Project managers require broad skill set

Intuate executive believes finding competent Project Managers can be difficult

The latest Gartner research has shown that the top three challenges faced by CIOs related to business expectations today are improving business processes, reducing enterprise costs and enhancing enterprise workforce effectiveness.

Peter Green, programme and project management executive at Intuate believes that the successful management of these challenges will, to a large extent, be driven by and depend on the implementation of IT related projects. “The successful delivery of such projects is similarly dependent on adherence to(governance) processes, including risk management and effective financial and resource management supported by accurate and complete documentation and reporting,” he says.

“The challenge, however, is finding the right IT programme or project managers who have the appropriate experience and skills to successfully deliver increasingly complex projects.”

Historically, IT programme or project managers were required to be competent in programme or project management as well as possess the appropriate industry, business and IT knowledge and experience. Today’s IT programme and project managers need a considerably broader range of skills.

“This calibre of person is not easily found and seldom readily available,” states Green.

“For that reason, Intuate Group has developed an IT Project Management Services Model to provide a comprehensive IT programme and project management and project administration capability, delivered by a team of professionals to successfully deliver IT programmes and projects.

“All project management team members are employed by the company and undergo rigorous recruitment and induction processes together with ongoing training and development. We have established a broad performance management framework, which details the required experience, qualifications, project management skills, industry, client and technical knowledge, organisational skills and behavioural traits required for junior project administrators through to programme managers. This is used for initial recruitment, career planning and development, training, performance assessment and key performance indicators,” he explains.

“In the end, businesses are looking for quick return on investment and for any IT project to be deemed successful, it needs to be completed within budget and set timeline and ultimately contribute to effectively run an organisation,” Green concludes.