CIO David L. Stevens say project managers are critical to his organization’s success, so much so that he shook up the org chart soon after he started in his post.
Stevens, who heads IT for Maricopa County, Ariz., consolidated project managers in a new project management office headed by a new PMO director who answers to the new director of strategic planning and business alignment position.
He says the set-up demonstrates that project managers must focus on business outcomes. That, in turn, influences the kind of professionals he wants on staff.
They need financial, scheduling and management skills to keep projects on time and on budget. They must communicate effectively to diverse business and technical teams and bring together various players “to really deliver something that impacts the business.” And they must be problem-solvers who can keep their eyes on intended goals.
“You have to have a systemic view of the project at any given moment to help navigate toward that outcome,” Stevens says.
Stevens, who hired five of the six full-time staff project managers working in the PMO since its creation two years ago, sought out experienced project managers with the Project Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, which is issued by the Project Management Institute (PMI). (The PMI is a not-for-profit professional membership association for the project, program and portfolio management profession, awards the PMP credential along with seven other project management-focused certifications.)
“We looked for the right talent, the right people, because we want to demonstrate to our customers our professionalism, our capabilities and experience to walk them through these often very complicated and expensive initiatives to produce the outcomes they expect,” he says.
Nearly topping the IT skills chart
Project management is one of the most in-demand skills among IT leaders today – coming in at No. 2 among top skills in Computerworld’s 2015 Forecast survey. It was second only to programming/application development. Some 35 percent of the IT leaders who responded to the survey said they plan to hire for the skill in the upcoming year.
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