I have just joined the IT organization of a relatively large company (over 6000 employees). In this company, project management responsibilities are assigned to the user department, i.e. the direct beneficiaries of the project. While it is true that sponsorship or ownership of the project belongs to them, project management, in my opinion is a different role altogether. Now proj mgt or the lack of it is starting to become a problem and a burden to the "user departments" more so if the project involves mostly information technology. Can anyone please describe your corporate PM organization and whether this is a group outside any specific department, IT included. Thanks and cheers!
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Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Believe it or not I think the project Manager should be from the user community as with the accountability for the project's success. That said it is important that IT serve as a close advisor to the PM as well as a major stakeholder in the project since they will inherrit the day to day support of any technologies deployed. In my tenure as a CIO I pushed hard to have the Project Success responsibility along with accountability and budget firmly placed in with the user community. Along with that I required a close partnership with the IT group and had an IT PM assigned to the project to assist the USER PM. In virtually every project IT did all the heavy PM lifting in terms of keeping the tracking software up to date and preparing status reports. In the end, the results achieved were far more accepted, implementations went smoothly and IT/USER relations improved dramatically. Hope this helps... Cheers Saving Changes...
Anonymous
On Mr Wood's response...is having the users do the project management the ideal setup? I'm wondering cause I've come accross a company where there's a separate group for Project Managers. Although most of the PMs in that group have IT background, it's not a pre-requisite. The PMs work closely with both the user and IT departments. This type of organization would be able to more effectively use PM skills of the organization and also address the lack of it if there's noone that can fit in the group. BTW, the PM group maintains the budgets allocated for the projects. Any comment on this type of organization? Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
A separte group could also be effective. However I would strongly recommend having those who will most benefit from the project's outcome be accountable and responsible for the budget. It is amazing how scope creep diminishes when the people responsible for the creep have to pay for it. I would even go so far as to place project success (time, budget, outcome) into the metrics that determine bonuses. The key here is one of balancing administrative control, defusing political agendas and improving functional accountability for results. With only 1 in 8 projects ever completing on time and on budget its clear that the approaches used in most organizations doesn't work. A formal PM group could be very effective in overseeing that the project is managed with proper governance and to provide essential PM services without having actual functional responsibility for the project. Saving Changes...
I would recommend the so called "Balanced Matrix Organization". In this type of organization you may have one of the staff persons as a project manager, reporting directly to the functional manager but also reporting to a PMO (Project Management Office). In this way the PMO will ensure that each PM in the organization is using a set of standard processes and tools to manage the project and also makes the PM responsible to deliver the project whithin time, cost and scope as part of the functional manager goals.
The selection of the PM must be aligned with the experience the user have in the type of project he will manage, otherwise a subject matter expert must be part of the project team.
Last thing, the PM assigned must have some type of authority since he is accountable for the results of the project. This must be clear for the Functional Manager and the project team members.
