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Blog posted by: Andrea Vecchi, Andrea Vecchi, Head of PMO, Sonnedix, November 10, 2021.

When a business doubles in size in a year (as ours has) it has major consequences for projects and programmes.

The growing importance of renewable energy to tackle climate change has helped our company grow, increasing the workforce to 400 people.

This means creating greater accountability at project level and delegating efficiently. It involves retraining people to become more sophisticated project managers. Previously, we’ve relied on technical specialists to also be project managers; now, we need people who are professional project managers.

What’s the difference?

The role of the professional project manager

Where technical specialists in any field focus very much on their product and the output from a project, project managers need to take responsibility for the business case as a whole.

While the eventual product is just one piece of a business case, the rest is a collection of moving parts. This makes the business case not only less tangible to manage, but also includes the vital elements of delivering benefits to the business and the finance needed to achieve them.

This responsibility requires project managers whose viewpoint is not only on the team and delivering a product but also upwards to the project board.

As head of the project management office (PMO), I need to ensure that we are providing project support and teaching our people to be professional project managers, with the ability to coordinate the work of the technical specialists around them.

To continue growing the business, we need to remain competitive. That means being sharper and delivering better projects with more predictable outcomes.

Looking ahead to 2022: a maturing project management approach

By creating professional project managers in an organization, we are really developing a new category of employee.

As this will be really fundamental to our business, there are certain skills and competencies our project managers will need:

• Formalizing the business case tolerances: understanding what to escalate because it could have an impact on the business case.
• Mastering tools for collaboration: to communicate both with the project team and upwards; making more information visible and having better informed conversations.
• Recording project controls as part of day-to-day activities.
• Starting to use a lot more agile approaches: especially in the work the PMO does – starting light, focusing on what people need to learn, going iteratively, supporting them and trying to learn as quickly as possible.
• Running change initiatives that start with a pilot project: defining and designing the necessary training which is focused on the tolerances of the business case and basic project controls.

Because of this, we have introduced PRINCE2 Foundation training for the company so that people become familiar with its language and key concepts. This training is accessible and beneficial to a wide range of employees.

Now, we are also including PRINCE2 Practitioner level for when using the method fully becomes more critical. And as the company grows, matures further and programmes/programme management become more relevant, so will Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) training.

In the coming year, I’m confident that professional project management will help us to be a better company – and that includes learning how to tailor it to our circumstances, which is very much where PRINCE2 comes in.

Getting senior leadership involved as part of evolving how we run projects will ensure we have a strong mandate for change.