project management - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

1. Organization Design

Organizational design is a methodology that takes into account the various, potentially problematic, areas of projects, such as work-flow, structure, systems, roles and responsibilities and realigns them in the most appropriate way for the project.

The 3 most basic kinds of structure are; functional, project and matrix.

2. Negotiation

Negotiations happen constantly. A good negotiator knows not only what he needs, but also how to get it, both internally and externally to the organization.

That’s why negotiation is an incredibly advantageous skill to have as a project manager. However, since it belongs to the phantasmatic realm of soft skills, it is rarely mentioned.

Negotiation is the art of achieving the most benefit for yourself from a transaction, while leaving all parties to the negotiation sufficiently content that the relationship subsequently works well.

Formal negotiations usually take place with external providers typically when agreeing on contracts, while informal negotiations can arise resolving conflicts or in discussions to gain more internal resources.

3.Value Management

Value Management is defined as a way of improving business effectiveness using a combination of planning tools and methods to find the optimum balance of project benefits in relation to project costs and risks. It is done in a structured manner, and uses specific techniques:

Value Engineering is the management philosophy that should guide the design of the project, using proven techniques during the formative stages.
Value Analysis is the introduction of similar techniques to an already existing product, process or organization.

4. Industrial Relations

Far from being a PR concept, Industrial Relations covers a full range of functions related to work-force management. Of course, proper Industrial Relations require an in-depth knowledge and personal experience of the legal system, labor regulations, and the negotiations with the unions, for example.

This skill is a must have for a project manager that wants to create a positive and safe working culture, and solve or prevent work related incidents.

5. Variation Control

Traditionally, projects have been predictable. Differences between projects (variations) ideally are too –so they have to be managed.

To incorporate variation management, systems and processes must be established and properly documented. Once these steps are implemented, procedures and their variations can be managed in an efficient and controlled manner. This practice is also known as Change Control, and includes taking into account such variables as scope, specification, cost and schedule.

6. Conflict Management

Although it is considered a soft skill, it still has imperative importance to how successful a project manager will turn out to be.

Conflict Management is the process of identifying and addressing differences that, if left unsolved, could affect the business goals. And we all know that an unresolved conflict can be expensive! It increases uncertainty, damages morale and undermines long-term team harmony.

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One of the most frequent needs facing organizations that are looking to launch a PMO is the centralization of information and knowledge. When your e-mail begins to be used as a repository of documentation, or when there is no homogeneity between the sources of information of different projects, it is possible that the time has come to consider the existence of a structure that supports the operations of the organization.

This type of PMO has been compared to a weather station, since the unification of processes and flows of information allows the increase of data and objective criteria to evaluate in which direction the projects and the equipment are moving.

By serving as a center for unification of knowledge, the PMO begins by assisting the management of the company by providing data and information that assist the company in decision making.

This is achieved in the confidence of the management of the company, the acquisition of new skills and the possibility of direct decision-making. The end result is to convert one support project management into another with a control or manager profile. This other type of PMO will be developed in another article.

Functions developed by the PMO as a support tool

Teaching and training, promotion of attitudes based on adequate project management, under direct supervision.
Transmission of information to the management of the company, so that it is the one that makes the executive decisions.
Search for techniques to reduce costs.
Centralization of management services in the department of project management or PMO, emphasizing the management savings that this entails.
Empowerment of those who have been designated as Project Managers, who must be trained in project management but also allow sufficient freedom to properly develop their skills.

Application and evolution of the support PMO

Supporting PMOs are sometimes geared towards an internal permanent improvement service. This is based on empowerment and the acquisition of responsibilities on the part of heads departments within the company under the instruction and monitoring of the PMO. The objective is that, after a period of training, the managers of the different departments of the company acquire new skills in project management or update the ones they already have, doing their work practically without the help of the PMO. This will allow the PMO to focus on other functional areas and to reorient itself from the mere work support, towards a more strategic integration.

Juan Delgado

Blogger

ITM Platform

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With more than a million and a half new professionals in the next three years, many things are changing in the industry.

There are many factors that are generating major changes in project management. To begin with, the community of project management experts has long since ceased to be a highly specialized niche for engineers: more and more professionals are involved in fields as diverse as marketing, translation, product and service development, or even Finance have titles or responsibilities related to project management.

Take control of your Project Management this year with ITM Platform

Of course, this means the practice is developing in many directions. Here we highlight four that will be fundamental during this year.

