Project Managers Listen Up

Dear Every Project Manager in the World–
I hereby put you on notice for the following reason: you are NOT the center of a project. You are a resource.
Now, I should qualify quickly. There are some folks given the role of project manager who are the center, but that’s because project management isn’t their main gig. They’re a developer told to BE a project manager for a while, or a QA manager, or something other than a project manager. I’m not talking to you.
I’m talking to full-on project managers (but you others can listen and learn).
You are a Resource
The primary purpose for you is to manage schedule, resource allocation, sometimes budget, and to keep a set of documents. You are a super facilitator. You are the one who can ask annoying questions, because you get the role of hallowed outsider to the teams you’re working with.
You can help smooth roadblocks by escalating and working the social issues. You can bring new perspective to situations where the team seems to be drifting into waters where things aren’t so clear. There are dozens of great things you bring to the situation.
The Team Rules
Project managers can often get into a few faulty thought processes. I wrote about one yesterday regarding not seeing the larger picture of a situation. Another fault is that sometimes project managers forget that the team are people and not resources. People are at the heart of the project, people with thoughts and insights and vast, complex pools of connection to the situation. Your project is not a gantt chart.
Work with your team, with the team leader, and be a SERVANT of the team, not a hammer pounding the nails of milestones. Yes, make the milestones, and yes, keep the people outside the team in mind as the primary reason you’ll be paid or not paid, but never forget that your role is to make that team successful, not the other way around.
Paper(or files) NEVER Trump People
Documentation is good in that it helps chronicle the way things went, keeps everyone informed, and gives a good template for future projects of a similar nature. However, pounding a team with documents and reviews of the documents and more documents and reviews can be energy draining. Try to keep it to a minimum. Just be sure everyone is in agreement and understands the purpose of things going on.
But please, for *.deity’s sake, don’t hold reviews for every comma removal or typo correction. Use your brain as to whether the edits or updates will impact anything, and then decide if it requires gathering everyone together into the same time frame to deal again.
Without Project Managers, Things Go Worse
Don’t get me wrong: project managers are necessary for companies with more than 50 people, or for situations that require a lot of precision. I’ve been the “go to” project manager at my company because I had one unique quirk: I could easily jump aboard a moving train headed for a broken bridge and stop it before the crash. Every one of those trains were projects that a non-project-manager thought they could manage on their own.
You’re important to the process. You are probably a good person. You offer insights and a vision that is sometimes lost on the trench-workers of an organization.
But never forget that you are a resource to the team, a servant of their success. And never EVER EVER talk to people using terms like “work breakdown structure” and “long pole in the tent.” Talk like a human, and you’ll garner more respect and connection. Believe me, the project managers that find their way to bigger and better projects are those that keep humans happy, not Microsoft Project.
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