“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has over 5,000
employees at our headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah and about 16
million members worldwide. On the business side, the Church has
around 25 different departments; publishing services is one of those
departments.
I’ve been a project manager in the publishing services department for
more than six years. Most of my career, however, has been in IT. In the
IT department of the Church, I became very familiar with product and
project management. After 15 years in the IT department, I was looking
for another opportunity and found out we had a project office outside
the IT group. Because I had over 20 years of experience managing projects, they invited me to join them as a project manager.
The publishing services department goes to all the other departments in the Church to find out what their publishing needs are, then
we put together an annual budget for meeting those needs—which are
much more than publishing. One of the organizations I’m assigned
to, for example, is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a world-renowned
choir sponsored by the Church. One of their most well-known events
happens every week, and that’s Music and the Spoken Word. I’m the
project manager of that production, which airs every week on TV and
radio stations, as well as on the Internet. I also manage the choir’s concerts, national tours, recordings—all the products they make, as well as
printed items like programs, posters and newspaper ads. I manage all
of that by using traditional project management tools to track projects,
documents, scopes, schedules and budget.
Here at the Church, we have producers who specialize in high-end
films all the way down to those who specialize in quick videos. We also
have producers who deal with live events, like putting on a concert, and
producers who specialize in broadcasting those events on television or
radio. One of my main tasks as a project manager is to organize a project team and put the right producer in place.
It doesn’t matter if you’re building a freeway system or a CD, a car
or a Christmas concert. Behind the scenes, there’s a project manager
keeping things organized, on budget, within scope and on schedule.”
Religion
PMP, project
“It doesn’t matter
if you’re building
a freeway system
or a CD, a car or a
there’s a project
manager keeping
things organized, on
budget, within scope
and on schedule.”
—Loren Bishop, PMP
The Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
