January 24, 2024 • 23 mins
Unlock the competitive edge your organization has been missing with a masterclass on the strategic essence of project management. As your host, Munir Ajam, I bring nearly four decades of experience to the table, unraveling the intricacies of constructing a robust and adaptable Organizational Project Management (OPM) system. This episode is a deep dive into the alchemy of people, processes, and technology, and how this trio can serve as your company's bedrock for innovation and efficiency.
Prepare to explore the significance of integrating processes with human competencies and the role of technology as a powerful enabler. I shed light on the importance of flexibility within project management frameworks, the establishment of competency baselines, and how professional development programs can elevate your team's prowess. We'll also delve into the potential of internal certification programs customized to your organization's unique needs. Join the conversation and contribute to the evolution of project management excellence, as we dissect the transformation that a solid OPM system can bring to your organizational success.
Explore more project management insights at www.urukpm.com
Connect with Uruk Project Management:
Uruk PM | Blog
Uruk Project Management | LinkedIn
Uruk PM | Twitter
Uruk PM | Facebook
Uruk PM | Instagram
Uruk PM | Youtube
#UrukPM #ProjectManagement #Podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Good day, howdy, and welcome to the 4pm podcast.
My name is Munir Ajam.
My core passion is projectmanagement in community.
I come to you with at leastclose to 35 years of experience.
My eagerness to share knowledgeand to mentor and coach groups
help organizations transform theway they manage project to a
(00:30):
higher level.
4pm's tent in this case isshortened for us for what we
call value, which means project,program, product and portfolios
.
So a lot of our topics will bearound these 4pm.
Let's get going.
Great day and welcome toepisode 4 of the 4pm podcast.
(00:59):
Today's topic about thefoundation of transformation,
which is essentially focusing onorganizational project
management.
If we are going to transformhow we manage project and
organization, we must start withthe system, the infrastructure,
which means the organizationalproject management system, the
policies, the guidelines, theprocedures, the methodology that
(01:23):
we need to help us manageproject and if we want to expand
the spectrum, managing project,program, product and the entire
portfolio.
As a refresher, in episode 2 wetalked about transforming
project management as a generaltopic.
(01:43):
In episode 3, we stressed theneed to understand that our
domain and respect our diversitybefore we start a
transformation journey.
Our approach to thistransformation effort involves
two independent aspects.
The first is organizationalproject management, which is the
foundation of transformationand that's today's topic, and
(02:07):
the second is a value deliverymethodological process, which we
will cover in the next episode.
So today we will be focusing onorganizational project
management and what does it taketo build an effective and
sustainable organizationalproject management system?
And when we say sustainable OPMsystem, that means it must
(02:28):
depend on three pillars ofpeople, meaning competence,
processes, meaning methods andtechnology.
So people, processes andtechnology as three pillars of a
sustainable organizationalproject management system.
So as we start, we want toreflect on in this first episode
(02:53):
okay, on what are we going tocover today?
We will divide the episode, asusual, in multiple parts, and
part one we will talk weintroduce the organizational
project management and projectmanagement system.
In part two we talk about theprocesses pillar.
In part three we will talkabout the people pillar and then
(03:14):
we will shift to part fourwhere we talk about the
technology pillar and basicallywe will start wrapping up the
episode.
So let's go through part one.
The first aspect ofunderstanding, recognizing and
(03:34):
accepting the project managementis strategically important and
can be a competitive advantage,and also if we can reach the
level of where projectmanagement is truly a
competitive advantage.
That means project managementcan become indispensable for
(03:54):
business results.
Unfortunately, we have seen alot of pain in the area of
project management, to the pointwhere many organizations do not
accept or recognize or respectproject management enough.
And part of that, as wediscussed in earlier episode, is
possibly our fault.
(04:15):
We have not been able todeliver excellence to executive
and organization so in a way wecould have gotten ourselves onto
what I like to call the cycleof dooms.
You know we don't perform well,executive will trust us less.
You know we start to performingeven worse and worse, or maybe
we stay the same.
We don't see any improvement asa result.
(04:36):
Executive are not going to seethe value.
