Ways to Bring Value As Project Managers

With the prevalence of Agile, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), and Scrum, organizations are asked to justify the roles of project managers on a project. Scrum purists reject adding a project manager to the team as the team should solve all the problems with the product owner and scrum master's help.

As organizations change from a systems focus to a product focus, they seek to streamline costs and reduce administrative overhead. Agile methods will help organize the team around a product backlog, increase feedback, and improve incremental delivery. However, do not throw out the project management role just yet.

Reasons Why Project Managers Adds Lot of Value

Below are some reasons why adding a project manager to Agile and traditional teams still adds a lot of value.

1. Project Managers Focus on Customer Needs

The single most significant factor for a project’s success is whether it delivers what the customer requires. The tricky part is that when customers state their wants, it may show what they want rather than what they need. Highly successful project managers uncover the customer’s real needs. They do that through inquiry and by learning about the client’s business. They are not pleased in merely delivering the elements but in adding total value.

Read: Traits That Every Successful Project Manager Must Possess

2. They Build a Great Team

The team is the project’s most significant asset, and highly successful managers know that. They feed it and want to understand each person’s strengths and motivators. To encourage the team, they do not tell people what to do but coach them to find the right solutions and make decisions independently. These project managers see themselves as enablers rather than micro-managers, and they remove blockages so that the team can go on with its work.

3. They Are Delegate

Highly successful project managers have learned that the way to add maximum power and fully leverage the team is to trust anything that can potentially be done by someone else. In delegating, they develop the team’s skill-set. Still, they also free themselves to focus on the material, such as customer relationships, communication, leading and moving the unit, de-risking the project, and hovering the vision. If they do not attend these essential activities, no one will.

4. They Challenge the Status Quo

It is no longer adequate to turn up for work and give a project the way we used to. Highly successful project supervisors are mindful of how they can have changed in better, cheaper, and faster routes. They challenge the status quo, evaluate what new technologies can be employed, which extra benefits can be achieved, and how processes can be improved. They encourage themselves and the team to think in new and unfamiliar patterns and ask questions such as “why,” “how,” and “what if.”

5. Project Managers Have a Strategic Outlook

The most sustainable projects add value, not just in the short term but also in the long term. It is not sufficient to deliver a project on time, cost, and expected quality, although that is a great source. The project also has to be strategically viable, meaning that it must be sustainable over time, and it must have the wanted effect on the organization’s strategic business objectives. Project managers who are at the top of their game know that and consistently operate at that level.

6. They Strengthen Buy-in to the Project

Highly successful project managers build excellent relationships of trust with the project’s stakeholders. In doing so, they concentrate their attention on those stakeholders who have the most power and influence over the project, especially those who are not supportive of the initiative. By proactively listening to the stakeholders’ interests and acting upon their feedback, they strengthen buy-in and commitment to the project. These project managers are proactive and do not shy away from initiating a difficult conversation.

7. Project Managers Control Risks, Issues, and Changes to the Scope

A large part of successful delivery is managing risks, issues, and changes under control. Highly successful project managers instill a risk-awareness experience in the team by consistently asking people what they worry about, what is blocking their work what could potentially go wrong. They also monitor changes not because they are opposed to them but because they require to assess the impact on factors such as time, cost, quality, and advantages if a requirement changes.

8. They Deliver on Their Promises

It is required for successful delivery that managers are reliable and that clients and stakeholders trust them. Highly successful project managers do what they say they will when chasing other people for their actions. They set a good example and gain an enormous amount of respect for being effective, timely, and reliable. The fastest method to lose credibility is to promise something you cannot keep.

Project Managers Need to Be Doers

The backlash against staffing project managers is based on project managers being administrative overhead. Projects do not need purely executive project managers. Project managers need to be doers!

Projects require coordination and administration, but the project manager needs to provide the leadership to drive the project forward. If project managers demonstrate their expertise to improve predictability, manage scope, improve communication, resolve issues, and manage the budget, a project manager’s value is well understood and appreciated.