At the core of our business is the mission to help clients and the industry share best practices. With invaluable support from our clients, we are pleased to announce the release of our White Paper, ‘Building World-Class Project Delivery Methods and Playbooks.’ This paper is a testament to the innovative strategies and approaches we have […]
Join us for an insightful GRIDtalk where we dive into using Method Grid to manage residual risks for project assurance, hosted by Method Grid Principal Consultant Sam Bentley and Director of P3M Services at Step 5 Group, Edward Arrowsmith. Learn how Method Grid facilitates a comprehensive approach to assurance, moving beyond traditional perceptions to embed […]
Using Method Grid we have developed an engagement management process as a key theme within our overall Project and Program Management Methodology (PPM).
What is engagement management?
Engagement management is a set of management practices and processes, deployed by a vendor service provider, to monitor and optimize the success of the overall commercial engagement and the constituent supplier-client relationships. An engagement management process focuses on the explicit contractual obligations and the, often implicit, client expectations; as such, it provides context to any accompanying project management processes.
This process focuses on the idea of regular supplier-client reviews – based on performance objectives specified by a client in a balanced scorecard at engagement commencement. These reviews are optimally undertaken by a senior member of the vendor supplier (e.g. quality director) who is independent of the delivery team in order to facilitate unconflicted candor in the dialogue.
The overall PPM grid serves as a complete end-to-end methodological toolbox for the delivery of a multitude of projects and programs. It has principle alignment with internationally recognized best-practice reference points including Prince2 and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP). The grid serves as a deep foundational starting point for organizations, and integrated delivery teams, to tailor-bespoke their own specific corporate frameworks.
Who might this engagement management process be useful for?
This process example will be useful for all organizations that dispense their services as discrete, project-based engagements.
Specifically, it will be relevant to all project and program management practitioners and quality directors/managers within such organizations.
This guidance will also be relevant to all senior leaders in projectized organizations in so much as skilled and consistent engagement management lies at the heart of satisfied clients and commercial success.
Further, this resource can serve as a powerful teaching and support aid for those new to the engagement management skill set.
How is this process best used?
This engagement process example is designed as a sound starting point. It sets out the basic principles of engagement management based on the setting, and subsequent review, of the client’s (weighted) objectives.
The provided balanced scorecard template can then be further configured to meet your own organizational needs and then continuously improved and refined. It should be noted that many projectized organisations use the output of this process (i.e. end-engagement completed scorecards) to feed into an overall Quality Management System (QMS). The QMS, in this context, will typically set a corporate-level objective for overall target levels of client satisfaction against which such aggregate scores can be assessed and any corrective actions initiated.
It should also be noted that many organizations continuously refine such a master version of an engagement management process but then create snapshots of this grid (using the clone functionality in Method Grid) to create specific instances of a project governance framework.
These specific instances can then be easily configured to meet the scope of an individual project and harnessed as a connected-team management aid to track and assure progress across the project lifecycle.
Uniquely, this application of Method Grid then provides the project practitioner with all the relevant knowledge resources (guidance, templates etc) alongside powerful team-collaboration and project management tools (task assignment/scheduling, visual progress reporting, task-evidencing etc).
What does this engagement management process consist of?
This process consists of multiple elements that bring the topic of project governance to life. These elements include guidance on the process, including engagement roles and responsibilities and elements for specific management deliverables (i.e. the setting, and review of, a balanced scorecard).
The overall PPM grid, which which this theme lives, contains a wealth of further guidance documentation, management tool templates and “hints and tips” – over 50 rich resource elements – as captured within a complete end-to-end project and program management lifecycle, against the following themes:
Network Rail 
Arup 
Oxford Brookes University 
NHS 
SSE 
Future Shift 