We need to reverse that and tobe able to reverse and to get to
the point where organizationsand executive accept, respect
and recognize project managementto become an indispensable for
business results.
That means they need to seeit's becoming a competitive
advantage.
(04:57):
That means they are able toproduce and deliver product and
deliver and complete theirproject faster, better, cheaper
than their competitor.
How can we do that?
As we mentioned, the foundationis to build a robust,
sustainable organizationalproject management system that
sits on these three pillars thatwe discuss processes, people
(05:21):
and technology.
So what do we mean by theprocess pillar or the processes
pillar?
In this case we're using theword processes generically.
It could be anything frompolicies, which are the things
that are part of the governance,to method, to procedures, to
(05:43):
guideline that we need as anorganization to use to manage
project, program, product andportfolios.
We need to have a consistency,a standardization in these areas
.
Now, when we talk aboutconsistency and standardization,
we do not mean set in stone onesize fits all.
Project management is alwaysadaptive.
(06:06):
We repeat that probably inevery episode.
Project management is highlyadaptive.
That means we must adapt to theneed of the organization, the
need of the project.
However, we don't always startfrom scratch.
We must start from a foundationIncluding the processes, the
(06:27):
standard processes, then thestyle, the culture, the way we
manage project.
All of these might be highlydependent on the individuals
involved.
So what does it mean?
To have the process in place,and sometimes people like to
debate which come first, whichis the most important, the
process pillar or the peoplepillar?
Well, obviously, processes.
(06:48):
You know, until we have AI takeover, you know, someday in the
distant future, processes aredeveloped and designed and
established by people.
So we need to have some kind ofa processes or at least a set
of people whether they areinternal from the organization
or external to build the process.
So we started with the process.
(07:09):
So in this case, what we aretalking about is that we need to
have the systematic approachfor standardization.
Now, one big area of processesis what we like to call method,
or methodology.
Right, when we have anorganization, they want to
manage project or program, whatwould be the methodology that we
(07:29):
have to follow?
What kind of lifecycle, whatkind of decision point, what
kind of criteria do we have formaking decision or accepting
project or rejecting project?
Or, if a project is in trouble,what do we do to terminate the
project?
There's a lot of processes hereas part of the governance and
and methodologies that we needto establish an organization.
(07:51):
We will have many topics in thefuture in this episode where we
will talk about differentaspect, for today we just want
to introduce that high area.
One warning before I close thispart on the process is we must
be careful with rigidity.
Rigidity is anti-agile, it'sfragile, right?
So basically, if you put asystem where it is very rigid,
(08:14):
what you're going to end up withsooner or later is going to
break.
Now, what do we mean by rigid?
Again, set in stone, guideline,dictatorship style, autocratic
style.
You must do one, two, three,four, regardless, right, when we
get those kind of situations,sooner or later project manager
are going to revolt or they aregoing to start bypassing or
violating or ignoring theseprocesses in place.
(08:36):
So we have to accept the ideaof continuous improvement.
Again, that might be a separatetopic by itself, so let's leave
it here for now.
So to close, we must build anagile system that encourage
innovation, continuousimprovement.
That is the only way to achievea higher level of
(08:57):
organizational maturity, whichwill produce the better result
and maximizing shareholder value.
It's time to shift to the secondpillar, which is the people
pillar, as we mentioned.
Obviously, processes are builtby people, but now what we are
(09:19):
saying here?
We need to have the people whoare going to execute, manage and
handle these project, program,product and portfolios.
And when we talk about people,we need to start maybe with a
two definition and becausesometime we use them and we
confuse them, which is thedifference between knowledge and
(09:42):
competence.
Unfortunately, one of theproblem here is with many
certification out there thatthey claim to be competency
based exam a reality.
They are knowledge exam.
You are only being tested tomake sure that you have an
understanding or a knowledge ofa certain guide, a Pumbak guide,
(10:03):
a Prince II guide, somethinglike that.
So a knowledge based exam isdemonstrating that if you pass,
if you secure one of thosecertification, that mean you
have demonstrated that you havethe knowledge.
That doesn't indicate that youhave the competence.
Now what's the difference?
Competence, by definition, thatmean you have acquired the
(10:26):
knowledge.
So it starts with knowledge.
