Mentoring For Successful OPM Implementation
Excerpt from the paper PMI originally published in 2015, by Dino Butorac, PMP, BRISK Business Inc. Click here for the full paper.
In order to prepare an organization for the successful implementation of organizational project management (OPM), it is important to ensure that relevant information is being communicated throughout the organization. The organization can facilitate the sharing of knowledge, expertise, skills, insights and experiences through dialogue and collaborative learning—also known as mentoring. Mentoring is a relationship between a more experienced person (mentor) and a less experienced person (mentee), with the goal of achieving personal and professional growth of the mentee. Mentoring benefits the organization, the mentors and, of course, the mentees.
Mentoring initiatives help practitioners perform more effectively by exposing them to more experienced employees whose knowledge and real-world experience can shorten the time needed to learn how to plan and carry out the actions that are parts of their jobs. By participating in the mentoring initiative, mentors receive recognition for their professional competency, and the satisfaction of being able to help other people in a very direct way; and greater exposure to fresh perspectives from other members of the profession.
Mentoring practices may benefit the implementation of organizational project management so a project to implement mentoring should be one of the components of the broader OPM implementation program. Keep the following points in mind:
■ Plan the implementation of organizational project management as a proper program by applying guidelines from Implementing Organizational Project Management: A Practice Guide, The Standard for Program Management and Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide.
■ Identify mentoring implementation as one of the potential “quick wins” within the OPM implementation program.
■ Utilize the proposed high-level generic lifecycle for the implementation of mentoring, which incorporates stages as recommended by research results and typical project phases as recommended by A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)– Fifth Edition.
■ Leverage the research findings from workplace mentoring initiatives.
By following these recommendations, mentoring will benefit the implementation of organizational project management and will bring the organization closer to achieving its strategic objectives; while at the same time realizing general mentoring benefits such as higher employee productivity, satisfaction and retention.
Click here to access the complete paper “Mentoring For Successful OPM Implementation” published by The Project Management Institute (PMI) and written by Dino Butorac, PMP, BRISK Business Inc.
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Dino Butorac, PMP is a business consultant, project manager, and trainer, based in Zagreb, Croatia. His experience includes leading and consulting organizations, and managing projects, programs and portfolios of different sizes. He is a passionate PMI volunteer and in 2016 he started serving as a committee member of PMI Chapter Member Advisory Group (CMAG).
