PM ADVISORY:

Backpacker’s Guide to Lightweight Project Management

By Jeff Oltmann

Portland, Oregon, USA

Overwhelmed

The field of project management has been around for decades, and the accumulated technical knowledge often feels overwhelming to newcomers.  For example, my favorite introductory project management book gets longer with each new edition and now weighs in at 462 pages.  Both academic researchers and practicing project managers add new expertise to the field daily, as they explore new ideas such as Agile Project Management. 

In my experience, this formidable body of knowledge intimidates many organizations that are newcomers to formal project management.  These newcomers can see the benefits of good project management merely by observing their competitors, but they despair at their ability to adopt an extensive set of project management best practices.  They are starting from a very low level of project management maturity.  Chaos reigns, and the organizational changes required to implement the full suite of project management techniques are too great.  They need a lightweight, simple way to start – a backpacker’s approach to project management.

I have helped many clients start project management in organizations that had very little of it.  First, let me share six of the lessons I’ve learned about introducing project management where there is none.  Then in the next section, I’ll tell you what I load into my lightweight project management backpack.

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About the Author Jeff Oltmann, PMP Author Jeff Oltmann is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services, LLC in Portland, Oregon (www.spspro.com). He is also on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. His specialties include strategy deployment, operational excellence, and project portfolio management. Jeff is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience managing successful technology programs. He ran the Program Management Office (PMO) and a $60M project portfolio for IBM’s xSeries development facility in Oregon. Jeff’s hands-on program management experience includes program budgets over $100M and worldwide cross-functional teams of over 100 members. Jeff welcomes your questions and ideas. You can contact him at jeff@spspro.com or read previous articles at www.spspro.com/resources.htm.