But now you are also candemonstrate, you can prove that
you can apply that knowledge andachieve consistent result.
You know this definition I justshared may not be a textbook
definition.
This is my definition, whichI'm sure align with the global
(10:47):
definition, right?
So knowledge is I knowsomething.
Competent is I mean I amcompetent to do something.
That mean I can do it and I cando it well.
So we need to start with thatitem.
If organization invests intogeneric certification or generic
training, that's not bad.
(11:08):
That's a good idea.
However, when you go intogeneric certification or generic
training, the problem is youare teaching your people a
specific language, right?
However, the case is, or thequestion would become are your
system, the processes that youhave in place, aligned with that
(11:32):
knowledge that your team isacquiring?
If it doesn't align, then againyou just taught your people
another language but they cannotspeak it at work.
So we have to be careful andintegrate.
This is why we don't like whocome first, people or process.
To us they are highlyintegrated because an idea to
have competent people in highlymature organization, we must
(11:58):
have those people competent inthe processes that have been
established for thatorganization.
So this always we adviseexecutive and organization first
build your process.
If you have internal people tohelp you build it, great.
If not, maybe you can work withyour internal people on some
(12:19):
external.
And if you don't have internalpeople at all, then you have no
choice to depend except onexternal.
But the more you can build itwith your internal resources,
the best.
And then you must move to thenext level, which is train and
develop your people throughdifferent type of development
approach on the job, off the job, competency based, establish a
(12:40):
competency baseline so yourpeople are competent in the
processes that you haveestablished for your
organization.
So to reinforce this point, ifyou don't have processes and
many organization today that'sone of the gap we see in
(13:03):
practice is often enough.
Depend on people, people.
They send people to get genericcertification.
They become certified.
However, every project manager,every team member have a
different knowledge background,different, different knowledge
foundation, different background, different interests, different
experiences.
So everybody manager projecttheir own way.
Some of them might be doing agreat job.
(13:24):
Some people might be doing amediocre job.
If you have a lot of accidentalproject manager, maybe you have
a lot of risk involved.
So, as a result, if you have alot of people working on project
but you don't have the process,you could still deliver some
successful project, no questionabout it.
However, as an organization,are you able to deliver
(13:44):
consistency?
That's one question.
Second, are you able to improveand elevate your performance?
These are the question.
Without process, people cannotdo it.
So it's very important that wehave to depend on building that
process, and I'm repeating,probably to re-emphasize some of
these points.
(14:06):
So, once we establish a process,as we said, we need to
establish a professionaldevelopment program.
How do we do that?
Well, first, maybe you need toset, establish your competency
baseline.
What would be for differentroles, whether you are dealing
with project manager or programmanager, product manager or
sponsor team member, technicalteam member or project
(14:27):
management team member,executive or board of director.
Even so, you will have toestablish some kind of a
competency guidelines.
It's okay for the differentroles and different levels
within the organization.
What do we expect those rolesto know and to be competent in?
And we can establish some kindof a competency guideline.
(14:48):
There are some models out there,however, you can establish.
If you are large enoughorganization, you can also
establish your own.
So that is would be one level,because at least now you have
defined a baseline to developyour people on that.
Now, how do we develop thepeople?
Of course, there could be a lotof training, ideally in line
with those processes you'rebuilt.
(15:09):
They could be on the jobmonitoring.
They could be some kind of acoaching program, a mentoring
program, a shadowing program.
Notice I mentioned these asdifferent things and because
each one of them is a little bitdifferent.
So depend on the nature of theorganization and the culture of
the organization.
You might have something thatcombine all of these or you
(15:31):
could have one or the other.
So a mentoring program is veryimportant, a shadowing program
could be essential, of course,coaching and the training and
monitoring was this process.
Now, if you are in a largeorganization, who knows, maybe
you can establish your owninternal certification program.
(15:54):
We have a model we'll be happyto share with you and then to
build your own certificationmodel.
Now again, here we're not tryingto critique what exists in the
market.
What exists in the market isgood as generic certification,
whether it's French 2 or PMP orC-APM or IPMA, level D or IPMA,
maybe even level C.
However, they are not allcertification are equal.
