To me, it's about senior management being able to do THEIR job more effectively. Through good project management, senior leadership obtains the information they need to make strategic and informed decisions about risk, cost and schedule.

Without project management, they might as well do project selection by throwing darts at a board.

Let them try having someone from the impacted department do it.

Either they'll do it well and a dedicated project management department is in fact overkill at your organization (sorry), or the project will be a complete wreck and demonstrate quite clearly the value you add.

I don't have a silver bullet, but I have been in your position many times. In two of my past jobs, I was a project manager for a global support organization. We seemed to spend every three to six months justifying our existence. In the end, both firms decided they could do without, with some expected results.

Rob brings up one of the good points, and I'd like to expand on it. If you have a functional manager doing the project management work, he's devoting a large time slice to project management. This means the PM duty is covered, but it greatly reduces his ability to do the work vital to his regular job roll.

When you add to that, the study data that it takes someone at least 15 minutes to get back on track, after an interuption, and you start to have a compelling argument.

While not a CFO level argument, one of my most successful arguments is, "A project manager is your human snow plow. They are moving ahead of your core people to clear the way, so that they can be that much more efficient."

A PM pays for himself in how he can make others more efficient in their work, by doing the speciliazed planning work so many people don't want to do.

Hi Marcus, Let me split my suggestion in two phases: 1) Get the attention from the Snr Management. It could have many shapes; however, it is essential that they are able to understand your message. For example, presenting then an excellent Business Case could be a waste of time, if it would not be in their culture. 2) Once you and them share the same lingo, you need the most suitable tool (i.e. methodology) for presenting the project management as a valuable option. By the way, PM should not exceed the 10% of the project's value. This can be sold as a reasonable price for increasing the effective control on the project. Best Eugenio

Hi Marcus, Let me preface this with the fact that my career has always been construction management, which means ALL of my work is projects. Having to justify the need for a PM is something I've never dealt with.

Having said that, I see Project Management in some implementations as Operations with a limited life-span. What we do and produce is unique, which makes it a Project. If the same work (ie: same project) was done over and over it would then be called Operations.

So the question to management would be - would you start a new Operation (managing projects) using the same people you have now, and asking them to just manage the new operation as well? Or would you bring in someone trained in starting an operation (design, planning, execution, etc.)?

Just a thought.

Here's a link to a short post I wrote on this topic.

The main approach is to help provide visibility into all the little things that do go into a project, why its not just a "simple question" and how having a birds-eye view of everything in one place can show why there's such a backlog.