Mavendog’s COVID-19 response is grounded in what it does well. We support our customers with project delivery and project recovery specialization. Our aim is to help companies not only through the immediate crisis, but also after the dust has settled.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create headaches for businesses, governments, and communities everywhere. Businesses are responding to the conditions in various ways, often reacting daily as the ground shifts beneath their feet. The immediate priorities are the safety, health, and well-being of their people and their families, with an eye down the road on business continuity and the viability of their project investments.
1. COVID-19 Impacts to Companies
During this volatile and stressful time, most companies are doing their best to maintain business-as-usual, while taking steps to insulate themselves from fallout. Their steps and strategies are changing almost daily. As of today (March 26th, 2020), here’s what we have been seeing:
- Virtual posture: Most companies have shifted to a virtual stance, convening business through digital, video, and team collaboration tools.
- Executive re-prioritization: The economic pause and/or emergency demands have forced an across-the-board executive re-prioritization of investments and throughput.
- Global variance in resource capacity: Every country is at a different phase of the virus. So for those continuing to support and deliver global projects, companies face variances in resource capacity. COVID-19 has made global project and resource management even more complex than usual.
- A shift away from full time labor: Some companies have chosen to pause or even cancel mission-critical projects rather than try to navigate the turbulence or to float the cost implications. Some have even had to furlough or lay off staff needed to run those projects.
But as dire and bleak as things may seem, other companies are pursuing disaster response projects, such as repurposing their production and R&D capabilities for the “war effort” against COVID-19. Here locally, most now know about the noble efforts of Parkdale Mills and Beverly Knits of Gastonia, NC, who are answering the call to address the N-95 respirator and surgical mask shortage for our healthcare community. It is a demonstration of strength, versatility, and even patriotism, whether through innovation, resilient supply chains, or organizational versatility. They are compelled to take such project risks for the sake of their customers and for the victims of this pandemic.
Economic conditions are creating a heightened concern for the delivery of critical projects... or in the aftermath of COVID-19, their recovery.
But whether a company is pursuing new projects in response to COVID-19, or trying to salvage their ongoing project investments, the environment has changed for the every-day project. Economic conditions are creating a heightened concern for the delivery of critical projects… or in the aftermath of COVID-19, their recovery.
2. Our Response – Emergency and Fractional Project Delivery
Project specialization is at the core of Mavendog’s model. Buyers of project management services in a COVID-19 world are better served by project specialization, because it provides more surgical answers and choices. For example:
- “Project stimulus” for delivering projects in precarious market conditions.
- “Project prognosis” of a project’s viability following a major disruption.
- “Project recovery” to salvage and normalize projects after the dust has settled.
In this time of intense client uncertainty, the flexibility of specialized, fractional project leadership is more valuable than ever.
Moreover, Mavendog specialization is a fractional, rapid-response, gig-economy service — an alternative to traditional, full-time project personnel. Work can be ad hoc and deliverable-specific. It can fluctuate and be part-time, where commitments ebb and flow with a company’s ever-changing needs. In this time of intense client uncertainty, the flexibility of specialized, fractional project leadership is more valuable than ever.
Project stimulus efforts can include:
Fast-track projects or deliverables that have spiked in priority. Such needs are often driven by market pressures to deliver sooner than expected, or ensure successful delivery in the midst of a crisis.
Drive projects of special interest to an executive. This service is invaluable for completing critical and sometimes unusual projects and deliverables.
Reduce resistance to sudden change. This specialty is all about ways to garner change acceptance from an executive to an individual user, especially in a disaster recovery predicament.
3. Post-COVID Recovery
In this unprecedented challenge to our modern economy, companies will undoubtedly need to change the fundamentals of how they get work done. Mavendog anticipates greater investment in IT to support remote work and virtual commerce, including projects in IT infrastructure, Digital enablement, Data Management, IT Security, Supply Chain, and remote-based HR services. All of these are Mavendog domains within project leadership specialization.
But before such new investments, companies will need to assess the damage done to pre-COVID projects. What projects are worth salvaging? What project no longer makes sense in a Post-COVID world?
Mavendog’s Project Assessment Services (PAS) can answer the question of project viability and worth. They can protect you from throwing good money after bad.
Project prognosis efforts can include:
Provide a diagnosis (root cause) and prognosis (likelihood of recovery) for a failing project. Prognosis includes an evaluation of sponsor and team readiness.
An snapshot of a company’s application mix and its impact (directly or indirectly) on a project’s feasibility and/or strategic value.
A post-recovery assessment that covers both delivery quality and projected ROI.
Should a pre-COVID project be deemed salvageable, the challenge becomes one of recovery.
Project recovery services can include:
Provide a treatment plan and roadmap for recovery. This service has diplomatic expectations, as recovery specialists negotiate trade-offs, set new baselines of success, and establish business continuity plans.
Execute a treatment plan through Direct Action involvement. Direct Action implies emergency coverage, usually in the form of a replacement project leader for the purpose of salvaging a project or deliverable.
Execute a treatment plan through Indirect Action involvement — namely, shadow and advise a client sponsor and/or the full-time project manager already in place.
Our heartfelt good wishes go out to everyone amidst this COVID-19 scare. We hope all are weathering the storm as best they can. Our priority is not only the health of our families and yours, but also to do our part to starve out this virus for good.