A US based IT services company employed several project managers who were experienced but not being managed as a single team and not coordinated in a meaningful way. The company were expanding rapidly and concerned that the project management ‘team’ would become more fragmented and project quality would suffer.

A coaching and mentoring program was put in place to consolidate the project managers into a team through various measures:

• Evaluation of common pain-points and challenges

• Documented processes to deal with common challenges

• Formal induction program

• Introduction of project coordinator role

• Designation of a team lead project manager

• Regular individual portfolio meetings

• Regular team meetings

By workshopping the most common pain-points and challenges for the project managers, we were able to agree a set of best practices that could be documented and followed by all. We identified escalation points where project managers would be able to find support to overcome bottlenecks or mitigate project distress.

The various document templates and processes that each project manager used were brought together and consolidated into one agreed standard toolset. An induction program was then written so that newly recruited project managers could get up to speed quickly and become an effective member of the team.

One of the more senior project managers was nominated as the team lead and some of her capacity was allocated to the regular support of the rest of the team. This new role along with the recruitment of a project coordinator took administrative and governance pressure off the project managers so that they could focus on their customer’s outcomes.

Monthly ‘portfolio’ meetings between the team lead and each individual project manager facilitated a thorough assessment of each of their project’s health status. The monthly meeting acted as an audit of each person’s projects and while quality and compliance were being checked, the focus was on supporting the project manager to achieve success in their projects.

A weekly full-team meeting was instituted so that ideas and issues could be discussed amongst the team members, a time for new ideas to percolate or for old attitudes to be challenged.

The net result of the work was increased productivity within the project management team, demonstrated by an increase in utilisation and the volume of projects that each member was able to manage simultaneously.