The One-Page Project Manager for IT Projects: Communicate and Manage Any Project With A Single Sheet of Paper

Chapter 4. The One-Page Project Manager for the Project Office

Every project is run from someplace. It could be a small project run from someone's desk and is just one of several responsibilities of that person. Or, it could be a project coordinated from a central office devoted exclusively to corporate project communication. Or it could be a very large project that has its own office.

I suspect most readers of this book work in or with an office with the exclusive responsibility of guiding IT projects. But however the management of projects is set up in your organization, it can be called the Project Office, which I define as the person or group of people who have at least eight high-level, companywide project responsibilities, all focused on seeing that projects are setup and managed for success.

This chapter is about how the Project Office can use the One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) effectively, to address each of these eight project responsibilities.

1. A PROJECT DASHBOARD

The first responsibility of the Project Office is to maintain the dashboard for the organization's projects. By this I mean the Project Office tracks, at a high level, the progress of projects and reports them to upper management. This is a vital responsibility of the Project Office. It reports to the company's executives in a way that allows them to know what is going on with projects and know when attention is needed. The Project Office keeps senior management fully aware, at a high level, of these basic areas: ...