Four years ago, when I elected to pursue an opportunity in Miami, my Chief Information Officer asked me to provide the important factors he should consider when selecting the next BRM Director for the Louisiana Office of Technology Services (OTS).  I provided a narrative, dividing the responsibilities between the Tangible and Intangible.  For this post, there would be limited value in including the Tangible Responsibilities, but I did list 97 tasks that I was personally responsible for.  What  follows, though, is what I consider is a strong overview of BRM Director Responsibilities.

Let's start by explaining the characteristics of a "Magic Spreadsheet".  Virtually every organization has a spreadsheet that is "owned" by an analyst, assistant or coordinator that contains critical information that keeps a function of the organization operating efficiently.  The function could involve procurement timelines, task tracking, recruiting schedules - it could be just about anything.  The "owner" has developed a spreadsheet over time and it exists separate and apart from any CRM system.  This spreadsheet is often stored in OneDrive or, potentially, simply on the computer's hard drive.  It is maintained by a single person, which obviously limits the collaborative element from the equation.

     As an IT professional who has extensive experience in both project management and business relationship management, I know there are challenges in both disciplines that inhibit the ability of practitioners (the PM's and BRM's) from hitting the ground running when initiating a new project or building relationships with new executives.  With this in mind, I have recently been contemplating these challenges and have begun documenting examples of how leveraging the elements of one of the disciplines can greatly benefit the other.  These ideas go beyond the traditional organizational model where there is sort of a sibling relationship between the two disciplines, with each having distinct responsibilities, or another model where BRM's take strategic ideas through the ideation stage, hand them off to PM's for Project Initiation through Closure, then take them back for Value Realization.