(16:17):
Some of them are better thanother.
Some of them most of them areknowledge base, some of them are
competency base.
But even when those arecompetency base, they are based
on general processes, not yourown internal processes, as you
heard me say, which come first.
(16:39):
People of process.
They come together.
They are really essential to us.
Out of the three pillar, theseare the most important pillar to
establish, which lead us to thelast part, which is technology
pillar.
Now, technology is becomingmore and more important in all
type of organization, which isimportant, however.
(17:00):
However, technology is there tohelp us be more efficient.
Today we have, obviously, thebuzzword is AI.
Everybody talks about AI.
However, when you go to AI,some of the learning management
tool and you try to ask questionand then people think you know,
obviously they're notnecessarily pure AI, but
(17:21):
basically, when you look for,you start to look for
information, you can get a lotof garbage.
There are a lot of good stuffout there and a lot of garbage
out there.
So, technology, if it is adouble-edged sword, if it gonna
trust what come out oftechnology blindly, we might be
cutting ourselves.
(17:41):
That's why we must have theprocesses in place, we must have
the competent people, and whenwe have those two pillars
satisfied, then technologybecoming an enabler, it become a
way of helping us become muchmore efficient, much more
effective.
We are able to do more withless.
(18:01):
And when it come to technology,obviously there are tools out
there and there are systems andthere are what we call solution
which might be more definitelymuch more advanced than a tool.
With this I conclude the maintopic for today.
It's happening that this is oneof our shortest so far episode,
(18:24):
but that's the idea we'retrying to produce this episode
to be about 20 minutes plus orminus and maybe with a maximum
of 30 minutes.
So, in order, before I closethis, I want to, if you allow me
, this is to take a minute ofmarketing, as we share this
(18:48):
knowledge.
We know many organizations havenot built their organization
project management system.
You will be surprised.
Even large organizations havenot built it.
So obviously you know small,medium, if any small medium
organization have built somesystem.
I think that would be admirable.
But what we know and fromdifferent regions of the world
(19:11):
we've worked in multiplecountries and multiple regions
is that many small to mediumorganizations do not have
formalized processes in place,ie organization project
management.
But unfortunately what we foundout is a lot of large
organizations also don't have itand when some organization
might have something, itprobably all need to be improved
(19:32):
and or maybe it's not digitized.
However, we must say we haveseen a lot of organization with
great system in place and theyproduce great result and they
are lead, they are the leader intheir industries, right.
So that demonstrates thateffective project management,
competent project management inorganization was higher level of
(19:54):
project management, maturity,achieve success.
So the minute of marketing isabout.
We know that the condition inthe market that you know we
don't have enough organizationwas enough.
You know built and system inplace.
So what have we done as acompany?
We built it.
We built the ROOP platform,which is a digital solution to
(20:20):
allow organization to manageproject, program, their product
delivery and portfolios.
We built it as, not as a tool,we built it as a comprehensive
solution, versatile solution.
Now, what does this word mean?
Comprehensive and versatile?
That mean it's adaptive andscalable to different kind of
(20:41):
industries, sector, domain,vertical, type of project, size
of project, complexity ofproject.
So it's highly adaptive andscalable in that regard.
In addition, it also includesmost of the processes, the
guideline, the governancestructure of how to manage
project, all of that built intothe system.
(21:04):
So if you, as an organization,don't have a system and you want
to build a system, it mighttake you months, if not a year
or more, and it might cost youhundreds of thousand dollars, if
not a million dollar or more.
With the ROOP platform, you canstart to use it almost
(21:24):
immediately.
We're talking about almostimmediately.
That mean within hour, days orweek, depending on how much
complexity you have and the wayyou want to manage project, and
with minimal investment.
So forgive us to introduce thisminute of marketing and in an
educational podcast.
(21:48):
With this we come to closingthis podcast.
We talked about transformingproject management and that has
two aspects.
One of those aspects is theorganizational project
management as a foundation fortransformation, which was the
topic for today.
We introduced the topic of OPMand what is an OPM system.
