Insights

What value does a project manager add?

I do a lot of reading about project management whether it is on the PMI forum on LinkedIn, reading various tweets on Twitter, or just browsing various industry related sites on the internet. Over the course of doing that, it is clear to me that many people are not completely sure as to what value a project manager adds. There are even negative comments to the effect of “paper pushing PM” or “paper PMP.” I’m not really sure what the value is making these kind of negative comments, but obviously some people out there have not had good experiences with the project managers they have worked with. In addition to reading, I get the opportunity to talk to a lot of people from different industries, who have some perceptions which I would consider to be not fully accurate when it comes to the value added by project managers. As I mentioned in another post (What does a project manager do and how is that different from a virtual assistant?), I recently attended a number of small business events and also encountered a number of people who did not know what project management was. As I also stated in that post (and it is certainly a contributing factor to why there are some misconceptions about a project manager delivering value), there are a lot of people who confuse a project manager with a virtual assistant or an executive assistant. For those reasons, I decided to put this blog post together to illustrate exactly what value you can expect a qualified and experienced project manager to deliver:

First, a project manager will serve as the main point of contact for all team, senior leadership, and client questions. There is a lot of value in having a single person who can handle and answer all of these requests.This includes all project communication including status reports and email updates to stakeholders. In a matrix organization structure, if you don’t have a project manager serving as the point person for the project, then the questions and responsibilities for project communications are going to end up going to your team members directly. Those team members have other responsibilities whether it is related to day to day operations or related to the project. If they are going to be slowed down by questions, their ability to keep up with their project tasks and normal work responsibilities is going to be significantly hampered. Depending on the company, it may even be a case where a project manager’s time is not billed to a client, but that of the technical resource is. In those cases, it is even more critical that the subject matter expert is working on billable tasks. A project manager has responsibilities of managing the overall project on a day to day basis and this includes interacting with all stakeholders and providing all communication to those stakeholders. For those reasons, there is a lot of value in having the project manager as your primary point of contact.

Second and as I alluded to above, the project manager should be the most organized person on the project and should be able to locate any needed information quickly. The project manager will manage meeting notes, which while I have found that team members aren’t always regularly reading can be very helpful later in the project when someone says, “Why wasn’t XYZ discussed?” or “Do you remember when I raised ABC concern?” On several occasions on a recent project, I was able to go back and find important information in the meeting notes that addressed a specific question or issue. Beyond that, the project manager will also manage, track, and document project issues as they arise during the project life cycle. Lastly, the project manager will also manage the risk register and track project risks. This can often include the development (with the project team’s input) of a risk matrix. In smaller projects, a risk matrix is often not created, but with some of the more robust project management software tools a risk matrix can be fairly easily generated and thereby can be created without a great deal of time/effort. The project manager will also lead the team through risk planning including planning risk responses to potential events. Beyond that, the project manager will not only focus on the day to day management of the project, but will keep an eye in the distance particularly as it relates to potential risks and issues. All of these areas of responsibility are extremely important in making projects successful.

The above paragraph starts with a key word and that is “should.” Experienced project managers understand the importance of maintaining all project information. As a project manager, I take a lot of pride in keeping accurate and detailed records to avoid issues and because it is a good practice. I believe that all project details should be in writing and have a paper trail. Unfortunately, I have worked on large scale projects where more than one company was involved and thereby multiple project managers were involved. I have seen first hand how projects can fall apart when the project manager is not the most organized and up-to-date person on the project. When this happens, risks and issues can be overlooked and thereby are allowed to fester until they reach the point where they jeopardize the project. I have found that it is critical to be meticulously organized when it comes to managing the project including all project records and documentation.

The third place where a project manager delivers value is by managing the project budget and performing forecasts. This can range from tracking invoices that come in utilizing project management software (or an Excel sheet) against the project budget to creating and managing burndown charts. Managing the project budget is an important role as most companies have a fairly strict budget assigned to projects. If a client requests a change that is out of scope, the project manager will direct the client to submit a change request and then will work with the team to provide a quote for that additional work. Depending upon the organization and type of project, even small changes can add up rather quickly as resources need to spend more time on the project.

