The Unofficial Tasks of a Project Manager

Recently, I’ve presented a few excerpts from Gary Heerkens’ brief case book entitled “Project Management.” The book contains some very interesting concepts and the excerpt presented in this article is no exception. This section of the book discusses the “unofficial” duties of a project manager. Mr. Heergens defines these as babysitter, salesperson, teacher, and friend. Please read on and I’ll discuss further following the excerpt.

The Project Manager’s “Unofficial” Job Duties

Functional competencies (previously discussed in the book, not included in this article) represent official duties of the typical project manager. In fact, if your organization has developed a job description for project managers, it probably includes many of these functional competencies. What you won’t find in job descriptions are the unofficial duties that project managers perform in the course of carrying out their mission. Let’s examine some of the key ones (somewhat tongue in cheek).

Babysitter—This refers to the apparent need to provide close guidance or detailed instructions to certain individuals. This situation results from any number of root causes. The target may be under qualified, lack confidence, or simply crave attention.

Salesperson—There will be times when you’ll have to rely heavily on your ability to influence others to sell an idea, sell yourself, or perhaps sell the virtues of project management. Most of your selling situations will be helpful and have positive outcomes. However, if you find yourself spending too much time selling project management, that may signal deeper underlying problems, such as issues of trust or confidence. If most of the selling you do is to your management, you’re in trouble. This is a signal that your life as a project manager may be exceptionally challenging.

Teacher—This is an example of an unofficial role that actually yields positive results. In fact, superior project managers will be able to educate and develop those they work with as they manage the project. Acquire this skill or reputation and you’ll be in very good shape.

Friend—Maintaining friendships and professional relationships with the same people is difficult. However, if you can do it, you’ll benefit greatly. An open, informal, and comfortable communication linkage is much more likely to keep you supplied with more of the information you need than formal, rigorous, and stiff team meetings. Finally, avoid the trap of believing that because you’ve been put “in charge” of a project you’ve risen above your peers and friendships no longer matter. Big mistake!

Conclusion

I agree with Mr. Heergens’ “unofficial” tasks and could probably add a few myself, but rather I would like to discuss the four he identifies in this section.

Babysitter – As a project manager, you’re responsible for the overall project and its ultimate success, though much of the factors that go into its success or failure are somewhat beyond your control. Babysitting the project staff is hopefully something you won’t have to do too much of. Ideally, you’ll have an experienced and skilled staff. If you have project team members that require too much babysitting and are not productive members of the team – or are displaying rogue behavior and not staying on task – then it is time to bring it to their immediate manager’s attention and either get the behavior rectified or have them replaced on your team.

Salesperson – I agree with this one. The project manager continually must sell. They have to sell themselves and their ‘billable’ status to their customers on some projects. They have to sell change order situations to their customers. They have to sell the criticality of their projects to internal management in order to gain the experienced resources they need for important tasks on their projects.

Teacher – This can go two ways. In the teacher role, the PM is often mentoring a less experienced project manager or one who is new to the organization and, therefore, the organization’s PM methodology and process. They also act in the teacher role to their project staff and make them aware of the responsibilities each team member has on the project, the processes they need to follow and that tasks they are to perform.

Friend – This is a difficult one. Friendships are great, but having close friends work for you on projects as you try to manage and guide the team can be difficult and can even cause problems. Friendly relationships, though, are important. A friendly, cohesive team usually has a higher chance of success than one that is purely professional or has some internal strained relationships or power struggles.

Five Current Priorities of IT Industry Leaders

Mr. Peter Schroer is the founder, chairman and president of Aras, which provides product lifecycle management solutions. During the past two decades, Mr. Schroer has had manufacturing and engineering business roles at IBM, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Data General.

Here, Mr. Schroer outlines 5 top priorities for IT industry leaders and decision makers for a recent issue of eWeek.

Focus IT Projects on High-Value Business Goals

Priorities have transformed overnight, bringing a new urgency to cost-cutting measures and initiatives that will drive the business forward in the face of economic uncertainty. IT leaders must look hard at alignment and corporate goals and think out of the box to accelerate projects that will help the company compete and even take advantage of the downturn.

Challenge the “Big Box” System Fallacy

Today, IT has to challenge the viability and logic of the “suite will do everything” mentality. The business can’t afford that answer, and cannot wait two, three or four years for capabilities that the company needs now. IT executives in senior management must find new alternatives that are cost-effective and quick to deploy, or the CEO and board will find someone else who can deliver.

