Hello, I’m Richard Broo, Founder of TrueNorth PMP Consulting. We are a consultancy dedicated to helping companies eliminate costs, waste, and time out of the project management process in order to improve their operational efficiencies and profitability. I would like to talk with you today about how COVID-19 is impacting the discipline of project management and what you need to consider regarding how to become more effective and efficient in your project management efforts in lieu of COVID 19, as we close the year 2020, I believe it is important for us to analyze where we could have been more effective in how we spent our money, resources and time this year.
In order to prepare for the upcoming year, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely strained our businesses, regardless of whether you supply a product or a service or whether your business is considered an essential business or not by our government, while there’s hope on the horizon that a solution to COVID-19 may be forthcoming.
It is safe to say that even with this solution, COVID 19 will continue to impact our businesses throughout 2021. So how is COVID-19 impacting the discipline of project management, and what does it mean for your company’s ability to execute a project management process that is effective and efficient?
Well, I asked you to consider the following points. Point number one, product development and delivery. You and I, as business people are chartered by our clients. To deliver to them unique products or services. Our clients have expectations for what features and benefits our products and services must offer them and place a value on them in the form of the price.
They pay us for them. And with repeat business, however COVID-19 is redefining client expectations for product development and delivery due to COVID-19. It can take a longer time to develop and deliver new products to our clients. There are several factors driving the situation. One factor is that companies have had to reduce workforce due to loss of financial strength.
Some of the critical human resources normally available to drive new product development and delivery have been furloughed or given reduced work hours. This creates a constraint on the time available to run a project. Some older, more experienced talent has opted out of the employment market, leaving a void and tribal knowledge.
This too negatively impacts the time available to run a project as well as the knowledge base required to run projects. Another factor is communication with clients has become. More strained due to lack of human touch and face-to-face interaction that is best required to define what a client values and what price they’re willing to place on that value.
There is a difference in the quality of human interaction and the quality of information exchange, talking to your client. Face-to-face compared to meeting on. Google meets or zoom. Despite these challenges, our clients still expect us to perform for them. We must anticipate these challenges as it relates to delivering benefits, features, price, and value, how you adapt your business to address these challenges will directly affect your ability to profitably grow your business as well as competitively differentiated it.
Next year and beyond. I encourage you to think about this reality and what you will do now to prepare your business, to meet it. Head on consideration. Number two, funding, operations, and capital resources. The competition for funding to acquire capital resources or to fund operations is becoming increasingly aggressive regardless of the financial strength of a company banks, venture capitalists.
Or other financial institutions are intense in how they analyze and scrubs, nice businesses seeking funding, driven by the concerns about a company’s ability to survive COVID-19 and its residual effects like myself. I am sure you can name several long-established companies in several industries that have fallen from financial grace or have had to scale back operations because of COVID-19.
And it’s safe to say there will be continued financial failures into 2021. We as business people, owners have a limited number of outlets to access funding for our operations and why you can say, well, this has always been the case. Can you say it was easy to acquire funding this year as it was a year ago or two years ago or three years ago?
I think not. I believe. As we all negotiate the COVID 19 pandemic and its aftermath in order to be successful in acquiring funding, we will have to prove to our lenders that we are lean in our operations and I’ve cut as much cost and waste out of them as possible to be considered a good financial risk.
So, my question to you is what can you do? Now to eliminate costs and waste out of your operations to become an attractive financial risk to your funding sources. So, they will be a sustainable partner to help grow your business consideration three, using the right project management process for your projects.
Now, there are basically two project management disciplines are under project. One is what I would call the traditional method. Which is a project that is run sequentially using a former project management plan. The project scope is clearly defined and the process steps to achieve it are linear and logical.
Some folks call this the waterfall method of project management. The other discipline to run a project is called agile project management. It’s used when the overall product scope. Which is what you want to do is understood, but the path to get there will require more knowledge and data work must be executed in increments, which are called sprints or iterations over a fixed period of time to generate this knowledge or data.
The objective of each sprint or iteration is to create more knowledge and data that will ultimately achieve the projects. Go. Agile project management is more interactive and iterative compared to traditional project management. It requires a lot more interaction and communication with a client to achieve project success.
And in fact, project success is directly related to how involved the client is in the project. So, what does this tidbit of information have to do with COVID-19 project management and your company? It means that if you are not using the right project management process to run your projects, you will waste more money and time to complete them.
And there will also be unnecessary capital and human waste moving forward into next year. Before you undertake any project, you need to validate how its scope has been defined, developed, and validated. Is the scope crystal clear with a logical path to achieve it, or is it not fully developed in a need of further knowledge and data to find that path to success?
Once you understand this information, you can best decide what project management process discipline will provide you the best methodology to successfully execute the project. Choosing the right project management methodology will optimize the amount of money. Resources and time, you will have to invest in it.
2020 has not been a normal year for business and many businesses have had their financial capital and human resources negatively impacted by COVID-19 will continue to impact. All our businesses in 2021, I cannot stress enough the need for this discipline to be prepared for the challenges 2021 will present to your company.
So, what can I offer you to help you prepare your business for the impending challenges for 2021 to begin, I can offer you a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your most urgent project management issues. And what I can offer you in the form of action-oriented answers to combat them. I have 43 years of business experience from individual contributor up to president and CEO.
I’ve turned around underperforming groups within fortune 500 companies and companies themselves. I’ve also launched startup companies. My successes have been deeply rooted in the best practices of effective project management to reduce costs, time and waste out of commercial manufacturing, quality supply chain and product development operations.
Look, project management is not rocket science. It’s nothing more than one-third common sense. One-third logic and one-third process discipline. I can help you understand where in that spectrum, your project management issues lie and how to best fix them. So, you can successfully navigate the impending challenges that 2021 will place upon your business.
It would be my privilege to help you achieve your 20, 21 objectives by being more effective and efficient in your project management process. I am asking you for this opportunity and I hope you will afford it to me. My name is Richard Broo. My company is called TrueNorth PMP Consulting. I thank you for listening and I wish you all the best.
