Selling Project Management To Senior Executives PDF Download

Despite the organizational value that project management has enabled global companies to realize, executives often fail to support project initiatives. Without such support, projects usually fail. This paper discusses an approach practitioners can use to convince executives that project management is a necessary, value-enhancing practice. In doing so, it expands the phase-one findings of a two-phase, PMI sponsored study, findings previously published in PM Network (January 2001). Like the 2001 report, this paper identifies arguments that can help project managers demonstrate to executives the organizational value of project management. It first details a framework--distilled from a literature review--for selling project management to executives; it then analyzes the findings of interviews with 25 project professionals, findings which focus on the organizational value of project management. From this, it explains the traditional process of selling project management and analyzes the problems of using the traditional process, depicting in illustrations the common decision process of buying project management and the buying and selling relationship in organizations. It concludes by suggesting a reason why project managers often fail in their sales presentations and by summarizing phase one's findings, which focused on outlining the factors that could help project managers introduce the practice into their organization.