Rita Mulcahy passed away :-(
I’ve just heard the sad news that Rita Mulcahy, Founder of RMC Project Management, passed away after a five-year battle with breast cancer on May 15, 2010. Rita’s project management books are mostly being read in the world. She was 50 years old and had two children at 5 and 7. This is really bad situation for her husband and childs.
Everybody knows the name Rita Mulcahy in project management world. Every PMP aspirants read her PMP prep book. We also read this book before the PMP exam. I could not meet her but I read her books. Furthermore I was one of the beta tester of “PMP Exam Prep Online 6th Edition” course last year. I am very sad.
My deep condolences to her family and project management world.
Project Manager’s Role
You can have so many answers regarding the question “what is the role of a project manager?”. What is the official duty of PM? What does he or she perform in a project? We are talking about a person who manages the project. When we look at the definition of project, we see “project is a temporary endeavor to create unique product or service”. OK, let’s concentrate on the word “management”. We hear this word in our daily life. What does a manager do? What is the role of a manager? What is manager’s job? Is this person is responsible for the job and direct people to make the job? Or, this person takes the shovel, spade and do the job?
If we look at the definition of the word “management”. We can see the definition as “to give (someone) some guidance; to give a direction to someone to do an activity”. Let’s look at the definition of “manager”. We will see “the person who has a power to manage”. Now let’s match these two words into business life. There is a work to execute. Some people exist to execute the job and there is a person who is responsible for the work to be done. If this job becomes successful and meet the target, manager and the team are appreciated. OK, if this work is unsuccessful, who will be responsible? Manager or the team who executed the job?
Projects are temporary endeavors. It has one start and one end.When the project completed, a product or service come up. Risk and ambiguity exist in the projects. When we look at the literature we see “the project is successful if time, budget and scope targets are met”. Of course the quality is also important. If a project contains risk and ambiguity, it must be managed well to reach successful results. Managing means planning the work then monitor and control the work. As an example, a football coach prepare a plan for the game, share the tactics with players before the game. When the game starts, football players try to win the match in the football pitch and do their best. Coach directs and manages the players, but the coach does not go into field and plays the game. When the coach sees a problem then he change the player. This is a corrective action.
If some people do the job and your responsibility is to manage the work, you have to have strong communication skills. It is not enough to know preparing a GANTT chart or applying Earned Value Techniques for the project manager. You can find these things from the books easily. The most important subject in project management is “communication”. If you can not communicate effectively with stakeholders, you can not manage the project. It means that the project will be absolutely unsuccessful. You can not meet the time, budget and other objects. The responsible of this failure is Project Manager, not the team…
I saw so many case. Let’s look at the case. There is an expert about computer programming. He or she is writing codes well and knows the job in detail. The managers of this guy decide that this guy can manage the project. He knows all the technical details etc. When you talk to this programmer, he points out that he does not know what to do. When you talk to his managers, they are OK, he will do the job well. Unfortunately this approach causes the project become unsuccessful. This is typical “halo effect”.
We need a person who has strong communication skills, can see the big picture and direct stakeholders.
Project Manager’s Authority & Controlling the Projects
So many projects failed if we take time, cost, scope and quality into consideration. So many reasons can be found in surveys. One of the most important reason for the failure is controlling. If project manager can not control the project efficiently, the project fails. We can talk about some factors when we point out inadequate control.
- lack of project manager’s authority or less authority
- project team distributed over geographical area
- insufficient planning
- lack of communication management
Project Manager’s authority varies according to organizational structure.Authority level of the PM in functional organization is different than PM in a matrix organization. Authority of PM in a matrix organization is more powerful than a PM in functional organization. Furthermore projects are executed in every type of organization.How can a project be controlled without authority? I face to this question frequently. Yes it can be done. The project can be controlled in every type of organization. How we can do that? It can be done by increasing control.Whatever the authority level that PM has, PM must concentrate and take “control” into account. Which things can project manager control?
- milestones
- status
- change management (time, scope, cost)
- reporting times
- monitoring risks
- commnication management
If project manager can control the project, he/she can reach successful results. I recommend a book results without authority “controlling a project when the team doesn’t report to you” by Tom Hendrick about this subject. This book is really a good one that explains successful results without authority in detail.
Project Planning Process
We all know that project life cycle consists of 5 main processes. Initiating, Planning, Monitoring&Conrolling and Closing. Each processes have some details and these details must be followed up when the project is progressing. But the most important part is “planning”.
Planning is the base of a project. We have to do planning first to execute something. Let’s look at how the projects are running in real life. Generally people do not put enough time for planning. Because it is expected to start working and go into executing as soon as possible. It is perceived that planning is time consuming. Because planning work does not put some concrete things. However this phase is he most important phase in projects. Upper management expect to complete all the works and stated that this project must be finished on this time. People can not give enough time for planning due to time pressure. If we can not put enough time for planning the project will fail. What is the meaning of failure? Project can not be completed in time. Risk planning was not prepared. So risks occured adn became issues. Scope can change and risk occurs, extra money spent… You have vey professional team, they know their jobs well. But the project fails. Why? Because nobody put enough effort for planning…
Hello
This is my first blog message in English. I keep my other blog in Turkish at http://www.alginerozan.com for 3 years. I decided to write my blog messages in English. I will also keep this blog site.
I am telecomm professional and I work as program manager in one of the GSM operator in Turkey. I will write some posts related with Project management, Information Technology, Classical Guitar, Life and Telecommunication. Sometimes I put additional category to write some posts like coaching, sailing etc.
