For the love of projects…
Just what is a project? Prince 2 defines it as “A temporary organisation that is created to deliver a specific product, service, or result.” So a project can be anything that is ultimately not business as usual and is bound by a scope and finite timeframe. However even with that information I would wonder how many pm’s could describe this fundamental element of what they are doing day in day out. There is a raft of different project religions from Prince 2 to APM to PMI. Some of these are guidance and approach through to the latter being pretty descriptive, but none the less, like religions, they follow similar ideas. Yet with all this resource how many PM’s actually apply the methodologies and techniques of their chosen approach? I mean the fundamental basics……. to the point where the project starts to lose control of itself. Its not really any single person trying to intentionally derail the project but so many different pulls from all directions, we start to lose sight of what we are trying to achieve.
Scroll through LinkedIn jobs etc and you’ll find a plethora of project management roles, different sectors, different sub-sectors but all quoting the same basic project requisites that realistically no self titled project manager would say "no" to.....
Have you delivered a a project on time?
Have you delivered on budget?
Have you managed risk?
etc etc....
My take on this is surely these and other project fundamentals should be a given right? It’s as nonsensical as clapping when your plane lands at your destination airport and that we didn't crash, this is the absolute minimum we would expect, so why clap?
So what am I getting at with this? Yes there are lots of project managers out there, and I have been privileged enough to work with some of the best and with that I can tell you that not all PM’s treat their projects the same and not all even apply the very fundamental basics the same….. if at all in some cases. Everyone may have their own process and systems, some may have world class tools at their disposal and sadly do not utilise them. Time and time again when things go wayward, I see that just some simple questions to ask ones self or the ore project team get missed or the basic approach is not adopted: Are we on scope? Are we on cost? Are we to plan? What are the stakeholder expectations? Apply this as a cycle. These lead to risk/opportunity identification, these lead to action assignment with accountability (so important!). Yes these can lead to uncomfortable situations. We don’t like being uncomfortable but how we deal with these is part of the job, however some feel it can actually portray failure where the actual failure is not to do. We must remind ourselves that not all projects will go as well as originally planned, where they can be influenced by a dizzying amount of factors that you just cannot control (that’s what your risk log is for) but it's the very nature of the project management techniques that support you through that. None the less we have project managers that don’t really manage projects and they just hold meetings where they struggle to keep these to agenda! the PM role is just a title embedded in a huge corporate machine, they don’t really apply the very basic tools because maybe that’s for someone else to do, another cog of multiple gears not meshing together properly. It then becomes a blame game, when things go south and the “team’ ethos soon disintegrates and the project team, in its entirety - client and provider, becomes disengaged. The project becomes a curse where the aim is to just get it over the line and prepare yourself for anything that gets thrown over the fence.
Are you a project manager? Do some projects just feel like a nightmare? Remember it is you and your team that have the diversity of experience and skills. Be brave! Use the tools. Ask the questions. Tap up your resources for experience or guidance. Don’t blame or scapegoat, let the process help the team progress and learn collectively. Celebrate the success! Just like the PM's I’ve been lucky to work with, the best don’t treat the project as just a KPI metric where there's another one "delivered", the best ones use their tool kit and that’s why they aren’t afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions. Ultimately the best ones care and I might not be up there with the absolute best but I do care and I don’t clap when we land.
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