A project is all about transformation and change, about  making a vision happen and delivering outcomes. As such, it requires ongoing innovation, mobility, responsiveness, constant creativity, and a selfstarting, empowered team.
This cannot happen without a culture of out-of-the-box, innovative thinking. The contributions of all participants in the project are encouraged; As such, hierachies are flat, everyone is a part owner of the project and as such contributes their best, so as to achieve the best possible outcomes.

• Action is favored: once set, decisions are implemented, and the whole team participates in quickly turning decisions into material outcomes
• Team members hew to a charter of conduct . Thus, hierachies remain flat, and the best ad hoc implementation methodologies are used on a case-by-case basis as the situation requires. No artificial, one-size-fits all procedures are imposed, thus ensuring flexibility, responsiveness, ad hoc suitability and intelligence throughout the project.
• Learning from the project: every project contributes to the team's hoard of experience and lays the groundwork for future judgments and decisions, thus keeping the participants at the leading edge of their craft.

To ensure ongoing optimal efficiency at project sites, Opteam has devised a user-friendly project management and monitoring tool - a powerful and responsive "dashboard" utility which adapts to any organization, rather than the other way around, to let them efficiently monitor project metrics and delivery outcomes. Thus, any organisation can respond as is to any given project's developing requirements.

Continual improvement of methods, means, and of the team's project management experience and hence culture is thus achieved through this tool.

Goals.

Our approach aims at enabling:

• Autonomous, self-starter project teams , who are:
  • Motivated, collaborative and seamlessly functioning as a unit,
• Well-versed in the main techniques of Project Management, capable of splicing together and extracting the best elements from the various methods available, and deploying them judiciously.
• Conversant with management techniques,
• Equipped with the means to monitor their own management outcomes (through Project Management tools, spreadsheets, dashboards, etc.) and aware of what can be gained from the deployment of sundry business tools (accounting, management control, imputation management systems, GMAO, GPAO, etc.),
• Committed to using as few management rules as possible, compatible with achieving optimal outcomes (through rules of engagement (a chart of engagement & conduct) and/ or meta rules),
• A project portfolio management system providing a decision making methodology (decision trees etc.).
• Ongoing Improvement: the Critical Importance of Feedback Loops.
  

The broad environment  within which the project takes place is made project-friendly, i.e. the initiating and managing of separate projects becomes the best vehicle towards delivering and achieving business goals. This encompasses overcoming issues or hindrances as they arise, and making the whole business outcome delivery process enabled by the project approach  - including project management and oversight, dealing with contractors, and support functions.

So as to strike the right balance between the various possible competing modes of management , adjustments will inevitably have to be undertaken in real time during the course of project execution and delivery - a process sometimes known as 'turning dials' or 'tweaking knobs'.

This is why we use feedbak loops: methods are deployed and outcomes assessed against markers and metrics as they happen. Adjustments are undertaken as required, concurrent with ongoing learning by and education of participants.  Issues are dealt with as they arise, as quickly as feasible, by order of seriousness.

Involving All: a Deliberate Policy.

The aim here is to make project participants into project owners, keenly interested in the outcomes. To that end, team work, and any methodology conducive to enhancing motivation, are favored. Oversight procedures are used to enable levers as well as multi-tier empowerment within the delivery efforts.

We use a hands-on approach: we teach and learn through practice, to begin with during the preliminary coaching workshops, then within the actual project environment.

Training and coaching are given pride of place, and all participants are actively involved in the prior definition of the desired outcomes and the methods to be used. Thus, people, methodologies used, and organisations are intimately associated from the word go.
Likewise, any governing chart of engagement is put together collectively, thus ensuring buy-in and adherence by all.

How it Works: an Overview.

This approach is delivered in three successive stages , as follows:

1. Preparation phase.
   The first phase consists in putting together and establishing a common framework and agreed reference points, agreed to by all participants:

- evaluation of needs and requirements
- analysis of the project process (through simulation modelling)
- definition of methods and choice of tools for the next step.

2. Steering phase.
   Fine-tuning, testing and confirmation of the validity of the choices made via a small scale, mockup pilot project.
   Drawing up a chart and/or meta rules for Management by Project.

3. Deployment phase.
   Anchoring of agreed modes of working:
   - More indepth familiarisation with some techniques through coaching and targeted exercises; implementation of a project portfolio management system
   - If called for, some adaptation of the organisation
   then spreading out (dissemination) of the new management mode to all the projects.

Wy it works best.

The management by project approach works also because, by convening first all the players into a neutral area, any possible issues are effectively dealt with, and superb individual and team preparation are delivered. Thus, transitioning from one approach to another one is carried out smoothly, understandably, and seamlessly.

• The emphasis on team-work ensures collective buy-in, and an individually heightened sense of ownership.

• Thanks to a mentoring system, the project management and steering teams become much more tightly-knit than would otherwise be the case.
• Working first on a project mockup and simulations speeds up understanding of the sundry parameters at play and of any possible issues, thus ensuring smooth transitioning to the live phase.
• By giving precedence to coaching and methodologies over any organizational and/or tool change, positive, materially significant results are achieved at every step of the way, even before the participants have taken onboard or learnt all of the necessary knowledge later needed for the completion of the whole project. 
• Through anchoring, continued buy-in, enthusiasm and commitment are achieved.
• The general mode of approach, embodied and trialled in a prototype, evolves as required during the course of the project.