Right-Size Project Management for Infrastructure and Operations
Equip your project managers with a purpose-built approach to project management.
- Your team is expected to manage projects off the side of their desks while also balancing heavy operational workloads.
- The organization’s project management process is rigorous. While it might have its place on high-risk, high-complexity projects where the outcomes are unpredictable, it seems like a lot of documentation for the typical infrastructure project.
- You still need your team to properly plan and manage their projects, but the rigor prescribed by the project management office (PMO) isn’t working. Your team is frustrated by governance requirements that don’t ultimately help to drive outcomes on their projects.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Project management best practices have traditionally neglected the unique planning needs of infrastructure projects, prescribing heavy requirements gathering, scope, and schedule management rigor where increased communication and stakeholder management tactics are in fact what’s needed.
- With a high expectation of “get-to-action” (both internally, from infrastructure practitioners, and externally, from requestors and executives), infrastructure project leads can often have an allergy to project planning, and have a tendency to just “get to work.” While this might end up saving the individual practitioner some time, it can end up costing the organization at implementation time in the form of resourcing waste and stakeholder confusion.
Impact and Result
- Breakdown the divide between stakeholder groups. Use the training and stakeholder alignment tactics and tools in this research to help promote better project management adherence, while improving relations between project and infrastructure leaders.
- Shift the focus of your project managers and leads away from your processes, towards the fulfillment of the project. Provide project staff with a simplified process that will help to define scope, manage risk, communicate outcomes, and feed the portfolio, without drowning them in unnecessary documentation.
- Tune your project management tools to fit the task at hand. Configure the Excel-based toolkit at the heart of this research to help anchor and guide your right-sized processes.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Prince George's Community College
Guided Implementation
10/10
$2,546
2
The best part was exposure to the templates and explanations on how to best handle selected situations. I didn't have a worst part - but there w... Read More
Chemeketa Community College
Guided Implementation
7/10
N/A
N/A
Best - personable staff, helpful information Worst - applies broadly I just got back from a week away and would have got more out of the call... Read More
Workshop: Right-Size Project Management for Infrastructure and Operations
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Analyze the Current State
The Purpose
- Assess the current state of infrastructure project management and establish a realistic target state.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Realistic and well-informed workshop goals.
Activities
Outputs
Introductions and workshop expectations activity.
- Realistic workshop goals and expectations
Complete Info-Tech’s PPM Current State Scorecard diagnostic survey.
- PPM Current State Scorecard
Assess pain points and analyze root causes.
- Root cause analysis
Module 2: Define Project Management Baselines
The Purpose
- Establish key project and project management baselines before building the process out.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Stakeholder alignment on things like “what is a project?” and “how much time do we have for project management responsibilities?”
Activities
Outputs
Refine the definition of a project for your infrastructure team.
- Essential distinction between project and non-project work
Establish the criteria for assessing project levels to right-size project management processes.
- Project Intake and Classification Tool
Perform a high-level project capacity assessment.
- PPM High-Level Supply-Demand Calculator
Module 3: Establish Right-Sized Planning Processes
The Purpose
- Develop appropriate initiation and planning practices for your infrastructure projects.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Standardized and sustainable initiation and planning processes.
Activities
Outputs
Define intake and initiation steps for infrastructure projects and project managers.
- A process for the intake and initiation of infrastructure projects
Create requirements-driven scope statements and a plan for managing project changes.
- A defined process for defining scope and managing scope changes
Create a task breakdown and schedule and define roles.
- Processes for delineating project tasks and milestones, and defining stakeholder roles and responsibilities
Module 4: Develop Execution and Closure Protocol
The Purpose
- Develop appropriate execution and closure practices for your infrastructure projects.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Standardized and sustainable execution and closure processes.
Activities
Outputs
Plan organizational change management aspects of a project.
- A process to manage organizational change components of projects
Create a communications plan.
- A standardized approach to communication planning and management
Develop project status reporting and risk management processes.
- Status and risk management practices
Develop a closure checklist.
- A process for effectively closing projects out
Module 5: Define an Implementation Plan
The Purpose
- Define an implementation approach for your new processes.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Well defined next steps on how to implement the tools and processes defined during the workshop.
Activities
Outputs
Map your target state process.
- Project Management Process Flow
Configure the Infrastructure and Operations Project Management Workbook.
- Infrastructure and Operations Project Management Workbook
Plan training requirements and define an implementation plan.
- Project Management Process Training Template
- Implementation Plan
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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Guided Implementation 1: Configure a purpose-built project management workbook
- Call 1: Scoping call to determine the organization’s current state and to review Info-Tech’s Infrastructure and Operations Project Management Workbook.
- Call 2: Develop project initiation and planning practices using the workbook.
- Call 3: Cultivate project execution and closure practices for your infrastructure project managers using the workbook.
Guided Implementation 2: Document and communicate your project management processes
- Call 1: Formalize your new project management processes in a process document and workflow.
- Call 2: Prepare to communicate your new processes and to train project managers.
Contributors
- 3 anonymous contributors
IT Project Management Lite
Tailor IT Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects
Right-Size Project Management for Infrastructure and Operations
Right-Size Your Project Risk Investment
Formalize Project Portfolio Management for Small Enterprise
Rebalance Project Intake for Small Enterprise
Introduce Program Management to Your Organization
Get Started With Project Management Excellence
Begin Your Projects With the End in Mind
Avoid Project Management Pitfalls
Build a Comprehensive Business Case
Demystify the New PMBOK Guide and PMI Certifications
Project Success Assurance