Learning Solutions for Increased Project Performance

Helping a Busy Hospital Embrace Project Management Discipline to Support Business Transformation and Results

The hospital’s strategic plan called for major changes within 3-5 years, requiring cross-functional teams to come together to plan and implement the transformation strategy and desired business results.  While astute organizationally and operationally, no one in the organization had been exposed to formal project management methodology and tools.  mScholar provided customized, just-in-time training to the project managers and their teams as they were kicking off. This helped the teams define clear roles and responsibilities and learn key project planning techniques and tools.

For project managers, we also focused on execution elements, including holding people accountable to the commitments, tracking progress and escalating issues. Simultaneously, we engaged the senior management team in a project management “executive briefing.” This action learning session ensured that senior management also learned basic project management concepts and were able to adjust their expectations to be more realistic, as well as provide the right level of support to the project managers and teams, including breaking long-ingrained functional silos.

As a result, what seemed like an overwhelming effort ( the teams weren’t sure where to start), became manageable. Project teams were “re-staffed” for success and projects were no longer just a part-time effort without clear timelines and resource needs. Two years later, the hospital is reporting excellent milestone success, and is starting to see the results of completing several foundation projects.