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Vol. XII Issue I - January 2010
Project Management eJournal
VIEWPOINTS
Training the Customer in Project Management
By Rebecca Winston, Esq.
Idaho, USA
Pleasant moments of reward don’t come along every day and when they do, one should treasure them. I do. I had one of those days of reward when I came to the end of week in which I had one of our customers for a Program I manage in the project management class arranged for staff.
Project managers, myself included, have long stated that if our customers and upper management only understood in more detail what we do; our role, efforts, and product would be more appreciated and applied. In fact, books and studies have been done on how best to get them to understand the role of project management. In the class, I had not only one of my customers from the US Federal Government but three of the upper management team. In this age of cutbacks on training, the class was indeed a luxury. By inviting the customer into the fold, the class became more cost effective for the customer and the idea was well received by the senior management for the customer as well as internal to the company for which I work.
Senior management attended as they noticed that those who had attended the first class were much more prepared and spoke a common language. The previous class participants also appear surer of themselves in their job and the role of project manager. Besides as stated previously, training is not an option these days unless it is a job requirement, so this training was one not to be missed.
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About the Author Author Rebecca (Becky) Winston, Esq., JD, PMI Fellow, is a former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Project Management Institute (PMI®). An experienced expert on the subject of project management (PM) in the fields of research & development (R&D), energy, environmental restoration and national security, she is well known throughout the United States and globally as a leader in the PM professional world. Becky has over 25 years of experience in program and project management, primarily on programs funded by the US government. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska’s College of Law, Juris Doctorate (1980), in Lincoln, Nebraska and has a Bachelor’s of Science (BS) degree in Education from Nebraska Wesleyan University in the USA. Active in PMI since 1993, Rebecca Winston helped pioneer PMI's Specific Interest Groups (SIGs) in the nineties, including the Project Earth and Government SIGs, and was a founder and first co-chair of the Women in Project Management SIG. She served two terms on the PMI board of directors and was elected a PMI Fellow in 2005. She is a licensed attorney and a member of the American Bar Association and the Association of Female Executives in the USA. She has extensive recent PM experience in the areas of national defense and security, and has worked closely with local, regional and national officials, including federal agencies, the US Congress and the Pentagon. Becky is currently Chair of the US Technical Advisory Group for the new ISO Standard for Project Management, currently under development. She also serves as a Global Advisor to PMForum and is a PM AmbassadorTM, available for international speaking engagements. She lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA. |
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