It is not the project management that is complicated, but the search for an effective method

A common problem among creative agencies, consulting firms, and design studios is coordinating resources when the number of projects and staffing simultaneously begin to grow.

In these situations, one might think that the biggest obstacle is project management, in setting a quotation and distributing activities among available resources to get a minimum return on investment. The reality is that, for most projects, the complexity lies not so much in the planning of activities per se, but in interlocking the constraints of the project with those posed by others.

A coordination problem

Having the right resources when needed is probably the biggest difficulty the project manager faces and the organization solves.
Planning a project, in fact, does not require astronaut skills. We all plan our lives on a daily basis: sports activities, weekly meetings, when to go shopping, travel and vacations, always having our monthly budget in mind. So we are certainly able to plan the activities of a project, but only if put in a position to know the current situation of the company.

On the other hand, it often happens that in growth situations there is suddenly an "on the rampage" situation in which new resources are hired, projects are assigned to the first available person, and in the confusion we lose sight of the most important aspect: developing a value proposition through specific, individual expertise. The point is that (fortunately) we are not all the same: everyone has his or her own set of experiences, skills and specific cognitions that make him or her unique and better suited to contribute on one project rather than another. In this way, working does not become a passive activity to which one is assigned, but in which one is instead chosen (and in which one enjoys!).
Thus, one can see how the real problem is coordination.

Centralizing control is not the solution

At this point the traditional solution of many companies is to load the system with rigidity, centralizing planning on a few resources and creating a constraining, vertical structure. Extremely powerful and complex project management software comes to the rescue here. These are useful for obtaining hyper-detailed plans and designating planners who will translate allocation requests to optimize team production.
The reality is that because of this complexity and the large amount of information these systems require, they often end up being used in a small way and return a partial view of the business situation. In short, they create more difficulties than they should solve.

Thus, if centralized logic poses rigidities that are today difficult to reconcile with the required speed of action, then perhaps the answer should be sought in the opposite paradigm, namely, in distributed systems.

The answer lies in distributed systems

Adopting a flat organizational mode in which there are no overheads and everyone can potentially become PM of a project sounds like science fiction. In reality, the most innovative companies have already adopted this method and are growing at lightning speed.

For one thing, enabling an organization to decentralize control means establishing a new kind of internal culture, based primarily on trust in people and their individual capabilities. It means empowering them to grow from a professional point of view, allowing them to take ownership of projects. This certainly implies an investment in the training of each resource: we are not talking about master's degrees or higher education courses, but simply explaining to them how to organize the work of the group and why it must be done.

This small gamble will lead not only to an economic return, as it eliminates management and control costs, but above all to having a knowledgeable, capable and responsible team.

In addition, enabling these peer coordination mechanisms also requires opening up the system and thus giving people access to the information they need to be able to make decisions and enable mutual comparison. Awareness by all of the critical aspects and impacts of individual decisions fosters coordination and makes people more autonomous and collaborative.

All this is impractical without a tool that enables these dynamics. In particular, the key function of decentralizing decision making is to have shared planning that shows the readiness of team members.

In this way the organization becomes much more responsive, able to adapt more quickly to changes in projects and thus to changes in allocation. As a result, much more up-to-date planning is achieved and thus reflects reality.

In the trade-off between accuracy and timeliness, the latter wins by far.

Another key to solving the organizational problems of many growing companies is to find software that can return a wealth of information from a few data points.
The rationale argued is that by asking people directly to enter little information, it allows them to be able to get it with the right frequency and consistently. Because of this, wethod offers an up-to-date overview of the company's situation, where data comes directly from the person directly concerned, avoiding that cordless phone that usually causes unreliable results. In contrast, by asking a few intermediaries to enter a large amount of information at a detailed level, the result, as is often the case, is an unrepresentative and sporadically updated business summary picture.

The main functions from which wethod extracts data to generate the various analysis pages are:

1. The pipeline of business opportunities
2. The project budgets
3. The resource planning
4. The weekly timesheet
5. The project status

This is all information that every organization in one way or another already manages, but in this case it is intuitively integrated into the same system.

Such software supports and speeds up decision making because it is able to derive a multitude of reports and insights on a weekly basis, both at the overall level of the entire company and in more detail on the most important areas of business, such as sales performance, team productivity, project portfolio revenue segmentation and their health.

An intelligent, informed and distributed method

The solution to coordination and planning problems should therefore not be sought in rigid, centralized control, but in its opposite.

It is first necessary to implement systems that are easy and intuitive, but at the same time can effectively show the health status of the company.

It is also necessary to promote a new organizational culture that is transparent, yet accountable, open and shared, based on trust in individuals and in the group.

This philosophy can only be supported by an efficient method that responds responsively to the demands of today's world: the only obstacle is to leave behind some preconceptions, to question traditional project management theories to accommodate an intelligent, modern and effective vision.