Talking While Listening: Why You Need Project Management

Have you ever truly tried to talk and listen at the same time? I bet you didn’t retain much of what the other person said, or make much sense the longer you went on for. 

This is similar to an organization operating without proper project management processes. It doesn’t work…well. 

You can talk and listen until you’re blue in the face, but chances are slim that you’re getting your point across in the most effective way. To translate this into how you can better run your organization-  adoption, or focus on your project management tools and techniques, may be a vital pivot point.

The first in the series of "Talking While Listening" explores the basic reasons why you need project management in your organization.

The iron triangle of project management is to keep projects, programs, and/or portfolios on time, on budget, and within scope. ‍

Project Management (PM) can get a bad rep for being too bureaucratic, slow, or a waste of money. But anything not done well in business can become all of those things. The difference between an ineffective resource and a project management workflow is the proper PM workflow will help your business identify what is overly regulated, slow, or a waste of money. 

These elements are core to keeping a business alive, but to be competitive, investments in project managers goes beyond the geometric shape. With proper investments in project management, you can start seeing changes such as:

• Process efficiency improvements
• Money saved
• Strategic alignment between projects and business goals
• Increase in resource productivity
• Improvements in transparency and resource purpose

Staying Competitive

To stay competitive, project management processes and workflows need to be adopted at all levels of an organization, enforced by key project stakeholders, and guided by the Subject Matter Experts (SME) within an organization. While simple in theory, is your company ready to coordinate and implement the change management needed to elevate your project management divisions? If your answer is "No." then it's time to reconsider your company's goals and how it plans to adopt a sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace.