Lesser-Known Benefits of Contract Management

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Contract management makes sure that you and your project vendors agree on costs, terms, deliverables, and conditions. Dig a little deeper, and contract management can help your projects in other ways: 

  • Enhanced vendor relationships. Time spent negotiating vendor contracts helps vendors understand project goals and your organization’s culture. This effort also helps set expectations that smooth the process when the vendor’s resources are needed in future projects. In longer-term relationships, the vendor will be able to anticipate future needs and train their staff to support your organization’s future initiatives.
  • Expanded risk mitigation. Contract management helps identify and mitigate potential risks by defining terms, obligations, and liabilities for everyone involved. By identifying and planning for these risks, you reduce the probability of issues occurring when vendor resources work on tasks. In longer-term relationships, vendors can develop skills that position them to work on more and broader tasks. Skilled vendor resources help in several ways. If skilled resources within your organization aren’t available, you can turn to a vendor – thereby reducing the risk of using less skilled people within your organization. Skilled vendor resources also lighten your internal peoples’ loads so they have time for cross-training. That way, you reduce future risks related to skills shortages.
  • Compliance support. Vendor resources can help ensure your organization complies with government regulations or industry standards. When you include compliance in the terms and conditions of a vendor contract, the burden of creating compliant tools and processes shifts to the vendor. That reduces your organization’s compliance risk. Note: Even though that responsibility is shifted to the vendor, the contracting organization (that is, your organization) is ultimately responsible for compliance. Be sure to review all deliverables to ensure that the vendor has maintained compliance.
  • Long-term cost savings. Contract management helps current and future projects. Contracts on file simplify the renegotiation of favorable terms during renewals and can identify opportunities benefiting both the contracting organization and the vendor. This can yield longer-term deals at reduced cost, shorter ramp-up times for vendor personnel who return to the same client, and increased efficiencies.

Because contract management provides so many benefits, it’s a good idea for project managers to be involved even if another department does the bulk of the work. If you don’t already know the contracts people in your organization, make a point of introducing yourself!

For more about contract management and procurement, check out Steven Brown’s Purchasing Foundations course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 69,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Prevent Pseudo-Stakeholders from Hurting Your Project

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People who think they’re stakeholders but aren’t waste your time and distract your project team. Early on, you need to address these pseudo-stakeholders, so they don’t eat up your time and resources. This Project Pointer provides approaches to identify them and reduce their impact on your project.

  • Hold public consultations. After meeting with identified stakeholders, it’s time to hold open-to-the-public meetings to discuss the project’s scope and objectives. People who think they have something to lose or gain from the project can share their thoughts and concerns at this meeting. By addressing these concerns early, you save time later on (from minimizing distractions from pseudo-stakeholders) that more than makes up for the time it takes to plan and deliver a public consultation session.
  • Draft out-of-scope statements. Project charters typically focus on defining scope. An underused aspect of project charters is identifying what is out of scope. By clearly defining what is and is not in scope, you can help prevent pseudo-stakeholders from delaying the project with needless debates.  
  • Build a deliverables map. This is a visual representation of the deliverables produced in a project, showing the prerequisite deliverables that must be completed to produce the project’s final deliverables. This comprehensive overview of every item the project will produce can highlight the areas of the organization that will and won’t be affected by project deliverables—and from that, you can demonstrate who actual stakeholders are. Anyone else is a pseudo-stakeholder.
  • Focus on organizational politics. Be aware of internal politics, power struggles, or turf wars that might lead individuals to think they are stakeholders. You can proactively address people’s concerns when you understand who challenges scope statements or demands more for their business area. Politics will alert you to managers (beyond your project sponsor) who you need to work with to prevent pseudo-stakeholder objections.

Try these approaches with your current project to see if you have pseudo-stakeholders dragging your project down. If you do, it’s time to address them politely, firmly, and with your reasoning.

For more about stakeholders, check out Natasha Kasimtseva’s Managing Project Stakeholders course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 69,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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Want to Expand Your Skills? Use Your Network!

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Conferences and courses can help expand your skills and enhance your project management career. There are other ways to increase your abilities as part of your everyday job. Check out these ways to increase your skills by using your network.

