Enterprise-wide project management on way
The Ministry of Works and Housing has launched a project to implement an enterprise-wide project management system (PMS) in its directorates and offices which will incorporate Project Management Institute (PMI) standards and the best industrial practices.
Undersecretary for Housing and Management Affairs at the ministry and chairman of the project steering committee, Mohamed Khalil Alsayed, said the project was one of the key strategic initiatives in line with a strategic plan. The initiative is monitored by the Minister, Fahmi bin Ali Al Jowder.
Alsayed said that after the panel reviewed and accepted PMS, project teams initiated work on the next series of activities, focusing on the development of project life cycles, stage gating and project classification. Such life cycles are diagrams identifying key phases that each project must pass through, specifying key outcomes and activities needed to produce the agreed outcomes. Stage gating determines the readiness to enter the next phase of a project life cycle once the previous one has been completed.
PMS is scalable as it applies the right amount of rigour and control appropriate to a project class. A class is determined by its size and complexity. At one end of the spectrum are class A projects which are the large, complex projects and at the other end of the spectrum are class C projects which would be smaller and less complex.
An initial organisational assessment was conducted last September to validate the outcome of an earlier exercise that had been performed in February 2005 and to assess the organisational readiness for change.
The next steps would be to pilot test it between next month and April, for it to be fine tuned and refined. Then the training programme on PMS will be rolled out in May.
As part of a campaign to increase organisational awareness of the project management discipline in general and specifically on how it applies at the ministry, with benefits to be realised once it is fully implemented, a presentation was conducted for the information technology directorate management and staff last November. Presentations to other directorates follow. The project is implemented and managed by SPM Group, a Canadian project management consulting and training boutique, in partnership with LSS Technologies, a Bahraini technology-service firm.
Husam Sha'ath, from SPM Group, is the project manager working on site with ministry management and staff on the implementation of the project under the direction of Ghazi Al Saleh, head of the strategic projects directorate who is also head of the core management team and deputy chairman of the project steering committee.
© Bahrain Tribune 2006
