Alpha Projects Program Management Office

 

Alpha Project Management Group (1999-2012) enjoyed a distinct pattern of success in its history - we worked with many of our clients over a prolonged period of time (sometimes decades) providing IT, project management and business consulting services to deliver the outcomes that were planned carefully to return optimum value on our client's investment. The collaboration between Alpha Projects and the nonprofit, Work it UP was no exception.

 

Work it UP (www.workitup.org) was established in January, 2009 by a small group of PMPs in Portland, ME as a social entrepreneurial enterprise created to address the massive workforce challenges of the broken economy that followed the collapse of the global equities markets in September, 2008.

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Two constituent groups were identified by the organization as being especially adversely impacted by the economic climate of Maine at the time.  

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1.) Professionals who had decades of education and experience in specific industry sectors who suddenly found themselves without employment and wanted to apply their skills and work to help Maine's economy recover.

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2.)Small businesses whose survival was threatened by the pervasive trend among traditional sources of working capital away from making loans which had historically supported the business growth agendas that promote job creation.

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The answer for both groups seemed plain - the organization would collaborate with businesses to determine professional skill sets needed to support a company's growth agenda and match those requirements with our volunteer member professionals.

 

Thanks to the generous support of the Project Management Institute, Education Foundation (PMI EF) volunteers would be trained in PMI-approved project management courses to work with the client businesses on 6-12 week long projects that were designed to help each company grow and create jobs.

 

In December, 2010  Alpha Projects Mentorship Program (APMP) was launched with help from the Alpha Projects network of consultants in aid of the vital mission of Work it UP. 

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The working professionals affiliated with Alpha Projects created the program in an effort to see the mission of Work it UP grow and expand to reach the estimated state-wide membership of nine-thousand unemployed, under-employed or recently-graduated professionals seeking to enter the workforce.

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Applying their considerable expertise in information technology, professional development training, business consulting, custom web and software development the Alpha Projects network of consultants undertook to build a nonprofit Program Management Office (PgMO) Team to train volunteers for project assignments.

 

The PgMO managed 30-40 internal initiatives and external client projects simultaneously, supported by 40-50 members who received PMI-approved project management training as well as mentorship and coaching from the members of APMP.

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The collaboration between APMP and Work it UP was able to serve dozens of companies and nonprofit organizations in seven counties across Maine, they provided professional development training in Agile frameworks as well as PMI skills to hundreds of member professionals and donated an average of $ 500,000 per year (2010-2012) of volunteer professional services to the small business community of Maine.