On Projects*

There is a tremendous collection of Project Management Templates (and their related methods/processes) available on the web – some good, some bad, some ugly – but instead of encouraging you to copy large slabs of someone else’s project management methodology or template resource, which is not only a breach of copyright but will lead to you trying to implement a disjointed method, it would be worth noting that this easily accessible resource presents an excellent opportunity to do some benchmarking of your own methodology and templates/tools.

The depth of the analysis is really up to you and how much time you and your team have, however even a quick scan will prompt some ideas and possible improvements. As you review their sites, ask yourself some questions – How can I make my execution faster, better, cheaper? What have my competitors done better? Are they more usable? Do I have the right templates to support my own processes?

I’ve started with the public sector and have selected some organisations from different countries for you to compare. I’ll be adding more sectors as I come across them, however it’s important to note that if you are not a public sector organisation, benchmarking yourself against a completely different industry/sector does have its dangers and drawbacks. For example a state government project management office will be very different to a mission critical finance sector project delivery organisation and light years apart from an advertising design project team.

The key is to view what has been produced in the context of your projects, their performance, your organisational culture and staff personalities and go from there. Enjoy.

Public Organisations

	Method	Process	Templates	Tools
Tasmanian Gov’t (Aust.)
Queensland Transport Ministry (Aust.)
Texas Dept of Info Resources (USA)
Cornell University (USA)
Washington State DIS (USA)
Dept. of BERR (UK)

Table Legend

• Method – has the method been fully defined?
• Process – are the processes of the method defined?
• Templates – have the PM templates been created?
• Tools – have additional tools and templates been created?

– Full Tick indicates sufficient information is present

– Half Tick indicates some information is present however not fully defined.

NOTE: The tick does not provide a qualitative assessment of the Project Management Templates and Methodologies, instead it simply indicated the level of information provided.