What is Tailoring?

Tailoring is the deliberate adaption of the project management approach, governance, and processes to make them more suitable for the given environment and the work at hand. We’re going into depth about Tailoring and why it’s necessary on projects. 

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Transcript

This is Kaye B and welcome to another episode of PMP in a Snap. 

We’re diving deeper into Tailoring and what it means for project management. A quick recap: 

Tailoring is the deliberate adaption of the project management approach, governance, and processes to make them more suitable for the given environment and the work at hand. In other words, use your project management knowledge and experience to make the project better. 

You need to understand the project context, goals and operating environment because projects operate in complex environments that need to balance potentially competing demands. So what do we exactly tailor? The project aspects that are typically tailored are life cycle and development approach selection. Processes, engagement, tools and methods and artifiacts. Let talk about each one in detail. 

Life Cycles: Deciding on a life cycle and the phases of the life cycle is an example of tailoring. In addition, when you select the development and delivery approach for the project, that is also tailoring. Some projects use a combination of development and delivery approaches simultaneously. 

Processes: When you select the life-cyle and development approach for the project, you are also tailoring portions or elements to the processes. You can add, meaning to bring required rigor coverage or address unique product or operating environment conditions. You can modify, like modifying a document to use that is a better format for the team. You can remove. This is to reduce cost or effort since it is no longer required or it is not economical for the value it adds. Or blend, which is to bring additional benefits or value by mixing a combination of add, modify, or remove. And there is align. This is to harmonize elements so there is consistent definition, understanding, and application. 

In tailoring, there is also engagement for the people involved. When you tailor the people, this means you evaluate the skills and capabilities of the project leadership and the project team to see who needs to be involved. You can also tailor empowerment, which involves choosing which responsibilities and forms of decision-making should be deferred to the project team. There is integration, which is when project teams can include contributors from contracted entities, channel partners, and other external entities in addition to staff from inside the sponsoring organization. 

The other tailoring factor is tools. This is like your software or equipment. You would select the appropriate tools that the project team will use for the project. Often times the team has the best insight into the most suitable tools for the situation but you may have to tailor that because of cost or time. 

And finally there is the methods and artifacts. There are several models like communication models or Motivation models that a project leader can use to help the project along. You take the basis of these models and tailor it to fit the project flow. 

That is your PMP in a Snap, we’ll talk next week.