Features
Explores the SPO’s potential to transform an enterprise by maximizing the potential of knowledge workers Provides working models for assessing competency, building inspired teams, and creating a work environment in which motivation thrives Includes research drawn from the management of scientists, engineers, and other technical yet creative personnel Examines people management trends such as virtual work, remote project management, outsourcing, and communities of practice Highlights tools for HR practice including role descriptions, project manager competency assessment questions, and maturity assessments for project-related HR management
Summary
Optimizing Human Capital with a Strategic Project Office explores the SPO’s potential to transform an enterprise by making the most of people within an organization. This volume provides an exhaustive review of topics such as the hiring, retention, measurement, training, and professional development of knowledge workers in project management. This book’s chapters summarize the latest thinking regarding these issues and offer a model of how the best aspirations of workers can become reality through the medium of the SPO.
The authors explore the best practices of project-savvy organizations and offer detailed information on proven models for assessing and developing competency, building inspired teams, and creating a working environment in which motivation thrives. The book includes a set of model role descriptions for staffing the project office--on a divisional or enterprise level--based on original research by the authors.
The book opens by focusing on the business case for reorganizing companies around the managing-by-projects model, the roles of executives in implementing project management change initiatives, and the nuts-and-bolts topics of project personnel management, such as competency, recruiting, and rewards. The final section reviews current developments and trends, identifying the “people management” issues that generate the greatest organizational changes. Appendices provide examples of tools for establishing project-friendly HR practices under the auspices of a Strategic Project Office.
Table of Contents
SECTION I: THE NEW PROJECT MANAGEMENT
The Strategic Project Office: A Catalyst for Organizational Change Failure: Wake-Up Call and Teacher
Integrating Strategy and Action: Managing the Project Portfolio
People on Projects: A New Look at Project Roles and Responsibilities Why Is This So Important?
The Executive Role
SECTION II: MANAGING PEOPLE AS THOUGH PROJECTS REALLY MATTER: BEST PRACTICES FOR CAPITALIZING ON PROJECT PERSONNEL The Right Stuff: Competency-Based Employment
What Is Competence?
Assessing Competence
Developing Competence
Why Project Managers Fail … and How to Help Them
Succeed Project Manager and Team Member Competencies
What Does a Project Manager Do?
The Emergence of the Project Planner Role
Other Roles and Their Areas of Competence
The Turnover Solution
Recruitment and Retention Practices for the Project-Based Company
Recruitment
Retention
Culture
Graceful Exits
The Care and Feeding of Project Management Personnel Career Pathing and Professional Development
Professional Development: Training, Coaching, and Mentoring
Performance Management on Projects: More Carrot, Less Stick What Is Wrong with Performance Management?
Best-Practice Performance Management
Aligning Individual and Organizational Performance
SECTION III: THE FUTURE — WHAT IS NEXT FOR PROJECTS AND PEOPLE? On the Horizon: New Organizational Themes and Structures New Themes in Project Management Staffing
Beyond the Team: Community of Practice
Outsourcing: Project Management Expertise as a Commodity
New Opportunities and Visibility for Project Managers
SECTION IV: APPENDICES
Sample Role Descriptions for Project Office Personnel and Other Project-Management-Related Positions
Excerpt from Project Management Maturity Model
Sample Career Path
Sample Questions from Knowledge Assessment Instrument
Sample Questions from Multi-Rater Project Manager Competency Evaluation Sample Questions from the Caliper Profile
PM Solutions Career Planning and Development Program Artifacts Value of Project Management Training Research Study Results
Project Manager Support Survey
Project Management Mentor’s Competency Scorecard
PM Coaching Guidelines: Assisting Project Managers and Their Projects Project Management Performance Appraisal Form
Service Level Agreement Tips for Better Outsourcing
Relationships