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Case Study: Project Management in the BPM Project

Helen S. Cooke is a PMI Board Member in Chicago and a Fellow of the global Project Management Institute. She has developed PMI standards and processes, as well as PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model. As Vice President of Consulting Services for OPM Mentors in Chicago, she heads a consulting practice advancing the maturity of organizations to deliver strategic objectives through projects.

Cooke gave PMI's definition of project management. "The art of directing and coordination human and material resources though the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time, quality and participant satisfaction."

There is a new focus on project management because of worldwide competition for new markets and the globalization of business. Mergers and acquisitions are other drivers. Project management allows for greater flexibility allowing:

• Faster response to change
• Formal ways to manage risk
• Stakeholder views built into the plan
• Speed through responsive schedules
• Formal methods of monitoring and control
• Working through teams to get results

The challenge is to keep multiple projects aligned with the organization's goals and strategies while reducing duplication, capturing value, and delivering results and ROI as promised.

Every project needs to have a project manager, according to Cooke. The project manager's role for BPM projects facilitates a planned, focused approach that concentrates on the financial results while still maintaining autonomy with fewer levels of management involvement. Project management needs to be a part of BPM initiatives because they fit the definition of projects:

• BPM projects advance process maturity
• Operations processes are improving
• Projects are, by definition, 'non-standard' operations
• Projects are consuming an every-increasing portion of the operations budget
• Project processes also need to be improved

This means that BPM projects should be included under project management in order to take advantage of the full complement of existing PM expertise. Project management is different from operations because projects:

• Have an original charter, organization and goals
• Are a catalyst for change
• Have a unique product or service
• Use heterogeneous teams
• Have start and end dates
• Have estimated resources

Project managers have different goals from operations managers too. Operations managers should not be chosen to head projects. The mindset is different. The project manager must:

• Be concerned with customer goals, results, ROI
• Responsible for quality of the unique product or service
• Focus on creative solutions involving processes
• Use processes and methods for managing risk caused by change
• Do things differently and resolve issues locally

Projects shifts the culture and benefits the business by making the team a normal part of projects. Quality is built into the process while PM provides a common language to discuss the work. Everyone speaks project management, according to Cooke.

Project management benefits BPM specifically by aligning projects to the business strategy and improving control over project costs and estimates while monitoring resources and expenditures. It also helps identify duplication of effort and can help shift the focus to high priority initiatives. The results can be leveraged. According to Cooke, when BPM is put into a project management context, everything works better. Teams work better because of improved coordination and the common knowledge base of project work. The organization is benefited by the ability to track, common formats and use of metrics, and management can monitor priorities and quality.

Other benefits for the business or organization of conducting a BPM initiative with PM include:

• Identifies problem areas for projects
• Clarifies project management goals for the organization
• Defines the importance of project management to business strategy
• Quantifies project risk and ROI
• Prioritizes projects and resources

Cooke recounted the results of a multinational survey on project management done by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2004. The results give the reasons for project failure and success, and how organizations can reach higher maturity levels by investing in project management. 

Helen Cooke spoke on this topic at a recent BrainStorm Business Process Management Conference.  For more information on this conference, visit www.BPMInstitute.org/events.html

Listen to the archived audio file of this presentation, visit:

Jon Huntress
Special Events Correspondent

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