The term “project economy” was coined by the Project Management Institute in 2019. This video introduced the new vision: “At PMI we power the project economy”
In the project economy, people have the skills and capabilities they need to turn ideas into reality, and organizations deliver value to stakeholders through successful completion of projects, delivery of products, and alignment to value streams.
This video inspires a “fresh air” on project management. In the project economy, project team members are encouraged to grow their social skills to work inside cohesive synergetic teams. Project managers perform servant leadership. PMO promotes agile methods. Projects are the mechanisms to deliver value inside organizations.
According to author Antonio Nieto Rodriguez in his book “The Project Revolution: How to Succeed in a Project Driven World”, the profession of the project manager is on the rise: the number of individuals working in project-based roles will increase from 66 million in 2017 to 88 million in 2027. The value of economic activity worldwide that is project oriented will grow from $12 trillion in 2013 to $20 trillion in 2027.
The project economy does not consist only of young people collaborating on projects. What should be the role of a top manager in the project economy?
For a CEO, for instance, a project is just a means to get a product, service, or final result. They are more interested in operation management than in project management. How should they behave in the project economy? Should they blindly trust on self-organized teams? In agile projects, are they allowed to ask for completion dates, final budgets, direct margin, etc.?
Top managers are to play a key role in the project economy. They can delegate the actual project management to professional project managers, but they also need to perform the strategic part of the project economy. That is demand management, project prioritization, project portfolio and program management, value management, benefit realization, etc.
In PMPeople, top managers can use 4 premium roles: Functional Managers, Requesters, Portfolio Managers and Program Managers; and 2 free roles: Sponsors and Stakeholders. These 6 roles implement more than 50 use cases!
PM² methodology proposes similar roles like Appropriate Governance Body, Project Owner, Business Manager and the Business Implementation Group.
In this article we review some practical examples on how managers can perform some use cases in the project economy using PMPeople. To have the complete description, just download the pdf manual for the Functional Manager Role role at: https://bit.ly/PMPeople_FM_EN
Project Governance
Functional Managers have a quick access to the complete list of projects inside their business units. They can filter projects by several criteria to focus on the critical few:
They can enter any project to monitor project details:
Controlling the Projects Revenue
Functional Managers can monitor the funding performance of any project to make sure projects are eventually profitable:
Managing Projects inside Business Units
Functional Managers can create or delete business units—deleting a business unit is serious because all projects inside are also deleted.
Each business unit can be set up with some parameters affecting all projects inside—email notifications, calendars, clients, phases, etc.
Functional Managers can set automatic email notifications, meaning that some people, according to their role in the project inside the business unit, will receive an email if some event happens:
Work calendars identify working days and shifts that are available for scheduled activities. Work calendars are setup for each business unit. A business unit can have one or many calendars, at least the Base Calendar—managed by PMPeople Administrator. Functional Managers can add and edit work calendars inside their business units:
Dashboards and KPIs
For each review date, Functional Managers can monitor project schedule and milestones, comparing schedule baselines to actual and estimated dates:
For each review date, Functional Managers can monitor project cost using the standard Earned Value Management:
Functional Managers can review a dashboard on each project status report. They can check the project global status summary, and also traffic lights for scope, schedule, and cost. Below, they can read status summaries for risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies. Global status summaries for decomposing work packages can be read easily:
Functional Managers can monitor dashboard charts for schedule status, cost status, team performance and funding performance. They can do this for each review date:
Top Managers must be commited to the Project Ecomomy
Functional Managers need to do things like these in the project economy. This is not an option. Companies will be distinguished by their successful projects. Projects will make the difference.
Watch this video for a deeper explanation on this topic:
PMPeople is the tool for the project economy. It is aimed to unify professional project management by these differential points:
- Designed by and for professional project managers, following professional project management standards.
- Online productivity –less meetings, less documents, less workflows– through distributed collaboration among 12 specialized roles: Organization Owner, 6 roles on demand management and 5 roles on supply management.
- Freemium product –unlimited time, unlimited users, only managers have to pay– usable via web and mobile application.
Start using PMPeople for free, for unlimited time and for any number of users. In premium organizations, only managers have to pay. Several roles –stakeholders, team members, sponsors and resource managers– are always free. You can increase or decrease your premium seats according to the organization actual needs. Premium organizations have access to our interactive support through Slack. Our servers are located in EU. This software can also be hosted on customer premises.
