People in publicly funded organisations are constantly planning and implementing projects, small and large. The vast majority of these people will never think of themselves as ‘project managers.’ They think of themselves as specialists in delivering public services; as nurses, teachers, or engineers. H4 Consulting’s Project Management Made Easy (PMME) is a practical approach to help busy non-project managers to manage their projects.
Most projects in publicly funded organisations are managed by people with no project management training, who are also juggling full-time jobs delivering services. These people have to deal with the complex authorising environment and vocal stakeholders that often come with publicly funded projects, and do it all efficiently and effectively to maximise public value. To further increase the degree of difficulty, these people are often asked to shoehorn their projects into overly complex or ill-fitting project methodologies.
Under the circumstances, it’s not surprising that so many projects in publicly funded organisations fail, or are endlessly delayed by day-to-day priorities.
PMME addresses these problems by focusing only on the basic elements of good project management from conception to completion. It’s all about telling the story of the project, not the project management jargon.
PMME highlights three key project stages.
The beginning – building an idea into a proposal and plan. Depending on the context, approval to proceed beyond this point could be through a conversation or email with a manager or project sponsor, or from a formal business case. Once the approver has agreed to a proposal, the project manager develops a project plan that tells the story of how they will get from where they are now, to where they plan to be in the future.
The middle – implementing and regularly reviewing progress against the Plan. This maintains momentum, delivers, and keeps track of the project. This process also helps to identify anything that needs to be adjusted or amended, or any specific support required from the Sponsor to advance the project.
The end – the official close of a project. Ideally this will happen when the Plan has been implemented successfully. It might also happen if the project is abandoned or deferred because priorities have shifted or the circumstances around the project have changed. Whatever the reason, a final review at the end is an opportunity to reflect on what has been achieved, and how that relates to the original plan.
Sponsors have a critical role in projects.
PMME reflects a common-sense approach to project management underpinned by simple templates and tools that can be customised for the project or organisation. Project managers do not need to learn project management jargon to get started. Simple prompts help them to frame the stories of their projects, so that they can get on with the job.
Projects seldom succeed without planning, but asking people to adopt a complex project management methodology while still delivering business as usual is asking them for time they just do not have.
PMME will help the busy people in your organisation, who will never identify as professional project managers, to tell the stories of their projects and to make them come true.