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Project Business Automation (PBA) is a category of business systems that are designed to integrate and automate the business processes of project-based companies. So if your company is in a project driven industry - for example construction, engineering or professional services - where you work on projects that are paid for by your customers, then having a PBA system is a must.

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Our focus today is on project performance.

To be precise, it’s on The Practitioner's Handbook of Project Performance: Agile, Waterfall and Beyond. This handbook is the result of the hard work and dedication of more than 35 authors from over 15 countries across four continents. They wrote chapters on pretty much any topic of project performance that you can imagine, and it was all brought together by Mark Phillips.

Mark has been on the program before. That was back in episode 158 and then also 282 and 283 when we spoke about his book reinventing communication, and today it’s project performance.

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Today's topic is project business, which is what you get when companies organize their primary business activities in projects. They are sometimes called project-based, project-driven, or project-centric companies.

In particular, we are introducing The Project Business Study Book. The study book is a free, 118-page introduction to Project Business Management.

Joining us today are Oliver Lehmann and Martin Berneburg from the Project Business Foundation. I'm sure that they can give us a much better definition of what exactly project business is. In particular, we'll learn how it affects us, project managers' required skills when we manage a project that is considered part of project business versus when we manage one that isn't.

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld

Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld of Adeaca are back on the program today to discuss project business from the corporate perspective.

As a reminder, if your company’s products and services are delivered to your clients through projects, then your company is a project business. If we compare this to another industry, then a company that sells consumer goods is a retail business.

In this premium interview, we are going to be discussing the 7 challenges of a project business:

1. Acceptance of Status Quo
2. Failing to identify as a Project Business
3. Optimization of Project Management silos has maxed out
4. Inadequate communication among key stakeholders or “Lack of stakeholder collaboration”
5. Lack of governance/Lack a structured, standardized system of organizing their data
6. Lack of automation
7. Lack of real-time insight

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Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld

What type of project are you currently working on? Is it an internal project, where your own company pays for everything or is it an external project, where an external customer pays your bills? If you are part of the second group, then your project falls into what we call project business.

And now look at your company and the projects you deliver as a whole. Do you see mostly internal projects or external projects? Well… If your company’s products and services are delivered to your clients through projects, your company is a project business.

That means that the term project business is used to classify both individual projects and organizations as a whole. Both are project business. Confused? We can help.

Today we welcome Matt Mong and Henrik Lerkenfeld of Adeaca to look at the term project business from the perspective of a company.

In our conversation, we define the term project business from that angle, we discuss the central characteristics of a project business, briefly talk about some challenges, and look at why productivity in project business is lagging behind other areas like manufacturing or retail.

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Oliver F. Lehmann, PMP

Today we are going to talk about Project Business and Project Business Management, and if you have no idea what that means then welcome to the club. Cornelius didn't know what either of these terms meant when he heard them for the first time.

But now he does. Thanks to Oliver F. Lehmann.

Oliver wrote the defining book on the topic called Project Business Management (Best Practices in Portfolio, Program, and Project Management). In addition to that, he also founded the Project Business Foundation, and he is our guest today to give us an introduction to project business and project business management.

You will learn what project business is all about, that (surprise!) roughly 50% of all projects that are currently being undertaken in the world are part of project business, we talk about the skills that we PMs need to answer project business challenges, and you’ll come away learning about the number one thing that you should pay particular attention to, when you are involved in project business management and why.