(22:09):
We talked about the pillar thatgoes into a sustainable OPM
system, such as the people, theprocesses and technology, and
with this, basically, we justwant to remind you that this
episode is part of what we callthe outreach trio, which means
(22:33):
you can also probably seerelated videos on our YouTube
channels or related blogs on ourblog site, and you can access
all of those from our websiteknowledge tab.
As before we close, we wouldlove for you to reflect on this
episode and, when we post it onsocial media, share with us your
(22:54):
view.
Where do you might have adifferent opinion?
Where do you might disagree oragree?
It would be great to hear youropinion so we can create an
exchange and help us improvefuture episodes.
The only thing left is to wishyou success today, tomorrow and
(23:16):
always.
Good day, howdy, and welcome to the 4pm podcast.
My name is Munir Ajam.
My core passion is projectmanagement in community.
I come to you with at leastclose to 35 years of experience.
My eagerness to share knowledgeand to mentor and coach groups
help organizations transform theway they manage project to a
(00:30):
higher level.
4pm's tent in this case isshortened for us for what we
call value, which means project,program, product and portfolios
.
So a lot of our topics will bearound these 4pm.
Let's get going.
Great day and welcome toepisode 4 of the 4pm podcast.
(00:59):
Today's topic about thefoundation of transformation,
which is essentially focusing onorganizational project
management.
If we are going to transformhow we manage project and
organization, we must start withthe system, the infrastructure,
which means the organizationalproject management system, the
policies, the guidelines, theprocedures, the methodology that
(01:23):
we need to help us manageproject and if we want to expand
the spectrum, managing project,program, product and the entire
portfolio.
As a refresher, in episode 2 wetalked about transforming
project management as a generaltopic.
(01:43):
In episode 3, we stressed theneed to understand that our
domain and respect our diversitybefore we start a
transformation journey.
Our approach to thistransformation effort involves
two independent aspects.
The first is organizationalproject management, which is the
foundation of transformationand that's today's topic, and
(02:07):
the second is a value deliverymethodological process, which we
will cover in the next episode.
So today we will be focusing onorganizational project
management and what does it taketo build an effective and
sustainable organizationalproject management system?
And when we say sustainable OPMsystem, that means it must
(02:28):
depend on three pillars ofpeople, meaning competence,
processes, meaning methods andtechnology.
So people, processes andtechnology as three pillars of a
sustainable organizationalproject management system.
So as we start, we want toreflect on in this first episode
(02:53):
okay, on what are we going tocover today?
We will divide the episode, asusual, in multiple parts, and
part one we will talk weintroduce the organizational
project management and projectmanagement system.
In part two we talk about theprocesses pillar.
In part three we will talkabout the people pillar and then
(03:14):
we will shift to part fourwhere we talk about the
technology pillar and basicallywe will start wrapping up the
episode.
So let's go through part one.
The first aspect ofunderstanding, recognizing and
(03:34):
accepting the project managementis strategically important and
can be a competitive advantage,and also if we can reach the
level of where projectmanagement is truly a
competitive advantage.
That means project managementcan become indispensable for
(03:54):
business results.
Unfortunately, we have seen alot of pain in the area of
project management, to the pointwhere many organizations do not
accept or recognize or respectproject management enough.
And part of that, as wediscussed in earlier episode, is
possibly our fault.
(04:15):
We have not been able todeliver excellence to executive
and organization so in a way wecould have gotten ourselves onto
what I like to call the cycleof dooms.
You know we don't perform well,executive will trust us less.
You know we start to performingeven worse and worse, or maybe
we stay the same.
We don't see any improvement asa result.
(04:36):
Executive are not going to seethe value.
We need to reverse that and tobe able to reverse and to get to
the point where organizationsand executive accept, respect
and recognize project managementto become an indispensable for
business results.
That means they need to seeit's becoming a competitive
advantage.
(04:57):
That means they are able toproduce and deliver product and
deliver and complete theirproject faster, better, cheaper
than their competitor.
How can we do that?
As we mentioned, the foundationis to build a robust,
sustainable organizationalproject management system that
sits on these three pillars thatwe discuss processes, people
(05:21):
and technology.
So what do we mean by theprocess pillar or the processes
pillar?
In this case we're using theword processes generically.
