Case Study 8

Improving Project Management Process

A senior member of our staff was engaged by a major UK IT outsourcing company to improve the quality of their project management capability.

He was responsible for formally defining their Project Management process as part of their "most important" corporate programme.   This meant finding a sensible compromise for project managers between initiative and process formality; our emphasis being that project managers should be supported by central services, not be subordinate to an administrative function.   In our view, excellent project managers are people who have an instinct for it, not just someone rigidly following a taught process.

In addition, he was responsible for improving the project management toolset, including distributed databases for both project management tools and for project documentation.

To complete the set, he was given overall responsibility for the project management accreditation scheme.

Improvements were soon noteworthy; improved project reporting drew immediate attention to failing projects, while allowing project managers an excellent view of the status of their own project.