PMcrunch

Talent management is a huge challenge for corporations and organizations of all types and sizes.  I many cases, success at talent management within the organization can be the key differentiating factor between success and failure for the organization.  Likewise, success at project management, program management, and portfolio management also largely hinges on strong talent management.  Part of this challenge lies at the relationship between the organization’s talent management capabilities and those of the projects and programs.

Today’s rapidly changing environment has lead to the need for more thoughtful talent management strategies.  Change exhibited in market dynamics, workforce mobility, technology, and internationalization are some of the key factors influencing this need.  This is a change from the days of organizational loyalty to more of a free agency approach of today.

Many organizations are very formal about how they manage talent.  One popular tool is a succession planning system, whereby employee talents are stored in a database, and reporting can be structured so as to enable planning for the evolving organization of the future.  Other systems include market compensation systems, which allow an organization to compare its compensation to those in the market for similar roles.  These and other systems can be helpful, but are only part of the solution.

Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs and wikis, can also be useful tools for talent management.  They are, to a large extent, a response to the "on demand" nature for talent solutions.  On one hand, they can provide near instantaneous access to information and expertise that provides solutions, and does so outside the formal and traditional organizational structure.  Through the creation of organizational knowledge assets, this fills the vacuum left by the erosion of long-term employees of the past, whose loss also carried with it the loss of knowledge.  These technologies can also provide a means to identify team members for projects and teams.  They are also effective at helping a new team member rapidly get up to speed and assimilate onto the team by giving them a sense of project or program history and in depth background.  Finally, they can provide a living record of demonstrated knowledge and talent by individuals who could be candidates for project and program teams.

Another key to the talent management challenge on projects is training.  From a project perspective, just-in-time training can rapidly help to fill the talent gaps on project teams.  For programs, flexible training programs offered today can provide an opportunity to manage the risks of talent gaps throughout the life of a program, which can easily have shifting needs.  For portfolios of projects and programs, flexible training opportunities can provide the ability to confidently adjust priorities with changing needs, a critical factor in portfolio management.

Human resources project management is a critical factor in project management, and talent management provides a framework for coping with this challenge in a rapidly changing work environment.
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John Reiling, PMP
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