Links to last month’s 4-part series…
Part 1 - Organizations are multi-project systems
Part 2 - Organizational effectiveness is resource effectiveness
Part 3 - Managing the present and the future
[Part 3 in a series on Multi-Project Management and Organizational Effectiveness. If you want to start with Part 1, you can find it at Organizations are multi-project systems.]
Once an organization understands the constraints associated with it’s ability to deliver projects, whether for customer-driven deliverables or for internal process improvements, it has the basis to not only avoid overloading its current capacity and capability, but also to smoothly growing the capability to take on more work in the future, whether next month, later this week, or next year.
[Part 2 of a series in Multi-Project Management and Organizational Effectiveness. If you haven’t already read Part Organizations are multi-project systems.]
The old saw defining efficiency largely as doing things right and effectiveness as doing the right things definitely applies to multi-project systems. How individual tasks are defined and delivered are key to the efficient completion of individual projects. And choosing the “right projects” from the portfolio of possibilities is clearly related to the contribution of the efforts to the organization’s success. While these single-project and portfolio management concerns are beyond the scope of this chapter, strategies for managing the interaction of various active projects as they vie for the attention of the limited resources are not.
Understanding the importance of getting the right things done at the task level, and behaving accordingly are significant contributors to efficiency as well and are the basis for multi-project resource (organizational) effectiveness. Unfortunately, too many organizations overlook this and instead emphasize control of costs to the detriment of what they are trying to accomplish.
Project strategy is the missing link between the business strategy and the traditional project plan.
- (reblogged from tadzing)
About Frank Patrick
