In this post I join around 80 international bloggers and project management experts to answer the question: “What does project management mean to me?”
This is my project manager’s sermon — my Project Management Flash Blog — and it is quite a long read …
It may just surprise you.
What Does Project Management Mean to Me? A Project Manager’s Sermon
Before I answer the question: “What does project management mean to me?” I think it wise to set the scene.
Nowadays I manage a team of brilliant solutions architects. I no longer manage projects. But I do coach, cajole and encourage the project manager!
My job is to solve problems: To find solutions that enable beneficial business change. And, I see project management as a core competence in directing and managing change. Ergo I shall begin with a concise definition of project management.
Project management is the planning, delegating, monitoring and control of all aspects of the project, and the motivation of those involved, to achieve the project objectives within the expected performance targets for time, cost, quality, scope, benefits and risks. – Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2, 5th Edition
As far as project management definitions go this is rather good. But what does it tell us about project management? What does it tell us about being a project manager?
In truth, many definitions often leave us out in the cold.
Yet this simple definition does encapsulate what we should be doing. It helps identify 3 important things a successful project manager does.
The three — and yes, this is a 3-point sermon — things project management mean to me are:
- Making informed decisions;
- Gaining management support; and
- Dealing with the unexpected.
So now you have my answer to the question “What does project management mean to me?” I shall now take a closer look at these 3 distinguishing project management qualities.
1. Making Informed Decisions
Project management is often misunderstood and poorly practised because organisations don’t know how to control change.
Simply put, they don’t know what they are doing. Senior management believes it is driving change through from the top down when in reality it is basing decisions on assumptions.
And here’s the crux of the problem. Every one believes someone at the top knows what they’re doing. This stops everyone from learning and innovating.
Let me tell you a story …
Channel Shift
Anon.
We have been working to introduce a new content management system. It started out as a technology project. However, I was convinced that this was the wrong approach. I thought we had an opportunity to save a great deal through channel shift and improved handling of customer enquiries. But a change this big meant a change in the way we viewed the customer and how we engaged with them. I soon realised this would not be possible unless top management saw the opportunity and bought into the idea. This was a big ask because they all thought the project was about technology.
To get to the heart of the problem I asked an analyst to do a small study on website usage. I wanted to know how many pages we had and how often they were visited. I also wanted some insight into the way our customers behaved online.
When the analyst completed the research, she reported that we had over 5,000 web pages yet more than 80% of them were rarely used or not used at all. When I examined what she had found I learned that customers hardly ever visited the home page and never spent time browsing our pages. Indeed most traffic was via a search engine. I couldn’t believe how bad things were; one of our most popular pages was a not found error!
The key players in “Channel Shift” are not top management. They are the project manager and the analyst. The project manager had the conviction to follow his hunch and the analyst the tenacity to uncover evidence.
Project management isn’t simply about following process.
It is about challenging the status quo and making sure project objectives and benefits are crystal clear. The project manager must use evidence — honest facts — to inform decisions and show people how their project will make change happen.
So what does project management mean to me? For starters it is making informed decisions to get change started.
2. Gaining Management Support
My next point is about gaining management support. So let us return to the case study …
I Have a Voice
The analyst collected all of the information and prepared not one but 5 reports. One for each business unit; one for each project board member. At the next project board meeting we presented our findings. We decided to hand out unique reports to each board member.
What they read was a service-by-service description of their departments’ web presence. Or rather how ineffective their department was at engaging customers. For many minutes the boardroom was quiet. Everyone was intent on reading. They had nothing to say!
Later we were invited to present our findings at management teams across the organisation. Soon afterwards executive management heard about it and we were presenting to the CEO. Through the report we were able to reinforce at every level of the organisation a sense of “this is how bad the website is. ”
In “I Have a Voice” we learn that those who think they have little power can make a difference. The overwhelming evidence presented to the project board could not be refuted. They were on-side. The project manager had moved them from commanders to sponsors!
Making informed decisions using hard facts helped the project manager win over the project board. The board immediately connected themselves to something important and lent it their credibility.
Sponsorship is about holding up an idea or cause as important.
In this way project managers must learn to gain proactive support from senior leaders. This is what sponsorship is about. It is holding up an idea or cause as important. And when the project manager has true sponsorship he is empowered and likely to succeed in his role.
So what does project management mean to me? In a nutshell it is about making informed decisions and gaining management support.
3. Dealing With the Unexpected
But this isn’t enough. We all know that projects are unpredictable and inherently risky endeavours. Therefore, the third and last point is this: project managers must know how to deal with the unexpected.
Knowledge Is Power
Getting senior management on-board was just the beginning. Lots of questions followed and there was an expectation for us to have all the answers. We didn’t have them.
The project team quickly realised it had to learn about customer access, efficiency and channel shift. We needed to be one step ahead of everyone else’s thinking. We also knew our limitations and when external help was desired. Our approach to the project meant we could anticipate problems and deal with them head-on before they derailed what we were trying to do.
For instance, when parts of the business were too ambitious in their plans we were able to convince the project board that restraint was necessary. We fully understood the end-to-end transaction costs and the importance of user experience. In contrast, some of the ideas coming from the business made neither economic nor practical sense.
Most business change projects have difficulties. This is not surprising since we rarely know exactly what we are doing or how it is to be done. In other words, project management is learning as you go. Or to put it another way, dealing with the unexpected. Why this is such a surprise often confounds me.
I think we are all in agreement that the project manager’s job is to deal with uncertainty. However, I believe it is more than this. It is about making our future more probable.
What we learn from the case study is this: driving projects from the top does not work because people assume someone knows the answers.
Projects are called projects because we don’t know exactly what we are going to do. We have to learn as we go. The project manager has to learn fast. Only then can the unexpected be handled with any degree of confidence.
In Summary
So now you have my answer to the question: “What does project management mean to me?” Simply this: Make informed decisions, gain management support, and know how to deal with the unexpected.
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift in its hands for you. – Robert Bach
Who said project management was easy? Thank you.
What does project management mean to you?
Wonderful Creative Commons images courtesy Dimitra Tzanos.
“Everyone believes someone at the top knows what they are doing.”
I should have written about that, because that is a top reason why project management is needed.
Enjoyed the post, thanks so much.
Love the emphasis on irrefutable facts, Martin. Reminds me of something Joe Biden once said – “You have a right to your opinions, you don’t have the right to your own facts!” Though I’ll stay away from the “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” critics 🙂
When you talk about solving problems, I’m reminded of the kids in math class that handled equations just fine, then threw their toys out of the pram when they came to a word problem that involved a bit too much logic for their liking. I suspect you were the one that would’ve taken a deep breath, hunkered down and said, “OK, what am I looking at here?”
A great #pmflashblog post, thanks for sharing with us.
Thanks fir sharing. Defenitely some food for thought. We have to, but do we learn from our experience?
Project management is in fact often under-estimated or unclear! For some, project management can be done by anyone since it’s just forward client requests or tell teams they need everything done by yesterday. I exaggerate (a little…) but you get the picture 🙂
I loved how you describe a PM, this is how I see it too.
Cheers!