If you feel your company’s basic project management assets aren’t cutting it anymore, it may be time to update them or put new ones into place. In this competitive landscape, chances are that your peers are already updating their PM assets. And with newer PM assets being implemented and applied all the time it’s important to investigate your options.
What is a PM asset?
PM assets, or project management assets, are a group of best practices, plans, and procedures to manage the following during a project or program life cycle:
- business case
- scope
- time
- cost
- quality
- communication
- risk
- and much, much more!
PM assets shape your guidelines to manage and integrate business opportunities. They also create the input to develop and implement new enterprise resource planning (ERP). In other words, PM assets help companies execute strategy, align new projects with the company vision, standardize processes and reduce stress during executions, improve capacity and expertise, analyze real-time data, evaluate project performance, and increase your chances of success.
Now that you know what a PM asset is, let’s go over the five steps you can take to implement best practices and improve your PM assets.
Step one:
Identify the limitations of your current project management assets
Here are three signs that it might be time to replace or improve your PM assets:
01 Growth cap
Have your current PM assets helped your company increase client satisfaction, reduce stress, and manage more business opportunities simultaneously? Do they allow you to enter into new lines of business or markets?
A PM asset should allow your company to expand, optimize resources, and lower stress while maintaining focus on safety and financial success.
02 Lack of insights
Even though a PM asset offers expert-level visibility of an entire program or project, as well as insights into best practices, many companies still opt for traditional ways to manage projects without integrating all project efforts in one. This can lead to different departments working in isolation. PM assets tie all your departmental effort together, allowing accurate data analytics and input generation. This allows departments to work together for more productivity, growth, and a competitive edge.
03 Reliability
Most companies have taken a deep dive into the big data environment, training, and agile ways to manage their business opportunities. Although they know about the results, most don’t know how to increase their chances of success and bring business opportunities with variances in time and cost back on track. The pros that come with PM assets are basically to plan the business opportunities, proactively apply controls, and manage opportunities that can impact company goals.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”― Benjamin Franklin
Step two:
Determine what your project management asset should offer
Let’s start with the PM asset nuts and bolts. Here are some of the basic boundaries that every legacy project management asset should have:
01 Project and Program Management
Not only should your PM assets help you prepare a proposal or set a schedule, they should also provide tools to align business opportunities and evaluate business cases before assigning resources, bring in leadership and management, ensure there’s a proper plan to manage client expectations, scope, time, cost, communication, quality, resources, risks, and provide techniques for continuous oversight in all aspects of the business opportunities. They should also integrate accurate data from the enterprise system.
02 Synergy
The legacy PM asset should give enterprises the ability to have a common language within project management teams and stakeholders, access to real-time data, proper reporting, and ensure your projects are on track.
03 Flexibility
Every now and then, your business should evaluate the effectiveness of legacy procedures applied to business opportunities, then decide which one should be adapted or replaced with a new pragmatic approach. PM assets should offer strategic insight and flexibility to create new SOPs that support all business opportunities during its life cycle.
Step three:
Discover what renewed project management assets could offer
PM assets offer a solid approach to managing projects and allow companies to reach their PM goals. These approaches can also be applied to a business opportunity or serve as a foundation for an ERP change management project.
- Increase productivity
- Align business opportunities
- Deliver and execute strategy
- Be a step ahead of your project financial needs
- Establish objectives, plan resources, control and close out projects
- Establish proper team roles and responsibilities, communication and stakeholder engagement
- Increase client satisfaction and deliver success
Step four:
Create a plan
It can be overwhelming when you think about updating or implementing a new way to manage your business opportunities and even more so when adding these changes to your ERP. The better your plan, the smoother the improvement or replacement of your processes will be. Start with these three steps:
01 Make a wish list
Write down the PM assets you’re already using. Even if it’s only a basic scope and cost estimation process. Now make a list of the features you’d like to have or need. Now that you have some options and ideas about what’s out there, you could also look into special features like adding these new PM assets to your existing ERP.
02 Set your budget
Now that you have your wish list, the next step is to set a budget. Like buying a new car, you should know whether your budget allows for a used car or a brand new one. Knowing this helps you focus on the PM assets and features you should be looking for.
03 Don’t be afraid to ask questions
Don’t settle for a one-size-fits all solution. Make sure the solution you’re looking for fulfills your business needs. If you want to evaluate your current processes or just part of it, find a partner to help you address those concerns.
Step five:
Choose your partner
The most important part of updating or implementing a new PM asset is the partner you choose. If you choose right, this could be a value creation advisor who accompanies you during the implementation and operation of your new PM asset. Here are some of the qualities you should look for in a partner:
- Have they done implementations for a company like yours before?
- Will they make themselves available before, during, and after implementation?
- Do they have the right combination of strategic expertise and project management knowledge to help you?
Want to evaluate your project management assets?
Now you know what a PM asset is, which basics you need, and the extras you might want to implement. Talk to a consultant from Vista today to evaluate your project management assets and discover how Vista can help you streamline your everyday project management governance, using modern and best practice-based solutions.
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