Look around any organisation large, medium and small. You
have people, professional staff engaged in projects. These
can include for example:
1. service improvements
2. cost reductions
3. product development
4. staff development
5. improved sales
Where someone or a team are engaged in delivering a change,
then you have a clear project and need to apply project
management principles. But as we will show below, many
people fail to recognise that the application to day-to-day
work of some of the tools within project management can help
them enormously and answer a key question!
So, what is that questions? By far the most popular asked on
any of our project management events is
..what is a project
and what is not a project? There are many book definitions
which have failed to satisfy people on our courses. I am not
of course criticising the project management definitions,
simply saying that people who come our courses want much
more clarity what is and what is not a project?
They want answers that will put work (project management
work or non project management work) into neat boxes,
project work here, non project work there. However, work is
not like this. So, how can we help them, and we hope you?
To answer this we have developed a process called PROJECT
BASED WORKING. The process is simple; we take some of the
component parts of project management, for example:
a) developing a business case
b) having clear objectives for your project
c) carrying out risk assessment
d) managing stakeholders
We suggest taking the tools and processes within the above
areas and apply to day to day work (business as usual). Here
are some examples;
1) Why do that report? (having a business case)?
2) Are you clear what the objective is with that day to day
task? (Developing clear project objectives)
3) Organising the meeting - what can go wrong? (Risk
assessment)
4) Who do you need to involve to ensure a satisfactory
delivery of the task? (Managing stakeholders)
These are some simple examples of what we mean by project
based working - applying some of the tools of project
management to day to day work.
So, why worry about what is and what is not a project? Use
these tools on all types of work, everyday!
Many people who have come on project management events have
argued over this issue and it only when we explain about
project based working they understand.
So the next time someone asks the questions what is a
project?, tell them about project based working. Explain
what it is and how it helps others and, how it can help
them!
About The Author:
Ron Rosenhead helps people deliver projects. He is an author, consultant, coach and trainer in the field of project management. You can receive your free e-course on project management by going to: http://www.deliverthatproject.com
