The Project Management context

Introduction

Congratulations. You have been given your own project to run. If you are like most project managers, part of you is elated that your company has entrusted you with an important assignment, while the rest of you is petrified that it will soon discover the magnitude of its error. Whether the project is your first and you are being ''tried out," or you have been doing this for years but never on a project this big, this book is designed for you. I hope you find it valuable.

Project management is management. Its context and constraints are different from those of line management, but its concern is the same: to direct a group of people to achieve an objective. Therefore, project managers need to know how to manage budgets, people, and processes.

Why, then, do so many companies assign senior technical peoplewho usually have little interest in or aptitude for managementto head up projects? More critically, why are there so few trained project managers in an industry that is project-driven? One reason is that companies tend to regard project management as secondary: not as important as line management or technical skills, and certainly not a career goal for ambitious souls.

The result is that projects founder, destroying schedules, shredding estimates, derailing careers, and delivering results that are accepted out of desperation rather than design. In the longer term, those who have managed these commonplace disasters retreat from project management and either return to the technical world or move into "real" management. So project managers are not developed, and the cycle continues.

It is to those corporate managers, project managers, and technical staff who understand that project management is a special discipline that this book is directed.

The Project Management context

Project management is management, but five characteristics make it unique: responsibility without authority, the source of power, project transience, the observation that you get what you get, and the need for specialized tools and techniques.

Responsibility Without Authority

As a project manager, you are responsible for a project. If it does not meet its budget, schedule, or expectations, you are the one who will be held accountable and who will, at a minimum, suffer the scowls of management and receive an unflattering performance appraisal.

Bringing a project in on target requires resources: people, equipment, and support services. But, with rare exceptions, project managers do not command resources. You cannot arbitrarily assign staff to your projects, purchase equipment as you require it, hire people, or place your needs at the top of the corporate priority list. You cannot even promote or demote staff. Those prerogatives belong to supervisors and line managers.

To acquire resources, you must make a case to someone who does have authority. All too often, that person regards such requests as evidence of incapacity or poor judgment.

The Source of Power

Despite the project manager's lack of formal authority, the position carries with it considerable power for those project managers who are prepared to exercise it. The source of that power is that the project manager is the only one able to make the project deliver value; without a project manager, the project is in extreme jeopardy. The exercise of that power is the project manager's willingness to withdraw from a project under extreme conditions. Bluntly, you have the right, and the obligation, to say to a client or to your management, "This project cannot succeed under these conditions, and until they change, I will not continue."

Obviously, this is a stand that requires unusual circumstances; you will not use it for the day-to-day frustrations that accompany most projects. Equally obviously, you will want to consider the personal and professional consequences of taking such a strong position. Nevertheless, you are not obligated to accept passively all conditions that clients or management impose, and, in most reasonable organizations, a blunt refusal to accept unnecessarily difficult demands serves as a shock treatment indicating that a problem exists and must be addressed.

Project Transience

Teams, not managers, execute projects. Hence one of your major tasks is team building. This is also true of line management, but the difference is that while departments endure, projects are temporary. You must apply team-building skills to a group of people who may have no commitment to the project or to you, and who will shortly move on to another assignment. You do not have the luxury of allowing a team to evolve. You must actively construct one.

You Get What You Get

Some project management theorists emphasize the importance of selecting a good project team, of matching skills to activities, and even of ensuring that personalities mesh. Unfortunately, companies do not have large, idle pools of technical expertise waiting to be chosen as if for a sandlot baseball game. The problem most project managers face is not choosing the right people, but getting people who are even remotely qualified. Your job is not to select a project team, but to build one from the people who are available.

Specialized Tools and Techniques

Project management has its own set of tools and techniques. Concepts such as work breakdown structure, resource leveling, and estimates at completion are largely unknown outside the discipline. Even techniques, such as Gantt charts or critical path analysis, that have become commonplace in business are not used as richly in general business practice as they are in formal project management. It is not easy to learn these concepts or to understand how to apply them, particularly since few companies implement them consistently. The tendency to regard project management as being of secondary importance means that few companies will train people like you to master them.

Furthermore, since project management is management, it requires the same tools and techniques used by all good managers. Whether you are a project manager or a line manager, you need to know how to listen, frame outcomes, manage meetings, gather information, build teams, communicate, and manage your time. However, project managers seldom receive management training, nor are they selected, as line managers are, because of any promising management aptitudes or behaviors.

These five characteristics mean that managing projects requires, if anything, more management skill than most line management. Project management is a distinct discipline requiring its own aptitudes, standards, and training. Anything less will ensure that systems projects continue to suffer overruns, delays, and the increased antipathy of users and corporate management who are weary of regarding "systems service" as an oxymoron.