A large UK charity

A large UK charity (turnover around £200 million) was trying to implement lots of projects in a very short time, particularly in the IT arena, but was not making the progress that it needed to make. From the operational teams’ perspective, projects often ran “on time” all the way through, then unexpectedly failed to deliver on time within the last few days or weeks. From the IT team’s perspective, operational project managers did not understand the impact that decisions on one project would have for the timescales of another project. The charity’s Finance Director asked Sue to help them manage their projects better so that they could achieve their operational goals. Sue educated the operational team members in the basics of good project and programme management and recommended that the operational teams should identify one person to manage all the projects as a programme of work by setting up a programme board that would meet regularly to discuss and understand progress of each project and its impact on the overall programme. Within six months, the charity had improved its on time project delivery record and greatly improved working relationships between operational teams and the IT team. This solid foundation enabled the charity to confidently embark on a major change programme to transform itself for the 21st Century.