world of project management contracting to try and find supplemental people and skills.

In addition, even as the overall number of projects expands, there is still considerably variability in the number of those projects. There are periods of high activity as organizations implement digital transformation or similar initiatives, followed by a consolidation period where the number of projects reduces before expanding again as organizations have the funds and ability to leverage their previous endeavors. This shifting demand for projects, and project managers, means that contracting for additional PMs when needed makes a lot of sense.

But what is the best strategy for using these contractors? Where should they be used? Should there be consistency in the PMs who are contracted with, or is it better to bring in fresh PMs with new ideas each time? And how should contractors and employees be integrated? …

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