When explaining anything, it is always a good idea to start with a few definitions. The Project Management Body of Knowledge or “PMBOK” (yes, there is such a thing, but more on it later) defines Traditional Project Management (TPM) as “a set of tools and techniques which can be applied to temporary endeavors that seek to create a unique product, service, or result“, aka projects.
Wikipedia (for whatever that’s worth) defines Project Management as this: Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. (I wouldn’t rely on them as my ultimate information source, but they DO make things simpler, don’t they??)
Karen White, in her article “Dancing With Projects” calls it “a method focused on centralized decision-making and control within a hierarchical organizational structure. TPM has been proven to be successful when projects have solutions that can be pretty well defined, scoped and estimated (both time and cost), such as most construction projects.”
That’s a lot of words and a lot of definitions, though. So let me give you an example to maybe solidify what we’re talking about here.
Let’s say that your company wants to introduce an OS upgrade to all of the computers in your company. Even if you are only one office, that can be a large undertaking–but think if you have multiple offices–10, 50, even hundreds! It can be overwhelming to look out at a project like that and think “I don’t have time to get this done” or “All of my employees are critical to the company right now. I can’t spare their time to get them to do this for me”. Or maybe you’re even in the boat of not really knowing HOW to start getting all the computers switched over and the employees trained. That’s ok! Braintrust Consulting Group has people who are there specifically to step in and be your temporary Project Manager that you hire to come in and manage any large undertaking your company needs to plan, organize, and bring about to a “successful completion”. And hey, since we’re contract employees–you don’t have to buy us health insurance. We do that ourselves :):)
Whether you are an experienced project manager who might need an extra hand, or if you’re a small business owner who is just now discovering how great it is to have a project manager you can count on, we can help. Check us out online.
