How Project Management Can Create a More Efficient Government

Project management refers to the process of planning, motivating, organizing and directing resources, protocols, and procedures to attain particular goals that will help in solving both scientific problems as well as problems in your day-to-day.

A project refers to a temporary exercise that is designed to create a specified service, product, or result with a planned and set beginning and end. It is undertaken to attain predetermined goals and objectives that, in most cases, will bring about a positive change. Projects are normally time- and funding-constrained, as well. Unlike business reorganizations that take place periodically, projects are temporary and only last a specified period.

The chief trial of project management is attaining all the specified objectives and results while simultaneously honoring the predetermined constraints. These key constraints include scope, quality, time and budget. The secondary constraints include the struggle to optimize the sharing of the provided inputs and deliveries while at the same time, seeking to meet the pre-stipulated objectives.

Effective organizational project management involves integrating leading comprehensive practices, common performance standards as well as standardization that in return will result in accountable governance and transparency through the existing resources. Organizational project management is attached to the organization’s daily operations to ensure that the projects that are being executed are not just executed haphazardly, but instead are executed in a way that ensures the specified objectives and goals are achieved.

According to a 2010 report by PMI, organizational project management has been found to be able to cut government agencies spending by 20- to 30%. For you to successfully implement organizational project management, three essential factors are taken into consideration:

• People
• Policy
• Process

People

The first step in ensuring correct organizational project management is ensuring that the workforce placed into the management of the project is well-qualified and well-fit for the task. The project workforce is supposed to be well-treated and motivated through promoting and protecting the personnel with ample training and support. The training and support will motivate the workforce and arm the staff with the ability to discharge their duties with diligence.

The best, most efficient, and straightforward way to put this into action is through setting up a career path — like one that takes you through a Master of Public Administration and Policy program into a policy analyst role —  and establishing job classifications for the project’s workforce. This will give the workforce clear guidelines on how to conduct the project.

Policy

Policy is where standardization comes into play. Standardized practices will make the government firm with its results and objectives. Standardizing policy by way of project management best practices will bring more transparency, accountability, and flexibility. This transparency will make it possible for the government to discern the problems affecting the project and come up with solutions while simultaneously opening themselves up to the public for the sake of accountability.

Process

A well-defined set of protocols and leading practices would be very vital in solving the complications project managers encounter. Such complexities arise when overseeing the developing popularity of issues like public-private partnerships, IT systems, and the national defense programs.

One proven way of facilitating the effective management of taxpayer’s money by the government is through putting to use the organizational project management practices that have been applied successfully to the public and private sectors already.

Real-Life Examples of Effective Organizational Project Management

There are some private and public organizations that have already applied project management principles with great success. Department of Defense’s Better Buying Power reforms vital integrated  attributes of project management sanctioning in order to allow inventive acquisition approaches to succeed and is built upon arrangement based on the central doctrines of strong project management.

The “Acquisition Management Directive 102-01” of Department of Homeland Security stipulated numerous reforms to project management that included the strengthening and restructuring of the main acquisition programs through the strong Acquisition Review Board (ARB).

It is thus evident that effective governance borrows a leaf from effective project management. Effective organizational project management leads to the attainment of the objectives and goals determined before the project began. This would be great for governance where leaders live to attain pre-determined goals. Moreover, the funding and time constraints lesson should enable the government to make do with limited funds and time without compromising on services.