What is Project Facilitation?

Traditional project management places the emphasis on the technical competence of the project managers. As a result key project management activities such as planning is undertaken with little involvement from the project team members and with no involvement from the business areas affected by the implementation of the project. In many cases, the traditional project manager would meet with senior managers and then tell the team how long the project would take and who was to undertake what tasks (“command – tell” approach).

To successfully plan a business project in the contemporary organisational context, the project management mindset must shift from planning to facilitating the planning process. In this approach the project manager identifies the key stakeholders and cross-functional areas impacted and, with the team members, undertakes the planning process in an open collaborative manner using a collaborative working principle of (“equal opportunity to influence”). This ensures that all stakeholders who are service providers to the project understand the project scope and objectives and, are committed to support the project’s timetables and assignments prior to it’s commencement. In addition, the internal and external complexity of projects can overwhelm a single person whereas a collaborative team has a greater capability to ensure that all planning considerations are complete and accurate.

Apart from increasing the buy-in and ensuring that the key project service providers can commit to and be responsible for the projects deliveries and their service requirements, the values and ideals of participative processes of team-driven project management are in line with the emerging organisation paradigms of empowerment, ownership and partnership now being implemented in business groups across many organisations.