17593508 How Project Management Could Benefits Your Organization

8/8/2019 17593508 How Project Management Could Benefits Your Organization

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/17593508-how-project-management-could-benefits-your-organization 1/7



http://www.protrain-canada.com

Sylvain Gauthier B.Eng. MBA, PMPProtrain Canada

Sylvain Gauthier is a bilingual professional specializing in project management in the field of new product and business development. He holds a MBA from the Universite de Montreal andattained his PMP® qualification in 1998.

About the Author

Sylvain has a solid background and extensive experience in business planning, costmanagement and the implementation of project management office for large corporations. Forthe past 15 years he has worked with project teams with telecom service providers, equipmentmanufacturer, IT, TV broadcasting and e-business in Canada, US, Europe and Asia.Sylvain’s professional experience is centered on the practical application of ProjectManagement (PM) and Value Analysis (VA) Value Engineering (VE) principles and concepts forimproving product and processes costs.

http://www.protrain-canada.com/







How project management couldbenefits your organization

In today’s environment, leaders of profit driven businesses or non-profit organizations have avast choice of potential human resource development programs they could select for theiremployees. The difficulty for these leaders is to identify which one will provide more value tothe organization towards achieving its short to mid term goals. Investing in people for longterm is a luxury that if you can afford is great but the next quarters and the end of the year iswhat drive decision in a shareholder environment and in a non profit organization it’s the nextround of funding or budget allocation that needs to be secure and justify that preoccupyleaders.When we try to promote Project management training to leaders, their first question is always,what are the benefits for our organizations if I invest in PM training for my people?The answer to this question is not a simple ROI figure or revenue growth number but ademonstration on how the Project Management practices if implement and reinforce withtrained people is tie directly or indirectly to the Profit & Loss Statement (P&L) in the case of aprofit driven business and to the society values delivered by the organization in the case of anon profit organization offering public services.

Let’s take a look at how all the elements fits together in a profit driven model and a non profitone.

Profit driven organization

For profit driven organization, the value of project management affect positively your customerrelationship and your shareholder performance, while providing a very agile work environmentfor your employees.

It is possible at all time to tie directly projects results and improvement in projectmanagement practices to business results, here is how;

Stock price

Earnings

Revenue

Cost

R & D

OperatingProductivity

BusinessGrowth

NewProducts

Or services

SalesEfficiency

NewMarkets

LaborCost

FixedCost

VariableCost

R & D

Investment

Drivers of Business Operations

Stock price

Earnings

Revenue

Cost

R & D


BusinessGrowth

NewProducts

Or services

SalesEfficiency

NewMarkets

LaborCost

FixedCost

VariableCost

R & D

Investment

Drivers of Business Operations



New products or services: Best in class companies can constantly deliver new products,features or services on the market using well defined project management context and trainedproject managers. The key to succeed in delivering fast time to market, while meeting budgetcost at the target quality level is to sepa ra te the con ten t f rom the de l i ve ry . The productor service managers with the development team are in charged of content while the project

manager is in charge of the delivery. Organization that leaves the delivery entirely to thedevelopment team or the marketing team found themselves regularly out of bound withschedule, cost and quality.

Sales efficiency: Today offering end to end solution to your customer could provide a keydifferentiator versus competition. The ability to offer its product or service as part of acomplete project that include all the deliverables that the customer required to be fullyoperational could provide higher margins through lower life cycle cost. Companies such asNokia, Cisco are expert to offer their product as a full project solution allowing to keep the costof the equipment high compare to competitor but the total project management solutionincluding deliverables such as network planning, training, installation and commissioning up tothe point where their customer is ready to collect revenue is the most advantageous of all

making it the best life cycle cost solution. The ability to project manage your products orservices for your customer drive margins improvement and provide you keydifferentiators .

New Markets: Going into new markets could be an expensive proposition if it is not managedas a project at first. The entry require many deliverables to be scoped properly in terms of regulation, product adaptation to be compliant to local standards and culture, processdevelopment to be operational at all level, team development and much more. Merger & Acquisition could be an interesting way but require strong project managers to rally allstakeholders around sets of deliverables that are understood, agreed on and managed as perbudget, schedule and quality level expected. The well train project manager will focus ondelivering the project objectives derives from the market strategy while involving the right

stakeholder expert for any decisions related to content or outside the scope of its project.P ro j e c t managem en t p ro te c t s and imp rove s you r Re tu rn On i n ve stmen t (RO I ) inwhile venturing in new market.

Labor cost: The ability to convert rapidly cost reduction opportunity into actual results visiblein the P & L statement is a great attribute of best in class companies. In certain industry laborcost represent a good proportion of the total product or service cost. Opportunity to reducethis cost are continuously provided by the market using new technologies, new business model(outsourcing) or improve processes. The time between the identification of the opportunityand the realization of it , makes the difference between companies that can growth theirearnings or drive price reduction on the market. Solid project managers in best in classcompanies focusing on delivery can conver t ve ry fas t an oppor tun i ty , into a business

case, into a project, to finally results visible in the financials. Value analysis and valueengineering is a technique used very often to identify opportunity of labor cost reduction.

