PMP in a small business

After spending 15 years in the electronics industry, my family pushed me out of my native country, and comfort zone at the same time: I had to reinvent myself in the software industry and project management. It has been a very interesting experience all in all. Nearly 4 years ago, I changed job and joined a small, local electronics manufacturer, thinking that I would be back to my first love, i.e. electronics design. However, the ongoing projects led me on another path and made me discover a new professional world.

Small Company Dynamics

Before this experience, I had worked only in big companies, the smallest having about 1000 employees, with separate, specialized departments. In my current company, we have more needs than people, a fairly frequent situation in small organizations. This increases the level of responsibility and leads to more complex, global assignments. The project leader has a greater level of control over the projects and has to be expert in several fields, as he is also often involved in the actual work. One structure is not intrinsically better than the other: as people say here, you have to choose between being a "rat's head" or a "lion's tail". Projects tend to be of smaller scale, with a more targeted scope. This smaller level of investment also gives a chance to bounce back when opportunities arise, as long as the necessary resources are available.

On the other hand, there are different issues that should be taken into account. First of all, they tend to focus primarily on development, with some level of testing. Given the low level of bureaucracy, corrections are executed in fast iterations but it may take several cycles to fix the application. Also, the actual level of expertise may vary significantly from company to company.

Relevance of Project Management

Project management is arguably required in all sizes of organizations: customers are rarely a single person and providers often count with more than one resource. If the project is billed by the hour, the provider is treated as a time-limited resource and it is up to the customer to manage the tasks. However, if the project is negotiated for a fixed price, both must manage their own projects, with somewhat conflictual priorities: the customer wants a tailored result while the provider tries to finish as soon as possible with fixed requirements. Having a common set of concepts and vocabulary can therefore be an asset. This is where a Project Management training or certification comes into play. My current personal aim is PMP.

A certification is not necessarily a must: a number of organizations offer trainings based on a book called the PMBOK (Project Management Book Of Knowledge, published by the Project Management Institute or PMI). First of all, it is a very generic book that can apply to virtually any business (software, electronics, civil engineering, manufacturing, financial institutions, etc.) This universal language can help to establish the necessary processes to plan, execute and control all sorts of projects, even when mixing technologies. Second, it is a repository of generally accepted good practices, that apply to most projects most of the time: you will generally find that most rules apply explicitly or implicitly. Third, the rules are recommendations: no one will force you to implement everything but you're bound to find that part of the processes can easily be applied and improve the operation of your organization. The point is to define the sweet spot between inefficiency due to lack of control and to excessive overhead. The definition of the project management rules will therefore be a long-term, evolutive project on its own.

Hierarchy of Management Layers

The PMBOK will give you an extensive summary of the processes to execute but will not define how they should be conducted, as this belongs to the underlying methodology layer. If your company is already struggling with the execution and the methodology, why bother with an additional layer of complexity?

The question is actually rhetoric, because you will realize that you already perform part of the processes, in a more or less organized way. You don't necessarily want to generate a lot of documentation about Acquisition if you don't plan to buy more than a USB cable or a bag of nails but you implicitly Plan and Manage Stakeholders Relationships every time you meet with your customers and try to make sure you meet their expectations... or you manage their expectations to meet the reasonably achievable scope of the project, as a function of time and cost. The PMP training is therefore based on common sense.

Risks and Obstacles

The first risk is buy-in: In PMI's terms, you need to convince a sponsor in the higher levels of management, ideally C-level. Without strong support, you will likely face strong opposition and will not reach optimum results. A second risk would be an excessive level of control, which could easily bring the whole project to a stop: the main aim of any organization is to execute on their strategic projects and management should account only for a marginal cost, ideally financing itself with the savings that it generates.

Another risk is the Anna Karenina's Principle: happy projects are all alike but unhappy projects fail all in their own ways. It is not directly related to the implementation of management but a side-effect of an inadequate one. It sometimes comes from the belief that generic good practices do not take into account the specific needs of a given project: as mentioned earlier, the PMBOK applies to most projects most of the times so each implementation has to be tailored to fit the exact needs to be successful.

Bottom Line

Implementing a project management process is generally beneficial and has to be a project on its own inside the organization. It must follow the same processes as the other projects, taking scope, cost and time into account, and must come with success and exit criteria. However, keep in mind that that these are tools and must remain a support for the business: treating these tools as a direct target would be the wrong scope.