It’s a methodology
Smart Projex, developed by Suzanne S. Davenport, is a new way of approaching project management. She rejects schedules that are continually revised and instead embraces an approach focused on building teams that know how to deliver results that matter! We teach your teams to create project processes and follow a methodology that works during chaotic times. We teach your teams to speak the same language to improve your communications.
The Details
ABOUT SUZANNE
I’m Suzanne S. Davenport, founder of Smart Projex, a project management methodology for teams working on complex and critical projects where they need agility and control.
Early in my career, I was a Vice President of a major bank and later an executive in a healthcare start-up. I graduated with honors from an MBA program at Virginia Commonwealth University. I’ve gotten multiple project certifications. I spent countless hours in fluorescent lit classrooms trying desperately to understand tedious project concepts, such as earned value management, critical path management, crashing, and fast-tracking, to name just a few.
And yet, I will admit that there are still times when all of this gives me a raging headache. Sometimes these skills are needed, but more often, I question their value. Here’s why, in very simple terms.
Projects are Complex and Complex Projects need more than just a Gantt Chart
Most of the projects done in the business world are not simple, predictable, linear projects like the project of building a house; they are complex. Project teams are flying by the seat of their pants and at the end of the month, they look back on what they have accomplished and wonder whether they have made any real progress or not.
To understand this, consider what it takes to build a house. You have to dig a hole before you can pour the foundation. You have to put in the studs before you can staple in the wiring. And you have to put up the sheetrock before you can paint. At the end of each month, you can walk around the site, observe the progress, and estimate how much has been finished. In a business project, the process is not nearly so straightforward.
Suppose, for example, you are writing the user manual for a new piece of scientific equipment that your company is developing. You write draft after draft until you think you are finished. And then, you pass it along, and the edits start coming.
When a team of smart people must approve any major deliverable, it is not unusual for smart minds to delay completion, because new and improved information is always appearing. And so, if you try to estimate how much work you have really finished, you just won’t know.
And there is another factor. We work in a rapidly changing knowledge economy. We have smart people working on several complex projects at a time, with multiple bosses, as well as families and other personal commitments. They can’t tell you exactly when they will be available to work on your project, because they don’t know.
“Project teams are flying by the seat of their pants and at the end of the month, they look back on what they have accomplished and wonder whether they have made any real progress or not.”
And yet, managing people with the traditional Gantt chart requires that team members commit to a schedule of their availability.
The origins of Smart Projex: the software and the methodology
After years of thinking and questioning everything I knew about project management, I began dreaming about what project management, if it were done really well, might look like. I went back to first principles. Ultimately, I created and tested working software that met many of my goals.
The result of those efforts is a new project methodology that offers you and your teams the agility that is needed in a world of rapid change. It offers the project controls that keep change from turning into chaos.
And that is how my Smart Projex story begins.
I work with executives, project leaders, and teams needing to move key projects from start to finish. Make no mistake about it. The work that I do with these groups is challenging. I will ask you tough questions that you might not have thought about before. I can help you, but you will have to do the hard work!
Smart Projex was designed for business projects, where money, quality, people, and deadlines matter – though little is predictable – except change.
