While a business is a continuous and ongoing operation, a project is a temporary venture aimed at producing a unique product, service or process. In many cases, this uniqueness means there aren’t any blueprints or steps in place to develop the end product.
Project Management is a critical part of any successful project, but do you really need a full-time Project Manager on staff? Most small to medium-sized companies cannot afford to employ a full-time Project Manager, only requiring a skilled Project Manager when a critical project is identified.
Provisional Project Management & Consulting
What do you do when you need a skilled Project Manager for a critical or one-time project?
Recruiting a highly skilled employee at this level is expensive and time consuming, often taking weeks, months or more before the employee starts. Each week or month that your project is delayed can introduce additional costs and risks, possibly jeopardizing the success of the project.
There are many advantages to engaging Project Management services on a provisional basis, rather than hiring a full-time employee at this advanced level. Some of these advantages include:
Save Money
When you hire an employee, you have expenses that extend beyond their salary or hourly rate. You’re also responsible for paying for:
- Office space
- Any equipment needed to perform the task at hand
- Worker’s compensation insurance
- Unemployment insurance
- Social Security and Medicare
- Other benefits, such as health insurance and paid time off
Increased Flexibility
One of the best alternative ways to grow your business. Instead of having to provide full time employment, you have access to skills and knowledge on an as-needed basis that can help you compete with companies much larger than yours. By having access to more skills when you need them, you enable your business to respond to unexpected needs.
No Training Expenses
The only training required will be your on-boarding procedure, involving learning your policies and guidelines for working together.
Advocate for You
An organization shopping for outside I.T. services needs to have an objective insider who’s working for it and it’s interests and can also identify the vendors that do not have good practices. Relying on service providers can be risky as they will have their own vision of how things should be, what add-ons they can sell to the customer, and how best to go about completing the project; and, that’s after the challenge of choosing which vendor to use for the project.
Most service providers will include a Project Manager to gather requirements, plan the project, and manage it, so why spend more money to have your own Project Manager/Consultant do the same thing? Because they approach the project with distinctly different perspectives. Your Project Manager/Consultant advocates for the best interests of you, the client. A service provider will act in its own interest, and that may result in higher project costs or solutions that don’t meet the project objectives or both.
An independent Project Manager/Consultant plays a vital “watchdog role” to ensure that the service provider delivers what the client needs, not what the provider wants to deliver.
Larry Shivers 