Guess what. It's not working for any of us.
I heard it over and over again: “Our plans just don’t work.”
Since we spend a good part of our lives at work, and we all want our lives to be good, we started envisioning how great life with projects could be for all of us. And making this vision a reality is what drives me every day.
Imagine if:
- Everyone in the company prioritizes customer value above everything else.
- Team members get credit and are appreciated for the insights they provide, not just the hours they put in. They feel that the projects they work on make a difference.
- Project managers get credit for delivering great projects, not reports. Being a PM is a reputable position, not simply a necessary stepping stone in one’s career. PMs can rely on the resources they were promised. And management trusts them to choose the best way forward for their projects.
- PMOs get credit for putting together a set of projects that brings the company forward, not for controlling budgets. They draw up an overall plan that can actually be achieved and are able to calmly react to changes in availabilities and priorities as they occur. They make sure PMs have everything they need to be successful. And they put senior management in a position to make decisions, with all relevant information at their fingertips.
- Senior management can focus on making the tough calls. And they can fast track issues while knowing exactly what the tradeoffs are.
Wouldn’t that be nice? What I just described can be reality with a method we call Lean PPM™ (giving credit to the inventors of dynamic processes). This is not just any method, but it is one that is easy to understand, learn and maintain. We used our own experience paired with feedback from 1,000+ professionals, and created version 1 of of the Lean PPM method. So far, it’s helped over 100 companies worldwide Make Plans That Work, so considering it’s only version 1, I feel we’re off to a good start.