In the past, I have written about how a Project Manager (PM)
has to become more than just IT PMs. As PMs, we have to be knowledgeable about
the products we are implementing. They have to be aware of the products
benefits to the organization and why the product is being implemented.
Especially as a strategic PM, we have to know the benefits, the cost savings,
what problem the product solves, etc. What I see more often are digital
projects that PMs are being tasked to implement. Once again, the PM has to be aware
of this growing space and acquire new skills or bring to the project skills
that the PM once had and has to “dust off.” In digital projects, I have seen
many additional skills that a PM has to be familiar with. For this blog, I will
address a few. Not that these skills are the most important, but they are
something a PM needs to be good at for the project.
Analytics and
Reporting
Similar to what is important in real-estate, for digital
projects it is data, data, data. The PM has to be familiar with the data mining
process. How to collect data, decipher it and provide meaningful reports to the
organization and especially to executive management. Obviously Google Analytics
is a good first place to begin, but the PM should be working with the Subject
Matter Expert (SME) on the project and Business Analyst (BA) to understand the
deliverables for the project and what the benefits are when the product is
implemented. As with IT projects, Digital projects are usually costly and have
a long execution phase and monitor and control phase. Keeping the project team
focused and on track will be the PMs hardest job. Second will be the
communication and reporting progress to management. Also, the PM has to provide
management with samples of what the analytics will be like during these phases
so that the project team receives valuable feedback from executive
management.
Information
Architecture
Classifying and auditing information will be paramount to
the digital project. So the PM has to have the correct team members that have
experience in these tasks on the project. If there is a lack of this experience
in the organization, it is critical that the PM communicates this to management
so as to be able to acquire this in a vendor or consultant organization. Yes, a
team member can get trained on this and it may not be a stretch for a team
member who has had similar tasks in auditing to be trained in the digital
product. However, the PM has to be able to assess the competency of the team
member and report their findings to management. If the team member needs a lot
of training, this may be a risk to the project since these are critical path
tasks. The PM must be able to show management that these tasks need more
experience for the implementation and that hiring a third party is money well
spent.
Social Media
In these days of Face book, Twitter and LinkedIn, the PM has
to knowledgeable how the organization will be leveraging these sites for the
digital project implementation. The organization has to have a strategic
purpose on these sites. Just being on them is not good enough. The organization
must have a direct connection between how to leverage these sites to the
organizations strategic vision. In other words, the PM should demand for their
project that the organization provide the strategic objectives in using these
sites and how they benefit the organization. Which tool is better suited for
the organization and why? Are there resources in the marketing department that
are dedicated to the messaging on these sites? These resources should be on the
project and provide insight on the product implementation mainly because these
resources should see the benefits of implementing the product.
The PM will be tasked with a successful implementation of
the product and the measuring stick for the success will be the usage of the
product after the implementation. Executive management will need to know that
the budget, which includes the time of the project resources, was time and
money well spent. If that can be proven, the PM will have delivered a
successful project.
I am open to discussion at any time on these blogs or anything else related to project management you would like to explore. If you would like to comment about this blog, please do so by posting on this blog or by responding in an email at benny@bennythepm.com. You may inspire a blog article. I look forward to your comments.
