Project management is not normally a central career structure in most organizations. Project managers therefore feel vulnerable and are often organized into ‘pools’ or communities that are centrally coordinated or managed to give them substance and extract the maximum value from them.

But how to make this work in practice? This Guide gives you a very practical approach that gives you a framework for assessing, classifying and managing your project managers.

Everyone knows what is expected of them and how they’ll be assessed. They also know how they can develop their skills and career.

This Guide focuses on leverage and utilization, not exploitation, as the long term IP that your project managers build up in relation to your firm is important to try to preserve.

How to manage your project manager pool

1. Understanding the challenges of managing a project manager pool
2. The end-to-end project manager pool management process
3. How to classify your project manager pool’s experience
4. How to plan project manager use
5. How to support your project manager pool
6. How to select a project manager for a project
7. How to manage the pool
8. How to evaluate a project manager’s performance
9. How to plan your project managers’ career paths

• PPMOs or Pool Managers - to know how to effectively manage a project manager pool
• Project Practitioners - to understand how their career can be classified and managed
• Project Governance Teams - understand the nature of the project manager pool and its dynamics

• Evaluates project manager skills, experience, attributes and aptitudes
• Differentiates between the different levels of expertise and competence
• Ensures project managers are not stressed or overworked without rest (sounds obvious but is not always achieved)
• Provides a common but scaleable basis for assessing project managers’ performance
• Provides the basis for career planning to increase the overall competency of the pool