Project management capabilities are critical to most organizations across most industries. This is because change is a constant and project management is the tool most organizations use to adapt to or drive this change.
With a Talent Marketplace, organizations can improve their project management capabilities in the following ways:
1. Improve consistency in project management capabilities across the organization
2. Improve the staffing of projects with the right skills and experience
3. Improve the predictability of project delivery by tapping into available organizational capacity to address attrition / insufficient resources
Improve consistency in project management capabilities across the organization
Over time, the project management capabilities of most organizations ends up being inconsistent. People being hired from other organizations bring in varying levels of experience, maturity and skills. While the organization may try to increase consistency through common governance, standardized project management practices and classroom training, this is not sufficient to ensure consistent outcomes.
The ecosystem created by a Talent Marketplace can help here through the following:
Project Managers who are new to the organization or to the organizations’ project management methodology could be encouraged to participate in gigs alongside experienced project managers
Experienced project managers with a track record of consistent project delivery in the organizations’ context can be encouraged to participate in multiple projects across the organization as a coach
The gig ecosystem can be used to codify the organization’s project management processes, documents etc and then use standard templates to ensure wider adoption amongst the project management community within the organization
Improve the staffing of projects with the right skills and experience
A critical factor that contributes to the success of any project is the alignment of the project team capability (i.e. experience and skills) to the project context and requirements. At present, in mid to large organizations, project teams are assigned projects based on functional / departmental set-ups. There is no systematic approach to match project team capability to project context and requirements.
Ecosystems created by Talent Marketplaces enable assignment of appropriate resource capability to the project requirements. This can be leveraged to increase the number of projects that have project teams with capability that is better aligned to the context and requirements.
Improve the predictability of project delivery by tapping into available organizational capacity to address attrition / insufficient resources
There are many challenges to navigate before and during the life of a project to increase the chances of timely delivery of project outcomes.
One such challenge is relating to availability of project team members.
The following scenarios occur to due to the challenge of availability of project team members:
a. A project is put on hold in order to reallocate project resources to a more urgent / critical project. The project that is put on hold will invariably struggle to meet its original planned timelines
b. A project is not started since the project team members need to become available or recruited
c. A project that is in-flight needs to be put on hold due to key project team member(s) leaving the team or the organization
With a Talent Marketplace, organizations can source project team members from across the organization who may have the bandwidth available to help. It doesn’t always require people to dedicate 100% of their time. Even if the project can secure project team members who can contribute a limited portion of their time, it will still help to move the project along. This can work in all scenarios listed above. While delays are a reality of projects in any organization, leveraging the Talent Marketplace can help to reduce the number of projects that are delayed
