A Match Made in Heaven, An artilce in PM Network

        An article in the latest PMnetwork , March 2014, caught my attention with  a title: A Match made in Heaven. The focus of the article centered on three factors; the project requirements, the project managers’ skills and the organizations workload. The author suggested understanding the attributes of the project and listed the following attributes;

• ·         Budget
• ·         Schedule
• ·         Scope
• ·         Team building
• ·         Clients facing skills
• ·         Risk

Then reflect on these questions.

1.  Will the project require a lot of client interaction?
2. Will the team be virtual?
3. Is this an ambiguous project?

           One company was described as maintaining a database of project management skills and experiences. Then using a team based approach to looking at the characteristics of the project and matching the rights skills and experience. The team also considered the organizations workload and admitted that the right skills were often added to the project late.

           The construction industry did a study a number of years ago and concluded the number one consideration in matching of project manager with projects was availability. Fluor attempted to develop a data of project management skills when I worked there and for a number of reasons the effort was scrapped after a couple of years. One reason was the priority of availability when a project manager was needed.

           There was a process for matching project managers and projects but it was a very informal process. In this case, the informality of the process worked well because it depended on a very strong and informal communication network.

            In a project organization where projects ended and the project team needed to find another project to maintain employment, the informal communication was necessary and very strong. This process also worked very well. If I needed a scheduler with international experience, who understood the chemical industry and had experience on project larger than $500 million, I might go to Ron, who would ask Tom who knew that Larry was soon coming off a project and had the skills and experience I needed.

            It would seem that a combination of these two systems might be the best way to approach the matching of project needs with project management talent.

Russ