What if…There was No Project Management?
Posted by Brad Egeland
What if there was no Project Management? Ok, there are lot of worse things to be without…food, clothing, shelter, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. But think about this question from the IT world frame of mind. What if all IT initiatives were handled just…well….on the fly?
IT Responsibilities
I’m not saying that IT technical professionals are disorganized individuals. Not at all. I’ve worked with them all of my professional life…I am one. They’re very intelligent. It’s just that they have their own things to worry about. Design, Development, Software and Data Integration, Testing, System Testing, Deployment, etc. And I’m not really talking about what if there were no Project Managers. The question is, what if there was no Project Management?
I believe that on small engagements, it is possible – and I’ve seen it done – that an organized and talented Business Analyst can handle many if not all of the Project Management-related tasks. And perform them well enough to keep the customer and project delivery team informed and satisfied. But what if there was no Project Management at all? That’s what I want to examine.
No Project Management?!
What are the primary Project Management tasks? Let’s examine those first. I believe that the key tasks are:
- Project status reporting
- Project schedule management
- Conducting regular project status meetings
- Project budget and resource management
- Coordinating all project communications
No Status Reporting
So, looking at these individually, what happens if there is no one producing on-going project status reports? I think most projects would get out of the gate ok without project status reporting. However going very long without this mechanism and the issues and risk management that goes along with it would be disastrous. The status report is what drives the formal communication between the delivery team and the customer team.
No Project Schedule
What about the project schedule. Because the technical resources on the delivery team are talented and know their responsibilities, I’m confident that most of the time they could prevail and deliver a solution to the customer without a project schedule in place. However, what would happen with customer satisfaction. I believe it would fall through the floor. Without a schedule in place, things are just happening.
Development starts after Design is complete, but when is that? Testing starts after Design, but when is that? And at what point should test cases and scenarios be created for both system testing and UAT? Chances are, someone will just remember that in needs to be done, but most likely that will be at the last minute. And for UAT, the customer needs key resources available to perform those tasks. These resources may be coming to a central location from all over the country to perform UAT tasks. Can this happen without advanced planning? No, definitely not.
No Budget Management
Without a project schedule in place, what should have been a 6 month project would easily become a 9-12 month project without anyone knowing it because there was no real expectation. That leads us into budget management. If what should have been a 6 month engagement ends up running for 12 months, does the customer pay double? Yes.
They customer may not realize that in great detail, because remember….without Project Management we don’t have that detail. However, it is likely that all of this ambiguity will leave the customer less than satisfied…without really knowing why. And that’s probably worse than having a good reason and allowing the delivery team to address that known reason.
No Formal Meetings
Let’s also look at formal communication. I’ve already covered project status reporting, which is a major form of formal project communications. But the PM is also the leader of ongoing, regularly scheduled project status meetings. Without a PM, those could still happen. But without Project Management, that concept is gone. No formal meetings means no formal communication. Thus, we rely on adhoc communication and sometimes that will be enough. However, I think all PMs can attest to the fact that without regular, formal status meetings most team members on both sides would be horribly under-informed and nobody would be on the same page at any given time.
Summary
I may look later at how projects would be run without Project Managers…I think that can happen on small engagements only. My summary here is that no project of any size should be run without some formal Project Management practices and processes in place. It doesn’t work that way – at least not anymore. Customers expect satisfaction –and they should – and they should expect timely and efficient system deliver. That can’t happen without Project Management.
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Tags: adhoc, budget, Business, Communication, coordination, customer, data, delivery, deployment, Design, develoent, Developer, engagement, information, integrity, issues, management, manager, managment, meetings, need, organization, organizer, pm, process, project, Resources, Risk, software, Starting, status, team, UAT
19 Comments to “What if…There was No Project Management?”
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Ken says:
For PM Key Tasks I would include:
* Scope Definition & Management
* Requirements Gathering
Getting requirements and scope of work right, and managed are key elements of a successful Project.
