A Journey to Organizing Work: Success and Project Management
Written by Patrizio Sanzari, Influential Strategist, Rego Consulting Tribal PPM & Simple SharePoint in General Articles
Date: 08/24/2026
What is Collaborative Work?
Collaborative Work Management (CWM) is the intentional coordination and planning of people, processes, and information to achieve shared goals that deliver organizational value. Examples could include simple, daily tasks within a small team (e.g., customer-driven work orders for service representatives) or the complex, coordinated management of major projects (e.g., subcontractor coordination across construction sites).
Organizations typically don't excel at this coordination overnight. It's a process ... a journey that takes time and intention.
Wes McCoubrie, SVP of Delivery at Rego Consulting, weighs in on that idea. He says, "We see organizations struggling their way through collaborative work management all the time. At Rego, we think of it as a journey. And every journey needs a roadmap. Ours has three phases: visibility, management, and control."
Stage 1: Visibility — Seeing and Beginning to Coordinate Work
The first step in collaborative work is to see what's happening. It's about transparency — who's doing what.
In most organizations, work exists in dozens of places — spreadsheets, emails, disconnected systems, etc. This fragmentation results in unclear priorities, duplicated and error-prone work, and unknown risks, and ultimately makes getting things done difficult.
Achieving visibility brings work (projects, operational initiatives, and ad hoc efforts) together so everyone can see:
- What's being worked on across portfolios, teams, and functions.
- Who's doing what.
- How the work is getting done.
- When the work is being done.
- When work is visible, teams work better, and leaders can make decisions based on facts, not assumptions.
Stage 2: Management — Actively Coordinating Work and People
The management stage has more structure. It starts by considering risks, standardizing processes, managing resources, and ensuring accountability.
In this stage, organizations begin to:
- Define and apply common frameworks for planning and execution.
- Integrate scheduling and resource management.
- Encourage cross-functional collaboration, in which dependencies and handoffs are managed visibly.
- Predict, understand, and mitigate risks, such as pivoting when a deadline is about to slip.
- Build some governance models that maintain flexibility while ensuring alignment with business priorities.
- Innovate more because teams have enough governance to stay aligned.
Why do organizations yearn to improve from the visibility stage? One good reason, according to McKinsey, is that companies with strong project governance and consistent management processes successfully deliver 25–30% more projects than those without.
Stage 3: Control — Strategic Orchestration
The final stage of CWM maturity is proactive control. At this level, the overall portfolio gathers disparate projects, aligns them to strategy, and applies prioritization. The framework and structure are tested and optimized. In Rego's methodology, this stage is where governance meets empowerment.
Key characteristics of this stage include:
- Leaders can confidently shift funding, reprioritize projects, and model scenarios because the data is complete, accurate, and current.
- Leaders can evaluate performance across programs and dynamically balance investments.
- Teams are autonomous and efficient.
- Continuous improvement is baked into the framework.
Ways To Accelerate
It may be difficult to advance in stages — increasing cost reduction, productivity, and efficiency. But with small steps, organizations could see big leaps. Although this list isn't comprehensive, it may provide ideas.
Create A Roadmap
McCoubrie advises, "Assess your maturity and clearly articulate your vision. Then define a measured, pragmatic roadmap to keep you on track as you progress toward goals."
Roadmaps help organizations deliver successful solutions. A clear roadmap will:
- Execute on a vision.
- Force prioritization.
- Provide an element of time.
- Align business, IT, projects, and portfolios.
- Reveal gaps in project portfolio management processes and functions
- Drive common understanding and shared ownership
- Provide the ability to measure success.
To create a roadmap, consider your current and future state. Discover the gaps between them. Then, start setting goals, including software, organizational change, and assistance you may need.
Choose The Right Software
Organizations need a place — a single source of truth — where employees can store data and track trends on projects and portfolios. Insight into everything happening at your organization helps leaders and teams make better, faster decisions. That strategic alignment and transparency are invaluable. Although there are many tools available, determine what your organization needs and what aligns with your tribal government or nation.
Here's a list of typical features and capabilities organizations need: Visibility across tasks, projects, programs, and portfolios.
- Resource and/or team capacity and demand.
- Collaboratively defined progress and status.
- Goal alignment.
- Real-time dashboards and data to show metrics, health, risks, and more.
Focus On Organizational Change And Culture
Organizational readiness is often overlooked. Are leaders and teams ready for transformation? Adopting an agile mindset and rewarding it are important. Organizations that embrace continuous improvement and a willingness to transform are the ones that succeed.
Leverage Experienced Guides
An outside perspective can help. Experienced consultants can assess your organizational readiness and stage, provide best practices, give ideas about software, and guide your tribal governments and nations through transformation.
The best consultants act as partners; they collaborate with you, meet you where you are, help you clarify goals, and assist you in your journey.
Dive In
McCoubrie advises, "Even small steps can make a real difference."
He recommends focusing on building momentum toward a future vision by making incremental improvements to work visibility, management guardrails, and proactive controls.
McCoubrie says, "Find value along the journey, using a roadmap to keep heading in the right direction."