Project Management Outsourcing

PROJECT MANAGEMENT OUTSOURCING

“No one would let an untrained pilot fly an aircraft full of passengers,” yet many companies are giving the responsibility of managing projects to untrained and inexperienced persons (Stephen Carver in Financial Times Handbook of Management 3rd ed, 2004).

While a project failing may not be as sensational as a plane falling out of the sky, it is still a significant loss for the company and will certainly impact the bottom line.

Made popular in the 1990s by influential management consultant, Peter Drucker, outsourcing became a widely used business strategy to reduce costs, access skills and expertise outside the organisation, reduce overheads, increase efficiency and ultimately generate bigger profits. However, when it came to project management, outsourcing of the project management function only started gaining popularity in the last decade or so.

For many decades, organisations that were mature enough to recognise the need to manage their projects through a recognised project management methodology, either employed a full-time project manager or delegated specific projects to particular employees, who would be considered an expert in the project domain. Other organisations, due to whatever constraints preventing them from setting up a project management office, would simply try to handle projects as normal operations, usually with suboptimal results.

Engaging an external project manager offers your organisation many benefits that you would not have otherwise reaped from employing an internal project manager, such as:

  1. Having access to skills, expertise and experience only when required, on contract for the project duration rather than under a fulltime employment contract; leading to cost savings related to employment and retention of such a highly skilled person;
  2. A project manager that is objective and not involved in organisational politics and hence has a more critical view of the project outcomes and deliverables;
  3. Someone who is more focused on the project as he/she will not be involved in other operations related activities, permitting faster/on time delivery of projects;
  4. No need to set up a project management office and to train staff how to undertake the necessary documentations.