Strong and best management practices support successful project outcomes
Why is project management important?
For a project to succeed one needs to be able to deliver quality content using clear, efficient and effective processes that facilitates collaboration, monitoring, and delivering of project deliverables.
In the world of education and social services consulting, the culture encourages more depth versus breadth of knowledge, while professional growth demands that content experts engage in management responsibilities. This often occurs without the professional being given the opportunity to develop the skills or receive training to manage people, contracts, and other management responsibilities outside their deepest expertise. In such circumstances, typically management falls to a secondary function, with content remaining the person’s primary focus, exposing the project to potential risk.
To optimize a project’s outcomes, it is important to bridge the gap between content and management, and to integrate these two critical strands of work such that the success of the project and programs are ensured. This includes integrating the many varied behind-the-scenes components of a project, developing and/or adapting systems of operations to streamline the work to maximize effectiveness and efficiency, bringing creative approaches to engaging all shareholders, and working in alignment with the existing culture. By spearheading these varied components, and having staff with solid content knowledge, the team is able to deliver satisfying results to the clients both internal and external.
At the heart of it, a strong project manager is one who knows and understands what and how..
- CONTENT MATTERS
- STAFF SKILLS MATTER
- OUTCOMES MATTER
- RESOURCES MATTER
- MANAGEMENT MATTERS
A strong manager also recognizes the importance of working closely with the various organization’s services such as the Finance and Contracts Departments, HR, Facilities and IT, and works to leverage expertise in those departments to support the success of the project.
A strong project manager essentially knows how to plan, develop, and implement the work and how to analyze the resources and processes required to bring any given course of content to fruition.
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