Submitted by Richard Newton on 11 December 2011 - 1:47pm
As project managers we spend a lot of time thinking about the best ways to go about managing projects. There are books, bodies of knowledge, training courses and tools. But all of these are built on an assumption that is rarely questioned. Do we really need project managers?
Submitted by Richard Newton on 14 November 2011 - 8:39pm
If you are someone who has read management textbooks for a long time then you will have noticed, over the last few decades, the increasing emphasis on leadership skills. Successful businesses are presented as those that have great leaders. In contrast, unsuccessful businesses are often presented as those without a vision or without bold leaders. I am a big fan of leadership and have had the privilege of working with some great leaders in my career. So, it may be surprising to find that what I want to do in this article is to dispel a little of the hubris around leadership. I want to encourage leaders to be taken as role models for project managers, within limits.
I would like to look at the assumption underlying many project plans, that the future is actually predictable. All management models have this assumption at their core and all organizations spend a lot of time planning all kinds of things: budgets, revenues, project outcomes, etc. This article will spend some time identifying the flaws of these models and give some tips on how to overcome them. I hope you will find them both useful and interesting.
One of the ongoing frustrations for anyone running a project management team in a business is being asked to deliver activities which should not be considered as projects. This is particularly common when project managers or project management teams have a good reputation in a business. Whilst we all want a good reputation, with such a reputation comes the tendency for the business to dump all sorts of troubling bits of work our way. Anything which there is not an obvious home for can be dumped on the project managers. This is a tendency to be avoided!
In this article I will cover the boundaries of project management, what should not be a project and what solutions you have when you are being given work that’s not a project.
As project managers we do not deliver on our own. We deliver as part of a larger organisation. Typically, only a small part of the organisation is involved in the project we are running. What the organisation does share is a culture – or at least a series of broadly consistent behaviours and beliefs. Our ability to deliver successfully is impacted significantly by the culture of the organisation. Some organisations have cultures which seem to facilitate or encourage delivery. Unfortunately, other organisations seem to have developed cultures which are almost perfectly evolved to obstruct delivery at every point.
In this article I identify a few characteristics which I think help or hinder delivery. I hope these ring a bell for you. I’m most interested to use this article to generate a discussion about the culture of delivery. So... let’s start.
There are two isolated communities involved in delivering innovation and enhancements in business. Each community knows of, but remains relatively uninformed about, the other. The first community is that of change management practitioners, the second is that of project managers. In a business context at least, there is significant gains to be achieved by bringing these communities together. This article is a request to try and close the divide.
Since I've read Seth Godin's "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?", my mind could not stop making connections between linchpins and project managers. Therefore I could not rest without writing an article on the topic and share the reasons why I believe project managers to be more likely to become linchpins in their organizations.
As project managers we spend a lot of time thinking about the best ways to go about managing projects. There are books, bodies of knowledge, training courses and tools. But all of these are built on an assumption that is rarely questioned. Do we really need project managers?
If you are someone who has read management textbooks for a long time then you will have noticed, over the last few decades, the increasing emphasis on leadership skills. Successful businesses are presented as those that have great leaders. In contrast, unsuccessful businesses are often presented as those without a vision or without bold leaders. I am a big fan of leadership and have had the privilege of working with some great leaders in my career. So, it may be surprising to find that what I want to do in this article is to dispel a little of the hubris around leadership. I want to encourage leaders to be taken as role models for project managers, within limits.
I would like to look at the assumption underlying many project plans, that the future is actually predictable. All management models have this assumption at their core and all organizations spend a lot of time planning all kinds of things: budgets, revenues, project outcomes, etc. This article will spend some time identifying the flaws of these models and give some tips on how to overcome them. I hope you will find them both useful and interesting.
One of the ongoing frustrations for anyone running a project management team in a business is being asked to deliver activities which should not be considered as projects. This is particularly common when project managers or project management teams have a good reputation in a business. Whilst we all want a good reputation, with such a reputation comes the tendency for the business to dump all sorts of troubling bits of work our way. Anything which there is not an obvious home for can be dumped on the project managers. This is a tendency to be avoided!
As project managers we do not deliver on our own. We deliver as part of a larger organisation. Typically, only a small part of the organisation is involved in the project we are running. What the organisation does share is a culture – or at least a series of broadly consistent behaviours and beliefs. Our ability to deliver successfully is impacted significantly by the culture of the organisation. Some organisations have cultures which seem to facilitate or encourage delivery. Unfortunately, other organisations seem to have developed cultures which are almost perfectly evolved to obstruct delivery at every point.
There are two isolated communities involved in delivering innovation and enhancements in business. Each community knows of, but remains relatively uninformed about, the other. The first community is that of change management practitioners, the second is that of project managers. In a business context at least, there is significant gains to be achieved by bringing these communities together. This article is a request to try and close the divide.
Since I've read 
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