It could be anything frompolicies, which are the things
that are part of the governance,to method, to procedures, to
(05:43):
guideline that we need as anorganization to use to manage
project, program, product andportfolios.
We need to have a consistency,a standardization in these areas
.
Now, when we talk aboutconsistency and standardization,
we do not mean set in stone onesize fits all.
Project management is alwaysadaptive.
(06:06):
We repeat that probably inevery episode.
Project management is highlyadaptive.
That means we must adapt to theneed of the organization, the
need of the project.
However, we don't always startfrom scratch.
We must start from a foundationIncluding the processes, the
(06:27):
standard processes, then thestyle, the culture, the way we
manage project.
All of these might be highlydependent on the individuals
involved.
So what does it mean?
To have the process in place,and sometimes people like to
debate which come first, whichis the most important, the
process pillar or the peoplepillar?
Well, obviously, processes.
(06:48):
You know, until we have AI takeover, you know, someday in the
distant future, processes aredeveloped and designed and
established by people.
So we need to have some kind ofa processes or at least a set
of people whether they areinternal from the organization
or external to build the process.
So we started with the process.
(07:09):
So in this case, what we aretalking about is that we need to
have the systematic approachfor standardization.
Now, one big area of processesis what we like to call method,
or methodology.
Right, when we have anorganization, they want to
manage project or program, whatwould be the methodology that we
(07:29):
have to follow?
What kind of lifecycle, whatkind of decision point, what
kind of criteria do we have formaking decision or accepting
project or rejecting project?
Or, if a project is in trouble,what do we do to terminate the
project?
There's a lot of processes hereas part of the governance and
and methodologies that we needto establish an organization.
(07:51):
We will have many topics in thefuture in this episode where we
will talk about differentaspect, for today we just want
to introduce that high area.
One warning before I close thispart on the process is we must
be careful with rigidity.
Rigidity is anti-agile, it'sfragile, right?
So basically, if you put asystem where it is very rigid,
(08:14):
what you're going to end up withsooner or later is going to
break.
Now, what do we mean by rigid?
Again, set in stone, guideline,dictatorship style, autocratic
style.
You must do one, two, three,four, regardless, right, when we
get those kind of situations,sooner or later project manager
are going to revolt or they aregoing to start bypassing or
violating or ignoring theseprocesses in place.
(08:36):
So we have to accept the ideaof continuous improvement.
Again, that might be a separatetopic by itself, so let's leave
it here for now.
So to close, we must build anagile system that encourage
innovation, continuousimprovement.
That is the only way to achievea higher level of
(08:57):
organizational maturity, whichwill produce the better result
and maximizing shareholder value.
It's time to shift to the secondpillar, which is the people
pillar, as we mentioned.
Obviously, processes are builtby people, but now what we are
(09:19):
saying here?
We need to have the people whoare going to execute, manage and
handle these project, program,product and portfolios.
And when we talk about people,we need to start maybe with a
two definition and becausesometime we use them and we
confuse them, which is thedifference between knowledge and
(09:42):
competence.
Unfortunately, one of theproblem here is with many
certification out there thatthey claim to be competency
based exam a reality.
They are knowledge exam.
You are only being tested tomake sure that you have an
understanding or a knowledge ofa certain guide, a Pumbak guide,
(10:03):
a Prince II guide, somethinglike that.
So a knowledge based exam isdemonstrating that if you pass,
if you secure one of thosecertification, that mean you
have demonstrated that you havethe knowledge.
That doesn't indicate that youhave the competence.
Now what's the difference?
Competence, by definition, thatmean you have acquired the
(10:26):
knowledge.
So it starts with knowledge.
But now you are also candemonstrate, you can prove that
you can apply that knowledge andachieve consistent result.
You know this definition I justshared may not be a textbook
definition.
This is my definition, whichI'm sure align with the global
(10:47):
definition, right?
So knowledge is I knowsomething.
Competent is I mean I amcompetent to do something.
That mean I can do it and I cando it well.
So we need to start with thatitem.
If organization invests intogeneric certification or generic
training, that's not bad.
(11:08):
That's a good idea.
However, when you go intogeneric certification or generic
training, the problem is youare teaching your people a
specific language, right?
