Project Managers Grapple With 'Triple Bottom Line'

How many in the midmarket space are reluctant to help project managers with additional resources due to fear of software costs, lost productivity during training, or employee churn?

The obstacles are certainly there. Gartner Inc. 's latest Magic Quadrant report on project and portfolio management predicts more project manager and related staff layoffs in 2009. The analyst group also forecasts an increased need for software-as-a-service (SaaS) products as a way to avoid capital expenses and boost group productivity.

But if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, investing a bit of time and effort into your PM can reap rewards, or at least keep you from overspending. Certainly, learning from other expert PMs can help you on the right path, which is why a book I've been reading lately may also offer some good insight into helping make your business grow faster.

In 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know, author Barbee Davis has collected the wisdom of professional project managers from several different disciplines including health care, government, and education. The common thread connecting each story is an openness to helping others locate key issues and best practices.

"Today, the secret to project success is to involve the users almost as soon as there is anything visible to show them," Davis says. "How much better is it to find out that there are problems with what we are developing early on, rather than after the project is complete!"

Davis's tragic illustration profiles a training company that spent $5 million on a redesign of its ordering system. Insufficient project management led to slower processing times, an avoidable situation if communication had been more free-flowing.

In another example, Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer and computer science professor at the University of Houston notes in his section, entitled "Avoid Whack-a-Mole Development," that time is a relative thing in project management.

"When measuring time for feature implementation, do not consider only the time it takes to write it in the first place," Subramaniam said. "Add the time it takes to enhance, fix, and improve the code. Writing good quality code and tests takes time. It appears to be a short-term loss. However, it comes with a long-term gain. Ask yourself if you want speed, or if you want to savor sustainable progress."

In both cases, the flow of information is critical to the success of the project. Gartner's report buckets this into two objectives: The connection of PM systems to third-party data sources; and the tracking of application assets delivered as the result of an IT deployment project, through the changes made to the application assets.

The industry is also broadening its vision for project managers. On November 5, the Project Management Institute (PMI) will be honoring PMs as part of its annual celebration. The event will include a Webinar about the future of project, program, and portfolio management and its impact of global sustainability.

"Far from simply looking at the carbon footprint of our projects, project managers must consider the 'triple bottom line' -- people, planet, profit -- as they look to truly add value to the organizations they serve," said PMI president and CEO Gregory Balestrero. "Through my conversations with project managers around the world, I have witnessed very thoughtful and productive discussions surrounding the role project managers can take to advance more sustainable organizations through their work. While no one has all the answers at this time, I believe conversations occurring simultaneously around the world will get us one step closer to developing a consensus and identifying common practices for the profession."

So, all hail the project manager... the one person on your team that can allow a midmarket enterprise to not only streamline production but help grow business through efficient methods.

— Michael Singer, Senior Editor, Internet Evolution.