Geert Vermeiren

The objective of coaching is to further develop the competences/skills of a coachee.

GVEbca uses therefore an iterative process of continuous improvement. We gradually remove obstacles to better functioning of the organization and introduce new skills, in cycles of about one month. We intend to change the behavior of people in small steps, make small improvements to the organization and the processes in each iteration and monitors the consequences of the change.

For all selected coaching topics, we will go through the following stages :

• Exploring stage - by follow-up of a limited number of projects
• To get insight in the current project management approach (people, process and techniques)
• To get a clear idea of the strong points and weaknesses in this approach
• Diagnosing stage
• Definition and prioritization of areas of improvement
• Proposition of an action plan
• Executing stage
• Perform the action plan
• Monitoring stage
• Check the result of the actions

GVEbca will typically try first to realize improvements in a small team and then in the following iterations introduce these improvements on a broader scale.

“How to increase and sustain the maturity of your organization in the area of project management?”

coaching styles

interactive coaching

We perform intensive, individual coaching, one-to-one with a project manager, possibly also in small groups if relevant. The coach and the coachee will be strongly involved. We will work with hands-on exercises, to help individuals to change their behavior. In addition, we will organize small training workshops, focusing on a specific topic, in combination with interactive practicing sessions. These will address specific weaknesses, generally found in the way projects are managed in the organization, or can in later stages help in introducing more mature topics such as risk management, quality monitoring, etc. The coach can also participate, as an observer, in project board meetings, executive reviews, stakeholder meetings, … After the meeting, he can give tips on how to improve the way the meeting runs, where time can be saved and how to make the management generally more efficient and effective.

reviews

The coach pro-actively and regularly reviews the project management deliverables and the project management processes. He discusses the review results with the main people concerned. The coach identifies shortcomings in the project management deliverables or approach and suggests ways to improve them. A typical activity would be the review of deliverables before a project meeting. This approach is particularly useful during the early iterations, as this review will give a clear indication of the current situation. At the same time, it will give some immediate result in quality improvement of the deliverables. It helps less in modifying people’s behavior.

project assurance

As the project management process matures, the coach will help in setting up a project quality assurance process. The coach performs project assessments together with the project managers, in order to increase their maturity. In particular, we will help some more mature project managers to become ‘coaches’ themselves or at least enable them to monitor and validate the compliance with the project management process. The coach will, together with the relevant project managers, assure that the project is run according to the agreed principles, he will carry out planned project audits and validate to what extent targeted project management benefits are achieved.