According to Wikepedia, “A project is a temporary and one-time endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service, which brings about beneficial change or added value.” By that definition, a project manager then is someone who is able to organize and manage resources (e.g. people) in such a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints.

Contrary to popular belief, managing a project is not just about going from meetings to meetings. I used to think that another word for project manager is “Meet-agers”, based on the fact that they are forever attending some meeting, discussing thing and providing status updates. Yet the role of a project manager is extremely critical to a project.  It could make or break the project depending on how effective a project manager you are. There are many articles these days on how to be an efficient project manager.  Based on my many years of working with various project managers in various projects, I would like to share with you some ideas which might make project management a more humane yet successful task.

1. Be Involved

Some project managers somehow manage to get by with minimal knowledge of the project itself, the latest status or even development progress of the project at each stage. What they might have is a high level overview of what the project is about, so that if people were to ask them, they would be able to talk about it in a manner that would put them in a good light. But once you ask them about the details, they would go "Hmm... let me get back to you on that !".

A good project manager should pay attention to details, know the current issues on hand and what is being done to resolve them. This is to ensure that he has control and visibility over the issues, even if he might not be the one solving them all. It is his right and prerogative to know what is being done every step of the way, and be able to manage expectations. Talking about expectations...

2. Have  the Right Expectation

Knowing what to expect is one thing. Being realistic about your expectation is quite another.

I recently had an encounter with a project manager in a project, who would make flippant statements like “I am expecting a perfect system for User Acceptance Testing.” My initial response to this is “Hello…. If the system was perfect and bug free, it would be called Go-Live ! … and even then there are no guarantees!” 

Having an unrealistic goal is dangerous because it means that the team would be constantly struggling at achieving the unattainable goal. A wise person once said "there is no finishing line in the race for perfection." Hence when the goal set is unattainable or too abstract, people might eventually become demoralized and discouraged. They might even become negative and instead of contribution to the project, end up hindering it with all the negative thoughts and suggestions.

One of the key role of a project manager, is to manage the moral of the team. In fact, one might say that planning a project is like planning to run a marathon, A good project manager would know how to pace the team and not have the team sprinting all the way from the beginning, only to lose steam at the end and never make it to the finishing end line of the project.

A good project manager should also set realistic attainable goals and milestones. This is especially true when planning timelines. Don’t overstretch the team by setting an overly short timeline or unrealistic expectation just because it would make the client or management happy. Make sure that even if you have to make a tough decision, like going with a short timeline, you have a contingency plan like sufficient people to support the project timeline to the end.

In the case of the previously mentioned project manager, he might feel that the system should have been pre-tested  to a certain extent by the time it reaches his turn for testing. But if he had gone into the UAT testing session with an open mind to find bugs and discuss resolution to the bugs, then it would have save alot of time and arguement on why there are issues and allowed him and the team to focus on how to resolve the known issues. The key here is to not lose focus on the big picture and objective of the project. Therefore having the right expectation would help the project manager with planning and strategizing for the project.

3. Focus On the Issues

I have observed a project, where during a particular brain-storming session, one person began to identify issues with the project. Instead of focusing on the issue on hand and thinking of how to solve or minimize the impact, the team began to rally around that person in solidarity and soon, instead of brain-storming to find a solution, the session quickly turned around and became a game of problem finding and  trying to see who can identify the most or worse issue which might cripple the project. 

When faced with such a stumbling block, a good project manager should step in and try to mitigate the situation with minimal damage to the overall team moral. He should be tactful and have good people skills to be able to bring everyone back to focus and command the situation. After all, conflict management is an art, not just an acquired skill.

Besides conflict management, there are also many ways for a project manager to escalate issues and achieve project goals. To ensure success for a project, you do not need to put people down and play tyrant just to get your point across. In fact, some of the best and most successful project managers I have seen, are able to get everything they want for the project and then some. When it came to crunch time, they were able to make the necessary people come through for them with some gentle manipulation and negotiations. For items where it was obviously near impossible to deliver due to certain complexity or timing factor, they were also able to negotiate for a solution at a later date and continue to proceed with the project as scheduled, parking away items that cannot be immediately resolved. In other words, think ahead to move forward.

4. Call The Shots

Once such successful project manager whom I have encountered, also happens to be the Head of the Department. When faced with conflicting opinions from the other managers during meetings, she was able to pull rank and make a decision which everyone came to accept. In other words, she was able to influence people through her people skills.

On the other hand, I have encountered another project manager in another project, where her regular position is that of a team lead. The people , however, whom she mostly had to get consent regarding the project, are mainly managers and senior team leads. Hence when asked to make a stand, she did not feel that she was competent enough that her decision would be accepted. As such she was hesitant in making a stand, always trying to seek approval, mostly because she did not feel that she was given the right authority or have the courage to make the call.

Moral of the story here is that a good project manager should be someone who can command the situation and not back down or be wishy-washy when a decision is needed.

5. Buy-In from Management and the users community

When deciding on a solution, a good project manager would consider if the solution would be able to meet the needs of the general team as well as fulfill management needs. He would be able to manage the risk that comes with each decision and end up deciding on one which would meet the needs of the project in general.

As a good project manager, you cannot just be focused on pleasing the top management when trying to make a decision. Consider as well, the needs of the day to day operations general users who might be more heavily impacted by the decision and might eventually be the deciding factor on where the project is a long term success, even after go-live.

At the end of the day, anyone can manage a project. But the difference between a good project manager and a bad project manager, might be something of nature verses nurture. Some people would say that there are classes and courses on how to be a good project manager but I feel that if you have the right people skills in you, it could already be half the battle won. The rest is basically experience and knowledge.

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