The Professional Project Manager

In the same way that project management practitioners can be described as beginner, intermediate or advanced, organizations can also be described as having low, medium, or high levels of project management. These levels of project management reflect the level of organizational project management maturity (OPMM).  Knowing the level of OPMM your organisation is currently at, and also knowing where it should be is essential to help you reach your organisational goals and strategy through better delivery of portfolios, programmes, and projects.

An OPMM assessment will look at all aspects of the way you run portfolios, programmes and projects within the organisation including:

• Organisational Governance
• Management controls
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• Finance and cost estimating
• Planning and Execution
• Scheduling and time estimating
• Stakeholder management and communications
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• Lessons learned and information management
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• Risk management
• Quality management
• Practitioner capability development

A good assessment will look at all the processes and practices you have, evidence of them being used (or not), and also interview users and key stakeholders either in a workshop or face to face interviews. Once the evidence gathering is completed they can provide scores for individual business units, an organisational score (usually 0-5), benchmarking against others in the industry and a set of prioritized (and achievable) recommendations to move you towards your goal.

A good OPMM assessment provides a benchmark for your future efforts. It lets you know that you are progressing in the right areas. Without it you simply don’t know how well you are doing with your improvement efforts. It’s a good idea to commit to regular OPMM assessments every 18-24 months to check how you are progressing, and to reprioritize recommendations.

Don’t assume that all organizations must be at the top level of maturity, it’s important to consider that the level of OPMM that is desirable for any organisation is directly related to the size, cost, length, complexity and industry of the projects being undertaken. Organizations undertaking highly complex, long term, expensive projects should aim to have a higher level of project management maturity, while organizations and small businesses routinely undertaking short, low cost, low complexity projects may be perfectly suited to a lesser level of project management maturity.

Using an external consultant to assess your level of project management maturity and make recommendations has a number of benefits:

• A good consultant will make sure that your recommendations are achievable, affordable and appropriate.
• You get access to their wider experience with many organisations and their insights into best practice
• The report will be independent and objective

There are several good commercial models available in the market and the benefit of using one of these is that it allows you to more easily benchmark your organisation against others in their database.

I am experienced in using the P3M3, OPM3, HSI 4Q model and bespoke OPMM assessment models and if you have any questions about any aspect of organizational project management maturity please do not hesitate to contact me.

If you have any questions, comments or feedback please feel free to email me.

Here are my rapid fire suggestions for some of the most common issues a project manager will face:

Poor planning and estimating – Start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and then involve those people who are actually going to do the work

Poor change control – document everything

Poor scope definition – only do what is fully defined

Poor communication – try and see through the others person eyes

Demanding customer – listen better, document everything

Stalled career – invest in training or experience for yourself

Surprises keep slowing down the project – take time to do a risk register

Lack of clarity about who does what – get everyone to contribute to and agree on a RACI chart

No time for project closure – include it in the project scope of works and allocate time and cost to it

Poor team morale – karaoke evening 😊

I am really interested to know your answers to these three questions about project management:

1. What one tip would you give to a new project manager?

2. What is the single largest contributing factor to project success?

3. What is the single largest contributing factor to project failure?

I often get asked by junior or novice project managers for any tips I can give them as they begin their careers in project management. I don’t always have time to think things through on the spot so I have taken the time to note my top 8 tips. I would love to hear what tips you would also give.

1. The first job you take may be the one that takes you to the job you want. I always see people entering the profession complain when they see job advertisements asking for a minimum of 3-5 years experience. There is a reason for this. You need to get some experience under your belt. You may have just come out of university with a project management degree or got an entry level certification but this doesn’t translate well to actual on the job in the real-world experience. Go and get that experience by taking a job as a project administrator. Then see point number 4 for quicker way to get the job you really want.
2. Always be honest. There may be times where you are pressured to bend the truth a little. Don’t do this. This may mean standing up to senior practitioners or demanding clients. If you are honest you will never need to remember what you said previously. Also, your personal and professional reputation depends on honesty. If you find yourself working for or with people who expect a little dishonesty you may be better off elsewhere.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. This actually applies all through your career not just at the beginning. If you don’t know something, then ask someone who does. Mistakes, both small and large, happen because someone thought they would look stupid by asking a question. In fact, the opposite is true. We generally think that people who ask questions are smarter. So, go ahead and ask those questions.
4. The deep end is where the action happens. Don’t be afraid to put yourself forward for things that seem complex and out of your comfort zone. If you are as smart as you think you are you will rise to the challenge. If you don’t succeed, then take an optimistic view of it and realise that failure is a great teacher. Either way you will learn fast.
5. Keep gathering experience and qualifications. Don’t think that learning stops once you get your first job. You must always keep your knowledge up to date or you will get left behind in a fast-changing world. Keep up the professional development units, get that next credential, attend that conference (even better, present at the conference) and keep learning in order to get the most from your career.
6. Share your experiences. There will always be someone with less experience than you so don’t be afraid to mentor them. Don’t be afraid to share your experience with more senior people too. It may be the case that you have a unique viewpoint and experience that they don’t. Value yourself and your experience (just don’t over value it – see point 1).
7. Put in place good work habits. Good work habits are things like turning up on time to work and to meetings, acting professionally and respectfully at all times, being honest (see point 2) and expecting to get out of your career what you put in. Do these things on day one of your career and every day after and you will soon have them locked in place.
8. Start getting to know people. You can call it networking if you want but that word is probably better suited to describing how computers are linked together, not people. Introduce yourself to people and listen to what they have to say. If they ask about you then share a little about yourself. Follow up occasionally with an email or a coffee invitation. Over the years these relationships will be extremely valuable to you on a personal and professional level.

So that’s what I think are 8 important tips for novice or junior project managers. What did I miss?

Hello all, 
I firmly believe in giving back to the profession of project management which has been very good to me, and as such I am trying to gauge interest in a completely free, no strings attached, once only,  online PMP exam prep course run by me. I have written many books on the topic and helped thousands of people pass the exam.

It would run once a week (or every two weeks) for 20 weeks, each session would last 90 minutes and be run by gotowebinar. If we get enough interest I will commit to running it. Let me know if you would be interested.