Pros
Overall, American Specialty Health (ASH) has the typical corporate environment with fair benefits, hierarchal reporting structure, and the occasional office politics. Company does have a strong focus on health and wellness programs through classes, incentives to be active ($100/quarter to walk 500,000 steps), and free health coaching. ASH "eats its own dog food" in that the company offers most of its wellness-related products and complimentary insurance benefits (low co-pay for chiropractic, acupuncture, or massage therapy visits) to its own employees. Specifically, the work of a project manager (PM) at ASH differs depending on the department and needs for the position. This gives individual PMs an amount of freedom and flexibility in completing their work. PMs have all the pros associated with this type of creative knowledge work such as: - loosely managed projects, with self-directed mid-project deliverables - ability to define, create, and improve processes - ability to work with other departments and individuals - flexibility for (some) deadlines and deliverables - opportunity to work on new cutting edge projects Management is trained in Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership, which has good application for day-to-day employee relations, but doesn't address project work.
Cons
As of mid-2011, ASH doesn't have a formal project management office (PMO). Non-PMs and those new to the profession may struggle with the undefined or unclear project-related aspects of their work. Management views of project work vary between departments or even teams. I've seen individual PMs attempt to apply an informal mix of Agile methods and Project Management Institute's PMBOK (PM Book of Knowledge), however no "official" framework is in place for projects. Methods or a framework isn't everything, but with PMs doing a mix of business analysis, operational-type work, and even development it'd help to have a collection of organizational examples, templates, and other support specific to projects. Individuals across departments may have to re-invent the wheel and create processes using their own approaches with differing tools.
