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A mid sized BioAnalysis Device company requested a training programme to get everyone up to speed with project management. They had a group of young scientists who were managing projects, most for the first time.
Senior management, needing to account to investors, needed all projects to be reporting status, accurately and consistently.
We provided the ‘training’ but took a considerable time within it to engage the scientists in review of their systems, and especially facilitate discussions about using their new cloud-based planning system – and the templates with it. The committed to go away and work up a common way forward for status updates.
OutcomeThe fact that the PM’s had designed the response themselves meant that they all bought in to it. Within days they had adopted a new format for representing project status in a form ideal for presentation to the senior team. Within two weeks they had used it for real, very successfully.
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A not-for-profit group had conflicting ideas on how they should select projects to enter clinical phases. There was no common view on project value, and many funding decisions were “champion led”. Consequently, there was confusion on how the priority of these incoming projects could be seen against those already in the portfolio
How we helpedPhetairos worked with the client to understand what critical aspects of a project were valued by the organisation and stakeholders. These were used to form the basis of a small number of criteria against which incoming, and existing, projects were judged. A model was developed that could not only score these projects against these criteria, but which could also explore project ranking sensitivities, “what if” analyses, and critical strengths and weaknesses on a common framework.
Outcome
The client obtained a broad understanding of project value and was able to align all stakeholders around this.
- Comparisons between projects - for example high risk high value projects vs low risk low value projects – were made transparent
- Project weaknesses that made a different to go/no go for funding were highlighted
- Incoming and existing projects were able to be compared, selected and prioritised using a common language, and buy-in for funding obtained
- They built an agreed annual process that reduced the “heat” in project selection
We were asked to look at the performance of Project Managers (PMs) of the customer account teams in a contract manufacturing company. After some talking it was clear that they had already received a lot of training. The problems were different - their roles were not clear; various functions of the company didn't come to team meetings; customer needs brought in by the sales guys were sometimes ignored - certainly delayed.
How we helpedWe convinced the company leadership team to define formally what expectations they had of the PMs AND the project system. Also we worked with he PMs to define an ideal customer team operation. We ran sessions across the whole company to describe how they should collaborate - and balance responding promptly to customer needs, with the daily workload of manufacturing and quality.
OutcomeProject-style customer account teams were transformed. A core of essential functional team members was identified for each account. clear expectations of the contribution required were understood. The PMs actually managed to set up meetings that lasted a maximum of one hour (!). Action points were saved into shared spreadsheets so that everyone could access them.
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