Project Magazine profile on Lindsay Scott: "Social climbing" - April 2010

When you ask Lindsay Scott about the best route to enter project management, the co-director of Arras People might feel inclined to say "admin skills and osmosis." Hired by Hewlett Packard 12 years ago right out of university for the former skills, Lindsay was thrown into the Project Management Group in their professional services division and spent the first year absorbing all of the project management knowledge she could gather from sitting in team meetings and attending knowledge forums.

"I totally fell into it. Right place, right time," she says of those early days as a business support administrator to the Portfolio Director. "Project management is so diverse, I couldn't help but get intrigued. Supporting the team of programme and project managers, I had to track project progress, preparing status reports and provide administrative support. That was my introduction to the world of project lifecycles, methodologies, processes and tools."

Today, Lindsay points to one leading senior project manager at HP as one of the biggest influences in her development.

"This senior project manager was amongst other things a whiz when it came to project finance – money, budgets, cost to complete, P&L, he knew how to do it all; You just couldn't structure things better than he did! Thankfully for me he was willing to take me under his wing and spent many hours formally mentoring me in this key operational area." she recalls. "This kind of development is really priceless; I still believe that all organisations should actively encourage this approach to back up their investments in formal training."

Lindsay proved to be a fast learner, constantly quenching her thirst for knowledge in all things project and programme related. Her last role at HP saw her establishing the original PMO department, an experience she labels as one of the first great achievements of her career.

"This period was full of challenges and certainly expanded my skills and knowledge, especially on the soft side. It required teamwork within the PMO and with a team of 22 people we had to work hard to get the basic PMO things in place; it was tough going embedding changes to working practices. One of the best things I learned from this period was that to deliver effective change you have to really involve the people; most people don't want changes done to them. You've got to include them."

In 2002, Lindsay moved on from HP to take up a new challenge with Arras People. As a Director she has had a major impact in establishing the business as one of the leading project management recruitment firms in the UK. Using her PMO knowledge and experience she has placed many practitioners within blue chip organisations and across the public sector. At the same time she has been responsible for the marketing activities at Arras People using traditional channels, web and latterly social media to expand Arras People's reach as an expert project management leader as opposed to simple High Street win-chaser. In a word, Lindsay believes in the power of delivering integrity to project management.

"Outlets like LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging and online resources are very important for us as a business. We're project managers first and it's to our advantage to enhance the professionalism of the industry in any way we can. Social media is another great tool to push the message. We work with like-minded project managers to spread the message and share knowledge of how to go about it the right way.

"When we learn, hear or observe things through other project managers in our networks, and that includes social media, that we deem to have integrity, we want to share that with the wider project management community. We use our own social media platform to enable project professions to share their experiences through things like blogging and newsletters."

In addition to the possibilities for marketing and knowledge sharing, Lindsay senses great opportunities for better collaboration in project teams through improvements in online and social media communication tools.

"Project managers and their project teams should really look closer at the tools and software which allow for better collaboration. There's a bounty of tools (which just keep getting better and better) for project professionals to pick up and use to drive better communication in a project setting. It's what many projects have been waiting for really, something that helps improve that key element of successful project delivery - communication."

Project Support and PMO is a key area of expertise for Lindsay, she joined the knowledge-sharing voluntary organisation Programme and Project Support Office Specialist Interest Group (PPSO SIG) in 2002. The SIG brings together people that are passionate about PMO and its development, providing an open forum that enables PMO professionals to get together to share their knowledge and experiences. Alongside Chris Walters, the chairman of PPSOSIG, Lindsay co-ordinates two annual national conferences and has recently initiated local branch gatherings.

"When we first got involved in the SIG, PMO felt like it was classed as outside of project management. There was minimal written about PMO, no qualifications or training. To an extent, it still is, but the PMO profession is developing and becoming more high profile, thanks in part to things like programme management and the recent P3O guidance," she said. "Companies right now are clearly thinking more about how they can deliver on their corporate and organisational strategies and how that translates to the programmes and projects which are currently being run within the business. The PMO is being heralded as a solution and it's certainly become more prevalent during the recession as organisations seek to maximise their investments in programmes and projects."

The future? "I believe that social media is still in its infancy and will certainly increase its influence in the field of programmes and projects, not to mention recruitment over the coming years. Communication and collaboration are the cornerstone of effective programme and project management, so how could it not?"