  • Swap project reviews. A fresh set of eyes can spot weaknesses, flaws, or risks you might have overlooked. Taking advantage of others’ experiences can improve your project foresight. From your project management network, offer to review one of your colleague’s projects in exchange for them reviewing one of yours. You’ll get to see a project you might not know about, and you and your project management colleague will benefit from the insights you share.
  • Engage a contact as a mentor or coach. Take advantage of others’ skills and experiences by asking if they will mentor or coach you. This can be someone within or outside your organization. Internal mentors can help you understand project histories within your group and help with navigating office politics. External coaches provide different perspectives, challenges, and solutions you can apply to your projects.
  • Schedule case study discussions with colleagues. Case study sessions allow you and your colleagues to analyze and discuss real-world project scenarios. This can improve your analytical and decision-making skills and offer deeper insights into handling project challenges in your industry and others.
  • Expand your network and start a discussion. A quick search on LinkedIn lists more than 17 million people on the platform who refer to themselves as project managers. That is an amazing skill base! Search by industry or in your city and reach out. You’ll probably find other project managers eager to expand their skills as well. Launch a discussion, ask a question about a pressing issue, and take advantage of the experience your network can provide.
  • Use LinkedIn’s resources. You’ve discovered my Project Pointers newsletter. I also host live discussions on LinkedIn. You can ask questions during these live events or listen to the recorded videos at your convenience. Other LinkedIn Learning instructors offer newsletters hold live events. Check out the newsletters by Bob McGannon , Doug Rose and Chris Croft  among others!

Not sure how to reach out to others? One thing to keep in mind is that lots of others feel the same way. Don’t be afraid to be the one to kick things off. For more about networking, check out Dorie Clark’s Professional Networking course.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 68,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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What Domain Knowledge is Needed to Manage a Project?

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A project manager doesn’t have to be an expert in a project’s domain area to serve as PM. But they must possess some domain knowledge to be effective. Here is the general domain knowledge needed to manage a project.

  • Processes and regulations. Domain areas have specific approaches to work and standards that must be understood. For example, in the drug industry, processes for introducing new medicines are rigid. These must be understood to deliver project outcomes.  In construction, one must know the laws that restrict a building’s design. Without this, the building could become unusable without expensive modifications. In healthcare, managing and sharing data requires both health and technology process knowledge. Without this vital domain knowledge, project managers have reduced foresight. And they are unlikely to gain the respect of their project teams which makes it difficult to succeed.

  • Sources of risk. Effective risk management involves understanding the challenges that may present themselves. The project manager must know enough about the domain area to anticipate possibilities. They also should understand the probability of them coming to fruition. While having an expert team member as a management partner can help, it isn’t enough. The project manager needs to interact with key stakeholders without deferring to others. They must also react to situations that occur daily. Having to constantly refer to an expert partner impacts the project manager’s perceived authority. It also brings their abilities into question, reducing effectiveness.

  • Ability to assess business value. Projects are all about creating business value. Sometimes that value is obvious, like creating a new drug that cures a disease. Other times, value propositions are more subtle, requiring industry expertise to understand them. For example, the value of a great website is that it is easy to maintain after delivery to a client. So, website construction techniques are important. The project manager should participate in construction decisions to ensure maintenance is straightforward. This requires an understanding of the capabilities of modern coding languages. Knowledge about AI tools and search engine optimization is also useful. Unless the PM has some level of experience in these areas, they could overlook critical project activities.

  • Management practices and cultural expectations.  Domain areas have varying norms around how decisions are made. The expertise that is most valued, and how clients and their vendors work together also vary between domains. Industry trends might not be easy to identify without domain experience. Understanding these nuances are vital for a project manager to succeed. These can be learned on the job if knowledge gaps aren’t extensive, but that must be done quickly so project success isn’t impacted.

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This article belongs to the Bonnie’s Project Pointers newsletter series, which has more than 67,000 subscribers. This newsletter is 100% written by a human (no aliens or AIs involved). If you like this article, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article posts.

Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library and tune into my LinkedIn Office Hours live broadcasts.

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