Business Environment Interface Concepts

Project management mentors are resources for new and developing project managers. They provide coaching, serve as sources of information, and apply experience to guide and reassure project managers in their application of skill and knowledge. The mentoring effort ensures that no project becomes an experiment in failure and that no project manager is tested to a level of uncertainty or incompetence. This inherently ensures that business objectives are consistently achieved, even through the efforts of newer project managers, both those who are just joining the organization as well as those who are advancing upward to the project manager ranks.

Project management mentors, in working with prot g s from across the organization, gain a business perspective that few other senior managers will see — the interaction and productivity of cross-functional teams. Mentors often will observe and in some cases facilitate cross-functional project management activities that enable them to discern where strengths and weaknesses may lie relative to business unit influences. This information is not necessarily for compilation and reporting back to the business unit or to functional and senior management. Rather, it is for the mentor to take steps that encourage continuation of practices that are good for business and to rectify situations that reduce business effectiveness immediately, at the personal level, and within the context of the respected mentor-prot g relationship.

Of course, the mentor's role in the organization does facilitate the identification and exchange of such information as recurring project management business issues, resource utilization indicators, and project performance trends. Mentors can and should compile this type of information for broader examination and discussion, when appropriate.

As well, the project management mentor, as a senior professional, properly holds responsibility for advising other senior managers and executives in the art and science of project management. This is particularly valuable for executives who have project management oversight responsibility but limited formal training in the discipline and its recent advances. They need the advice and guidance of project management mentors on the details and intricacies of project management as input to their project management support and business decisions.