Executive's Guide to Project Management: Organizational Processes and Practices for Supporting Complex Projects

The Risk Mitigation and Business Value Roles of the Senior Management Team

Complex projects are high-risk projects and require a great deal of creativity to be completed successfully. That calls upon you as a member of the SMT to assume a role that may be new to you and that you might not be comfortable with. You need to understand the risks and how best to mitigate them. You need to understand the creative process and how to support it but not interfere with it. Every member of the SMT must be sensitive to the creative and flexible environment needed to support complex projects. As you consider the templates, tools, and processes that you support in this effort, avoid making the following demands on complex project managers:

• Requiring rigid adherence to defined processes
• Regularly scheduled meetings with no action items
• Written status reports
• Forcing them to use specific tools, templates, and processes
• Micro-management

Instead, leave room for the following:

• Empower your project managers to take exception to defined processes with justification
• Meetings called for a specific purpose with a timed agenda and action items
• Passing information in documents rather than meetings
• Discussing problems with affected parties in meetings rather than documents
• Utilize exception reports whenever possible
• Empowerment accompanied by responsibility and accountability
• Use of tools, templates, and processes when their use adds value not just work

Risk Mitigation

Complex projects are wrought with ...