Business Environment Interface Concepts

Project management tools are selected with the principal goal of supporting project managers and their teams. However, by its nature, project management is distinctly aligned with different business functions. Project management, and associated project work, is a critical representation of the organization's business. Therefore, the project management tools used in the project management environment directly affect the creation and exchange of vital business information. In many cases, entities on the business-side of the organization will recognize that their input is crucial to project management tool selection and implementation as well. A brief review of the types of tools examined for use in the project environment, as presented in the previous section, shows how information created, collected, calculated, and stored through the use of project management tools is also a valuable asset to the business functions of the organization.

The following list highlights some examples of cross-functional business use of project management tools. Of course, the culture of each organization will determine whether the following functional roles are considered project stakeholders. Notwithstanding that label, these functional roles will have interest in the output of project management tools:

• Executives: Executive dashboards and portfolio-management systems facilitate senior level management decisions for project selection, continuation, and termination, as well as decisions concerning overall resource allocation. This includes the receipt and review of associated project status and progress reports. The executive role extends to participants on senior level control and advisory boards as well as business committees.

• Resource managers: Project resources are frequently not assigned exclusively to the PMO or to the project manager on a full-time basis. Therefore, management of the project resource matrix is necessary for project team formation. Resource managers need access to information about resource utilization, which can be provided by several types of project management tools.

• Functional support managers: Organizational managers in traditional business areas will find project information sufficiently relevant to their business efforts to warrant their inclusion as users of project management tools.

  • Business development and sales managers will have an interest in performing project initiation tasks and customer interface activities as outlined and managed in the methodology tool. Consequently, they will have at least some interest in monitoring project progress for customer satisfaction, perhaps using the executive dashboard.

  • Marketing managers will be looking for project and customer information to develop targeting strategies and to promote project successes in publications and news releases. They will be seeking access to project information databases across the spectrum of project management tools.

  • Human resource managers hold ultimate responsibility for ensuring recruitment and retention of qualified project managers and team members to fulfill all project commitments. These managers will have a definite interest in project management tools that capture and convey resource assignments, performance, and future commitments. Alternatively, these project management tools can also support the human-resource department's job of maintaining an appropriate supply of qualified project managers.

  • Finance and accounting managers, legal advisors, contract and procurement managers, and facility and equipment managers play various direct and indirect roles in supporting project management. Managers in these functional areas can gain useful access to pertinent information from many project management tools.

• Customers and subcontractors: External parties as well as internal customers who have an interest in project information can access reporting tools from a network or Web-based applications to obtain project status and customized progress reports. Using collaboration tools, this group also can respond to and comment on project status and participate in associated on-line discussions and meetings. Moreover, automated invoice and payment systems, as might be found within a comprehensive contract or vendor-management system, would be useful to this audience.

The PMO can best serve the relevant organization by including these business function managers in its deliberations and decisions concerning acquisition or development and use of project management tools.