There may be something drier than the phrase “project management,” but usually it’s shaken and served with an olive. And while the latter is often greeted with some sense of anticipation, this is seldom the case with the former. In fact, the mention of project management all too often evokes a sense of weariness, unremitting work, frustration, even failure—feelings that are completely inconsistent with the fact that all successful projects depend on effective project management.
Scott Berkun is quick to tell you that it doesn’t need to be that way, and his latest book, Making Things Happen (formerly titled The Art of Project Management) will show you just what he means. Scott is a noted public speaker and teacher on management, creative thinking, and design. When I asked him what motivated him to write on project management, he said:
I’d yet to find a book on leading project teams that didn’t bore me to tears. Every great engineered thing ever made, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Eiffel Tower to the Internet was made by teams of people, and I thought it was a crime against those triumphs if there wasn’t a book about what really happens on project teams and how leaders handle it. I wanted to capture all the things I’d learned over a decade and increase the odds other people wouldn’t have to make the same mistakes I did.
How much of the software on the web that you use do you think is good?” he adds. “If it’s a small percentage, you can’t blame the lack of amazing technology available to developers. The cause of poorly made things is something else—it’s how projects are led and managed. My book is a handbook for people trying to make good things happen and who care about the intangible, human elements that software engineering and technology books typically overlook.”
I have personally been a fan of Scott’s writing for years and can tell you that the lessons and wisdom he shares in his book are not just valuable to project managers, but to anyone who has to get things done in the real world. He covers topics such as “Making good decisions” and “Ideas and what to do with them” and a rather important one, “What to do when things go wrong.” It’s no surprise to me that the price for used copies of the earlier edition of this book went up to $160 when it went out of print.
A chance to win a free copy
I’m curious to know what people see as good qualities in a project manager, or the qualities that make a project manager terrible to work with. Please post your comments here, and I’ll select a winner (in a totally arbitrary fashion) to receive a free copy of Making Things Happen. Just post your thoughts by the end of next Tuesday (April 15). Thanks!
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An excellent project manager must balance the demands of supporting the team and providing them with autonomy. Sometimes these two goals are mutually reinforcing (as when the project manager protects the team from competing demands on their time from people outside the project team) but often they compete. A project manager must convey a clear and compelling high-level vision for the project, but must also be able to stand back and let the team work out the details, sometimes slightly altering the vision in the process. She must give the team enough freedom to convey her trust in them, but must also be close enough to identify catastrophic pitfalls. Again, it is sometimes hard to distinguish the catastrophic pitfalls vs. team tactics and decisions that she may not agree with wholly, but which should be supported nonetheless to foster a productive feeling of engagement in the project.
There are no clear-cut and 100% effective guidlines for being a great project manager (otherwise we wouldn't have so many books and discussions on the topic). It is a complicated role requiring subtley, self-awareness, trust in one's team, and flexibility. For that reason, absolute adherance to a particluar PM model is probably not a good idea. Take the pieces from different models that you think will work with your team and project and apply them. Then, get feedback from your team and client early and often so that you can adjust your approach and continually improve. If this sounds like agile, I think it's because that school of PM thought, more than others I'm aware of, embraces flexibility and communication. Again, though, the goal is to produce a great product with a happy team, not to check off boxes on a PM's models checklist.
The great project manager manages. The project manager from hell micromanages.
I have been thinking a lot about project management recently. Perhaps it is due to Dreaming in Code (by Scott Rosenberg) sitting not one foot from me on my desk. His overview of the triumphs and tribulations of the Open Source Applications Foundations' Chandler project should be read by many a project manager.
Maybe it's due to listening to the Java Posse's Roundup podcast episode about the difficulty of extreme programming (really good project managerial techniques in that one).
Maybe its because I am constantly surprised by just how hard this stuff is and it never gets easier.
I know the perfect project manager. Her name is Linda. In the four years I worked with her I had absolute confidence that she would deliver any project. As opposed to some "program managers" I worked with, Linda did not simply gather dates from contributors and reflect them in a project plan, she took ownership for completion of the project, committed to the dates, and assured that her team members were also committed. She follows up frequently, and escalates when necessary.
