Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/74024
www.iltanet.org Once project management is seen as a valuable tool, people will start adopting it. if you want attorneys to focus on doing legal work, you need the project manager role to handle project details. _______________________________________________________________ Do you think project management has become too formal to allow for agility? Skip: In some cases, yes. In some organizations, project management has become a hindrance to getting things done — and I'm saying this as a PMP! While formal project management methodologies have brought many benefits to law firms and other organizations, there's a real danger to implementing too many controls to processes on every project. Striking the right balance between formal and agile processes should be reviewed for each project to prevent loss of time, wasted effort and quality issues. Mike: I don't think it's become too formal in the legal environment — it's still in its infancy. We found this out when building our matter management product. We asked several firms what type of tool would help them, and it was interesting to find they didn't want the ability to predict and chart time and milestones. As firms are getting more into legal project management, they've started asking for that functionality, so methodologies are continuing to get more formalized. Matt: It's really going to depend on the maturity of the group you're talking to. We totally went overboard with 8 ILTA White Paper formalities at the beginning of our project management journey, and then we slowly scaled things back. I think that's a natural progression — when you first learn project management, it's like that shiny new toy that you want to take everywhere and use on everything. After a while, you realize you don't need a full charter to order a box of paperclips! At this stage, I'm firmly behind the less-is- more agile movement for certain projects. I want to get things done right, but I want to maintain the flexibility to respond to novel situations. Dona: Not at all. The project size and business impact drive the degree of project management rigor required. Project processes are not designed to add extra red tape; they improve project results and deliver what the business was expecting with the highest level of quality possible. The degree of project management applied to a project depends on whether the project is complex or simple, so there's always a varying level of formality and agility. _______________________________________________________________ What risks are involved with taking a more agile versus a more formal approach to project management? Matt: If you go too far toward an agile approach, you might miss something upfront and have to go back and rework it. But if you go too formal, you might never get anything done at all. I never try to look at it as a sort of