Projects Evaluation & Project Managers

Sorry, I am thinking of lobbies, talks over business lunches, consensus building over the project management, in a nut shell the unstated/undocumented overview of the things to come.

Regarding your original question, Rami, i would say it heavily depends ... on the pm person, his/her background and experience level.
A long year, well experienced PM may add value in this early stage ... a fresh PM right before his/her first project wouldn't, i guess.
An ideal PM conultant to assist in this early stage would be a long, year, well experienced PM with BA skills or other way arround a well experienced BA with PM skills. Those persons really could at value here, i would say.

Just my 2 cents ...

Rami, would tend to agree with Homam, where he mentions it purely depends on the definition of value and also on the organization. As an example for large organizations where there is lot of 'movement' and waiting time on initiating a project, it might not be really fruitful in engaging the PM. However in a small organization, which is probably dealing with similar types of projects, it would be very helpful in getting PM's on board during early consulting to understand from there experience how a similar project was done.

In one of the organization that I have worked, they had 2 groups - one focusing on IT investments and the other on Innovations. The IT part was huge with big budgets and lot of projects being initiated. In this case the involvement of the PM within the Benefit Realization process was heavy whereby the PMO would capture most of the aspects that can be then re-cycled into the Idea phase (or pre initition phase). In the second unit (Innovation), the PM's where asked to participate using focus group sessions to understand and pick better initiatives.

Dear Rami Kaibani,

Thanks for your quick reply. In many organizations, project cycle is defined as
1- Concept phase or Define Phase, Analyse, Select, Execute and Operate. This classification is different among the companies, but the idea is same. Therefore pre-feasibility, feasibility studies and selection among alternative is done during both initial phases. It covers all financial, economic, marketing and sustainability aspects in details while high level aspects of technical matters. In other word, the project s divided into development and execution phases. Project Manger is appointed during execution phase and my opinion is that He or She should be involved during the concept phase.
There is no phase prior to concept phase.

In real world, the scenario is a bit different. Each project phase, as I mentioned earlier, have gone through the Project Life cycle. In Mega projects, spans over years with multi million budget, documents and steering committee (as as sponsor) are guiding the Project Manager. In fact project completion date and project budget are finalized well before appointing a project manager. It is my observation while working with 2 Fortune 500 companies and managing their portfolio of multi million dollars. Therefore, I strongly recommend, at least level 1 schedule and class v project cost estimates should be finalized in consultation of Project Manager.

I suppose this could be approached from two points of view:

1) Will PM involvement in project evaluation be helpful to the successful execution of a specific project? I think generally the answer to this is "no." After being assigned to a project, the PM will have the opportunity to consult with a BA, and review the charter, negotiate for a team, draft a WBS and schedule, and return to the sponsor or steering committee with her findings about how long the project will take and what the budget is likely to be. Alternately, in agile world, the PM will have the opportunity to work with a BA, identify the short term business requirements, develop some plans for sprints with their team and begin work.

So for benefit to a specific project my answer is generally no, however, there could be individual cases where this isn't the case.

2) Would inclusion of PMs in project evaluationa and selection be beneficial to the organization? Here my answer is yes, albeit with a caveat. As was mentioned by Markus, this wold be senior level PMs and/or BAs. This seems to me a logical area to develop talent for promotion to program managers, and executive leaders. This is an opportunity to develop PMs' abilities to understand the organizational strategy and to not only conceive of their projects within that strategy, but to see how they fall in with that strategy. It is part of the talent triangle in both leadership and strategic business management.

In fact according to Richard Heaslip's PMI Global congress presentation, this is the sort of thinking that most executive leaders want to see from the PMs in their organizations. Heaslip's studies have found that organizational culture and PM culture have prevented this, but it is what organizations are seeking, which is part of why PMI developed the talent triangle.

So from the perspective of developing talent and having a pool of promotable project managers, this makes really good sense, and it pulls from a pool of people who could provide some serious benefit and perspective in executive circles.