Successful projects start with the right capability

“As the pace of change increases and there is a greater need for everything to be connected and available 24/7 wherever you are on any device, many organisations are struggling to maintain their performance due to manual or outdated processes and systems.”

James Bawtree is the CEO of PMLogic, a company that specialises in strategy execution and program delivery, and the New South Wales Chapter President of the Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM). He believes one of the key challenges for project managers is maintaining momentum and velocity in their capability improvement projects.

“I was recently invited to attend a roundtable event discussing the future of project management and impact of different project management techniques such as Agile. We discussed the challenge many project managers face in having to deliver quicker, cheaper, better results in more complex environments,” he recounts.

“A lot of the ‘quick wins’ have been won, so it is much harder for project managers to continue to deliver largescale efficiencies without significant transformation to their organisations.”

Bawtree’s specialty is effectively executing board level strategy. He sees many initial issues arising from organisations at a loss as to where to start and suggests starting with capability.

“Capability has such a large part to play in effectively executing company board level strategy. When I say capability I am referring to organisational teams, their skills and non-people resources. [There is a] need to map capability needs to purpose.”

It is a process he has become an expert in, having been invited by public, private, not-for-profit and three levels of government organisations to help them improve their capabilities. Bawtree’s modus operandi, therefore, is to go beyond simply delivering a project and deep into improving future project delivery by investing in capability.

“The purpose I and PMLogic have is to improve the discipline of project management, so when supporting organisations we also coach and train their teams on top of delivering their projects.”

Interview conducted by Estee Ang, marcus evans

If you would like to hear more about executing strategy through building capability, James Bawtree will be speaking at the marcus evans Powering Productivity and Performance Australia conference in Sydney on the 22-23 February 2016.