However, the case is, or thequestion would become are your
system, the processes that youhave in place, aligned with that
(11:32):
knowledge that your team isacquiring?
If it doesn't align, then againyou just taught your people
another language but they cannotspeak it at work.
So we have to be careful andintegrate.
This is why we don't like whocome first, people or process.
To us they are highlyintegrated because an idea to
have competent people in highlymature organization, we must
(11:58):
have those people competent inthe processes that have been
established for thatorganization.
So this always we adviseexecutive and organization first
build your process.
If you have internal people tohelp you build it, great.
If not, maybe you can work withyour internal people on some
(12:19):
external.
And if you don't have internalpeople at all, then you have no
choice to depend except onexternal.
But the more you can build itwith your internal resources,
the best.
And then you must move to thenext level, which is train and
develop your people throughdifferent type of development
approach on the job, off the job, competency based, establish a
(12:40):
competency baseline so yourpeople are competent in the
processes that you haveestablished for your
organization.
So to reinforce this point, ifyou don't have processes and
many organization today that'sone of the gap we see in
(13:03):
practice is often enough.
Depend on people, people.
They send people to get genericcertification.
They become certified.
However, every project manager,every team member have a
different knowledge background,different, different knowledge
foundation, different background, different interests, different
experiences.
So everybody manager projecttheir own way.
Some of them might be doing agreat job.
(13:24):
Some people might be doing amediocre job.
If you have a lot of accidentalproject manager, maybe you have
a lot of risk involved.
So, as a result, if you have alot of people working on project
but you don't have the process,you could still deliver some
successful project, no questionabout it.
However, as an organization,are you able to deliver
(13:44):
consistency?
That's one question.
Second, are you able to improveand elevate your performance?
These are the question.
Without process, people cannotdo it.
So it's very important that wehave to depend on building that
process, and I'm repeating,probably to re-emphasize some of
these points.
(14:06):
So, once we establish a process,as we said, we need to
establish a professionaldevelopment program.
How do we do that?
Well, first, maybe you need toset, establish your competency
baseline.
What would be for differentroles, whether you are dealing
with project manager or programmanager, product manager or
sponsor team member, technicalteam member or project
(14:27):
management team member,executive or board of director.
Even so, you will have toestablish some kind of a
competency guidelines.
It's okay for the differentroles and different levels
within the organization.
What do we expect those rolesto know and to be competent in?
And we can establish some kindof a competency guideline.
(14:48):
There are some models out there,however, you can establish.
If you are large enoughorganization, you can also
establish your own.
So that is would be one level,because at least now you have
defined a baseline to developyour people on that.
Now, how do we develop thepeople?
Of course, there could be a lotof training, ideally in line
with those processes you'rebuilt.
(15:09):
They could be on the jobmonitoring.
They could be some kind of acoaching program, a mentoring
program, a shadowing program.
Notice I mentioned these asdifferent things and because
each one of them is a little bitdifferent.
So depend on the nature of theorganization and the culture of
the organization.
You might have something thatcombine all of these or you
(15:31):
could have one or the other.
So a mentoring program is veryimportant, a shadowing program
could be essential, of course,coaching and the training and
monitoring was this process.
Now, if you are in a largeorganization, who knows, maybe
you can establish your owninternal certification program.
(15:54):
We have a model we'll be happyto share with you and then to
build your own certificationmodel.
Now again, here we're not tryingto critique what exists in the
market.
What exists in the market isgood as generic certification,
whether it's French 2 or PMP orC-APM or IPMA, level D or IPMA,
maybe even level C.
However, they are not allcertification are equal.
(16:17):
Some of them are better thanother.
Some of them most of them areknowledge base, some of them are
competency base.
But even when those arecompetency base, they are based
on general processes, not yourown internal processes, as you
heard me say, which come first.
(16:39):
People of process.
They come together.
They are really essential to us.
Out of the three pillar, theseare the most important pillar to
establish, which lead us to thelast part, which is technology
pillar.
Now, technology is becomingmore and more important in all
type of organization, which isimportant, however.
(17:00):
However, technology is there tohelp us be more efficient.
Today we have, obviously, thebuzzword is AI.
Everybody talks about AI.
