The need to accompany technological changes with a change in mindset, or at least method, is one of the cornerstones of innovation. Limiting oneself, for example, to a change of platform or software without reviewing one’s management model often leads to failure. In truth, the issue is even more thorny: any technological solution, in fact, should be a tool to serve these kinds of changes, not the driver for adopting them. From this perspective, working by projects is perhaps one of the most effective methodologies we can include in the paradigm shifts required by a digital transformation process.
Working by projects: the theory
What exactly does it mean to work by projects? In a nutshell, it means that the company, after setting itself any kind of goal, plans and organizes all the necessary activities, within a specific time limit and with a precise amount of resources. The curious aspect, to remain in the academic field for a moment, is that practically any activity, even the construction of a product or the realization of a service, can be seen as a project, in turn embedded in a larger project that may be the realization of an order or the fulfillment of the terms of a contract.
Working by projects: practice
Since project management is still a resource-intensive activity in its own right, one of the fundamental aspects of project management, that is, the discipline of organizing and regulating projects, is precisely to identify the optimal level of control and management. To give a concrete example related to the manufacturing sector, it would be unthinkable-bordering on the ridiculous-if a workforce were forced to report the closure of a task with every piece produced. On the other hand, it would not even be conceivable to have to process the count of a ten-thousand-item job order after the fact. Or, at least, it would not be conceivable in today’s market, where efficiency, including in management and logistics, is paramount. This aspect introduces one of the key topics, namely the delegation of some processes to an infrastructure, to which we will return in a moment.
Returning for a moment to the main focus, the opportunity to work by projects, this approach brings with it some interesting advantages: let us recall the main ones.
The advantages of working by projects
The cardinal principle of project work is, in essence, to formalize the company’s activities into a shared control and management system. Many of these are actually already functionally projects, but they need to be codified. The leading case is, for example, order management. Managing each order, or each set of orders from the same customer, as a project brings with it certain advantages.
First of all, drafting a project requires planning, even minimal planning, which allows for the immediate identification of any critical issues, which would otherwise emerge during the course of work.
Planning is the first piece of an overall improvement in efficiency: having a shared project means that each of the departments and people involved can easily know the progress of the work and, through the project manager, better plan their own processing steps.
Improved efficiency also means a better customer experience, both in the preliminary stages, for example if a customer asks to be kept informed about the progress of the work, and in the final stages: project work tends to offer more certainty about delivery or delivery times.
Another important advantage is replicability: with good project management software, it is possible, over time, to build a real library of projects to be used as a basis, with appropriate variations, for future needs. In addition, the creation of a project-based system leads to the establishment of a more general method of working, which will allow new and increasingly complex challenges to be addressed with greater ease, providing greater flexibility in dealing with customer demands and needs.
The Benefits of SAP in Project Management
Of course, in order to manage projects successfully, you need a flexible and powerful project management platform that can make project work a useful and functional tool within the business reality and infrastructure. SAP has a dedicated solution, Project System, which is part of SAP Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management. It is a powerful and flexible management solution that facilitates project work, while also offering a solution to precisely the problems indicated above. By interconnecting with ERP and MES modules, for example, it offers the possibility of incorporating controls of all kinds into project management. In the case mentioned above, for example, it is possible to delegate to the control systems the counting of items made, so as to always have visibility into the level of completion of the orders and initiate the next stages of the project, such as organizing logistics, payment requests, and so on.
We understand that transforming business processes means transforming the way people, the heart of projects and all innovation, work.
That’s why we created the new path of knowledge, sharing,
cross-fertilization: THE GOOD PEOPLE SCHOOL.