Best,
Ken
Pradeep Bhanot says:
Brad, I like your assertion that project management is at the center of managing the delivery of satisfaction to the customer and provides a focus for accountability within IT. A section I might add would be focused around managing the deliverable from the project. It is project management that organises the tasks to cover the critical ones first and adjusts the scope to ensure project success.
Raven says:
Hi Brad,
We (re)circulated this around on twitter in the PM circle and it got a lot of notice – Folks really like your writing!
I think “No formal meetings” and “No formal communication” would definitely be the first signs of “life without a project manager”..
-R
John says:
If there were no project management, it would no longer be 9 our of 10 businesses that fail, but something more like 99/100. Whether it’s a dedicated project manager, a team effort, or using software, you really need project management. Our web design agency, Pelago, has benefited greatly from having a project manager and owe our success largely to him.
Laura Brandau says:
Hi Brad,
What I like about this post is that it articulates the value created by typical project management tasks. To say that I, as a project manager, hold project status meetings or publish project status reports, is a fairly boring statement that does not sell the value of PM to anyone, but to say that I facilitate team communication and maintain alignment between the executives sponsoring the project and the team doing the work is much more interesting.
One other (albeit cheeky) thought. Without project management you don’t have a project, you just have people doing tasks that may or may not be interrelated into a larger whole.
Best,
Laura
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com
Roman says:
All said before is true. I’d like to add that any process improves efficiency as everyone knows what he\she needs to do and when, whom to report and how to behave in a specific situation.
Lack of PM processes doesn’t mean that the project will definitely fail, but I am 99% sure the efficiency is lower in the environments without PM processes.
John F says:
The impact of project management is very easy to see within well run organisations. You will find that organizations operating with very structured PMO’s in place do significantly better in controlling the P/L for enterprise level projects. Regardless of industry, the winners and losers are often separated by those that follow structured PM methodologies and those that don’t.
????? ?????? ????? ????? » Blog Archive » Good Question: What If There was No Project Management? says:
[...] Egeland over at Project Management Tips asks a great question in a recent post What if…There was No Project Management? There is already a great discussion started in the comments and the link was shared throughout the [...]
David Wright says:
As a Business Analyst, I have indeed done what is described at the start of this post, also managed small projects. The main reason is a shortage of Project Managers where I have worked.
My rules for accepting the PM role were that the project is small, I am also the BA and I am the only BA the project. So, I would be basically managing my self through Project Initiation and into Requirements and Analysis, and I can usually manage that… . The rest of the team would be small too like a couple of developers and one tester.
In this situation, the basics of PM are fairly straight-forward; the challenge of being a PM is doing it with a lot of people involved, and you just can’t follow some basic steps in that case. And in that case, I always insist on a PM, never go ahead without one!
Caroline says:
Further to Ken’s additions which are sound is Risk Management.
This is not the gathering of risks and issues which the article describes as the task of Status Reporting. It is proactive assessment of future (and not so future) risk and the consolidation of agreed mitigations. It alerts all the team to possible tripping points, keeping all on the watch for them. It catches and immediately resolves problems with immediate solutions without a crisis situation.
Sponsors of projects and Senior Management don’t want to know about problems they want comfort to know delivery is being managed effectively and efficiently. They don’t care how. Our job is to get there with the minimum of stress and overtime. Risk management is critical to that task.
What if…There was No Project Management? » MRM Tech Blog says:
[...] What if… There was No Project Management? Sounds familiar? The article didn’t cover everything, but it’s worth a read. The author hit the nail on “No project Schedule”. http://pmtips.net/ifthere-project-management/ [...]
Pawel Brodzinski says:
If you ascribe all things project managers do and then throw them away then yes, it would be hard to run projects. However this is artificial since quite often, especially in small projects, these things are responsibility of other people. Why the heck a project manager should be one and only person who create a schedule? Who said the responsibility is exclusively ascribed to project management?
