Blog post
Life sometimes gives us opportunities to change our course to something different, to evolve competences or obtain new ones. One interesting area is definitely Project management as a part of an IT business (or any other) and a career path.
So, if you are willing to step outside of your comfort zone and polish some of your competencies like communication skills, here are some situations that you could encounter. Hope it helps!
In the past, questions related to Project management, which have shown a level of misunderstanding of what that role represents, were addressed to me. Let's share some of them.
Why is the PM role needed to deliver something? Those guys/girls just give tasks and write check lists, that's overhead to delivery!
This one is one of my favorites. It shows a lack of understanding of the bigger picture.
First of all, it's a matter of responsibility. Someone needs to be responsible for that concrete delivery as a whole package. The question is not only whether it is delivered, but whether it is delivered in the expected timeframe, budget and scope. The quality connected to already mentioned measurements is also a part of the story. The sponsor of that project doesn't want to wait for the delivery to see whether everything is OK, he wants to monitor the progress, risks and react accordingly and on time to unplanned deviations, which are also a part of a business.
Why PM? To ensure sponsor investment to some level of certainty! This is logical, normal and anybody in a sponsor’s or investor’s shoes would want to do the same.
Regarding the overhead, it is a measure of good taste. Smaller projects and a self-organized team can be efficient in delivering with minimal or no management. If such a small project starts to go bad, then the PM is definitely desirable, since resolution, if possible, requires a certain set of skills that, in the majority of cases, a small self-organized team is missing.
In general, negative feedback is often taken personally and that isn’t easy to handle for anybody. Controlling emotions is learned utilizing different methods to handle such situations and adopted through experience. Even then, it isn’t easy, and it is limited by our personal capacity to take that load. It can be stressful and people in such roles, among others, are more likely to experience burnout.
The situation is drastically changing with project size and complexity, while utilizing multiple cross-country or cross-continent teams and vendors or subcontractors. Each smaller unit cannot grasp the “complete picture” of the project and project management is starting to be a necessity. Sometimes not just one layer, but multiple layers of management divide the responsibility for smaller deliveries with one manager on top.
The leading Project manager, the holy grail of Project management. Is that the ultimate level of Project management? No, it isn’t. One level above is Crisis management. That is the “Gandalf” of project management, who didn't participate in the project and is called when all goes terribly wrong.
In such cases, his or her job is primarily damage control and saving what can be saved. Here we are, talking about things like reputational risks, minimizing financial loss, or protecting future investments. The financial aspect has lower priority since the damage is already done.
To go back to the question, is project management needed, and can anybody do it? Answer it yourself.
What are project managers doing? They don’t code, don’t test, and often cannot help in resolving the technical issues…
This one is related to a company culture of propagating the importance of each and every role in the organization. Is the PM the answer to all questions? Of course not!
But now we are getting close to what the PM is doing. It relates to the mentioned responsibility. Keep in mind, especially if you aren't a PM, every project manager wants to achieve a few goals, usually by the stated order of priority:
- Successful project delivery (timeframe, budget, scope and quality);
- A happy team working on a project;
- A satisfied customer, although this is a part of point a;
- And satisfied management to whom the PM is responds to for the 3 previous points.
Isn't the stated end goal for all of us included in the project?
A PM’s job is to implement the best practices, standards and communication protocols for the assigned projects, and foresee risks and react accordingly on time, to achieve as much as possible of the 4 listed points.
He needs to monitor, react and report to the customer, sponsor and the team. In short, he/she needs to be “on top” of his/her project as a backbone between the sponsor, customer and the team, working off of the technical part of delivery.
How to do so is adjusted per project, but the two major competences are key:
- Communication skills
- Needed competencies and experience for running certain types of projects.
Both are learned and accumulated through time, like with any other job. In my humble opinion, the difference between a senior and a junior Project manager is in the experience part and based on the experience, the ability to foresee the future obstacles or the so-called risks.
A few final thoughts:
Although a technical or domain background is a plus for a Project manager, by PMI pushed methodology, for example, it isn't mandatory. The idea is that certain project management principles can be applied to any type of a project or an area of an activity. Don't be afraid if you lack optional competencies, each of us has their role in the project. Sometimes roles are combined, sometimes they are not. The goal of management is to recognize the weak areas and to address them!
A project’s success is often related to the weakest chain link in the lifecycle of a project. Focus on that to succeed! BTW, a PM can also be the weakest chain link. :)
PMs are sometimes perceived as annoying persons who always just ask questions like
- “What is the progress?”
- “Are we on time?”
But there are reasons for those questions. They relate to the mentioned responsibility. How to handle it? Don’t take it personally, educate! The end goals are the same for all of us.
It is important that everyone who wants to be PM finds an organization that encourages career growth and values people willing to step outside of their comfort zone without biased judgment, in case of a mistake. Once I stumbled upon a research that concluded that almost 50% of the decisions the management makes are wrong. Those decisions were the best at that point in time, but in retrospect, the conclusion was that they had better choices.
The organizations that value the key people, especially in the role of mentoring others, are targeting long term stability. Why? Seniority is expensive and it is accumulated through mistakes, that’s just the way how it is.
I believe that this is a universal truth for any line of business with a healthy demand factor. The key is in improving ourselves by learning from those mistakes and in sharing the knowledge. Everything else is just unhealthy. Sometimes it doesn't pay off, but in that case, you are probably not in the right place anyhow. We all sometimes forget that our job is problem solving on a day-to-day basis. Accept that and prosper!
Last but not least, some researchers predict that project management is one of the jobs that will survive and possibly thrive in the future. Some things will not be automated for a long, long time!