Leverage SOA to Cut Costs

One of the best ways to cut project costs and deliver results more quickly is to stop trying to rip and replace all of the old systems each time a new one comes along. Major replacements are long and expensive. With a smart SOA (service-oriented architecture) approach, companies can do more with less. Vendors have tried to frame the SOA concept in their terms to sell IT new packages; however, SOA is really vendor-neutral. It comes down to using XML and SOAP messaging to interface between wrap around systems to expose and exchange information in new ways that provide more flexibility than was previously possible.

Expand the Use of Enterprise Open Source

Several years ago, open source meant Linux. Not anymore. These days, there are one or more high-quality open-source solutions in every software category. “Enterprise open source” typically means that a solution is sufficiently robust to complete directly with conventional proprietary offerings on functionality and capabilities, and that there is a company standing behind the solution to provide enterprise-class support and value-added services. The real business benefits of the open source come from the licensing format that removes the up-front capital expense for licenses and enables companies to prove out solutions before committing.

Renegotiate the Big Contracts

When push comes to shove, everyone has to share the pain. When IT executives take a hard look at expenses to find savings, there are usually three to five line items in the budget that jump off the page. These are the major provider agreements that have been entered into in the past and now jeopardize corporate profitability. To achieve real savings, IT will need to renegotiate contracts of magnitude.

Job : Siebel CRM Senior Project Manager

Another job posting that I came across…

Our global multinational client in Lausanne, Switzerland is now looking for a Senior Siebel Project Manager / Program Manager to join a long term basis (ideally permanent).

There is the possibility to join as contract initially but this will only be given to candidates based in Switzerland or looking to relocate on a long term basis in the French speaking part of Switzerland.

THE ROLE:
Senior PM for Siebel implementation with role evolving to Program Manager (multiple projects / more countries) as Siebel initiative is planned across next 3 years. You will be in charge of the overall Siebel global implementation.

YOU NEED:
At least 10 years CRM projects,Siebel experience (SFA/BI/Call Centre), global/large scale projects(multi-country deployment), strong project management skills(end-to-end project life cycle, good command of all project areas;technical, process, change, etc.), process manufacturing experience,strong communications skills, experience of vendor management.

- University degree or equivalent. Good education is mandatory.
- Fluency in English (written and spoken) mandatory + French speaking will be an advantage.
- At least 10 years large complex international experience in delivery of IT/consulting services in the area of CRM with indepth expertise in implementing CRM software such as Oracle CRM/Siebel
- Experience on business process re-engineering;
- Experience in international working environments; Experience of off-shore delivery model
- Management of project teams
- Advanced business consulting competencies

Nice to have
- Deep understanding of leading and emerging IT solutions; experience of Siebel on-demand will be appreciated
- Selling skills on high added value services
- Good business acumen for marketing and sales in specific industry / process manufacturing / chemical are an advantage

If this sounds like your next challenge and you would like to live/work/play in Switzerland please send us your cv ASAP. We will call you shortly to discuss it in details.

- Apply here.

Project Management and Startups: How Can PM Help? – Case Study 2

In the first article – Case Study 1 – I discussed my experience working with a startup delivering a web-based service to three new major clients.  Case Study 2 goes outside the IT world to a leading supplier of mechanical automation and control equipment.

The first study focused on my client’s inability to deliver because they were lacking the overall processes and structure to ‘professionally’ manage their large implementations.  This second study focuses on the resource management issues my client was facing as they were attempting to deliver on current projects and ramp up for future projects.

To the Rescue – Case Study 2

This organization was very successful.  They had become one of the leading suppliers of mechanical automation and control equipment to big name companies in theatre, Hollywood, theme parks, and large-scale Las Vegas entertainment productions.

Entrepreneurial aggressiveness wasn’t the issue, but it was indirectly the cause.  Their team of non-technical PMs were leading large scale implementations locally and internationally utilizing this organization’s small pool of personnel and equipment resources to deliver on the existing projects.  These engagements were being tracked in the worst way possible for a busy, overloaded, growing firm whose reputation rested solely on how they performed on their last big project.  Nothing was standardized, much of it was on paper and some of it was in spreadsheets.

The Basic Problem

This company was growing and doing a lot of business.  They were – and still are – being acknowledged in the leading trade magazines and conferences and had no problem attracting customers.  And they were led by a very creative CEO, who was constantly out selling their business to new customers and winning new engagements.

