Corporate Approach to Project Management

Summary

In 2008, we introduced a corporate approach to managing projects to support the successful delivery of our Transformation Programme and provide a consistent and robust framework to manage all projects across the Council.

The problems and how we tackled them

Although we had experience of managing projects and programmes which were being managed well in some areas, we lacked a consistent approach.

This meant that lessons learnt were not being shared more widely and some areas were experiencing common issues such as project slippage.

As a result, a project was identified early on in the Transformation Programme to develop a pool of project management resource and introduce a consistent and robust approach that could be rolled out across the Council.

Outcomes and impact

Of those staff who have been trained in project management, 92% are currently managing a project or programme.

Since completing the project, we have yet to see any instances of project failure from those projects being managed by this pool of project managers and all planned benefits to date have been realised.

As many of these benefits are cashable savings, this has meant that further funding is available for further transformation projects, allowing scarce resources to be used in the most effective way.   

Next steps

The Oxford City Project Management approach is now being developed into a format that can be used as the basis for an internal training course in project management at Oxford City Council.

This will sit within a wider management development programme that all managers will complete, plus further training for Councillors and team members as appropriate.

We will also be developing a corporate approach to managing programmes. Like the approach taken here, this will involve training a select number of staff in a recognised programme management methodology and developing our own internal approach.

Page last reviewed 5 May 2009