One Works is an international design studio employing more than 120 people in the fields of architecture, engineering, and urban planning. The team is managed by several figures across different offices in Milan, Venice, and Rome. Camilla Levorato is the PMO, while Paola Caccia Dominioni is the director of human resources and quality control.
In the past few years, One Works has introduced the PMO division to promote a new project management culture within the company. This involves sharing common processes and principles to improve overall management. However, this innovation is part of a broader cultural change that began in 2019. This process aims to simplify organizational processes and make employees more aware of the company's performance.
"Before we used a typical project management system for design companies, where you calculate the hours allocated to different assignments and that's it. It was not intuitive or open at all, and I didn't receive any feedback on our performance".
Camilla Levorato, PMO at One Works
One of the main challenges faced by the company was having timely and regular information about their business performance. This was necessary to efficiently organize teams and realistically build customer budgets. As a result, One Works' research required a comprehensive platform that could provide real-time information in an intuitive way, simplifying the user experience.
"wethod is outstanding: it’s very user-friendly and requires a minimal effort to enter and update information while providing immediate feedback on the company's performance."
Camilla Levorato, PMO at One Works
However, the aim of One Works was not only to improve the monitoring of the project portfolio, but also to encourage a cultural change within the team. A key step was to introduce a method for resource planning, which is not always an easy task for design offices.
"Thanks to real-time data, project managers are now able to identify if people are overconsuming the budget. This knowledge allows them to minimize production on a given project, which is a key element in implementing cultural change and giving everyone a complete overview."
Paola Caccia Dominioni, HR and Quality Control Manager at One Works
With this method, the team was finally able to understand at a glance the resource saturation, as well as the impact of people allocation on the budget of the projects. This led to a change in mindset and a greater level of efficiency, allowing the team to foresee critical issues before they happen.
For One Works, wethod represented a tool that supported the firm's direction and vision: by implementing a more open system, they could make a quantum leap in their data culture. The project canvas, in particular, is the focal point for gathering key project information, which is very useful during the kick-off meeting.
“Together with the timeline, the canvas helps the team avoid unnecessary meetings or messages. Everyone knows where to find the right information, which is very useful in terms of sharing, control, and planning."
Camilla Levorato, PMO at One Works
Furthermore, by sharing the project report with each team member, awareness has improved, because hey can now immediately understand the value of the hours worked against the project's progress. In other words, thanks to this project summary page, data analysis has become more straightforward for everyone.
"I have seen many project management tools, but wethod is the only one that provides immediate and easy control over your work. It is so simple that even a 7-year-old child could understand it!"
Camilla Levorato, PMO at One Works
Camilla Levorato and Paola Caccia Dominioni have described another interesting aspect which is the "feedback part" after project closure. This is crucial in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which in turn helps to improve. In addition, the OKR and anonymous review questionnaires on the platform help in identifying areas for improvement and monitoring the progress of individual skills.
"The project evaluation feature at the end of the project is also very interesting because it immediately identifies the projects where something did not work. When it comes time to do the lesson-learned meeting and debriefing, you have a tool to guide you."
Paola Caccia Dominioni, HR and Quality Control Manager at One Works
The interview took place on April 6th, 2022.