Optimizing Human Capital with a Strategic Project Office
Select, Train, Measure,and Reward People for Organization Success
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Book Description
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