I consider a project management role as the one which appears when team grows and there’s enough work with meetings, statuses or scheduling to get a dedicated person to do the task. Until then different people do all these things and it’s not uncommon that they do it well. Should we call it a project management or no project management? Or better should we care at all?
As far as the job is being done I think we should not.
Brad Egeland says:
Pawel-
I understand what you’re saying and I agree. On smaller projects or when staffs are stretched, the PM activities become activities that – to some degree – are carried out by other people in the organization…not just PMs. And this article addresses the question..what if there was no Project Management, not what if there were no Project Managers.
I’m looking at the activities of Project Management…no matter who carries them out. I’m asking, do they have to happen? And yes, they do…the degree that they need to happen increases with the size and visibility of the project. And I will go further and state that as the size of the project increases, your need for a dedicated resource – like a Project Manager – to carry out these activities increases greatly.
I have managed projects for most of my 23 yrs in IT and only a handful of times have I seen developers or development managers or other technical resources happily and successfully create project schedules and manage to them.
Jonathan Gardner says:
Yer, who needs Project Managers what value do to they add? They are not technical, the don’t actual produce any work, they always hassle engineers and asking questions about status, and are we following the schedule yup… what do PM do, that was the questions I was asked before I left for a two week holiday
When I go back two weeks later, my first couple of days was on escalation calls from very angry customers and internal manager, there has be no formal communication, no status reports, no timely feedback to customer questions, or internal managers, no ordering of equipment, no following of the prioritized schedule, simple no direction, and know one to act as a buffer from the questions from the customers and internal senior managers, year who needs Project Manager now!
Brad Egeland says:
Jonathan-
This article addresses the topic of what if there was no Project Management – and that can be ANYONE performing the PM role, not just an actual Project Manager. It sounds as if in your organization that is clearly lacking or at least it is not serving you well. If there is no formal communication, no status reports, and no timely feedback then you have precisely answered my question. What if there was no Project Management? Chaos in many cases. You’re frustrated because it is lacking in your organization. Your customers are also frustrated. My point exactly. It has to be practiced – those activities are critical and it clearly needs to be addressed in your organization.
My recommendation…have your PMO Director or whoever is in charge of PM contact me.
——-
Brad Egeland
IT/Project Management Consultant
ph: 702-343-0431
email: brad@bradegeland.com
website: http://www.bradegeland.com
Project Mgmt articles: http://www.pmtips.net/author/brad/
Brad Egeland says:
Jonathan-
I completely understand your frustration. However, it sounds like your frustration precisely answered my question… what if there was no project management? I’m not touting Project Managers…rather I’m stating that the functions that a PM usually handles are critical and someone has to perform them. If they aren’t happening in your organization and you’re frustrated and your customer is upset, then clearly they should be happening and aren’t. Talk to your PMO Director or whoever leads the PMs. Have them contact me….I’d be glad to talk to them or help out somehow. Thanks for the post…
——–
Brad Egeland
IT/Project Management Consultant
ph: 702-343-0431
email: brad@bradegeland.com
website: http://www.bradegeland.com
Project Mgmt articles: http://www.pmtips.net/author/brad/
Nico Viergever says:
Not so hard to imagine. In a lot of of projects, there is no project management at all. Just someone pretending.
What if…The Project Budget had No Limits? | Project Management Tips || Project Management, Collaboration and Knowledge Management Blog says:
[...] thought I would do another “What If” scenario as a follow-up to the “What if…There was No Project Management?” article. This time, I’d like to consider the unlikely scenario of how a project would be run [...]
Sony says:
Can you please help me with this assignment for project management. it is due for next week.
Question: Once a project begins, a good project manager will set up checkpoints. How should this be accomplished? Will teh duration of the project matter? Can checkpoints be built into a schedule? If so, how should they be identify?
Please reply at bonitasony@hotmail.com