This morning a new blog entry landed in my In-Box, an article focused on “making project management work” from The Register. A recent survey of project management staff focused on tools and best practice in planning and reporting activities and the results made interesting reading.
23% of respondants “hold regular planning meetings, agree priorities and allocate tasks” whilst 51% “prioritise on the fly depending on what’s most pressing”. Unfortunately less than 20% use a project office function when it comes to key planning and reporting activities. Well, congratulations to the 23% – I know where I would rather work!
Does the 51% shock you? No, I must admit it took me back to a particular project in my past where it was pretty much the norm, ever tried project managing a runaway horse?
The survey also looked at how people record their project information too:
It’s good to know we’re leaving behind the mundane paper based recording but the key message here is a benefit the project office could use to justify the move towards online recording systems; the ability to provide information to the senior manager or decision maker quickly, accurately and without delay. It’s not rocket science but there are still far too many project offices out there making do with inadequate systems and processe leaving them unable to provide the valuable information (and some would argue the only reason they are there) required quickly and easily.
The other interesting point in the article is the what – what are we reporting on? It seems that we’ve gone data mad, if we can collect it – do it, regardless of whether we actually want to kow this stuff. How many times have you sat down recently to complete a project template – be it a progress report, planning document, lessons learnt – and thought what on earth am I doing this for and will anyone actually read it!
Another benefit the project office should grab with both hands – defining the reporting standards and information required- ensuring no duplication of efforts – demonstrating every time how the accurate and timely information and metrics from the projects are used – make the outputs visible – show correlations between the project data and the bottom line. The project office should be a function that no business can live without (who else can be the eyes and ears?) unfortunately many project offices have a way to go before they become truely indispensable.
Read The Register article at “making project management work“
