Bad Project Management gives all Project Managers a bad name!
Done badly, it actually can scar one for life and diminish management's effectiveness in running an organization.
Too many people have the notion that all project management is is: issuing tasks for people to do, and hounding people for status. A lot of people think project managers add no value. And I would have to agree: if this is all they are doing, then they are probably not contributing much at all and detract from the project. This kind of project management gives us all a bad image. However, it just doesn't stop there. The damage becomes pervasive: People who have *never even been managed* on a project learn from their peers and others in the organization the attitude of "Oh no, we gotta listen to this guy" and watch as their colleagues roll their eyes at the PM who doesn't know what s/he is talking about.
PMs are caught in the middle between senior management and the people doing the work. From a senior management point of view, if I plan a strategy and want to execute, I look to my PMs to implement that strategy. They are my levers to push and pull on to get the organization to move in a certain direction. So as a senior manager, I need to have trust in my PMs. If I have a negative view of Project Managers, I'll never place much faith in them and empower them to get the job done. I might second-guess, or micro-manage them; basically doing their job for them. That would put me at risk of losing my own job.
I'm sure there are senior managers who have these attitudes but those who are effective senior managers believe in the virtues of effective project management and have seen that it truly is the way to get things done.
My concern is more with the people doing the work. We should be more worried about the effect of project management on the line workers and those in the functional areas. If they're disillusioned by project management and its practices, they won't execute and the whole practice becomes a failure. Many of them have been burned by the application of bad principles, or principles inexpertly or inappropriately applied. (e.g., long, wasteful meetings with too many people or the opposite: badly run scrum meetings) or bad PMs (who stay above the fray and don't get involved and miss key details, report wrong facts, etc). This has a cascade effect as I mentioned above: they don't feel utilized or listened to; they feel ineffectual or that the project isn't going anywhere or headed in the wrong direction or it may simply stall because decisions aren't being made => other colleagues become infected. These personnel may start to look for work elsewhere. The problem with this is they carry the same negative views of project managers with them where ever they go & history can easily repeat itself.
So what's the remedy? Simple! (but more difficult in practice) Hire good PMs; PMs who aren't afraid to get into the guts of the project; to sit down with a BA and have them make that call to the customer to clarify a requirement (I did this just the other day because the BA sounded unsure of what the customer was asking for) or to sit with a developer and get into the details of why something is not working. You don't have to have a particular skillset to do this. You don't have to solve the problem. But just listening alone shows others that you are deeply involved and care what's going on: that you're all one team. And this is the most important thing in project management: Operating as a team.
Project Managers are leaders by definition. Thus they need to also model the behaviors that go into successful execution of tasks. If a BA is uncertain of something, call up the customer. If a developer doesn't know how to proceed, suggest things to google, etc.
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