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Project Management - To Template or not To Template
January 21, 2011 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices
Project Management - To Template or not To Template
By Patrick d’Astous
Part of the benefit of using a standard project management process is that project managers have a set of best practices they can use every time. There is a remarkable value in having a common set of project best practices and corporate PM standards. These standards help project managers complete projects on time and at a lower cost. Designing and implementing these standards requires up-front investment. However, benefits are noticeable on every corporate project.
How to ensure best practices and standards are used and understood?
Templates have become the de facto conveyor of standards in a project organization. Why templates? There is a common belief that templates provide an excellent conformity mechanism. I do not agree.
I believe the great part about project templates is that you can use them to start any project as quickly as possible. On the other hand, when you use templates, it introduces a learning mode and establishes rigidity instead of clarity. When templates are used blindly, without discernment, project plans can break down and become meaningless.
Furthermore, templates are static. They cannot guarantee the proper use of best practices while executing the project and making decisions in real-time. And this is the real test: do your best practices and standards ensure project managers will have the proper data, at the right time, to make informed decisions. I think not.
Not to Template
Checklists are interesting. An experienced project manager will be able to selectively apply a list of standards to a particular project context. Junior project managers will have more difficulty with checklists. Having a mentor or the PMO sitting beside a new project manager would of course be the best solution, but not very practical.
A PMO’s challenge is to ensure conformity to corporate standards. What we require is a conduit between these standards and the project manager. This conduit has to help the project manager be better at his/her job by using standards while providing flexibility in his planning.
Patrick d’Astous is chief scientist at Smartbox Software in Montreal. Smartbox commercializes Project Scheduling Smart Assistant, a Microsoft Project add-on that provides contextual advice to the project manager based on his actual project plan’s strength based on common PM best practices and standards.
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