Case Study: Project Planning

Project Planning: Learn how MetaPM helped a major financial services organisation improve their project results by developing a consistent set of roles.

The Challenge: Our client, a major financial services organisation, recognised that their project planning and project management delivery success had been hampered by a lack of capability and embarked on a program of initiatives to improve their project results.

In developing the program it was identified that a number of issues were related specifically to project roles, such as:

• Lack of a dedicated pool of project staff
• Disengagement by project staff due to a lack of career path clarity
• Inconsistent application of a robust performance management framework across project management roles that are appropriately differentiated from operation roles
• Recognition of project management roles being distinct and different to operational roles
• Recognition of project management roles having commonality regardless of function, division or region
• Remuneration strategy and policy that better reflects localised supply and demand of project management professionals

MetaPM Approach: MetaPM was engaged to analyse global standards and best practices to develop a core set of standard roles for all program, project, business analysis, PMO, change management, and business process roles.
MetaPM focused on the delivery of a consistent set of Project Professional Role Family (PPRF) roles that are aligned with international best practice standards structured to integrate into existing HR standards and remuneration grades.
With extensive stakeholder engagement across a large project population, MetaPM were able to capture examples of better practice as well as inputs, ideas and concerns to ensure maximum collaboration and re-use.
The Results: MetaPM delivered a complete set of integrated job roles, job descriptions, and role structures for all project-related standard roles. This provided a sound basis for:

• Standardised recruitment and selection practices
• A standard suite of KRAs / performance objectives
• A remuneration and reward framework
• Identification of project practice professionals

In addition, MetaPM provided a detailed analysis of international standards as a key reference for future development.
Client Assessment: The engagement was recognised by the sponsor as a success, laying the foundation for the uplift of the overall capability of project professionals.