Beyond the Boundaries of Project Management

Abstract

In this chapter I describe in broad terms the business functions that are contiguous to project management and their operating principles: it is very common to discover that the goals within the same organization are misaligned, and this, although it should not shock us, represents a serious problem that the project manager has the duty to communicate to his or her sponsor to work together for an organizational improvement. For example, a classic case of misaligned objective in which I often come across is that of the purchasing department that has as its sole objective to obtain discounts from suppliers, without taking into account other aspects that impact the company as the level of quality and sustainability of the supplier's business and the on-time delivery. The supplier who is “plucked” and induced to accept an excessively low selling price will try to make efficiency at the expense of lead time and/or quality of deliverables, thus causing problems for the project. In such cases, the project manager must work with his or her sponsor to ensure that the purchasing department's action is also sensitive to the supplier's performance issues in terms of time and quality. And so on. What is presented in this chapter does not pretend to be exhaustive with respect to the topics covered, but I believe it provides those who are project managers with the basic notions to orient themselves when they have to interface with these functions.