Ways to Build a Strong Project Management Culture
Like every other company out there, your company relies on projects to deliver business
value. Anytime you want to do something new, strategic, or challenging – that’s a project.
Projects help bring order to chaos, and balance demands for resources. When delivered
successfully, projects lower operating costs, improve efficiencies, and fulfill strategic objectives.
However, without an organizational culture that supports projects, companies fail to realize
the many benefits of projects.
What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture describes the personality of a company and influences how employees
work and interact with each other.
Culture helps an organization to reach strategic goals by encouraging desired behaviors,
attitudes, and ways of working.
Although difficult to define, organizational culture typically encompasses:
• Consistent, observable behaviors
• Work ethics
• Codes of conduct
• Habits and emotional responses
• Incentives and reward systems
• A shared sense of purpose and action
• The story of a company and how people fit into that story.
Culture is constantly evolving, making it hard to change through a formal program or effort.
That said, there are some steps you can take to make positive changes to culture to support your
project management, which we’ll cover later on.
Why is organizational culture important to projects?
Organizational culture is the framework in which a project manager and team must work.
All elements of a project – from processes to leadership, management styles, communication,
risk tolerance, and project request management – are influenced by cultural norms in your
company.
A shared belief in the value of project management and a willingness to invest in project
processes are key to a strong project management culture.
In fact, the Project Management Institute (PMI) reports:
”High-performing organizations successfully meet goals two–and–a–half times more often,
and these organizations waste 13 times less money than their low-performing counterparts”.
Culture is a key point of differentiation between these types of organizations.
Culture also affects the types of projects executed by a company. Ideally, all projects should
be aligned with strategic goals. Not only will this help companies to deliver more business
value; teams are likely to be more committed to a project if it reflects the story of a company.
Individuals who understand how they fit into a company and into a project and how a project
fits into the company will be highly motivated.
4 Ways to Build a Strong Project Management Culture
As we noted above, changing organizational culture is notoriously difficult. Too often,
organizations try to change everything at once and fail to translate the new vision into practical
steps for their employees.
It’s worth remembering that culture is about doing, about behaviors and actions. If you want
to make a lasting change to improve project outcomes, start with action. People tend to act their
way into new behaviors before changing their mindsets.
Let’s take a look at four practical ways you can build a strong project management culture.
1. Pick your project management approach
I’m sure you can think of many elements of project management you’d like to change within
your organization! You need to be rigorous and realistic when picking a behavior.
Introducing a standardized approach to project management is a good place to start.
Quite often, individuals tasked with managing a project have no formal training in project
management. As a result, the whole idea of “project management” – never mind a project
management culture – is a new concept.
In the absence of a clear approach, individuals will get creative and develop their own ways
of working, leading to multiple styles in one organization!
Below is a project management spectrum we use with our customers.
As depicted, some projects require a lighter touch whilst others need more rigorous project
management processes. The choice will depend on project maturity levels with your
organization, the number of projects, the complexity of projects, duration of projects, etc.
2. Pick your project management tool
Next, you’ll need to make it easy to translate the new process into actionable steps for your
team. Update relevant project management templates and software as required, or find new
software is required.
Focus on practical, role-based training to help your team understand how the software
supports their role. It is important that the new solution is easier to use, or in some cases,
obviously worth the extra effort for team members.
Many organizations around the world are already using Microsoft 365 for productivity and
collaboration. BrightWork 365 pulls together the best Microsoft 365 apps (Power Automate for
workflows, Power Apps for Project Management, Teams for collaboration, etc.) into project
management templates.
These templates can be an effective starting point for individual projects. The pre-designed
project sites is very easy to use and is mapped to a practical project management process.
3. Measure and report on performance
Demonstrating tangible improvements to business and project outcomes is key to driving
new behaviors. People need to know their efforts are contributing positively to projects and the
organization; otherwise, they will become disillusioned with your leadership.
Pick a few project metrics to improve with your new process and report on these in your
project site. Does your team struggle to track tasks and meet deadlines? Do issues fall through
the cracks as no-one knows how to report a problem? Are documents stored in multiple
locations, leading to confusion?
Report on these project metrics during weekly team meetings to demonstrate impact quickly.
The SharePoint Project Management Template ships with useful reports including:
• Tasks
• Issues
• Work (Open, Overdue, Upcoming, and Unassigned)
• Metric tiles
• Project Status.
You should also think about how improvements in these areas add value to the company –
more projects finished on time, increased stakeholder satisfaction, effective teams.
These benefits will likely become apparent after a project is finished. Set a reminder to get
the outcomes and share them with the team and company a few weeks after the completion date.
Send an email, share an update on your intranet, talk to people at meetings – just get the word
out!
4. Get leadership involved
People tend to mimic the behavior of individuals or groups who have influence within an
organization. If your team sees senior management acting differently to you regarding project
management, they’ll no longer follow your efforts.
Find someone to act as a “Project Management Champion,” to secure senior management
buy-in. The champion is someone who really cares about project management, someone who
“gets it” and really wants it to succeed.
‘Influencers’ are not only found in the C-suite; look to your team and colleagues to help
spread your message.
How BrightWork Can Help You Implement a Project Management Culture
At BrightWork, our approach to implementing successful project management in your
organization is the philosophy or approach of “Start, Evolve”.
The idea is that you start as many projects as you want, with the right amount of project
management (arguably a smaller amount to begin with) to help your project teams experience
success. So teams get visibility and control, without overwhelming processes, and then they can
gradually evolve their project management practices.
This approach is delivered in the BrightWork 365 product with templates for project,
portfolio, and request management, as well as the way we accompany you with our deployment
assistance. “Start, Evolve” is designed into our 3D deployment approach.
The 3D Deployment approach is based on the following three principles:
1. Design – using collaborative project management best practices
2. Deliver – starting with configurable templates
3. Deploy – with on-demand and as-needed training
Our 3D Deployment Process (Design, Deliver, Deploy) is a clear, transparent, and practical
change management process that is focused on your needs, so we can help you implement
collaborative project and portfolio management with BrightWork.
Summary
Organizational culture shapes how people work together in pursuit of common goals. A
culture that supports and actively works to improve project management processes will likely
experience growth and success.
If you need to change attitudes towards projects, focus on behaviors and actions that can be
easily measured.