Primarily as a result of Linda's leadership, we were able to convert seven customers from an old mainframe version of our product to a Windows version within a year's time, and all completely referenceable.
She occasionally ran into conflicts with team members, managers, etc., but they were conflicts resulting from candid communication and important problems--in other words, vital conflicts.
If you could clone her, we could fix all the project management problems of the world, in my view.
Regards, John
A great project manager deals with culture to serve people, not the other way around.
A good project manager is a genuinely passionate expert on the project as a whole--the purpose, the plan, and how everything fits together. A bad project manager is mostly concerned with wielding power and making themself look good.
A bad project manager is one who cannot wisely apply theory and methodology to achieve an objective, but instead tries to force cookie-cutter practices to everything he/she does thinking that is "project management".
The great project managers I worked with influenced with a soft hand. It was all people skill. I worked hard for them happily because they did those simple quiet things in ways that fell just below the full awareness window.
The poor project managers assumed too much. They assumed I'd work on an arbitrary task at an arbitrary time with an arbitrary lead time. Their assumptions caused more work and more spin with less results. Perhaps worse is they worked to a point on the calendar with little attention to scope or purpose. They delivered something other than what was requested.
I have found the best project managers take care of the issues that developers and team members shouldn't have to worry about. They are great for chasing down answers from reluctant business leaders and can be helpful for keeping the development team focused on the task at hand rather than becoming distracted with "shiny objects".
However, the relationship between a project manager and a team is built on a delicate foundation of trust. A project manager that doesn't trust their team, or a development team that doesn't trust their project manager, will falter in an unproductive, disheartening cycle of misery. All too often, personal attitudes, future career aspirations, and historical biases damage manager-team relations before they have a chance to flourish. Really, it comes down to the old quote where a team is only as strong as its weakest member (or members).
All projects have issues, but how we respond to these issues defines how well we work together. I've been lucky enough to have worked with mostly professionals and we have more or less amicably worked trough our difficulties without losing too much blood. Or maybe I've just been lucky.
Just Like Tom Peters says: It's a balancing act!
Ego / No Ego ; Ambiguity / Perfection; Oral / Written; Courage / Fear; Optimist (believer) / Pessimist; Autocrat / Delegator; Acknoledge Complexity / Tolerate Simplicty; Impatient / Patient;
This is one of the many pearls present in the previous edition of this book!
Great work Scott!
A great project manager will recognize that different problems have different solutions.
If your project is suffering from a stifling bureaucracy that prevents progress and innovation, then the solution will involve removing pieces of bureaucracy.
If it's suffering from chaos -- lack of direction and control -- the solution will involve adding bureaucracy.
It's fun, and useful, to study how other people have successfully dealt with their particular problems. It's necessary to fill your toolbox with lots of ways to address lots of different situations. But it's absolutely critical to recognize what problems you are actually facing, and solve those problems.
Great project managers give their team the freedom to follow through on their own ideas in completing the project while ensuring delivery on time.
Great PMs keep their cool, work with the strengths of their team members and lead by example.
This very old description describes the modern project manager (From Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching):
Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.
Great PM's know how to connect with everyone in the team more personal level to maximize the team effectiveness and individual contributions.
A great project manager is sui generis: their greatness derives from what they as an individual bring to the project.
It's a lot easier to define what makes a good project manager: somebody who knows there's more to managing a project than just keeping MS Project up-to-date.
Cheers, APC
The generosity of O'Reilly is astounding...one whole book to be given away. Get this...not a half a book, not 3/4 of a book but a whole book. That's so incredibly generous that I'm challenging O'Reilly and Scott Berkun to give away 2 books next time he publishes one. Deal or no deal?
Great managers put all their effort into making the rest of the team succeed. If the rest of the team behaves in the same manner, everyone succeeds, and everyone's happy.
Great PMs are part psychiatrist, part drill sergeant.
A great PM knows when to press and when to let slide. Enough said.