To illustrate this third point, I was recently involved in an IT project where there was an external web development team performing all of the work. There were some issues with the development team where tasks were not being completed on time and the hours logged on the tasks were significantly higher than the estimates. When I escalated this to the project sponsor with those exact concerns, he looked at the total hours logged by the team and said that the project should be 60% complete and that they have used 60% of the hours and therefore he indicated that the project was on track. However, that was not an accurate way to assess the project because it didn’t reflect the fact that many more hours than allocated were being spent on tasks thereby putting the project over budget and behind schedule. There were many red flags here starting with the tasks being late and further evidenced by the billable hours being so high.

One point that I mentioned above is managing scope as it relates to the project budget. Managing scope overall is a pretty big task and one that can easily be mismanaged. As a project manager, I am always diligent in making sure I understand what the defined scope of the project is. Depending upon the organization’s pre-project management and project management processes, I may not have been involved in the initial conversations among senior leaders where scope was negotiated. Therefore, it is really important to make sure that I fully understand the scope from the project sponsor. It may go without saying, but having a project manager who clearly understands the scope will save you a lot of headaches as a company. Accepting requests outside of the project scope almost always have an impact on cost and schedule. I’m sure we have all experience someone coming in at the last minute and saying, “We forgot this feature and it is really critical. The product will be useless without it.” Rather than just committing to that, the project manager will have the requestor go through the change management process and then work to evaluate and understand exactly how that is going to impact the project in terms of time and cost. Lastly, the other way that a project manager provides value is ensuring that the project scope is in alignment at all times with business objectives. If a project doesn’t align with business objectives, why is it being worked on to begin with? If a change request that would incur a 15% cost increase and a 2 week delay doesn’t match business objectives, it should not be approved.

That leads me into another key project management function, which is resource allocation. In matrix organizations, resource allocation can be a bit tough for a project manager to track since the resources are normally shared resources. In many of these cases, the number of hours a resource is allocated by their functional manager isn’t tracked by the project manager or specified to the project manager. Even in these cases, the project manager should work with the functional manager to understand that resource’s schedule and how many hours the functional manager is going to allocate them to the project for. The project manager will also want to ensure that the project plan and resource allocation chart reflect any vacation time or planned sick leave that the resource may have coming up during scheduled project activities. For all of these reasons, I would recommend to track the hours even in a shared resource situation to ensure that you don’t assign them more work than they have time to complete. You will also want to see what this looks like over the course of the plan to ensure that any constraints (such as a resource being unavailable on certain dates) are fully considered when building the project plan. For dedicated project resources, it is a bit easier to track. Within the project management software, the project manager can track the allocation of resources to ensure that work is as evenly balanced as possible.

When doing my aforementioned reading online on Twitter and LinkedIn, as I alluded to at the beginning of the article, I frequently see jokes about how a project manager expects too much particularly as it relates to managing and allocating resources. In fact, yesterday I saw the following joke on Twitter, “A project manager is someone who thinks that 9 pregnant woman can create a baby in 1 month.” In most matrix organizations, I don’t find this type of mindset to be the case and I can say that I personally strive to not be this way. To that end, I am always sure to work with the team in the most collaborative way possible. As an IT project management consultant in Philadelphia, I do not come into a business as someone who is the subject matter expert on a company’s internal business processes or even their PMO processes (which vary company to company more greatly than most people realize). The team members know how long the tasks have taken them in the past and while the project sponsor almost always sets a goal it is important for me to work with the team to set reasonable deadlines for tasks on the way to achieving those goals. Once the team has committed to a timeline, then I hold the team accountable to that timeline, but it is typically largely based on a timeline the team provided to me.