That sounds great, but what that caused – given their lack of overall project oversight – was a significant resource management problem  They never knew from one minute to the next if they had enough resources – people or equipment – in place and available to cover both their current projects and their future work that the CEO was out selling.

Standardizing the Tracking

First, I met with the General Manager to get a good understanding of their resources and their business processes.  As I said, this was not an IT shop so it was somewhat new to me.  I then met individually with all of the project managers, reviewed their current projects and any documentation they had on the current status and issues, and went off to create an overall project template that would fit most of what they do on a given project.  I then worked with the PMs and the General Manager to get all of their current projects setup in a project management software solution.

The Fix

To implement project tracking and an overall project template, I utilized MS Project.  Ultimately, they needed more of a collaboration tool.  Since the learning curve and overall cost is fairly significant (and the implementation painful) for the Project Professional 2007 + Project Server 2007 collaboration tool solution, I would recommend going with Seavus’ ProjectOffice.net web-based collaboration solution.  That is what I am guiding them toward currently.  However, at the time we needed to work with what we had and that was MS Project.

Together with the GM and the various PMs, we setup all of their current projects in MS Project based on the general project plan template I had developed.  In order to manage their personnel and equipment resources across all projects – which is the overall solution they were seeking – I created a shared resource pool that all project plans utilized.  It worked well and provides them with the resource allocation reporting they so badly needed, though the future implementation of a collaboration tool like ProjectOffice.net will give them a better view of all projects and resources at any given time and allow for true collaboration within the organization.

Summary

Even in the non-IT world, an IT Project Manager can make a difference and help an organization like this get a handle on their resources and how to move forward effectively without alienating their customer base.  A major concern in this case study was that as the business grew without the proper resource oversight, eventually they would start missing dates and deadlines on critical deliverables due to overextended resources.  It was already starting to happen on a very limited basis which is why they contacted me.  This problem, left unchecked, would have led to unhappy customers, a decrease in their customer base, and a decrease in revenue and profits.

Helping this organization was no different than helping any IT organization.  The problems are the same, we just have to look for creative ways to apply the winning practices behind Project Management.

Project Management and Startups: Resource Allocation and Usage – Part 1

There are some very talented individuals out there who have successful started their own businesses and worked hard to grow those businesses into viable entities.  One thing that must be remembered – not all creative, entrepreneurial individuals translate well into good business men and women.

Bringing Talent to the Table

I’ve worked with small business owners who basically are the entire company.  They make sales based solely on their skills and what they bring to the table.  However, once that company has grown beyond the one creative individual, then you have a larger issue to deal with…how to manage and allocate the resources effectively across several projects and future engagements.

As Project Managers, we take for granted that we have a finite pool of resources and hours assigned to the projects we manage and we apply those resources to the detailed tasks for the projects.  Seems simply enough, right?  Now, put yourself in the shoes of the one very talented and creative individual (usually with limited business process sense) who has seen his or her business grow but has not really adapted to that new, larger business model.  What happens next?  I’ve witnessed it…and I’ve been called in to help fix the mess on more than one occasion.

The Mess

What happens next is that the talented CEO travels the globe successfully making sales on the company’s offerings while paying little to no attention to the company’s resource allocation and its capacity to meet both current project demands and future demands for newly acquired business.  Needless to say, this scenario can bring disastrous results.

For example, let’s say that the very talented CEO makes a sale in Tokyo and commits to a project starting in FY09 Q2 and completing in FY09 Q4 utilizing key equipment and personnel resources.  However, when that information is relayed to the US-based team everyone but the CEO quickly comes to the realization that two pieces of critical equipment and four key personnel resources will not be available until Q3.  What this means is that the Tokyo project will never complete in Q4.  Something has to give.  Either the current project has to slide or the new Tokyo project has to be pushed out and both scenarios will put a dent in the armor of the very talented CEO and his future selling ability and integrity.

This seems like something you and I would never do, but it’s possible.  It’s a very easy trap to fall into.  Think of the commercial where the head of a very small brewery is traveling around the country and making sales of his beer.  He keeps calling his partner back home and telling him of all the sales he’s making and rather than being overjoyed, his partner is stressed about their immediate need to expand.  It paints a picture of the leader of an organization not having a good handle on the current availability of resources to meet sales or demand.

The PM Role 

This is where the Project Manager can step in and help develop processes and implement tools that will ensure future success for this type of organization.  The PM can be the change agent that will retain those new customers instead of lose them.  I’ll discuss in my next post how we can make that happen.