1. Project management in extreme situations

Brexit, Syria, climate change, Trump. This is only a quick summary of the political difficulties that are testing the global economy ... and with them all companies with international scope.

Faced with this situation, it is essential to have tools to deal with unforeseen events and respond promptly to threats. The evaluation of investments and risk assessment will become increasingly important, moving from the strategies of internationalization to the dimension of the projects and their impacts.

2. Strategic value, not just tactical

Projects have ceased to be watertight drawers that can be planned and developed in a vacuum. The habitat of a project and the integration of the manager's responsibilities into the company's overall strategy are the measure of credibility, both external and internal, when developing projects. That is why transversal competences, the ability to listen and to go beyond predetermined processes are increasingly valued.

3. Combined methodologies

Especially in companies with business models that are not dedicated exclusively to software development or foreseeable engineering projects, such as construction or infrastructures, the combination of agile and predictive methodologies is increasingly gaining acceptance to cover the different operational phases of an organization.

In the financial sector, for example, many teams already employ a methodological sandwich structure to deal with a new credit product.

Kanban board

To cover the phases of market research, identification of barriers, niche, etc. The objective of this first phase is to build sufficient knowledge to define the essential characteristics of the product.

Gantt chart

When the product is profiled, it is possible to introduce predictive guidelines that allow it to become a reality. A Gantt chart is still highly valued to develop the product with some fixed dates.

How to land the go-to-market

Finally, the phases of business development and client acquisition usually follow agile procedures that allow reacting to market acceptance in a flexible way. In other words: how to land the go-to-market. In some ways, this approach allows us to treat each product or service as a project. But on other occasions, even the teams themselves or the organizations themselves are organized on a project basis. For this reason, it is important to have tools like ITM Platform, which allow to combine both methodologies in a flexible way in a single portfolio. The Design Thinking approach, coined by Stanford University, resembles in its goal the sandwich of methodologies combined in the sense of providing a process that allows to incorporate technical experts and personnel with other training. However, the commercial orientation is clearer, as the different phases are a formula for creating a solution from the public and their needs.

4. Project Intelligence

We have been talking about Big Data for years and it does not seem that this trend is going to leave us. Applied to project management, orientation to big data involves learning, creatively, from all the information of the projects that is automatically collected during its development. In this sense, the leap beyond mere statistical guidelines towards creative data science can be a very interesting dimension for 2017.

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Although collaboration is an essential principle for a modern and innovative organization, it is worth remembering that it is not recommendable to embrace collaboration at all costs. The definition of a collaborative culture will have to be oriented to different parameters specific to each organization.

Collaboration for PMOs: advantages and disadvantages

If you are convinced that your organization needs to improve project collaboration, you must make sure collaboration is properly oriented and directed towards the goals of the organization.

For example, collaboration is a priority in innovation intensive organizations dedicated to the design of new products and services: the more ideas are gained, the greater the innovative potential. In these cases it may be important to collect inputs from all interested parties and even to determine a iterative procedure, whereby each design phase is subject to an open round of discussions.

However, in organizations with more predictive projects, a culture of open and uncontrolled collaboration can be pernicious. Even destructive:

Hierarchical validation procedures are proportionately related to deadline compliance
Informal communication relies on people, not processes. That is why large organizations and teams with high turnover suffer especially when they fail to combine collaborative elements with standardized procedures.

1. Project Management

Despite the risks of open collaboration, the risks of not collaborating are also high. A project manager who does not delegate, share information, or accept comments beyond the established channels becomes a bottleneck that can choke the entire organization.

On the contrary, among the collaborative responsibilities of the project manager is the habit of sharing knowledge with all stakeholders: team members and executives, clients, suppliers, or public entities in the case of tenders.To avoid being lost in this web, it is very important from a certain complexity to determine what tools, documents and processes are right for each stage.

2. Project collaboration

Another advantage of a collaborative controlled culture is that team members can benefit from cross-pollinization. Again, this is a very important aspect when the project presents unknowns or new problems to solve.

Some practices to make ideas flow:

Use open spaces
Use equally open chat tools: instead of email, a chat service for channels such as Slack, for example
Adopt SaaS tools, so that your computer's hard drives do not become black boxes

3. How to combine closed communication and standardized procedures

Unfortunately, these days it is not enough to be productive and execute a list of tasks within a project. Actually, we have many applications based on a timeless distribution of activities or the check-list approach , which, although they are very valid for certain functions, do not serve for the execution and planning of professional projects. The most difficult in these cases is to get the right balance between collaboration and controlled information.

