National Puzzle Day: Solve Your Team’s Capacity and Skill Gaps with Fractional Project Management
In our fast-paced world, effective project management is not just beneficial but often crucial for success. National Puzzle Day is a perfect opportunity to reflect on assembling the right mix of skills and capacity within your team, much like solving a complex puzzle.
In the past, the most common solution been to hire a full time project manager when a project arises. While this can be beneficial in some cases, not all entities have utility for a full time project manager, nor the capital to secure and retain a full-time hire. Alternatively, adding fractional project management support to your business adds value; offering strategic, cost effective solutions that allows your organization to gain the benefits of experienced senior manager guidance and direction without the financial commitment of a full time hire.
Let’s explore how fractional project management can be the solution to these challenges, especially when full-time project management is not viable.
1. Fractional project managers align capacity with optimal efficiency
Project Management Professionals (PMPs) offer expertise to address challenges throughout a project’s lifecycle. This allows businesses to get the most out of your resources (internal and external) without hiring a full time employee.
Consider this scenario:
Imagine your organization needs to manage a one-off project, such as an office move. The current team doesn’t have the resources or capacity to lead this initiative, especially by a hard deadline. Koja can take the lead on your ‘special project’ and everyone else gets to continue working on their current responsibilities. Win-Win!
Beyond capacity alignment, another major benefit of fractional project management is boosting productivity.
By incorporating standard project management workflows and procedures, projects are completed efficiently, leading to increased productivity, profits, and organizational growth…
2. Increasing productivity
One of the primary benefits of a fractional support model is productivity. The expertise of project managers ensures that projects are completed on time and on budget, which will lead to increased productivity, profits and organizational growth. Who doesn’t love business growth? This is achieved by incorporating standard project management workflows and procedures.
Consider this scenario:
Creating a work breakdown structure and identifying dependencies (tasks, deadlines, approvals, etc) and ensuring a communication plan is created and utilized to ensure all collaborators are engaged and know their role, responsibilities and deadlines as related to the overall project.
In addition to enhancing productivity, fractional project management offers another significant benefit: targeted expertise.
3. Targeted expertise
Another significant benefit is the targeted expertise fractional project management provides, focusing on specific project needs without the overhead of a full-time position.
Consider this scenario:
One, two, or perhaps more employees have tried to work on a particular ‘special project’ in their ‘spare time’ or ‘off the side of their desk’. The project has dragged on for years, with no permanent solution in place, continuing to cost the organization more and more money as people continue to waste time and resources on the project.
Another common issue is that a risk has eventuated, crippling the project progress, and costing a lot of extra time and money to fix what went wrong!
Hiring a project management professional to focus on the project from beginning to end, and who creates a risk register and mitigation plan, ultimately saves the organization money.
Just like every puzzle requires a different approach, every organization has unique needs. This is where our tailored solutions come into play.
4. Tailored solutions
Recognizing that each organization is unique, our tailored solutions ensure that you have access to the right skill set for each specific project. Implementing fractional project management allows organizations to access a diverse range of skills and experiences tailored to the specific needs of each project, at a flexible rate that fits within your budget. At Koja, we leverage a diverse network of project managers to complement the capacity and skillset needs of your team.
Consider this scenario:
An ERP implementation is a very different project to a fundraising event. One project may take two years or more to complete, another only two months. Koja will match your team and your project with the right project manager for the job.
Another key aspect of this approach is the adaptability it offers, particularly in scaling up or down according to your organization’s changing demands. Adaptability is key in project management, and our fractional model excels in scaling to meet your project’s dynamic demands.
5. Scale up or down
An additional advantage of fractional team members is their ability to flexibly scale up or down. Whether facing a sudden increase in workload or a need to reduce hours, our ‘on call’ project managers provide the necessary support and flexibility. This adaptability is crucial, ensuring that resources are optimally utilized throughout the project’s lifecycle.
Consider this scenario:
Project effort naturally fluctuates throughout the lifecycle of a project. For example, a fundraising event might need 3 hours a week to start with, and ramp up to 12 hours per week as the event date draws closer, then 30+ hours the week of the event.
Koja’s model factors in that our team is working on multiple part time projects at any given time, enabling us to resource our team to meet the project cycle demands of your project from kick off to close out. And if the project needs extra support, we have resources to add to the team.
Understanding the unique nature of each project, Koja Consulting has crafted a service model that reflects these diverse requirements.
This National Puzzle Day, don’t let the pieces of your project management challenges remain scattered
At Koja Consulting, we understand that every project is unique and may not demand a constant, full time presence. This is why we have developed a fractional project management and consulting model to strategically provide value by adding capacity, focus, skills and experience exactly when and where it is needed most.
In summary, Koja Consulting’s fractional project management and consulting model is tailor-made to strategically align with your unique project needs, adding value precisely when and where it’s needed most.
Connect with us today – and let Koja help you assemble the perfect solution for your needs.
