The Challenge
Having completed an engagement to introduce Project Management standards and develop a customised Project Management tool, EQuest Consulting delivered a mentoring program to individually coach Project Managers in these standards and in the use of the tool. The Project Managers possessed varied levels of experience and diverse backgrounds.
They had not previously been required to manage projects with a common set of standards and tools, so the introduction of these posed a cultural change as well as an educational challenge. The standards and the tool had to support projects that varied widely in their duration and complexity and needed to be adopted by different areas each with their own focus.
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How EQuest Consulting Met the Challenge
The mentoring program was tailored to meet the varied backgrounds of the Project Managers and the nature of the environment. Mentoring is a form of change management and must be tailored to the environment if it is to be effective in changing organisational culture.
Mentoring sessions were scheduled over a number of weeks to minimise the impact on Project Managers’ time. To begin with, a series of workshops were held where we presented the new standards and the new tool to all of the Project Managers, explaining the purpose and structure of the mentoring program in order to achieve ‘buy in’ to the changes.
EQuest Consultants then delivered the mentoring program, coaching the Project Managers individually at a level that was appropriate to their skills and experience. Important to the success of this work was the ability of our consultants to listen and to respond to each Project Manager’s concerns and at the same time impart their knowledge, thereby facilitating a two way exchange which is an important part of the learning process. The mentoring program covered:
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The Benefits
There was excellent take up and acceptance of the tool. Project Managers were well versed in the standards and therefore able to utilise the tool effectively. This was an important step forward in project management maturity. For new Project Managers with little prior experience we had improved their understanding and given them a framework with which to manage projects to an acceptable standard. For more experienced Project Managers we had cleared up confusion around which standards to use, enabling a consist approach to project management to be adopted.
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