The benefits of incorporating project management in an organisation’s operation are applicable even for government agencies and departments.
In fact, based on their research on this matter, Timothy W. Jaques and Jonathan Weinstein found that public sector organisations utilised project management in all levels of government as a means of streamlining and delivering services during difficult economic times.
It was particularly effective when there were coordination and demonstration of the value that project management offered within project teams and between different organisations involved.
Incorporating project management in their operation allows public sector organisations to be more flexible, foster innovation and drive change
In their 2010 conference paper ‘Integrating project management across government operations’, Jaques and Weinstein identified three ways that project management could improve the way government agencies and departments operated:
As a Lever of Change: Project management provides new methods of addressing challenges unique to the public sector, including a bureaucratic environment, incremental thinking among government organisations and increasing projects involving cross-agency collaboration.
It does so by enabling these organisations to be more aggressive and proactive in delivering on clear, concise objectives, as well as driving change by way of creating new strategies, inculcating problem solving capabilities and managing the needs of stakeholders more systematically.
Bringing Flexibility to Bureaucracy: Applying the principles of project management in their operation can help highly bureaucratic organisations such as government agencies and departments to maintain a consistent approach to managing projects, but most importantly to enhance the speed and flexibility of planning and execution processes.
This requires looking at projects as “small businesses” and instilling key principles of flexibility in the organisation, namely priorities over procedures, outcomes over outputs and process over personalities.
However, Jaques and Weinstein noted that these principles do not suggest ignoring procedures, outputs and personalities altogether for they remain vital aspects in completing a project.
Fostering Innovation: With governments finding new and more affordable means of delivering services and fulfilling the needs of the people, project management plays a crucial role in driving innovation by enabling different ways of thinking and problem solving.
Read more on Jaques and Weinstein’s conference paper ‘Integrating project management across government operations’ at https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/integrating-project-management-government-operations-6525.
