Cortado Project Management Excellence — Charter (Seed)¶
#cortado_project_management_excellence
What this initiative is¶
Project management at Cortado has been a tribal craft. Strong PCs and EMs absorb it by osmosis from sitting next to David, Bill, Matt, and Jess. That works at our current size; it breaks the moment we onboard our second, third, and fourth project coordinator in a year — exactly what the talent portal pipeline is about to produce.
Project Management Excellence is the program that converts that tribal craft into:
- A taught curriculum (this project coordinator onboarding folder is the v1 seed)
- A canonical set of templates and tools (project plan template, Asana board structures, Steerco shell, status report format, 1099 onboarding pack)
- A defined competency model for what "great" looks like at each PC level (intern → coordinator → senior coordinator → EM-ready)
- A measurable cadence (the GROW weekly meetings — see
mentor_check_in_template.md)
Why now¶
From the 2026-05-14 weekly:
- 14 PC applicants in the talent portal, with more arriving
- Bill needs a body soon
- David is the bottleneck on building the curriculum: "the only thing holding me back is literally just putting that one toward the top of the pipeline because I keep getting individual challenges handed to me. I never quite make it to backlog items."
- The firm is increasingly delivery-throughput-constrained, not demand-constrained
Project coordination is the leverage point. Every hour a PC absorbs from an EM is an hour the EM can spend selling, scoping, or steering.
Scope (v1)¶
In scope: - project coordinator onboarding curriculum (this folder) - Standardized project plan template across all RevOps engagements - Standardized status update format using Asana's Updates + 4 Blockers - 1099 onboarding checklist - Steerco operational pack template
Explicitly out of scope for v1: - EM-level training (already covered by the Consultant Development Program) - Sales process training (separate initiative) - A formal PMO function — we are building the discipline, not the bureaucracy
Owners¶
| Role | Owner |
|---|---|
| Initiative sponsor | David Russell |
| Curriculum mentor | Matt Trotter |
| First production deployment | Bill's RevOps engagement |
| First intern | TBD from talent portal pool |
Milestones¶
| Milestone | Target |
|---|---|
| project coordinator curriculum v1 (this folder) | Complete (2026-05-14) |
| First project coordinator onboarded against the curriculum | Within 30 days of hire decision |
| First curriculum iteration based on intern feedback | Day 30 review of first intern |
| 1099 onboarding checklist landed in Talent Program folder | Within 60 days of first intern start |
| Second project coordinator onboarded with v2 curriculum | Whenever next hire lands |
How this folder relates¶
The contents of output/onboarding/project_coordinator_project coordinator/ are the operational artifacts. There are two plausible destinations for them once stable:
-
The PMO Site (https://sites.google.com/cortadogroup.com/pmo/) — Cortado's existing canonical home for project management methodology, glossary, and reference material. The curriculum's foundational content (GROW, Engagement Methodology, status conventions) likely belongs here.
-
A new
projectcoordinator.cortadogroup.aisite, mirroring the pattern of https://innovationstudio.cortadogroup.ai/ — a practice-area site dedicated to the PC role, including the curriculum, the 1099 onboarding orchestration, templates, and ongoing reference content. This is the natural fit for the role-specific operational content.
The split would likely be: methodology and glossary on the PMO site; role-specific curriculum, templates, and orchestration on the projectcoordinator site. Worth deciding before migration — picking by accident leads to fragmented knowledge.
Until that decision is made, this folder lives in the BoxAnalyzer workspace so it can be iterated on quickly without polluting either destination with drafts.