ITM Platform Teambot is an application for Slack that allows, precisely, to speed collaboration through the messaging chat that has taken a robot to Mars while incorporating the strengths of an ITM Platform capacity planning tool. Where Slack adds the collaborative dimension, ITM Platform adds the control.

In fact, ITM Platform Teambot, created for all team members, is the most convenient way to use ITM Platform:

It allows to recall tasks and projects
facilitates reporting processes
Links seamlessly to ITM Platform

Advantages of ITM Platform Teambot:

Teambot is the only project management application in Slack that, besides allowing to recall information, offers the possibility to use agile and predictive methodology in the same integrated portfolio
Share knowledge and cooperate with organizations that integrate different hierarchies or open teams
Check projects and tasks in seconds
Report your progress from Slack and without ever having to log in to ITM Platform

Request a demo of ITM Platform and we will tell you how to establish successful collaborative practices for your projects.

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By Nicholas Taylor

Our intern Nick shares his particular views on the season

Season’s greetings to one and all! Hope you’re all looking forward to the Day of Food… or otherwise known as; Christmas day.

All joking aside, there can be a lot of pressure to deliver at Christmas, particularly depending on the number of not so close relatives you only see once a year, and the rotation system your family has in place. After the amazing stuffing your brother-in-law prepared last year, expectations are built up!

Whether it be all the family coming round expecting the best meal of the year, or making sure you’ve got the correct Tamagotchi for Sophie (I am aware that my knowledge of children’s toys may be a little outdated…) and the latest Nike trainers for Matthew, at ITM Platform we are aware a bit of method might help your situation.

I’m going to provide you with some insider tricks on how to get through the big day using project management skills, so that by the end of it you find internal peace to sit back, relax, and enjoy a well-earned tipple.

Christmas initiation

The first step to project managing your Christmas, before doing anything else, is establish what your perfect Christmas day entails. Do you have all the family coming over and want to impress them with an amazing dinner? Or maybe a simple, quiet Christmas day with close family is what you’re aiming for? Whatever it is you decide to do on Christmas day, make sure it is clear in your mind what the project is, so you can put into place the steps to managing a stress and problem free day (Well, as much as possible).

Christmas planning

The next step to project managing your perfect Christmas day is to plan it! Planning is a MUST in project management.

Let’s go to the basics: think of your oven in terms of scope and try to answer the following questions:

How many people are coming? Do I have room for such a big turkey in my oven?
When do you have to start cooking in order to be done by dinner time?
How many hours of work will you need to have an unforgettable dinner?

If you don’t know the answer to any of this, projectize! Break down your preparation, task by task, and think of what each task requires so you can have a clear, critical path in mind.

Don’t improvise the groceries! Make lists of all the ingredients for recipes, and don’t underestimate drinks! Double the amount of champagne that you consider sensible.

Gift control

When it comes to buying presents, controlling costs is probably the most important advice for the season. Give yourself an overall budget and don’t go overboard!

Other important facets of gift control include:

Not buying large presents for adults
Buy services, not stuff that will be abandoned in a corner. A subscription to a good news service, for example, or to a non-profit can mean a lot more than yet another necklace.
Identify your relative’s personas: Are they likely to get upset if the present doesn’t meet their expectations? Do they have expectations at all?

Communication

Communication, communication, communication. If you’ve got a couple of Santa’s little helpers on your side, you must have good lines of communication with them, report your progress and vice versa. Don’t buy presents without telling them, don’t change the recipes or invite new people over without informing the party! This will help keep the project on track as everyone will be on the same page.

Avoid project overload?

Don’t give yourself a crazy amount to do all in one day, this could completely ruin the quality of the project or only finish with a half completed job.

Remember: to be a great host, you need to look happy, too.

Final checks, expert delivery

This is your time to shine.

Quality checks are a must – is the turkey moist enough? Are the grandparents merry enough yet? Whatever your goal, final checks should definitely be undertaken to make sure the project is up to the highest standard so your guests will enjoy the evening without realizing you have been using spreadsheets with thousands of rows to track your Christmas orders.

Enjoy

Now comes the fun bit. Enjoy Christmas Day! Reap the success of your work, whether it be devouring those delightful little pigs in blankets or enjoying a large glass of champagne. You’ve worked hard and successfully project managed a great end product. You can now take these project management skills of yours and put them to use for the New Year’s party you’re regretfully obliged to host…

Nicholas Taylor

Marketing Assistant

ITM Platform