Project Management
Are you looking for assistance in situation analysis, planning or strategy development? Do you want to test your preparedness for the challenges of project management? Do you need help thinking about roles, abilities and responsibilities within your project team? I provide professional advice on all aspects of project management.
Projects, unlike organisations, are temporary. As such, whatever their purpose is – whether to test a new approach or reach a certain target – they are under pressure to produce results in a limited period of time. Projects are frequently caught between the ambition of their objectives and the limitation of the resources available to pursue them.
A successful project has a convincing strategy that all its major stakeholders work to uphold. It features simple and flexible structures that encourage interdisciplinary collaboration and professional cooperation. Moreover, a skilful project team reflects on its progress and manages its knowledge by making it available to the organisation. To achieve all this, projects need professional management.
Managing intercultural projects
Multinational project teams pose specific challenges to project management. In these cases, management must take into account and accept the cultural codes of each project partner, and become aware of its own cultural impact. Each intercultural project must aspire to sustainability without abandoning the values and beliefs of its participants.
A particularly important part of intercultural projects is communication and coordination, as misunderstandings can lead to conflicts that undermine effective collaboration. Management must make sure that all stakeholders live up to their potential in this regard.
How to create a balance between action and reflection
Project management comprises results-oriented actions, decisions and instruments. At the same time every project team needs to step back now and then and take stock of what it’s done and where it’s going. A tailor-made monitoring system for your project facilitates systematic self-evaluation and reflection.
Monitoring in the non-profit sector today focuses on outcome and impact. It delivers crucial information on individually selected key indicators, and conveys data for public accounting and for presenting results. Monitoring is more than a management information system, however. Many projects that I have advised had an overabundance of raw data not prepared in a way to be effectively used by management. Information must be kept at reasonable levels to be of use for everyday project management.
But monitoring always goes beyond information too. Invariably tied to the question of success or failure, monitoring is accompanied by powerful emotions. In helping clients establish monitoring systems I show them how to focus these potentials to achieve their goals.
I offer:
- Twenty years of training and advising project managers in Germany and abroad, as well as experience as a project leader and project manager.
- Analysis, planning and strategy consultation – the basis for achieving outcomes, impact and sustainability!
- A tool box of instruments, methods and exercises for introducing central aspects of project management.
- Seminars, workshops and coaching on key topics of project management: planning, results-oriented monitoring, participation and communication, collaboration and environment, knowledge management, quality management.