However, when you go to AI,some of the learning management
tool and you try to ask questionand then people think you know,
obviously they're notnecessarily pure AI, but
(17:21):
basically, when you look for,you start to look for
information, you can get a lotof garbage.
There are a lot of good stuffout there and a lot of garbage
out there.
So, technology, if it is adouble-edged sword, if it gonna
trust what come out oftechnology blindly, we might be
cutting ourselves.
(17:41):
That's why we must have theprocesses in place, we must have
the competent people, and whenwe have those two pillars
satisfied, then technologybecoming an enabler, it become a
way of helping us become muchmore efficient, much more
effective.
We are able to do more withless.
(18:01):
And when it come to technology,obviously there are tools out
there and there are systems andthere are what we call solution
which might be more definitelymuch more advanced than a tool.
With this I conclude the maintopic for today.
It's happening that this is oneof our shortest so far episode,
(18:24):
but that's the idea we'retrying to produce this episode
to be about 20 minutes plus orminus and maybe with a maximum
of 30 minutes.
So, in order, before I closethis, I want to, if you allow me
, this is to take a minute ofmarketing, as we share this
(18:48):
knowledge.
We know many organizations havenot built their organization
project management system.
You will be surprised.
Even large organizations havenot built it.
So obviously you know small,medium, if any small medium
organization have built somesystem.
I think that would be admirable.
But what we know and fromdifferent regions of the world
(19:11):
we've worked in multiplecountries and multiple regions
is that many small to mediumorganizations do not have
formalized processes in place,ie organization project
management.
But unfortunately what we foundout is a lot of large
organizations also don't have itand when some organization
might have something, itprobably all need to be improved
(19:32):
and or maybe it's not digitized.
However, we must say we haveseen a lot of organization with
great system in place and theyproduce great result and they
are lead, they are the leader intheir industries, right.
So that demonstrates thateffective project management,
competent project management inorganization was higher level of
(19:54):
project management, maturity,achieve success.
So the minute of marketing isabout.
We know that the condition inthe market that you know we
don't have enough organizationwas enough.
You know built and system inplace.
So what have we done as acompany?
We built it.
We built the ROOP platform,which is a digital solution to
(20:20):
allow organization to manageproject, program, their product
delivery and portfolios.
We built it as, not as a tool,we built it as a comprehensive
solution, versatile solution.
Now, what does this word mean?
Comprehensive and versatile?
That mean it's adaptive andscalable to different kind of
(20:41):
industries, sector, domain,vertical, type of project, size
of project, complexity ofproject.
So it's highly adaptive andscalable in that regard.
In addition, it also includesmost of the processes, the
guideline, the governancestructure of how to manage
project, all of that built intothe system.
(21:04):
So if you, as an organization,don't have a system and you want
to build a system, it mighttake you months, if not a year
or more, and it might cost youhundreds of thousand dollars, if
not a million dollar or more.
With the ROOP platform, you canstart to use it almost
(21:24):
immediately.
We're talking about almostimmediately.
That mean within hour, days orweek, depending on how much
complexity you have and the wayyou want to manage project, and
with minimal investment.
So forgive us to introduce thisminute of marketing and in an
educational podcast.
(21:48):
With this we come to closingthis podcast.
We talked about transformingproject management and that has
two aspects.
One of those aspects is theorganizational project
management as a foundation fortransformation, which was the
topic for today.
We introduced the topic of OPMand what is an OPM system.
(22:09):
We talked about the pillar thatgoes into a sustainable OPM
system, such as the people, theprocesses and technology, and
with this, basically, we justwant to remind you that this
episode is part of what we callthe outreach trio, which means
(22:33):
you can also probably seerelated videos on our YouTube
channels or related blogs on ourblog site, and you can access
all of those from our websiteknowledge tab.
As before we close, we wouldlove for you to reflect on this
episode and, when we post it onsocial media, share with us your
(22:54):
view.
Where do you might have adifferent opinion?
Where do you might disagree oragree?
It would be great to hear youropinion so we can create an
exchange and help us improvefuture episodes.
The only thing left is to wishyou success today, tomorrow and
(23:16):
always.
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides.  Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer  Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.