All organizations have strategic visions and goals. Whether they are to meet a business need or provide a community service, successful accomplishment of new visions and goals advance organizations to new levels. Without accurate forecast of how much the endeavor is going to cost, how long it will take, and what risks are involved, organizations are operating in the dark on what it takes to bring their initiatives to reality. Project management can provide a structured approach in executing the vision by understanding the cost, time, and risks involved in these undertakings.
Developing a structured process to execute an organization’s vision into a reality requires a systematic approach to achieve its desired results. Research data, from a literature review, reveals that the failure rate for organizational change initiatives are as high as 75% in meeting their targeted goals (Standish Group, 2003). The reasons for failure vary from poor strategic planning, the inability to properly plan, and failure to manage the execution of the project (Standish Group). An entrepreneurial opportunity exists for the development of a project management model to be used to facilitate organizational change initiatives.
Over seven years ago, Diana and I began developing a project management model to assist organizations in managing their organizational change initiatives. The planning portion of the model was originally built around four questions:
» What do we need to do? (Scope)
» How long will it take? (Schedule)
» What are the risks? (Risk)
» How much it is going to cost? (Cost)
We have continued upgrading our project management model based on knowledge we are acquiring from business professionals that attend our project management classes and interviews with organizational leaders. By “listening to the voice of the customer,” we have captured their suggestions and other information to add a fifth question to our model.
» How are we going to do this? (Approach)
That one question has caused us to dramatically rethink our project management model. Over the next couple of months, we will begin posting the basis of our new project management model. We will give you a “behind-the-scenes” look of what we call, TPM—A Tailored Approach to Project Management.
We are pretty excited about it.
Steve & Diana
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Reference:
Standish Group. (2003). Latest Standish Group CHAOS Report shows project success rates have improved by 50%. Retrieved April 27, 2005, from Business Source Premier
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