Catching Up With An Old Colleague While Having Ulterior Motives
- Project Management
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Today I had an appointment with an old work colleague to catch up on things. I had the opportunity to explain what the company I work for does and told him that I was doing a master programme. And, that I need to write an analysis paper on how organizations manage projects. I told him that I need some information how he managed IT projects in the past. In retrospective, no wonder he offered me just a glass of water. I’m sure he really enjoyed how I hijacked the conversation so that I can collect some data.
Anyway, jokes aside, he was more than happy to give me some details. We’ll have a chat again soon to go more in depth. I briefly asked me how he connected business strategies with IT projects and he replied that, as he worked at a large consulting firm, the business strategies were strongly influenced by the amount of consultants that were not “deployed” at clients.
Business strategies were also influenced by certain wants and needs from prominent clients in the portfolio of the consulting firm. The consulting firm provided engineering and IT expertise and the wanted to transform their business model into becoming a project organization instead of a traditional outsourcing company. One of the benefits that would be gained by the consulting firm itself is, being less dependent on projects coming from clients.
I asked whether the firm applied the Benefits Realization Management framework and unfortunately he does not think so as he is not really familiar with such a framework. When he answered the first question I did hear some elements of benefits management however. So, I would like to interview him another time to see if there are any similarities in project management approaches done, without using the BRM framework, and the BRM framework itself.
Question number two was about how the consulting firm selects, evaluates and aligns projects. With this one, the firm selects and evaluate projects based on the size of the project, the length of the project and the amount of consultant that are going to be assigned to project. In regards to alignment in the context of project management, this was done based on the expertise the firm had in-house. As you might be concluding by yourself already, the projects were strongly determined by the needs of clients and the kinds of expert consultants the firm has.
Question number three was about monitoring and controlling projects. The answer I got was that the firm employed people managers that would be in constant communication with clients to evaluate whether the assigned consultants are producing the desired work. Depending on the customer satisfaction, the contracts of consultants that are assigned to projects of clients are extended, which would ultimately extend on-going projects at the consulting firm as well.
I wanted to ask one last question related to the application of the BRM framework, however, like I said, the BRM framework is not a familiar project management framework for him.
It was quite interesting catching up again. Five years ago while I was still a student and he was a manager at the company we both worked for in the past. Now he has his own business and I am working for a different company now. But we both live in a city with lots of mutual corporate connections so are paths crossed again, unexpectedly.
I thank him for all the details he has provided me and I hope to get more usual information from him for my upcoming analysis!