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Direct responses to your key questions.
Our PMs are all chosen with a requisite scientific curiosity, are lifelong learners, and are not shy about reading white papers in their off-time about the field their client operates in. We also partner directly with your own SMEs to ensure we're taking the facilitation, organization, and administrative work off their plate, giving them time back to do what they do best: the technical implementation!
Working with MustardSeed is seamless. The MustardSeed team arrives with a bottoms-up approach, ready to apply the Program Management Best Practices most applicable to your unique situation. We are guests in your house, and always ensure we are strategically and culturally aligned with our project sponsors.
When you hire an outside PMO, you get the experiences of an entire team, not just a single person. Our team of project professionals have been a part of 50+ PMOs, allowing us to recognize the patterns that PMOs face today.
In short, YES! Our project managers focus heavily on Team Unity, and a big part of that is connecting as a team and connecting one on one. It's the team connections and bonds that really allow for remote teams to be successful. Our PMs always have their video cameras on to help enhance that connectivity, and we do go to our client sites as needed to ensure that those bonds are strengthened. We have supported remote teams and supported teams that are exclusively on-site for years.
As a team, we've worked across industries for years. We will always be proud of our company origin story in the life sciences industry and more recently our expansion into food and beverage. As we look to support clients outside of those industries we will rely on our roots in aerospace and defense and in finance, along with other highly regulated industries. We have found that our services work well regardless of the specific subject matter within the companies. For those sectors we have not supported directly before, we do significant preparation prior to those engagements to ensure a quick ramp-up.
Over the last few years, we have developed and refined our own methodology. We've developed a 70-page Program Management Best Practices Playbook that acts as an internal guide for all of our project managers. The vast majority of our project managers are PMP certified, with additional project managers having unique certifications such as Scrum Master, Lean Six Sigma, or Agile. While we have our preferences for how we like to implement project management best practices, we always take a bottom-up approach to supporting our clients. No two companies are the same, so our view is that it is critical to meet our clients where they are today to combine steps today that allow for the vision and needs of tomorrow.
We have spent the last three years looking at all available project management software options in the marketplace. That list has over 160 unique offerings today, and that list continues to grow.While we have no standard software that we would make a blanket recommendation to for the majority of clients that are small to medium size, we believe Smartsheet is the best tool for most. Our team has tools and templates built out on that software platform. We are not a paid provider of Smartsheet, but we do feel that it is approachable for most users, while at the same time, provides the functionality necessary for the vast majority of teams.
What makes our team unique is our ability to manage projects at a detailed level while engaging strategically with C-suite leaders. We ramp quickly (often standing up a functional PMO in under 45 days) bringing structure, data, and alignment that drive confident decision-making across every level of the organization.