The great Project Manager has three core qualities: they care, they serve, and they make decisions.
They must care enough to not let people run themselves into the ground for the project.
They must show 'servant leadership', focusing on removing obstacles so their people can do what they do best.
Lastly, they must be decisive and give direction when it is needed. Umming and ahhing and letting things drag on is a recipe for killing the passion of the people on the project.
The perfect project manager has infectious passion for the project, has the capability to stay organized (and keep chaos from emerging), and has the ability to pick (and retain) the right team to help them.
A good project manager anticipates and proactively mitigates risks before they become an issue. Many PMs are always in fire-fighting mode and in dealing with short term urgencies lose the overall perspective. A good PM doesn't lose sight of the larger project goal and keeps the project on track.
PM has to be a people person who can motivate and inspire his or her team. At the same time he or she knows how to manage upwards and keeps scope under control.
Most important, a great PM has to have a good sense of humor to remain sane and make project enjoyable for his team.
The perfect project manager is a catalyst just like in a chemical reaction. He helps to improve the chemical reaction (the project process) without altering the final result of the chemical reaction.
Project management is about managing the expectations of your clients and effectively using your resources, while protecting the interests of your coworkers and your clients.
Qualities of a good project manager:
1. Their own behavior demonstrates integrity in self, home, work and community.
2. Crisp
3. Uses metrics to communicate what is the desired (and undesired) team behavior.
4. Conducts weekly one on one 30 minute meetings with their directs.
IMHO, a good project manager focuses on the bottom line, targets the problem and not the person, has good communication skills, is smart enough to manage and resolve conflicts between teams or team members, maintains team morale, does often do more work and be more productive than his team members etc., He is a constant source of motivation.
An effective project manager is above all firm but fair, the reasons for which are many. They should realize that in addition to the the project, they have responsibilities not only to those above, but to those below as well. The best way to please those above is to work with those below firmly but fairly. That is to say that the project has a schedule, but things happen that may affect the schedule. They should further realizes that there are steps / actions that can be taken to minimize the surprise schedule delays such as not demanding delivery estimates on a project while at the same time not giving adequate time to do even a rough design let alone a proper design. Great software is based on a firm foundation, guessing on estimates without proper information weakens the foundation of the project in and of itself and will have a direct affect on the foundation of the software.
An effective project manager will use metrics, but not preach them or live by them. Software development is not in anyway like manufacturing, even if you use software factories. Living by metrics is detrimental to the morale of those that are actually responsible for the project to be completed; the keyword in the title is 'manager', and the person in that role should be humble enough to realize that and operate as such, being a task manager and always pushing will not help the process, it's not like I can take a 2x4 and some nails and screws and kick out the application.
An effective project manager should keep abridged of the status of the project, it is after all part of the job description. However, they should also realize that there are more ways to accomplish that than to always have meetings. Meetings take time, time away from working on the project. While status meetings are inevitable, they need not be regular. Utilize project tracking software, a good developer will realize that people want to know where things are at and while they may whine, they'll most likely prefer logging into some system and updating status. That said, the project manager or any management for that matter should ever abuse that system using the information in what would seem a micro managing role.
Firm but fair. Realize the job that needs to be done and accomplish it while at the same time realizing that others need to do the same in their individual roles. Strive to accomplish but realize the individual factors and adjust accordingly. Firm but fair provides for a better harmony which leads to a better development ecosystem.
</soapbox>
A great project manager protects his team from distractions and takes care of day to day things to progress the project.
He takes care of building trust among team members
He ensures there is open/transparent communication across the team
He is should be impartial
Manages Risk well
Basically gels with the team and helps the team to get what ever is required to deliver at the end of the day
For me, a good project manager has to be like a good football coach. I have to want to do things for them. I would rather respect a prooject manager, rather than be friends with them.
Unfortunately this is a quality that's very difficult to learn.
Also a good project manager should recognise that the timeline for tasks is not linear. They should plan for 50% of the time to be spent on getting the first task right, and 50% on replicating this to the rest of the project.
