Hello, everyone! This is the first of my weekly blogs on Project Connections. I am honored to be a member of the team of experts who have been assembled to help you get the results that you expect with your project, program and portfolio management missions. I would like to thank the entire Project Connections team and especially Cinda Voegtli for asking me to come on board.

You know everyone needs a niche. Mine is implementing project management within organizations. I thought it would be a good idea for my first blog to tell you a little about myself; where I plan to focus; what I plan to do with my blog; and, what I am going to do to insure that you get the help that you need.

About Me: I am fortunate to have been in the project management business for quite some time. It all began about two years out of college when I made a conscious decision, while working for IBM as the lead for a new chip design team (we were working at the time on the most advanced 20 transistor chip --- can you believe it!), to learn all I could about project management and to be the best there is in the field. My experience continued over the next 30 years managing projects, managing programs and eventually managing portfolios in excess of $15B of Information Technology service contracts. In many of my practitioner and executive positions I have had to transform the project and portfolio management of entire organizations from methodologies to training to coaching to tools to communications and metrics – the entire spectrum of activities necessary for a complete transformation. Having done this a few times I then decided to help companies all over the world with their improvement and transformation programs. It is this experience that I hope to bring to the blogosphere each week.

My Focus: My focus will be on organizational transformation, change and improvement in project, program and portfolio management. This will include PMOs, Enterprise PMOs, Centers of Excellence and other entities charged with responsibilities to plan, organize, implement, direct and control such programs. The target audience will be organizational executives, managers, project managers and staff supporting these activities.

My Plans: My plans are to bring to you information which you can take to the trenches each week that will help you in the above endeavors. Tips and tricks based on experiences I have had or been involved with to help you be successful.

My Insurance: In order to make sure that I address the issues that are important to YOU, I am providing you my personal email address. Please feel free to write to me any time regarding advice or help that you need. I will answer every email, I promise, within 3 days. As I begin to hear from you and detect common problems or issues, I will take these to the blogosphere. So I am offering two levels of insurance. First, you can get personal service. Second, for those who didn’t think to ask that question, blog postings will insure you get the information.

My Email Address: jerry.perone@verizon.net

Does Project and Portfolio Management Pay Off: I want to leave you this week with a little story about one company that I worked with a few years ago. If there are any doubts about whether or not there is payback with implementing these programs, maybe this will help. The company I was consulting with was serious in knowing exactly if there was a real return on investment (ROI) by changing the organization and implementing project management. The executive in charge felt that if they could prove there was a realizable return, then it would be a lot easier to get organizational support, buy-in and funding. They knew that personnel could be trained in basic project management a lot sooner than they could develop a methodology, get tooling in place and other long lead time items. Therefore they decided to study the ROI for project management training first. What they decided to do was to identify two sets of 20 nearly identical projects, 40 projects in all. The two sets contained 20 projects each, where each project was less than 12 months in duration and of approximately similar total levels of efforts. Forty project managers were identified to manage these projects --- 20 project managers who had never had formal project management training; 20 project managers who had recently received formal training in basic project management principles. At the end of the 12 months the revenue, cost, schedule and profit variances were determined for each of the two sets. The set of projects that was managed by project managers who had recently had formal training realized on average a 2% higher profit margin than the set of projects that was managed by project managers who had never had any formal project management training. Since this company was a contracting company, profit was very important and a responsibility delegated to each project manager. Now 2% may not seem like a lot to some, but it translated to a savings of over $500,000 a week, that’s right, per week, in bottom line profit, take-it-to-the-bank-cashola. So even if nothing else was done, just training, they could expect this level of savings per year. Given that a typical three-day project management training class costs less than 5% of the $500,000, you could run a class per week and still show a huge return on investment. Imagine the payback with tooling, standard methodologies, standard templates, data and information systems, management of the portfolio and ever increasing competency. Unbelievable is all I can say.

So, Project Connectors, I look forward to helping you and your organizations. Bring it on!

Respectfully, Jerry Perone

National Management Center Inc.