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8 Traits of Top Project Managers - Part 1
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Agile Project Management - Engaging Your Customer!
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9 Tips to Avoid Traps in Project Planning
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Why Projects Succeed - Executive Sponsorship
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On Customer Participation in Agile Projects
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A Project Charter for Lazy Teams
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The Power of Process: How Bad Project Management Kills Great Ideas
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The Benefits of Virtual Project Management
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Lessons Learned and the Project Council
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Project Management Across the Knowledge Domain
February 6, 2012
When Should You Hire a Program Or Project Manager?
August 4, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Miscellaneous
When Should You Hire a Program Or Project Manager?
By Corbin Links
A frequent question when it comes to buying Enterprise IT Consulting Services, is “do we really need the vendor’s project management services when we have our own in-house staff?”
This is a great question, and a crucial component of Strategic IT Program Planning. The short answer is: there is no one-size-fits-all-answer. To put the question in context, let us suppose for a moment that your organization is highly “projectized” or “matrixed.” The organization has a strong centralized PMO (Project Management Office), or perhaps it also has PMO’s organized along line of business (LOB) or departmental lines. Or, your organization may be the exact opposite: little or no centralization, distributed project management and a lot of ad hoc resources. In either case, the important thing to know is that the right decision is not solely a matter of how many project resources are involved in the project, or even your degree and availability of internal expertise. Nor is the decision absolute. In some cases for example, it may make sense to engage the vendor’s project resources during certain phases of your Strategic IT Program, and disengage in other cases.
Engaging the vendor’s project manager may be beneficial or in the following cases:
- Internal project managers are over-allocated to current projects.
- Your organization has no existing enterprise-scale Strategic IT expertise.
- The vendor is adding 3 or more engineers/architects/developers to the project.
- Vendor engineers will not be tightly embedded with internal staff and may be working remotely.
- Vendor has complex time, budgeting and reporting requirements.
- Terms of your vendor SLA require it.
- When multiple vendors are engaged in complex deployment scenarios, with each owning a piece of the program.
- When technically complex deliverables are required with very tight timelines.
- When multiple concurrent deliverables are required by multiple vendor and internal teams.
- To help vet Internal project or program plans.
- When maintaining program continuity during internal resource shuffles or key resource losses.
Vendor project managers may be redundant or less beneficial in the following situations:
- When engaged solely in ongoing maintenance contracts.
- For portions of your program or project that are strictly internal, such as planning, determining compliance or regional requirements.
- When two or less vendor engineers are deployed on your site.
- When internal project plans are tightly scoped, vetted, and agreed with vendor technical staff.
- When vendor PM overhead is cost prohibitive.
- When there are significant difference in project tools and document formats.
- When significant internal PM expertise exists and is available for your current Strategic IT project.
When in doubt, it is best to err on the side of safety, especially when a Strategic IT investment is substantial. Should you decide to test the waters with vendor PM resources, follow this checklist:
- Insist on an iron-clad Scope of Work (SOW) document.
- Establish clear PM beginning, ending, and review dates prior to implementation.
- Require firm delineation of what the vendor PM would do, relative to the vendor’s engagement/service manager.
NOTE: Many vendor Project Management or “PM” functions may already be performed by the vendor’s engagement manager.
Conclusion
Large-scale Strategic IT Programs such as Identity Access Management (IAM), ERP, Enterprise Messaging, Data Center Consolidation and the like require extensive teams and tight program management. When engaging vendor teams to assist with your planning and implementation, it is crucial to ensure that the right level of management and reporting is in place to cover all team members. When working with a mix of your internal staff and external vendors, be sure to evaluate your needs carefully, and when in doubt, bring in vendor project management on a trial basis to keep your project or program running smoothly.
Corbin Links is known in professional circles as “Your Guide to Thinking BIG in Business IT Consulting.” He is the author of three books “IAM Success Tips: Volume I,” “IAM Success Tips: Volume II,” and “IAM Success Tips: Volume III.” Corbin is currently writing his fourth book, which is due for release in October 2010.
Take your Business IT Consulting practice to the next level! CorbinLinks.com
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Coming from the perspective of a software vendor I have to say that having some level of project management resources from the vendor is critical. I have seen situations where customers think that software is just ‘installed’ and expect the consultant to do only that and then all the other critical project components are forgotten: procurement of hardware, requirements gathering, planning, resource assignment, deployment, testing, training, business process integration, and final hand-off. In the end, the customer loses if they do not invest in the PM resources (both internal and on the vendor side). I believe both are important and provide the best chance of success.