You can access it here: Link to magazine
One interesting tidbit that resonated with me was in the Viewpoints column, called "Led Astray: Sometimes project leaders turn out to be their own worst enemies."
The last 2 paragraphs are about PMs failing to lead up: "Executives need managers who can give them the facts on the ground"... "If you are not effectively communicating to executives the detailed consequences of their decisions, then you only set yourself up to suffer."
How true! I've found this to be completely & utterly relevant to my own situation. I am almost done with a significant project. I have finished up the testing and we are planning the deployment for next week. The change requests to the production environment have been scheduled & approved. In the beginning of the week, however, the senior managers had shifted priorities on the next batch of projects and assigned me as the PM to two of them. They wanted me to start looking at these projects since I was wrapping up the one I mentioned above.
However, my gut instinct was "Hold on. We don't want to count our chickens before they've hatched". Even though the current project is in the deployment stage, there are still quite a few things that could go wrong. I let them know this and they agreed but they also said I could at least start a piece of it.
The thing with me is I like a challenge. I'm always raring to go, especially on new, unknown projects: I like to dive in and take the bulls by the horns. However, I also knew that if I started this project in earnest and started contacting stakeholders I would start creating expectations when I still had my previous project to finish up. Turns out that the project even in the final stages took some unexpected turns. My winding down of the project continued to be a full-time job! As soon as I realized my bandwidth was going to be consumed by some late requirements and shifting schedules, I shot off an email to the senior managers:
"It turns out that because of some late changing requirements and the recent schedule changes, that I need to conduct more tests...
Done! I now had the responsibility of the project off my shoulders. I don't like to shirk off work. I don't like to let people down. I seriously weighed sending vs. not sending that email for a few minutes. But I eventually concluded that there was no way I was going to make any headway on this project as long as the previous project required my guidance.
There was no response to my email! No one convinced me that I could or should be able to do the new project. I got no complaints that I was incompetent or that I couldn't manage my time. They simply silently assented to what I told them. And I was free to devote my energies to finishing up the current project. Or at least bought another week :)
I knew that if I didn't push back on this new project or at least raise my concerns, then I would simply inherit the project and the managers would start asking me for status on the project, despite my having no bandwidth to get anything done. The memory of my having multiple projects would fade and only the weekly status of 0% accomplished would remain. It's important to raise concerns when you have them. Most of successful Project Management has to do with communication and this is a prime example. And this is an example of managing up. If you have no bandwidth, it's not a weakness to let your managers know this. Make it their problem, not yours. If you don't say anything, it automatically becomes *your* problem... and as the columnist wrote: "you have only set yourself up to suffer".
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