The UGLY truth about PROJECT MANAGEMENT.
I worked in companies with 0 project managers. One of them was DoubleClick, now part of Google. DoubleClick was and still is a technology powerhouse.
I also witnessed situations where project managers created noise and the broken-phone communication problems, caused confusion, provided wrong estimates, etc.
In some instances they would call excessive number of meetings with excessive number of attendees, created red-tape and bureaucracy and chaos - all at the same time.
I submit to you that these are NOT issues of the project management function. Rather, these are problems of the organisational immaturity and of misunderstanding of the role of project managers.
A good project manager makes a huge positive difference for an organisation. As for DoubleClick, absence of project managers created a huge overhead on line managers.
If you one of those people who believes that Agile does away with project management, you really should read this article: Agile does NOT work ! And NEVER did ! That should put your mind at ease.
Project management is a leadership function. You do not use leaders, you follow them.
When project managers are used, they are used for wrong purposes - to schedule meetings, to keep notes, to create lists. True that this is what project managers do, but it is not their main purpose.
The purpose of project managers is to lead projects and initiatives, discover and manage dependencies, issues and risks, and bring everything to a quick resolution. Most importantly, they are responsible to bring projects to successful completions.
Keys to effective project management:
Project managers need to be empowered to lead. Perhaps, it is time to move into 21st century and call them project leaders ?
You can not manage something you do not understand. Thus, project managers need to understand the product, the technology behind it, various methodologies, user interfaces, quality assurance aspects, business and product strategy. Managing tasks without understanding them is a recipe for disaster.
Synthesize disparate sources of information. Project management is writing a novel from a bunch of short stories.
Create and maintain various acceptance gates. Every stage of an SDLC should have an acceptance gate - requirement sign offs, development plans sign-off, designs, risk acceptance, etc. The formality of these gates should be fitted to the process and the organisation. What is important is that the success criteria and the act of acceptance are explicit.
Force issues into the open. Discover and then force issues into the open and into the hands of people responsible for resolution.
Track and report KPIs (key variables): Milestones, number of open issues, percent-complete, bugs, project expense.
Create and drive realistic schedules and project plans. The plan is not a plan without all key participants understanding their tasks and responsibilities, without dependencies, without risks and issues highlighted and managed.
Keep everyone informed without over-communicating. Too many meetings and emails can really kill the energy and bring everything to a crawl. Too little, and you are operating in the dark. Project managers get blamed when they fail to communicate something. Their defensive reaction sometimes may be to over-communicate. The root cause of the problem goes back to the leadership and empowerment. There should be no blame in a mature organisation. If the project managers are empowered and are on top of things, there will be no over-communication.
None of these keys of effective project management are possible without empowerment and leadership.
Empower your project managers ! Let them lead !
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Products & Services Director at JOIST Innovation Park | Empowering Innovation Connecting Solutions
6 年Right communication and understanding of what the project is about is very important for a Project Manager. In my opinion understanding is more important because if you don't understand what your project is about, you can't deal with the project's deliverables. Aftert that you can use tools that can help you with the planning and keeping records of your project. Tools like Ms Project, Primavera, Teamwork are useful when you know how to use them and of course why you have to use them. Because of my studies I search about new Projects Management Tools and I found one from Institute of Entrepreneurship Developement called Themida. Unfortunately is still in demo state but you can check it out! [https://ied.eu/what-we-do/custom-services/project-management/ ]
Senior Lead Researcher at Leading Solution
6 年Thank you for good information. One more useful tool for project management is Monday - https://goo.gl/mhTHxw. This is flexible tool for streamlining projects and keeping track of everyone's progress.
Spanish architect and project manager for you
8 年things get worse when project managers are hired only for project managing others company or professionals job. They are a waste of time, energy and get everything meshed up.
Chief Information Officer
8 年Great article, could not agree more!
President at Tamarac Consulting LLC
8 年A few points in this article resonate with my experience. I believe the difference between an average project manager and a "level 5" project leader are the abilities to develop/manage key stakeholder relationships, understand the key aspects of realizing desirable business benefits, and leading and inspiring high performing teams. This is what many would call "wisdom", and I believe we need new forms of professional development to help project managers achieve it more quickly and more powerfully.