I PROJECT MANAGE – THEREFORE – IAM

During a conversation with a fellow Project Manager this week, an interesting philosophical question came about.

 

We were discussing the value a PM can add to our business.  He has more experience within the organisation, I have more experience as a PM.  As a result, two different outlooks on the value of a Project Manager.

Towards the end of the debate I stated that sometimes I struggle to see and understand the value of PM.  To which he replied, me too! 

 

OK so you’re probably thinking that it’s not good not to understand your own professional purpose and value, and I agree.  But hear me out.

 

In our organisation projects and activities run without formal project management, everyone does their job and if you like “project manages” their own area of responsibility.  This has been the case for a long time, and it works really well.  In this scenario, with known quantities, processes, low complexity and low risk a Project Manager is surely not required.   To add to this we’re not technical proficient and could not complete the build of services to the customer.  In this BAU / Small Project Scenario a Project Manager will just burden the team with unnecessary tasks, meeting and generally be a nuisance.

 

So WHERE can a Project Manager add value.  Let’s delve into what a PM does first before locating value add.

 

The role of a PM is to plan the project, corral and co-ordinate resources, communicate with the team and wider organisation, identifying and mitigating risk and control the project.  Pretty obvious stuff right, and I’d also say this is the minimum expectation of the role, more like project co-ordination.

 

A good PM should also the project champion, the project is his/her’s baby to deliver into the world, fit and healthy.   The PM has total responsibility, ownership and passion for the project.   They should be challenging all aspects of the project – processes, timescales, plans, people, to improve on project timescales or at least reduce risk profile to minimum but also fighting their corner for shared resources, resolving issues and escalating to the right people for assistance as needed.

 

Now we know what a PM does, or should do, we should have an idea as to where the PM can value right ?

 

I think so.  PM’s should be involved to deliver complex, non-standard, prestigious, business critical projects.  Examples could be projects that have never been attempted before with new technologies or customers, it could even be a project with standard deliverables within the organisation but with high risk or accelerated timescales.  In these instances the PM comes in, plans, executes, controls and closes down. This is the value add. 

In summation the PM should be involved in the weird, the wacky, the complex, the business critical project.  That’s not to say they shouldn’t work on the projects that the business would consider standard.  Just that more value can be added to the non-standard.

 

Thanks

William

 

PS Phew! First real blog out of the way, next one coming Friday next week.