Cross-Departmental Work Management

 

500 annual projects sounds like a lot of work.

In a recent conversation I had with a project manager for the marketing department of a leading online and offline retail chain, I was told that she and her staff of 10 project managers handled 500+ marketing projects per year. Even with the understanding that marketing projects are often of shorter duration than a large IT project, I was still impressed (that averages to two new projects each week). Not all marketing projects are of short duration, and many rival the complexity of a large IT project.

As we discussed what they were doing to manage projects, their goals for improving the way they approached project-based work were very similar to how a traditional IT organization might look at work management. This conversation validated in my mind the notion that there are many organizations turning to traditional IT project management processes to improve efficiency and get more work done regardless of they type of work they do.

I don't think this comes as a surprise to anyone. I think most of us in the project management industry have recognized that PPM isn't just for IT anymore. However, at the end of our conversation she made a couple of observations that I think are very relevant for software providers:

1. They spent four years looking for the right solution for their marketing department.
2. It was difficult to find a solution that spoke to the needs of creative departments.
3. They would like to see something that would be more conducive to an audience of creative thinkers. Something that was more visual, included a more creative color pallet, and was simple to use and more straightforward in approach.

I've heard these same suggestions from IT project professionals, but as project management methodologies expand outside of IT I think it becomes even more important to approach the project management process from the perspective of the user. This is something I find myself talking about on a pretty regular basis because I believe the end user is the linchpin to project management software adoption and success. I most recently talked about this in a post titled, Overcoming the Knowledge Worker Assembly Line.