Project Leadership

All organisations are in a state of constant change – it’s a fact of life. Such change carries risk and absorbs money and focus from the ‘day job’. It is, therefore, imperative that change is led properly, from start to finish. We can provide that leadership.

Our Background

We have run over 100 projects in a range of sectors and functional areas. There isn’t a typical project, but they normally deliver significant business change and involve products, services, reorganisation, construction, process and systems. We have worked with a range of organisations:

  • Car companies including Audi, Hyundai, Peugeot, Porsche and Volkswagen
  • Business services including Babcock International, Bureau Veritas, Coincidence, Lex Transfleet, Objectivity, QCG and VT Group.
  • Retail including Inchcape, Laurel Pub Group, MCL Group and Costa
  • Public and higher education including East of England Development Agency, Nottingham Trent and Bath Universities

What You’d Expect

We use and are accredited under Prince2. We are sometimes asked why – the methodology receives a bad press in certain quarters. In our view, it is an excellent tool when it is tailored properly to manage the impact and riskiness of the project.

We are also accredited under MSP (Managing Successful Programmes). Whatever the circumstances, you will get appropriate rigour, attention to detail, high standards of documentation and genuine commitment to improving your business.

Why Project Leadership

But there’s usually more to it than good project management.

Initiation

How well does the project idea line up with our strategy? How feasible is its delivery? Have we found out absolutely everything that needs doing? What’s the best approach? What resources are required? Should we even be doing it? Or should we do it later? How convinced is the wider business? Failing to answer these questions causes many project failures.

We offer commercial, profit-focused, customer-centric project initiation. We’re not afraid to say a project should not start.

Planning

Is the timescale sensible? Do we have the resources we need, at the right time, and with the right level of availability? Who is the leadership group? Do we have enough money? What is going on in the business that will affect this project? Have you very clear outputs?

Failure to properly answer these questions threatens cost, time and scope. We plan with the experience of projects of all shapes and sizes and the learning from those that didn’t go to plan.

Implementation

How complex and critical, i.e. how scary? How frequently do we go back to the business case? Are we keeping the business on board? Is the project team having to deal with business as usual as well? What’s the prototyping/test plan? Are all stakeholders ready for go live? Is our reporting truthful?

Failure to answer these questions threatens cost, time, scope and a working output. We run the implementation with the end in mind, being frank about progress and the right number of steps ahead of the project group. We understand and manage the pressures between the project and the day job and its impact on the team.

Monitoring

Do you have visibility of project performance? Do you have enough resource to deliver all your projects? Are your projects running to time? How transparent is risk and issue management?

Failure to answer these questions risks stakeholder support for the project(s). We can provide support setting up Programme Management Offices including PMO software, governance structures and bedding down.

Closure

Can you close the project? Is it properly finished? Are there residual tasks? Can we release the resources? Did it deliver on its outputs and objectives? What did it cost? What lessons did we learn? Have they been properly collected and distributed?

We ensure projects are closed properly and the business is left with a complete summary of the project and its lessons.