I still think Rudyard Kipling said it best:
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Hire slow, Fire fast.
It works for me.
A good PM seems to always know what YOU need and never says to you (directly) what HE needs.
A good PM recognizes that they succeed with the team and fail with the team. A bad PM will try to claim successes for themselves and will blame the team for failures.
The good PM is fully present.
When you have a conversation with her, you have her full attention.
The good PM is congruent.
When she communicates and make decisions, she harmonizes her own needs, the other member's needs, and the needs of the project. She always works on all three needs rather than a single need.
The good PM is a change artist
She knows when to insert herself and when to let the team work it out themselves.
The good PM is healthy
Her work habits set a good example. Never too little, never too much.
The good PM is responsible.
She takes full responsibility for failure and gives credit to the team for for success.
The good PM is appreciative.
She knows how to reward and recognize the team members so they know when they are doing the right things.
The good PM plans but doesn't worship the plan.
She knows when things aren't working and makes new plan rather than crashing.
The good PM is assertive.
She deals with problems rather than letting them fester.
The good PM is likeable.
You thrive on being around her.
Qualities:
1) Confirm estimates with the team for all components of a task.
2) Have a way to record estimates so that these can be re-used for future projects.
3) Only stand up meetings
4) Start and end meetings on time. Only then projects will start and end on time !
Project managers are spear-catchers. They have that "warrior energy" to stand in front of the team and take the heat from management when there's a problem.
They are not leading from the back; they are leading from the front by clearly defining what are the objectives of the project and then getting out of the way to let the team achieve them. They have passion and they believe they can make a difference and never lose faith. Like Winston Churchill once said : "Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
A good project manager has courage , creativity ,can break the rules ,formulate a solution , implement , influence , find alternative resources, communicate the project ,invision the end of the project,motivate the people involved , and committ 24/7 regardless of what is happening around them. One of the best was ----Walt Disney
Keeping it succinct :
* Integrity.
* Passion for work.
* Knowledge about technical and general flow of the work lead by him/her, enabling the leader to also work as team-member.
* Collaboration and communication at all levels.
* Intimacy with team.
* Art of using using KPIs with higher bosses and translating the KPI semantics to the team below.
* Planning and preparing for anticipated challenges.
* Personal Charisma.
* Enabling a culture of democracy at workplace, collaborative decision making.Minimizing the autocratic decisions to a bare minimal necessary.
* Attitude of getting things done rather than waiting for them to happen for you.
The perfect project manager
understands what's to be achieved,
and why.
Can articulate how it will be done
and who by.
Plans for certainty,
but can handle ambiguity.
Groks technology,
but also comprehends
that it's just a means
to achieve ends.
Has many worthy virtues
and several human foibles.
But knows, really knows,
that projects are made
(or ruined!)
by people.
I'm a .Net developer and happily for me I get to cycle to work each day. On a good day I arrive at work to find that I've beaten my average time even though I hadn't been struggling to do so. At that moment I realise that I had the wind behind me the whole way!
And that's what working for a good project manager should feel like. No fireworks, no one shouting at you, just the support you need to allow you to get where you need to be as quickly as posible.
A good PM has a clear overview over his project, a good understanding of his domain and knows how to form and lead a team.
A bad PM is difficult to approach for his team members, compensates lacking understanding with activism, fails to see dependencies between different parts of his project and thinks he can manage multiple projects at once.
A good PM makes sure they have balanced the negative interactions with the positive ones -- usually about 1:5.
I am convinced that a project manager must be part psychologist. You must LEARN and UNDERSTAND what makes people tick; what their buttons are; how to build relationships. You have to be good at leveraging the wide range of personalities and agendas to get the job done and still make people feel a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It's all about communicating and knowing which method works best with each person, individually. It's about the people.
I remember the advice my mentor gave me when I first made the transition from developer to PM: you can always tell the good PMs from the crummy ones by how much of their day is spent sitting at their desks. The good ones are ambling about, staying in the fray, getting involved in any way they can with the actual heavy lifting of shipping rather than simply holding a clipboard and checking off complete tasks. It is that addiction to shipping that great PMs all share in common.
