Project Management in a troubled Economy

The times, they have become tough, and more and more companies are required to reduce the number of employees in order to survive or to keep the figures nice. Often enough, these means that less people are required to manage the same amount of work as before the reorganisation. In other words, resources need to be used more efficiently.

If there is one vital advantage of project management, then it is the effective use of resources. By managing scope and planning the resources that are needed in order to get the work done, project managers make a attractive promise to senior management: For budget “x”, you will get “y”, and provided that the project manager has been involved in ROI calculations during project initiation, the project manager can make sure that the scope of the project will reflect the needed means in order to deliver the ROI.

However, project managers are not always positioned to “sell” this advantage. Now, even more than in other times, it is important for project managers to evangalize organisations about the value of organisations, not because the project manager wants to survive but because project management does add value to an organisations bottomline if resources are used more efficiently.