CPG Project/Program Management
Overview & Challenge(s):
DEMDACO had been operating for over 20 years using Excel spreadsheets and underskilled team members to manage projects, programs, and timelines, resulting in a continuous tug of war over internal and external resources. My role was to oversee the organization's strategic programs and projects and prioritize the most beneficial programs first.
With over 9 executive stakeholders, each with different agendas, and no platform, the time was right for introducing a scoring methodology, centralized tracking, and a governance structure.
Goal(s): Create a scoring model, evaluate existing projects (underway or in the queue), and implement a user-friendly, real-time roles-based project management tool for use by all levels of the company.
Strategy & Approach:
Conduct stakeholder meetings to capture the desired approach and critical functionality needed.
Identify a single SME from each functional area to serve on a task force led by the project manager on my team.
Research, evaluate, and conduct demos of platform options based on the requirements gathered.
Present the top two platform contenders to the CEO and CFO for approval.
Create a detailed project plan for rollout.
Test and launch.
Results:
The selected platform, Hive, was purchased and customized to support project management tracking, creative asset routing, and automate tasks based on dependencies or milestones.
After successfully testing the process end-to-end, the program was implemented company-wide using detailed communication and training plans.
Existing projects were migrated to the new platform and prioritized based on set criteria.
Executive dashboards were created based on role, providing real-time status updates as needed.
100% of the programs that year were implemented successfully, on time, and within budget.
Hive became the company's single source of truth and we saw a 50% reduction in re-work.