Now that we have covered the value a project manager contributes in terms of managing the budget and resources, I want to highlight one key metric that can be derived from those efforts. One of the key things that every organization should track (and unfortunately many do not do this) is planned vs actual. This information tells you how the project is doing relative to what was planned in terms of time and cost. Normally, I will baseline a project when the initial project plan is created (sometimes a project may have to be re-baselined due to some changes made by stakeholders in the early phases of the project). From that baseline, I can track how the project actually performed. Obviously, it is important to do this to understand if a project is underperforming and how it can be corrected, but it is also valuable for creating predictability and repeatability in your projects going forward if you will be doing a similar type of project. You want to understand what a reasonable timeline is going forward so that your customer’s expectations can be met (or hopefully exceeded).

I have already alluded to tools that a project manager can develop such as a risk matrix and the overall risk planning process. Those are just 2 of some key tools that a project manager can develop to add clarity to a project. For larger projects, a project manager will work with the team to develop a work breakdown structure (WBS). This can help on really large projects to break down a project into its smallest parts so it is very clear what needs to be worked on to solve a given problem. As far as other tools, I’ve referred a lot in this article to project management software. While a project manager may not be proficient in your company’s tool, they should have experience in a variety of other tools. Yes, the tools are all different (as I noted in another blog post), but an experienced project manager should be able to pick up a new tool very quickly. The interfaces change from tool to tool, but the processes that a project manager uses stay the same and that usually makes the transition smoother. A project management can also typically create any needed flow diagrams or process maps using a tool like Microsoft Visio. Lastly, a project manager can write a project management plan, which is a comprehensive document that contains a number of sub-plans such as the Risk Management Plan, Communication Management Plan, Procurement Plan, Human Resources Management Plan, Change Management Plan, Stakeholder Management Plan, Quality Management Plan, and Budget Management Plan. There are a lot of other tools that project managers use and I know I have only covered a few here, but a project manager can implement a number of tools throughout the course of the project life cycle to solve problems and bring clarity to particular project.

The next point to highlight as far as where a project manager delivers value is when it comes to providing project leadership. Leadership styles can vary greatly from individual to individual and project manager to project manager. For me personally, I tend to be calm and even tempered regardless of the circumstances. Some of my colleagues are a bit more fiery than I am and that approach works for them, but for me, I have found that staying calm even in heated situations is critical and that it can be an asset in stressful meetings and situations. It is also important in my opinion to maintain a good relationship with all project team members and stakeholders. To this end, I always try to convey a positive and appreciative attitude towards all team members. I’m not a believer that you have to be a yeller and a screamer to get things done and in a lot of matrix organizations project managers don’t have the authority to be all that forceful with shared resources. Projects always have challenges and it is valuable to have a project manager who can deal with challenges in a way that keeps the team focused and in a positive state of mind.

In this regard and as a little bit of some insight into my style, my feeling has always been that showing a temper regularly isn’t a sign of leadership. Of course, there are times when all of us are frustrated, but I am of the mind that routinely exhibiting a temper loses its effectiveness. I have worked on a number of projects with people who show their frustration rather regularly and after a while people just chalk up to, “Hey, that’s the just way Elmo is.” With that being said, when good leaders sense complacency and a lack of urgency, a kick in the pants is appropriate, but you can only go to the well so many times. Conversely, I’m also not one for false praise either and try to be totally honest and realistic at all times. If a project is struggling, I won’t tell the team, “Hey we are doing a great job here and everything is on track,” but I also won’t blow up either. I’ve always found that stating facts is a lot more effective than allowing the emotion of a moment to get the better of you. For example, I can say, “We are two weeks behind on coding the main interfaces for Company XYZ’s mobile application,” but I wouldn’t say, “This project is going to fail,” but would focus on, “What challenges are we encountering that we are behind?” Facts can’t be disputed, but opinions certainly can be. Like everything else, there is a balance to be found.

If you’ve read this far, I’d like to thank you for your attention and patience. I didn’t really set out for the post to be a short novel, but every time I thought I was near the finish line, I said to myself, “But you forgot that!” and went back and added another paragraph. Despite the length of the post, I hope that it illustrates the point that a quality and experienced project manager delivers a lot of value. To that end, I hope this post cleared up a few of the misconceptions that are out there about project managers.