OR/MS Today - April 2003 Was it Something I Said? The Truth About Project Managers By Vijay Mehrotra As Yogi Berra said, "It's like déjà vu all over again." Two years ago this month, I filled this space with a few hundred words about project managers, but this is such a big topic that there's a lot more to say. So here we go again. I'm not going to try to describe the "Art and Science of Project Management" in this forum. Because I only have a limited amount of space, I'm not going to launch into a dissertation on WBS (Work Breakdown Structure), CPM (Critical Path Method) or PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique). If this kind of thing is what you're after, go to your favorite Web search engine from which you can quickly locate the Project Management Institute, the Association for Project Management, the Project Management Forum, the Project Management Center and the Project Management Journal, all far better authorities than I. No, I'm just here to vent. Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of great project managers (PMs) out there, and I in fact actually happen to be working with quite a few myself right now. This column is not about any one person or project, but rather 10 years of intermittent frustration that happened to find a home here. Bear with me. Stop taking me to task. There is seemingly no end to the level of detail that some PMs will track in their trusty Microsoft Project (.mpp) file. Who plugs in the telephone? When is the training date finalized? Who makes the coffee on Tuesdays for the programmers? When will we decide when the weekly project review is scheduled? Most project managers create a lot of value by forcing us to pay attention to what comes first, second and third. And yes, I do understand that the very act of formalizing these steps often reveals specific activities that we may often overlook. But come on. What are you trying to accomplish, really? Is that task really worth writing down? Are you merely listing activities, or do you have the larger goal in mind? Project manager, not project tracker. Big difference. What are we doing here? I've encountered an awful lot of project managers who simply do not have an understanding of the purpose of the project that they are managing. This is not OK. I do not expect them to understand algorithms or database schema details. But there is a huge need for an appreciation of the "Big Picture" that too many PMs (and the people they report to) seem to think is just optional. Any project manager should be able to answer the following questions: Why does this project exist and who would care (or prefer) if it did not? What are the business results that this project is expected to produce, and how specifically do you envision getting there? What are the keys to achieving these results, and how much of your energy are you putting in to making sure that these things happen as planned? Beyond these Great Questions, I am looking for you to dig in to the content of the project beyond your comfort zone. If you are deploying a software solution, you should go to the training and at least understand who uses the application and for what purposes. If there are particular steps that sound like gibberish to you ("database tuning" or "model calibration"), go get a rudimentary understanding of what these are, why they need to be done, and why they are/are not difficult. Don't be content to hide behind the Gantt chart. Not only will you gain the respect of the team members by taking the time to begin to comprehend what they do, but you will develop an awareness of the context. Maybe, just maybe, you could engage actively in working with different "resources" to creatively address issues, as opposed to throwing the burden over the wall. More importantly, if you don't really understand what any of this activity really is, you are far more vulnerable to half-answers, half-truths and highly subjective status reports that reflect different biases and agendas. You need to have an understanding of what it is that you're managing. Deal with it. The truth will set you free. Many projects run behind schedule or over budget. This is just a fact of life. Hell, some projects start behind schedule or over budget and never catch up. Yet too many project managers spend an inordinate amount of time and energy on: beating on team members to make up lost time (note: this often just serves to annoy the key resources that you are dependent on, cause them to make mistakes due to rushing, and/or delay their work, which will cause you more problems downstream). trying to get the scope reduced to keep the project on schedule, even when that means eliminating the elements that give the project its very purpose (see "knowing the answers to the Great Questions," above). pretending that everything is fine, often just to avoid the wrath of senior management (note: they only get really upset when the business results fail to materialize). Yes, I know that project managers are taught about the Golden Triangle of Scope, Money and Time, but these are rarely quite as fungible in practice as they are in theory. The sooner you face the truth, the sooner you can start working on real solutions. The longer you wait, the harder it will be to recover at all. Vijay Mehrotra is vice president of the Solutions Group at Blue Pumpkin Software. He can be reached by e-mail at Vijay@BluePumpkin.com. Table of Contents OR/MS Today Home Page OR/MS Today copyright © 2003 by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. All rights reserved. Lionheart Publishing, Inc. 506 Roswell Rd., Suite 220, Marietta, GA 30060 USA Phone: 770-431-0867 | Fax: 770-432-6969 E-mail: lpi@lionhrtpub.com URL: http://www.lionhrtpub.com Web Site © Copyright 2003 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.