PMIWIC West Boise Roundtable Meeting Notes – March 14, 2007

Current job prospects in the Boise area

• low unemployment rate
• appear to be a lot of engineering jobs and PM jobs in the construction industry
• check career builder and monster job sites

How do you differentiate PM activities related to different industries such as merchandising, healthcare, technology, IT

1. There seems to be a lack of PM capabilities within the healthcare organizations.

2. Culture is very 'old school'.

3. Throughput is the primary metric for healthcare.

4. Most of the staff is delegated as project resources but do not have PM knowledge or backgrounds and are already stretched supporting clinical duties.

5. One idea would be to stick a PMO under the senior staff that support the operations side of the business.  Current PMO on the IT side seems to be efficient and effective.  Proof of this is that IT changes are implemented effectively but on the operations side, workflow and process changes are rarely implemented successfully.

6. It appears that many people only view PM as a necessity for IT or construction industries.  Technology has also grasped the concept and uses it as a means to improve efficiencies and cost effectiveness of operations.

7. Biggest challenges across all industries appear that people just tend to resists change.

8. In many other instances it is simply a case of politics and who holds the power to initiate and implement changes.

9. Biggest challenges within property management are how to get upper management to listen to suggestions regarding changes.  People 'stuff' is the biggest barrier.  One channel is to let a customer push the idea so management will listen and make the change.

10. You make it happen; you must gain the confidence of management and have a clear set of objectives that is results driven.

11. In healthcare, the above item seems to be missing.  There is misalignment or lack of objectives and in turn, there are no metrics that align with the objectives.

12. An example of where health care failed - Hilary Clinton's attempt at a Universal Heath Care plan.  She had to face the political aspects, did not have the right players involved, and lack of funding to proceed with the proposal.

13. Another fundamental flaw that has been witnessed is that root cause related to problems with change and PM activities usually resides at the bottom but originated at the top.