Talk about a Ronnie Pickering moment!! **
A CIO friend has just switched firms and, when he suggested Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) as an alternative to hiring and contractors, the response from the CFO, COO and CEO was: “who?”.
Like many, this project team is under immense pressure to deliver more, deliver faster, with greater innovation and the right specialist talent but the business leaders and decision makers knew only those two alternatives—oh—and there’s a hiring freeze!
Sound familiar? When every route to building capacity seems blocked by obstacles, it’s good to remember that there is a third path that financial decision-makers may not even realise is available: Project Management as a Service (PMaaS).
It’s been nearly a decade and a half since Stoneseed helped pioneer PMaaS, and I assumed everyone knew what it was. Most CIOs and Heads of PMO understand PMaaS, some C-suite leaders are still asking, ‘Who?’
Let’s put that right!
To illustrate further, here are four more “Ronnie Pickering” moments, instances where key decision makers were not initially aware of PMaaS—and how PMaaS helped solve their problem!
Scenario One: The Hiring Freeze!
An IT Project team, whose portfolio has grown, got the dreaded email: no new hires allowed.
With digital transformation and AI integration on every board slide, business units expecting more value from IT delivery and permanent headcount locked, they had urgent resourcing challenges. Furthermore, contractors are frowned upon as they “cost a small fortune” and “burden the organisation with onboarding paperwork, compliance checks, and daily cost anxiety.” Yet the pressure remains: deliver on time, on budget, and with fewer resources than ever.
Here, PMaaS radically changed the game. Stoneseed’s PMaaS offers on-demand project management capacity, flexing hours and resources as your workload spikes and ebbs, without a permanent operating expenditure increase. Suddenly, you can scale up to meet deadlines or scale back in quiet periods, with total predictability on spend.
Budget holders get the risk management and commercial clarity they crave, without swelling the payroll or getting stuck in procurement gridlock.
Scenario Two: When Projects Multiply Overnight
Growth can be as stressful as constraint. Maybe your business has acquired a new division. Maybe you’ve launched a product line that’s created four new major projects this quarter, not next. Your carefully balanced portfolio suddenly looks like a traffic jam, and your internal PMO isn’t built for this speed.
Bringing in a consultancy means long contracts, scope agreements, and the feeling that your work is now dependent on outsiders who may not “get” your culture or change direction quickly. Contractors can only fill discrete gaps, not manage a dynamic and expanding project slate.
PMaaS is designed for scaling. Stoneseed maintain pools of experienced project leaders and specialists who can be deployed quickly. Need two extra project managers for just six weeks? A business analyst to untangle requirements for a month? With PMaaS, capacity flexes as the portfolio grows and then recedes seamlessly when the peak is over.
There’s no legacy headcount or sunk cost, and CFOs see transparent use-of-service charges instead of murky, one-size-fits-all consultancy fees.
Scenario Three: When Skills Are Scarce
Every year, projects demand new and rarer skill sets that just aren’t in your permanent team’s DNA. The market for specialists is tight and expensive. You can try recruiting, but that means delays and a permanent overhead; you can try contractors, but finding the right expertise at the right moment is hit and miss, and once they’re gone, so is the knowledge. Stoneseed’s PMaaS teams are adept at documentation and knowledge transfer, so project momentum is never lost, and specialist value is captured for your business.
PMaaS offers a better approach. Stoneseed’s teams have broad and deep expertise, covering everything from classic project controls to industry-specific know-how. When you deploy PMaaS, you plug straight into this well of specialist skill, accessing exactly the resource you need, for exactly the period you need it.
Scenario Four: The Public Sector Pressure Cooker
UK public-sector organisations are under relentless pressure to deliver more digital services, meet new compliance rules and modernise legacy systems, often with shrinking budgets and recruitment freezes. IR35 tightened contractor markets, making it harder and riskier to bring in temporary staff. Traditional consultancies mean lengthy procurement and big, inflexible contracts. Despite Stoneseed already being on UK frameworks, able to navigate public-sector procurement, many leaders are unaware of the benefits of PMaaS.
PMaaS offers a compliant, cost-transparent way to flex capacity quickly, and Stoneseed can deploy vetted, security-cleared project professionals at speed. Public-sector leaders get delivery capacity without blowing their headcount or triggering new procurement delays, while retaining accountability and knowledge transfer inside their organisations.
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Why CFOs and CEOs Say Yes to PMaaS
For budget holders, PMaaS is more than just a new staffing model. It helps solve fundamental business problems:
Cost control: Costs are aligned to actual delivery, not a fixed payroll or open-ended consultant agreements.
Speed to value: Resource bottlenecks are eliminated, so projects aren’t stalled while waiting for approvals or hard-to-find hires.
Governance and risk: Service-level agreements and outcome commitments ensure everyone is aligned on delivery (unlike traditional contractor arrangements).
Focus on outcomes: Instead of paying for time, you pay for capability, measurable progress, and results that matter to the business.
IR35: All our PMaaS resources are directly employed by Stoneseed and therefore fall outside the scope of IR35.
You can check out more PMaaS FAQs here.
Making the Pitch: How to Sell PMaaS To Your C-Suite
When you’re trying to sell the idea internally, don’t frame PMaaS as “just another delivery resource.” Frame it as:
- A financial strategy: avoiding permanent Opex increases.
- A risk strategy: reducing reliance on high‑day‑rate contractors.
- A delivery strategy: ensuring you can keep up with innovation without waiting for headcount approval.
In short, PMaaS isn’t a backup plan. It’s the smart third option hiding in plain sight – the one that lets Project Directors keep delivering, while CEOs and CFOs keep control.
Of course, if you need someone who knows their PMaaS to make the pitch… we’d love to meet your board to make the case!
Project Management as a Service isn’t “Plan C” – A New Default for IT Leaders
Most IT Project Directors face similar headaches to the ones outlined above, and many still default to traditional solutions their finance colleagues expect: “Either we hire people, or we hire temps until things improve.”
PMaaS is different. It’s about using service capacity smartly, smoothing project delivery bumps, and equipping teams with exactly what (and who) they need, when they need it.
PMaaS is the third, smarter option that budget holders and strategic leaders have been waiting for. When growth, constraint, or critical expertise gaps loom, PMaaS delivers flexibility, control, and clarity, so IT can keep moving, the business can keep innovating, and nobody’s left wishing they’d known about this option sooner.
Find out how Stoneseed’s PMaaS can help YOU. Call now on 01623 723910 or email info@stoneseed.co.uk.
More about Project Management as a Service from Stoneseed
**FUN FACT I am writing this in the week of the tenth anniversary of that Ronnie Pickering video going viral! How time flies! Ronnie Pickering, a former amateur boxer from Hull, became an unlikely viral sensation in 2015 after a road-rage incident was caught on a biker’s helmet camera. In the clip, he repeatedly shouts “Do you know who I am? I’m Ronnie Pickering!” at the bemused motorcyclist, who replies “Who?”, turning the exchange into a widely shared internet meme.
Sources And Inspiration:
Stoneseed Procurement Frameworks
Stoneseed Project Management as a Service
Further reading:
