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The value of project management during turbulent times

With the current financial downturn, organizations are looking for ways to cut costs. In their haste, these organizations may make some mistakes concerning the value of project management.

First of all, many decision-makers mistakenly believe that project management is a luxury, an overhead expense that, in a pinch, can be done without. After all, it’s the team members who do the actual work, right? The PM is just an administrator, coordinator or status report writer.

Not True!!

Proven project management processes and practices can make the difference between the success or failure of an enterprise’s business strategy. Project management is more than just coordinating the work of others and reporting on their progress. Project management has protocols, methodologies and proven professional practices based on experience, consensus and scholarly research. There’s a big difference between being a general manager and being a project manager. Project management is a well-defined specialty within the management domain.

Then there is the very serious, but all too common, mistake of taking one of the more senior team members and giving that person PM responsibilities on top of or in addition to their regular, hands-on responsibilities. This would seem to save money. After all, you’re getting one person to fill two roles so there’s only one salary to pay. In addition, you’re paying the salary of a team member, not the higher salary of a professional project manager.

This is another big mistake!!

Regardless of the title of the person in the role, the role of project manager is a full-time role. Organizations who are looking to fill positions such as “PM/Business Analyst” or “PM/Technical Lead” are kidding themselves. This is like an airline looking to fill the position of “Pilot/Flight Attendant”, perhaps expecting the pilot to put the aircraft on auto-pilot while he serves beverages in the cabin.

The above two mistakes are well documented and pretty much accepted among the knowledgeable members of the professional project management community, so I won’t go into any more detail about them here. Rather, I’d like to point out that, with the pressures of the current financial conditions out in industry, there will be a lot of pressure on middle-management to save money. When you combine this with senior management’’s often very limited understanding of modern project management and the value of sound, proven project management processes, the result can be a reduction or even the elimination of the full-time PM role on projects.

The short-term benefits of this short-minded approach will be more than offset by the negative results in the long-term. Projects will fail and this will prove to be very costly at a time when managing costs is more important than ever.

Middle-managers who are unfamiliar with the necessity of professional project management may see this short-sighted approach as an easy way to comply with cost-cutting requirements. Middle-managers who do, indeed, understand the value of project management, but are worried about their own job prospects, may simply go along with senior management’s short-sightedness in order to preserve their own short-term employment prospects.

Just as having a full-time pilot on a commercial airline flight is essential to a successful flight, management at all levels must recognize that full-time project managers are essential to the successful execution and delivery of projects. Rather than remove pilots from airplanes as a cost cutting tactic, an airline will simply find other areas where they can cut costs — perhaps one less flight attendant. If they cannot find any suitable areas for cost cutting, the airline may simply decide to cut down on the number of flights or routes they will offer.

The same is true of organizations with on-going programs of projects. Removing the full-time PM role will only result in project “crashes.” Rather than going on with the projects without the PMs, the organization should identify other areas of cost cutting — perhaps stretching out projects across a longer schedule or removing non-essential scope. If this cannot be done, then the organization should review their programs and portfolios and identify projects that can be postponed or eliminated.

An airline would hate to have to cut out flights, but doing so is an acceptable way to cut costs. Continuing the flights while eliminating pilots is not!! In this tough financial climate, organizations may need to cut down on their projects. However, they cannot continue with their projects without full-time, experienced, project managers. This is simply reality.

Jerry Bucknoff, MBA, PMP

Project Management Best Practices