Project success is probably not the first association that comes to mind when you think of Stuttgart Airport. At least for me, the first thing that comes to mind is air traffic.
But above all, an airport is also a complex infrastructure, a complex network of companies, employees and ongoing change projects.
The planning of transport projects (e.g. rail links at airports), the construction of new traffic areas (parking lots, runways, access roads, etc.), the construction of new buildings, the takeover of companies, the awarding of long-term service contracts, etc. or simply the digital modernization of organizational processes requires procedures, methods, tools, etc. that are adapted to the requirements, circumstances and people involved.
We'll manage
As in most companies, those involved in projects are often not project professionals, but experts in their subject area. The professional use of modern project methods and tools is usually not part of the day-to-day business of the technical experts involved in projects. Highly motivated and excellently trained - but not for projects.
Nevertheless, there is no active demand for professional PMO services from the central organization in projects. Awareness of the need for a professional project management office (PMO) often only arises when projects have already run into difficulties.
Project success with a repeat factor
Our concept proposal has taken up the existing findings, enriched them with our external perspective and systematized them.
The potential map derived from this prioritizes the topics and fields of action according to impact, effort, expected implementation speed and expected implementation risk.
In a capability map, we have sorted the highest prioritized topics in the potential map according to required capabilities and evaluated these according to "make or buy" potential in order to identify capacity bottlenecks for prioritized topics.
Finally, for each project type, we identified suitable methods and tools that can provide project-type-specific support and compared this map with the current situation in order to identify recommended fields of action for each project type.
Conclusion
Since even after systematization and prioritization there was an overwhelming mountain of tasks, we proposed a communication concept to address the stakeholders of the topics and fields of action, which supports the addressed stakeholders in querying the readiness for systematized project management and the use of central PMO services in their organization.
This approach allows prioritization according to "willingness to act". And where there is a will....
