It is not project management that is complicated, but the search for an effective method

A common problem among creative agencies, consultancies and design studios is coordinating resources when the number of projects and staff numbers start to grow simultaneously.

In these situations, one might think that the biggest obstacle is project management, setting a price list and distributing activities among the available resources to get a minimum of return. The reality is that, for most projects, the complexity lies not so much in the planning of activities per se, but in the interlocking of the project's constraints with those of others.

A coordination problem

Having the right resources when needed is probably the biggest difficulty the project manager faces and the organisation solves.
Planning a project does not require astronaut skills. We all plan our lives on a daily basis: sports activities, weekly meetings, when to go shopping, trips and holidays, always having our monthly budget in mind. Therefore, we are certainly able to plan the activities of a project, but only if we are in a position to know the current situation of the company.

On the other hand, it often happens that in situations of growth, an 'on the ramp-up' situation is suddenly created in which new resources are hired, projects are assigned to the first available person, and in the confusion, the most important aspect is lost sight of: developing a value proposition through specific, individual skills. The point is that (fortunately) we are not all the same: everyone has their own background of experience, skills and specific knowledge that make them unique and better suited to contribute to one project rather than another. In this way, working does not become a passive activity to which one is assigned, but in which one is chosen (and in which one enjoys!).
One can therefore understand how the real problem is coordination.

Centralising control is not the solution

At this point, the traditional solution of many companies is to load the system with rigidity, centralising planning on a few resources and creating a binding, vertical structure. Extremely powerful and complex project management software comes to the rescue here. These are useful for obtaining hyper-detailed plans and designating planners who will translate allocation requests to optimise the team's output.
The reality is that because of this complexity and the large amount of information these systems require, they often end up being used in a small way and give a partial view of the business situation. In short, they create more difficulties than they should solve.

So, if centralised logic poses rigidities that are today difficult to reconcile with the required speed of action, then perhaps the answer lies in the opposite paradigm, namely in distributed systems.

The answer is in distributed systems

Adopting a flat organisational mode in which there are no overheads and everyone can potentially become PM of a project sounds like science fiction. In reality, the most innovative companies have already adopted this method and are growing at lightning speed.

First, enabling an organisation to decentralise control means establishing a new type of internal culture, based above all on trust in people and their individual capabilities. It means giving them the opportunity to grow from a professional point of view, allowing them to take ownership of projects. This certainly implies an investment in the training of each resource: we are not talking about master's degrees or advanced training courses, but simply of explaining to them how to organise team work and why it must be done.

This small gamble will lead not only to an economic return, as it eliminates management and control costs, but above all to having a team that is aware, capable and responsible.

In addition, enabling these peer coordination mechanisms also requires opening up the system and thus giving people access to the information they need to be able to make decisions and enable mutual comparison. Awareness by all of the critical aspects and impacts of individual decisions fosters coordination and makes people more autonomous and collaborative.

This is impractical without a tool that enables these dynamics. In particular, the key function to decentralise decision-making is to have a shared planning that shows the readiness of team members.

In this way, the organisation becomes much more reactive, able to adapt more quickly to changes in projects and thus to changes in allocation. As a result, planning is much more up-to-date and therefore reflects reality.

In the trade-off between accuracy and timeliness, the latter wins by far.

Another key to solving the organisational problems of many growing companies is to find software that is able to return a wealth of information from a small amount of data.
The rationale behind this is that by directly asking people to enter a little information, it is possible to obtain it with the right frequency and consistently. Thanks to this, wethod offers an up-to-date overview of the company's situation, where the data comes directly from the person concerned, avoiding that cordless telephone that usually causes unreliable results. In contrast, by asking a few intermediaries to enter a large amount of information at a detailed level, the result, as is often the case, is an unrepresentative and sporadically updated company overview.

The main functions from which wethod extracts data to generate the different analysis pages are:

1. The pipeline of business opportunities
2. Project budgets
3. The resource planning
4. The weekly timesheet
5. The project status

This is all information that every organisation already manages in one way or another, but in this case it is intuitively integrated into the same system.

Such software supports and speeds up the decision-making process because it is able to derive a multitude of reports and insights on a weekly basis, both at the overall company level and in more detail on the most important business areas, such as sales performance, team productivity, project portfolio revenue segmentation and project health.

An intelligent, informed and distributed method

The solution to coordination and planning problems is therefore not to be found in rigid, centralised control, but in its opposite.

First and foremost, it is necessary to implement systems that are easy and intuitive, but at the same time capable of effectively showing the company's state of health.

It is also necessary to promote a new organisational culture that is transparent, yet responsible, open and shared, based on trust in individuals and in the group.

This philosophy can only be supported by an efficient method that responds reactively to the demands of today's world: the only obstacle is to leave behind some preconceptions, to question traditional project management theories in order to embrace an intelligent, modern and effective vision.