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Help, I've just trained everyone!

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Part3 of a farce in 6 parts. Why not help 'David' by posting your answers below?

Dear all,

Im now starting to worry a bit, Im not sure Im really changing anything. Ive just gone and completed a round of project and programme management training we are all now MSP and PRINCE2 practitioners. We did it for really good reasons. Our senior stakeholders could not believe that our project and programme managers really knew what they were doing, so we made sure that they did.

Unfortunately, all that seems to have happened is that weve spent a lot on training everyone, Ive already had a couple of people leave and said thank-you for the improved career prospects and that it is a shame that we dont have a framework they can do business within but at least our HR director will receive his bonuses as we have moved our expertise forwards. It is still a shame though that not one director knows what portfolio management is.

Im getting all kinds of stick for doing what I thought was the right thing. Help - Where did I go wrong?

Yours Etc
David

Part 1 - Help, Ive just implemented a PMO!

Part2 - Help, Ive just implemented a project management tool!

David Dunning
Written byDavid Dunning

David Dunning is the founding director at Chase Management Services and Chair of Corporate Project Solutions. He provides director level advice, guidance and critical friendship in portfolio, programme and project management. He is very interested in aligning innovation and portfolio management, and is currently focusing on developing a core P3M data model with other volunteers to give the public domain the basis for a shareable P3M Governance framework.

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  1. Unknown User 05 April 2013, 06:05 PM

    Davidit sounds like you have missed some training out. Based on your last 2 submissions you don't seem to have trained the sponsors of these ventures (I was going to call them projects but I can't see too much project mentality going on in the implementations as both of them seem to have forgotten why (or benefits/outcome) they were being done). Whilst you now have some trained practitioners in the project managers, the PMO seem to have missed this out, perhaps they were experts already, and the senior managers who commissioned the training, the PMO, and the PPM tool perhaps need the education as well. If you implement some processes, then you could successfully deliver some projects, but as you allude to are these the right ones? You could ask the management community, but given their track record they may be the wrong people to ask. Perhaps some further training in MoP may not have gone amiss. Good luck and I look forward to seeing your next move. 

  2. Unknown User 05 April 2013, 01:16 PM

    Hi Tom,Thanks for the reply, but it looks like learning about stakeholder engagement and benefit realisation on the MSP course was a bit too late for me.Also I think equipping our project managers with best practice without having any guidelines for how they use what theyve learned has created more problems than it has solved. We have lots of people all now wanting to do things the right way, but our PMO cant now cope with the additional support need, and we seem to have a proliferation of report requirements for our toolsets which is sucking in development time almost uncontrollably.Weve also spent all our training budget, so we cant train up the new joiners in replacing the folks that have left.Were in a bit of a muddle almost everything is now being treated as a project, and our management team cannot keep up with the decision making needed. I think I need to put a throttle on this. Thankyou for making me think, I now know what to do tomorrow JYours etc,David 

  3. Unknown User 05 April 2013, 12:04 PM

    Unfortunately David you don't bring about change just by training.You need to consider three questions before starting: what are we trying to achieve? Is training the right and only answer - the answer to this is highly likely to be 'no'. How will we know we have achieved what we set out to get - you need to know the measures or evidence that show that things are different.They are very much like the questions that a project has to consider: the problem, the options and the benefits.