Humility and respect for the people he manages.
The perfect project manager requires a multitude of things but first and foremost is the ability to listen, process and communicate.
As many comments have stated here that there is no book to tell you how to do everything, it’s a lot like being a parent and experience is key! Along with experience you have to be willing to work on yourself, bite your tongue at times and try not to always make everyone happy or you will wind up in hell yourself. Watch out for boomerangs, low flying objects and stubborn vehicles in your path, predict the unpredictable and have a vision. Do not wing it but be prepared to accept change daily. You need to be able to convey where you are on a project at a moment’s notice and spare the detail for your reports. Know when a fire is a fire and know when a blaze is a blaze, you might be able to put both out so careful when to raise an alarm. Overall, be willing to share your thoughts and bounce ideas off of others but come prepared. Project management is much like managing a good life.
A perfect project manager is like a unicorn: most of us know what they look like, but none of us have ever seen one.
a good project manager is a leader. a bad project manager is just another manager.
Project managers must be able to see into the future, live in the present and never forget the past. The past help them understand the challenges that have come before. The present is where their team lives and needs leadership. The future is where they will have the biggest impact as they identify what projects need to come next.
In film school we described project management this way:
You write what's in your head.
You shoot what you can get.
You edit what you shot.
It's all about balancing priorities and compromises forced by deadlines.
Based on my experience, good project managers are the ones who have been through the worst on the other end, and learned from those experiences as what not to do.
First and foremost, Project Managers have to be good communicators with great vision. They have to see the 'big picture' of a project as well as the teeny tiny details. The best Project Managers I've worked with are also great diplomats.
I look at a good project manager as someone who employs an aperture to communicate. They offer different views based on intent, whether it be a small aperture which would allow shallow depth of field resulting in one object in focus, or a large aperture that provides a clear picture of a large number of things. Much like everyone has a voice, an aperture is simply a hole that lets light in. The trick is knowing how and when to use it.
A good project manager can prioritize work items, rally the team behind the project goals and deliver quality end results on time and within budget.
I think the best project manager is the one who is most effective at understanding and working with people and all the personality clashes that come with it. There are a million ways to organize a project, each with their own merits, but it's the ability of the manager to bring all the people together to make things happen.
I have worked with dozens of IT project managers, but the best one I worked for was a bear of a man with a heart of gold. He was gentle by nature but would fight for you and fight for his projects, but he had an interesting way of getting commitment to yes/no questions, "Imagine your house/car is riding on this. It the answer yes or no?".....
For me a perfect project manager would be someone with a deep amount of perspective. Perspective helps you effectively plan and execute the tasks at hand.
Someone with empathy, experience, wit, and cunning who can follow the rules or break them as needed for the sake of the team and the outcome of their project.
Listens like a buddhist; thinks like a borg; plays like a monkey.
A good project manager is organized, communicates well, has a keen sense of managing risks, and is a master at multitasking.
A good PM is a thinker, a planner, an innovator, a creator, a coordinator, follows discipline, and views the forest and the trees; a diplomat, a politician who takes full responsibility for the success or failure of the project. He or she ask not what the organization or project can do for him/her, rather ask what he/she can do for the project and organization. The project success is his/her success…. Like Generals Patton and Eisenhower, good PMs are also generals moving forward with a half plan rather than never moving with the planning for the perfect plan. In preparing for a big project, good PMs know that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable; great PMs understand the good tactics can save even the worst strategies but they also know that bad tactics will destroy even the best strategies.
A good program manager is one who thinks ahead of the team on every thing, inculding the foreseeing the issues, risks, comes up with mitigation plans and keeps team insulated from external noise so that team can work the required stuff in focussed manner. Also motivates the team all thru the diffrent phases of the project.
beside having all of the standard features, PM is:
* a casual person, but with proper knowledge
* not neccesarily a genious, but knows how to extract knowledge from people
* makes mistakes, but can admit it and - most of all - looks for a solutions and makes sure that there is a plan, and it is followed.