Today, enterprises depend on business-critical projects to remain competitive in this complex business landscape. Project practitioners across the globe know the inherent benefits that project management best practices offer to an organization. Overall project management helps enterprises deliver more with less.
But, how do you bring this to the senior management’s notice in your organization? It is an arduous task for many project managers to convince people mainly due to the fact that the job role of a project management professional has not been around as long as the role of an accountant for that matter. Hence, as a project manager, you have to take time to elevate the status of project management in your enterprise by talking about its benefits at regular intervals.
How to Promote Project Management?
Project management needs to be promoted in the same way how you would promote yourself in an organization. Naysayers might deny the fact, but people who promote themselves are the ones who land that plush corner office. There is some percentage of truth to it, as managers fail to recognize their top performers if they keep their heads down and just get on with their day-to-day job activities. As a project practitioner, you know the advantages that project management yields but elevating the profile of the same with help you to build a great reputation throughout the organization.
5 Ways to Elevate Project Management Profile in Your Enterprise
1. Let go of Project Management Jargon to begin with:
“Do have a look at the Gantt to check on the schedule, and I will mail you later about Epics and Versions that have been completed along with the team’s Velocity”
If you start on this note with your senior stakeholders, surely you will make them run away from the beginning. Even though you might be tempted to use it to just show off, resist the temptation, as you may scupper that all-important chance to showcase the benefits of project management. You may as well use this kind of jargon with your team, as they will understand it and it speeds up the entire process. But for your senior leadership, this may as well be a bouncer as per the cricketing analogy.
To begin with, it would be more helpful if you use the language that your senior managers understand so that they can clearly analyze the benefits that are there on offer.
2. Success Stories need to be Shared:
If you are just going about implementing project management practices and not sharing the success stories, then you are not doing any favor to raise the profile of project management in your organization. Senior stakeholders have their own vested interests in projects, making sure stakeholders get the results they require. Better give them access to project management software tools so that they can review dashboards and see how the project is performing. Make sure you provide data that is real-time and which is easily accessible.
3. Share Knowledge by Being Transparent:
Project management thrives on knowledge gained by your team members, stakeholders, project sponsors, and more. Gone are the days when people kept knowledge of key processes and tools to themselves to make one look knowledgeable. Today, it is all about sharing the knowledge by you and others to get to the best outcome for a project. Being transparent and having a robust communication channel will help to elevate the profile of project management in your organization.
Also Read the blog on Enterprise Project Management to ensure the right methods of promoting a project in an Enterprise!
4. Meet your Deadlines and Deliverables Every Time:
Be it any job profile for that matter, being able to meet critical deadlines and delivering on your promise is an integral part of working in an enterprise. The same logic applies to your projects as well. As a project manager, you do not have to set a separate process in this regard, but build credibility by delivering the deliverables every time. It starts from “I will be sending you the email” to “The project has been completed as per the client’s requirement”, you have to follow through every time to ensure the deadlines and deliverables are met.
By doing this, you are setting an example for your team members and other project stakeholders, that you mean business by delivering on your promise and you do not expect anything less from them. This ensures your team is better aligned to deliver on your promises and takes into account that project management is not a single person’s job but requires collaboration from like-minded people. This simple act of delivering on your promises and deadlines surely helps to elevate project management status in your organization.
5. Showcase the Results of Your Initial Efforts:
As a project manager, you know how much of the cost and time was saved, and how productivity soared by adhering to project management principles. You have to share the results of your initial efforts of project management by sharing the results to the management by backing it with tangible examples. You have to constantly share how project management is adding value to the processes, if not it feels like you are just bragging about project management without showing any value. Share how scheduling software is adding value by improving productivity, and showcase how you are able to predict a team’s velocity by looking at their burndown charts. There are many such instances where project management adds value, you have to show it to the right people in the organization so that key personnel begins to take project management seriously.
There are many ways to elevate the project management’s status in your enterprise, but if you are not able to communicate the right things with the right people, then your effort will go in vain. It all comes down to delivering better value by spending less. And because ‘Value’ means different things to different people. By knowing vested interests of senior executives, you can tailor-fit your project management practices to showcase the immense value and help raise project management status in your enterprise.
