A few good project managers

Hal Macomber of Reforming Project Management received permission to repost a recent editorial from the Zweig Letter, a newsletter focused on the Architecture Engineering (AE) and Environmental Industries that tries to explain why there are Not Enough Good Project Managers. It is an insightful, well informed opinion. Hal provides some additional comments including:

Project manager is a very difficult job.
Mark offers a litany of usual circumstances that make the role difficult. I'll add three more:
1. The firm lacks standard practices for organizing teams and delivering projects relying instead on the idiosyncrasies of project managers.
2. There are no practices for learning from one project to the next.
3. Team members are isolated from one another performing one task after the other on one project to the next.
The job is difficult enough. And then we add to it!

The editorial, Hal’s amplification and the comments on his site are well worth considering. They provide a keen view that explores the environment project managers toil within, the causes of these conditions, the impact on performance and some hope for improvement.

However, something left unstated needs to be right out front. The lack of good project managers can be tied directly to the lack of demand for good project management. Without demand, there is no incentive for educational or training programs to prepare project managers for myriad challenges encountered by PMs trying to get things done.

It is axiomatic - if good project managers were highly valued, then more people would pursue a rigorous education and involvement with the discipline. But as the article, Hal and Amy in the comments point out, PMs are not highly valued - overworked, thankless, underappreciated, misunderstood, in demanding roles, lack of formal training, etc.

Lack of demand for high quality project management results in few programs dedicated to producing qualified and quality PMs. Certainly there are some excellent University offerings, certificate programs and PMI preparation courses. They do well focused on the technical recipes that are the foundation of the practice or providing an overview of project management’s approach and techniques. Those are valuable, but they only produce practitioners, not experts and Project Management remains a discipline rather than a profession.

To see this effect, look at the job requirements for Senior PMs across a variety of trades or industries in position announcements. Very little is tied directly to the practice of project management, rather more emphasis is on industry knowledge, working familiarity with tools or highly technical and specific trade skills. As if the elements of project management were an afterthought in hiring PMs. In the computer and communication industries this results in the primary considerations for selection being PMs who understand technology, platforms, can code/program or design and have working experience in the industry. These positions seem to need only a passing familiarity with getting things organized and done in a formal manner. In addition, if the organization is not project oriented, the skills required of a good PM seem to be even less in demand.

Given these circumstances it is no wonder the success rate of software implementation projects is less than 25%. Most product introductions fail to have any significant impact on bottom line results or top line growth promised in reviews and analyses. The inability to create products or services from promising technology is more often a failure to execute rather than failure in planning or strategy. On top of that, these efforts are almost uniformly over budget, late and fail to meet the desired or stated performance requirements.

Until industries and firms put more emphasis on getting things done well than getting people familiar with their specific firm or industry or particular tool, skill or operating procedure, this will continue to occur. Lack of demand for high quality PMs results in few becoming very good at managing projects except as a product of an individual’s initiative and character. Unless demand develops for high quality, highly trained PMs, project management will likely remain a discipline, not a profession. And it will be few people who will become excellent project managers, and even fewer firms that will be lucky enough to find them.

Comments

[Michael at the Calico Cat]

My thoughts on PM are mixed. The value of PM in software projects may be overvalued because management doesn't understand what programmers do, but they understand Gant charts and they like the illusion that someone is bringing "order" to the software development process.

There are some new software project philsophies developing, such as "extreme programming," which acknowledge that software development is truly a team exercise, and not something that can be managed the way you'd manage construction project.

[JD at Drake Associates]

Your comments are exactly on the mark. Too many times projects that don't require full project management treatment suffer from application of rules and procedures that interfere with efficient delivery of software or design. Usually to satisfy management’s curiosity about what is going on behind the curtain. XP is the right approach for a certain class of projects - maintenance, process improvements, feature extensions, patching and upgrades to name a few. Projects where the requirements are well articulated, dedicated resources are familiar with the system and outcomes predictable are good candidates for XP.

As you point out, construction projects or designing a flight platform without project management would be foolhardy. My primary contention above is that too many organizations (outside of aerospace and AE) do try to attempt an ERP (or equivalent) implementation with someone well versed with S/W engineering or system administration in the PM role, but who has very little understanding of how to manage projects effectively. The lack of fundamental communication skills, formal project processes and risk assessment leads to projects poorly specified and implemented, over budget, over schedule and seldom working as planned if working at all.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in the comments.

[froth]

The first place most firms look at to reduce costs is project management, arguing that a proposal's cost could easily be eliminating this one crucial position. I would always insist that the number one metric for project success is a dedicated project manager. They don't see that the project managers' cat-wrangling skills are people skills, best suited to a jock personality type. They are not just the head geek. But because these are technical projects, they want to eliminate overhead. Communication skills are paramount, especially credibility and other "boss" skills, and this works back to the customers, since they are cats needing wrangling, too.