Fix & variable cost: Identifying opportunity for reducing fix and variable cost are availablein many ways. New suppliers, new products, new tools, process or quality improvement teamsor VAVE (Value Analysis Value Engineering) techniques are different ways that new costreduction opportunities get signaled to management. Again time to C.R. makes a bigdifference between beating a quarter or missing it. Developing project managers focused onconverting consistently opportunity of cost reduction into actual results by using a goodproject management context, solid tools and techniques to evaluate opportunities and develop



business cases, provide a constant earning improvement streams quarter after quarter. Best inclass companies using pro jec t man agem ent to d r i ve C .R . o f f se t p r i ce e ros ion + p ro jec t

m anager sa la r ie s and deliver on top contribution to earnings.

R & D Investment: Separating delivery from content development is key to get a multipliereffect related to the quality of contribution of all stakeholders in the project. Gettingaccountability of every member of the project team for their deliverables is the number onetask of the project manager. The project manager focuses its efforts on ensuring that theteam stay on schedule and budget while maintaining the expected quality level. R & D Is

usually closely link to market and customer commitments and the ability to manage the scopeversus these two elements while the development team stay focus on the content makes a bigdifference between a successful introduction and one perceived to be a failure. The greatadvantage of using a solid R & D project management context is time to market.

Non - Profit driven organization (Ex: Government)

For non -profit driven organization, the value of project management affect positively thesociety value that they are targeting to improve. By project managing efficiently the keydrivers of their operation they can optimize the contribution of every dollar they invest. For anon-profit organization, being able to demonstrate to funds providers how the organizationwas able to deliver strong value to the society by implementing specific projects, provide them

a solid way to reassure the stakeholders that what they are investing there, is good return andthis will help secure funds for future projects.

It is possible at all time to tie directly projects results and improvement in projectmanagement practices to society value, here is how;

FundsAppropriation

YearlyBudget

CapitalBudget

DepartmentalBudget


Maintenance

Newequipments

Labor

CostFixedCost

VariableCost

Drivers of Non Profit Operations

SocietyValues-Poverties-Education

-Health-Arts

-Entertainment-Economics-Etc

PublicServices

PublicProjects

FundsAppropriation

YearlyBudget

CapitalBudget

DepartmentalBudget


Maintenance

Newequipments

Labor

CostFixedCost

VariableCost

Drivers of Non Profit Operations

SocietyValues-Poverties-Education

-Health-Arts

-Entertainment-Economics-Etc

PublicServices

PublicProjects



In both style of organization, if senior management or executives creates a ProjectManagement Office (PMO) environment, they will be able to plan and monitor the impact of projects versus their business objectives, the same way an airplane pilot monitor its cockpitindicators to ensure that its flight will make it as per plan.

Why PMBOK from PMI instead of another methodology ?

The Project management practice is applicable in any type of organization whether you are aprofit driven or non profit driven one. You can decide to focus your PM practice for certain key

business driver such as R & D or cost reduction or new products introduction or across the allof them.When project managers gets trained using the PMI Project Management Body Of Knowledge(PMBOK) they learn a worldwide deployed a PM standard or framework allowing greattransportability in other country or type of business. It is important to underline that a PMstandard is not a PM methodology. The s tandard p rov ide the answers to the ques t i ons

abou t “what needs to be done” . The framework also called standard is applicable in any

field or industry because it does not attempt to show how to do it.On the other hand, a meth odo logy p rov ides the “How to do every phases” in order toget to the end. It is usually specific to an industry sector (ex: IT, Construction, Pharmaceuticaletc..). A methodology usually is based on a standard and in many cases nowadays, the defaultstandard for the majority of methodologies is the PMBOK from PMI.

Many Companies which have embedded a project management culture as part of theirbusiness are usually in the best in class category (Cisco, HP, GE, P&G, Citigroup, Hitachi, IBM,, Microsoft , and much more…) are more agile to adapt to market changes and are usuallyleader in innovation.

From an individual perspective, a project manager train and recognize PMP will acquire moreconfidence to take the leadership of managing a project, of being accountable for the resultsand take actions when problems arise to keep the projects going and not just report issues tomanagement.The big difference from an executive perspective to use PMP instead of an improvise projectmanager is that they will ensure less micro managing on non mission critical projects and

avoid being drag into the rescue of projects that goes off-track.PMP part of their training learn how to communicate to executive the right level of information’s (short and precise summary) so in few minutes they understand where theproject is and where it is not, the key issues requiring their involvement and the actionexpected.Project reviews becomes very focus, effective and professional avoiding long exchange of ideas and opinions that sometimes lead to confusing priorities and course of actions.

Train PM Individuals ill seek projects inside the organization because it provides a motivatingenvironment, opportunity to work with different people /functions and a chance to learn newthings.

Author: Sylvain Gauthier B.Eng. MBA, PMPEmail : [email protected]: June, 2004For : Project Management Magazine in Beijing

About Protrain Canada: Protrain Canada is a Global Registered Education Providers from PMI and isregistered in Hong Kong and Montreal.

Address: Protrain Canada 2550 Blvd Daniel JohnsonLaval Quebec, Canada






Tel : 514 433 8223

17593508 How Project Management Could Benefits Your Organization

Documents

Transcript of 17593508 How Project Management Could Benefits Your Organization