Four global professionals share how their Project Management Professional (PMP^®) credential helped them improve their organizations' internal project management practices.

Europe, Middle East and Africa

Profile: Andrzej Kazirod, PMP, director, Infrastructural Development Department Company: Aquanet, Poznan, Poland Quick Take: Empower team members to make decisions in order to increase the speed of business.

When an organization's senior managers are responsible for approving team members' daily decisions, it can be difficult to keep the company's workflow from stagnating. Andrzej Kazirod, PMP, saw that his organization's strict approval process slowed down the speed of business, so he implemented project management techniques to open up the bottleneck.

Mr. Kazirod offered his teams weekly lectures and workshops on project management practices that he learned when he took the PMP exam. He implemented a matrix system in the traditionally hierarchical organization by helping employees determine which decisions they could make on their own and which required an authorized report. This empowered his team members and made them see the value of their contributions to the organization.

"Finally, employees in different organizational units have started to communicate horizontally," he says. "In spite of the problems experienced, most of the people within the organization have recognized the matrix structure as the only solution that will work effectively."

North America

Profile: Howard Bruck, PMP, CIO Company: Hudson Valley Bank, Yonkers, New York, USA Quick Take: Blend outside vendors' project management practices with your organizational strategy.

It can often be difficult for an organization to align its own strategic goals with the efforts of external resources. Although vendors for the Hudson Valley Bank have their own project management support when they provided products and services, they often lacked consideration for the bank's culture and time requirements, says Howard Bruck, PMP.

"By establishing a methodology that integrated the vendor's plans and our own project management practices, we were able to better plan and execute projects with our vendors and take greater responsibility for the result," he says.

The bank created more stringent vendor performance management measurements and implemented a formal change management system that required approval before a project could be expanded. To gain senior-level buy-in, Mr. Bruck proposed solutions that could be connected to the organization's strategy, which helped him demonstrate the value of project management.

"Our initial concentration was on better project budget analysis and status reporting. This provided the executive team with more insight into the projects without a lot more effort. From there, we were able to slowly build onto the methodology, adding components from many of the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide) process groups," Mr. Bruck says.

Latin America

Profile: Mario Ferreira Filho, PMP, manager of corporate projects Company: Genius Instituto de Tecnologia, São Paulo and Manaus/Amazonas, Brazil Quick Take: Share knowledge to increase organizational efficiency.

During his four years of employment at the Genius Instituto de Tecnologia, Mario Ferreira Filho, PMP, has focused his efforts on the integration of different areas of the organization. Knowledge of how resources are used throughout the organization facilitated cooperation and prevented duplicate expenditures and efforts.

"One of the [improvement] opportunities that I identified was to integrate the different areas of the organization–purchase, financial, project management," he says. "In this case, we adopted a spreadsheet that everybody has access [to], avoiding additional training and software investments."

This type of integration also enhanced his organization's risk management techniques. Keeping everyone informed about the risks involved with specific projects, the actions required to mitigate them and the person responsible for these tasks helped create a more collaborative risk-aversion strategy.

"We can share this information with all the project managers. And ... extend some experience," he says. "So maybe someone has some ideas to solve the problem, or to avoid the risks. This has helped a lot."

Asia Pacific

Profile: David Guan, PMP, senior project manager Company: Huawei, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Quick Take: Start every project with standardized project plans and documentation.

As every PMP credential holder knows, successful projects start and end with well-conceived plans. To ensure this critical component is present before his projects begin, David Guan, PMP, uses a standardized planning process he developed using project management principles he learned when earning the PMP credential.

Before Mr. Guan launches an initiative, he creates collaborative project ideas, requests feedback from senior management and conducts risk assessments. Since deploying this strategy, he has witnessed increased communication among team members, decreased planning time and improved customer feedback.

To get senior management support, he engages leaders at the start of a project and keeps them updated on any progress that occurs. However, it is the project results that really sell the process.

"Using and implementing the best practices in project management has helped produce professional documentation," Mr. Guan says. "These, at times, have propelled our projects [to be] completed ahead of time, improved [our] financial status and [won] customer confidence. This has helped the organization win more contracts from existing and external customers."