Times are tough for everyone out there at the moment. The economies of Europe and the US are slowing down again, and there are real fears that they could dip back down into recession. So it’s only natural that businesses are looking to cut their costs – but sometimes they are making the wasteful saving of doing without good project management.

I’m hearing of companies who are running projects to try to save money, but starting themselves off on the wrong foot by not putting in place adequate project management. Projects designed to reduce costs, ranging from outsourcing entire IT departments to staff reduction work, are being begun, but there is a reluctance to bring in the necessary project management expertise. This can either mean internal project management resource is being overstretched, or someone with little to no experience is asked to make do as best they can.

The problem with this is that effective project management will actually save these companies money. Think about it – a good project manager will anticipate problems, and avoid or solve them. A good project manager will have planned well, so there isn’t any wasted time waiting for something else to be done before work can continue.

Too often the perception is that project management is a mostly unnecessary overhead, because it is all too difficult to demonstrate the ways we have reduced timescales, or avoided problem – some senior managers seem to think a problem avoided is one that never really existed.

By cutting project management, companies are making problems more likely to occur – and any delay they cause is a cost. I worked on a project recently that would, when it was implemented, start saving the organisation thousands of pounds a week – or to put it another way, the company was currently losing thousands of pounds a week. That means any delay quickly starts to cost far more than a project manager would!

I understand the temptation that senior managers may feel to cut the upfront cost they can see, but it is something we as project managers need to fight against – because down the line, problems will crop up which cost more than the solution of good project management does.