After being used by managers all over the world in their daily work, the “People and Project Management” Toolbox has now become a shared legacy, evolving into an application made available to anyone with an Apple iPad. Just like its paper counterpart, the digital Toolbox brings together practical tools, examples and simplified diagrams to help improve your project and people management skills.
Donatella Pinto, Head of Human Resources in Comau, explains: “By downloading the app you can use the contents of the toolbox immediately. What’s more, you can also examine the topics of people & project management by accessing the Resources internet area, where you’ll find links to the most interesting websites dealing with this subject.”
All of the tools are already available in the Apple app store. The App can be downloaded at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/p-p-mgmt-project-people-management/id941161754?ls=1&mt=8 or on a special site dedicated to the initiative http://ppm.comau.com/
It contains 4 starting tools: Project Charter and Stakeholder Register (Project Management); Balanced Talk and Action Register (People Management).
The Project Management Toolbox can also be augmented with 15 additional tools available at a single price of €4.99 for the entire kit. To complete the People Management Toolbox, 31 additional tools can be downloaded for a onetime cost of only €4.99.
Mauro Fenzi, Comau COO, adds: “Our app could be useful for managers in companies of differing sizes as well as young high fliers wanting to understand not only how project and people management works in company situations but also how to apply it in their daily lives, whether professional or – why not – personal.”
“With regards to the People Management area” continues Ezio Fregnan, HR Training Manager for Comau and Teksid, “we focused on four work areas: Engagement (the manager’s ability to motivate and draw in his/her collaborators), Execution (attention to “making things happen” by defining, allocating, planning and monitoring the tasks), Quality (the manager’s ability to stimulate his/her collaborators to apply greater accuracy in their work and the results they’re responsible for) and Cost Management (for a more efficient task/cost management).”
Amongst the execution tools available for download, there’s the Action Register used after a meeting to outline the specific tasks and timescales for each member of the team. The Engagement Library, on the other hand, contains the Giving Feedback tool that helps provide prompt feedback in relation to the positive aspects and improvement areas of collaborators’ work.
“The Project Management area contains the four project management stages: Start Up, Rolling, Closing and Portfolio Management,” explains Roberto Guida,Head of Contract and Project Management for Comau. “One example of a tool is the Project Charter, a sort of identity card to be filled in at the beginning of a project to establish the agreement between the project manager, sponsor and all of the stakeholders.”
The app is the natural evolution of a project that began by identifying and bringing together the good practices used at the company’s sites all over the world. These were then made available for internal Comau use via the “Comau Academy”, and subsequently collected in a book, Project & People Management, for external use, successfully launched in Europe and China.
