Optimizing Project Environment Efficiency (Part 1)

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.

  Cost Management   Organizational Project Management   Portfolio Management   Strategy  

As we explore the idea of project management on a budget this month, I want to look at the overall project delivery environment that exists in organizations, considering where the biggest opportunities to improve efficiency lie.

This is going to be a two-part article. In this first part, I look at the business processes and practices that can be optimized to reduce the operating costs of projects; and in the second part, I explore how technology can support that.

I believe that this is an area where organizations still have considerable opportunities to improve things. While some progress has been made in the last few years in improving the way that strategic planning, portfolio management, and related disciplines are handled, there hasn’t often been a direct focus on optimizing the efficiency of project environments. Effectiveness is important, and it has to be the first step; but if that effectiveness isn’t then optimized to be as efficient as possible, wastage will occur.

Additionally, when organizations do try to focus on reducing project costs, they tend to focus on individual projects and project managers. In some ways, that’s understandable—the project is the unit of work delivery after all, but it misses the fact that practices, processes, and work methods that exist across the enterprise have the potential to waste far more money.

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