If your projects are leaving you more confused than satisfied, you’d be right to ask: ‘Is there a better way of doing this?’
I hear it all the time in my practice.
“We don’t need formal project management training — we’re doing fine without it.”
“We don’t have any projects.”
“Project management is just about learning a bunch of terminology and administrivia, which isn’t what we need.”
I have been teaching project management and leadership for decades and I’ve heard it all. Today, I want to walk through some of those objections and help you understand how formal project management training can help.
Leadership and process go together
I’m an adult educator by trade, and my original passion was teaching leadership. But what I realized after a few years was this: no matter how strong their leadership tools were, those I trained were still tripping over things that weren’t working well in their organization. They didn’t necessarily have the process skills required to bring their visions to life.
My first introduction to project management came when I was working with a federal government client. They had a project management system, but it wasn’t working for them. It was buried in highly prescribed details, and their project managers were drowning in organizational requirements. The system did not meet their needs.
What is required to make projects work for your organization is leadership: a vision is shared, people are focused and energy is present. And process tools: plan, do, check and repeat.
Leadership without process tools is chaotic. Process tools without leadership leaves people just looking busy. When both are present there is focus, efficient use of all resources, confidence in the outcome and credibility.
Finding value in surprising places
Maybe your organization isn’t purchasing millions of dollars worth of equipment, or building large hospitals or deploying new software.
How about organizing a fun fair?
One of my favourite aspects of project management is that the skillset is so scalable. I worked with a client in a remote northern community who used the skills she learned to plan a carnival — similar to the old Ottawa SuperEx — for her region. The result wowed everyone in her tiny community, who had never been to an event like it. We simply gave her the tools she needed to realize her dream.
In fact, the value of project management skills can surprise in many ways. I’ll give you another example. One First Nations group I worked with said they weren’t doing any projects. I paused for a moment, and then I asked them about a solar farm I saw as I drove into the community. A lightbulb went on for them at that moment. “Aha! We are doing projects — we’re just not calling them that!”
If you look around your workplace, perhaps you’ll start noticing efforts that should really be labelled projects, which you can define as formal endeavours to create a unique product or service. For each, you’ll need to devote the capacity, the tools and the processes to reach a desired outcome.
A wide range of applications — and opportunities
As you start to learn the principles of project management, you’ll appreciate that it is full of its own terminology and ways of doing things. Those are needed to ensure that everyone on your project team is speaking the same language and knows what to expect. You’ll need to know those terms and practices if you want to build your credentials as a professional project manager through certification.
You will also discover that the practice of project management lends itself to a variety of informal expressions. For example, we often refer to adopting project management best practices while a project is already underway as “building the plane while flying it.”
‘Building the plane’ is a relatively common expression, but yours don’t have to be. One company I work with has an expression that makes sense to all of us, although it wouldn’t help us boost our professional standing. When we get a project and don’t yet know how big or complex it is going to be, we say we’ve got “a bag of puppies” (with apologies to PETA).
Every client is different. I have helped federal government clients, such as the Bank of Canada, where project management support was keyed around documentation, governance and administrative overhead. I have also worked with First Nations communities where the project complexity was lower and the requirements for terminology, documents and such were likewise reduced. Instead, our efforts focused more on building leadership capacity.
Other times, my involvement concentrates on ensuring that tools are applied correctly and identifying areas for improvement.
Whatever situation you find yourself in — whether it’s lack of process, awkward process or disconnects in language — training could be the start of a solution. The vast majority of our learners tell us, “We’re already managing projects but we didn’t know that, so we couldn’t harness what we were doing.” That’s valuable insight you can apply as you develop or hone your own professional project management skills.
To learn how AC Corporate Training can help you or your teams, visit the Project Management courses page on our website. You can also reach us at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729.
Pat Masters has over 25 years of experience as a trainer, facilitator and consultant. She has worked with companies within the fields of law enforcement; universities and colleges; high-tech private sectors; and municipal, provincial, federal governments and international governments. Pat is PMP certified by the Project Management Institute.