Project management vs Project manager

Project managers Functional managers

- They are required an ability to - They are usually specialists in
put many pieces of a task the areas they manage, they
together to form a coherent know the detail of each
whole. operation for which they are
- They should be more skilled responsible.
at synthesis and they use - They are analytically oriented
system approach, which helps and they use analytic
them to manage a set of approach, which focuses on
interrelated components that breaking the components of a
accepts inputs and produces system into smaller elements
outputs in a purposeful - They are direct, technical
manner. supervisiors who are
- They are facilitators and reponsible for deciding how
generalists who are responsible something will be done, who
for deciding what need to be will do it, and what resources
done, when must it be done, will be devoted to accomplich
and how are the resources the task.
required to do the job to be - They may affect the choice of
obtained. technonology to be used by
- They are responsible for project and the specific
organizing, staffing, budgeting, individuals who will do the
directing, planning, and work.
controlling the project - Depending on how the
- They are responsible for the project is organized, they have
results. little or no direct responsibility
for the results.

Reponsibilites of PM
 Responsibility to the Parent Organization
Conservation of resources
Timely and accurate project communications
Careful, competent management of the project
 Protect the firm from high risk
Accurate reporting of project status with regard to budget and
schedule
 Responsibility to the Client
Preserve integrity of project and client
Resolve conflict among interested parties
Ensure performance, budgets, and deadlines are met
 Responsibility to the Team Members
Fairness, respect, honesty
Concern for members’ future after project
=> None of these strenuous activities relieves the project manager
of the responsibility of keeping ther project on time, within budget,
and up to specifications.

Special demands on PM
1. Acquiring adequate resources: The resources initially
budgeted for a project are frequently insufficient to the
task. Crises occur that require special resources not
usually provided to the project manager.
 Sometimes resource trade-offs are required
 Subcontracting is an option
 Project and functional managers perceive availability of
resources to be strictly limited
 Competition for resources often turns into “win-lose”
propositions between project and functional managers

2. Acquiring and motivating personnel

 A major problem for the project manager is that most people
required for a project must be “borrowed”.
 The project manager must negotiate with the functional
department managers for the desired personnel, and
negotiate with prople themselves to convince them to take on
these challenging temprorary project assignments.
  The project manager is usually trying to borrow precisely thost
people the functional manager would most like to keep:
individuals with scarce but necessary skills, and top producers
Motivating personnel
 Typically, the functional manager retains control of personnel
evaluation, salary, and promotion for those people lent out to
projects
 Because the functional manager controls pay and promotion,
the project manager cannot promise much beyond the
challenge of the work itself
 The issue of motivating people to join the work creatively for a
project is closely related to the kind of people who are invited
to join. The most effective team members have some common
characteristics.
o High quality technical skills: team mebers should be able
to slve most of the technical problems for a project
without recourse to outside assistance.
o Political sensitivity because project success is dependent
on support from senior management in the parent
organization.
o Strong problem orientation: Team members tend to
learn and adopt whatever problem-solving techiniques
appear helpful.
o Strong goal orientation: Projects do not provide a
comfortable work environment for individuals whose
focus is on activity rather than on results.
o High self-esteem: they must be comfortable with being
held accountable for the results of their work, and be
able to maintain high ethical standards in the face of
considerable uncertainty about the nature of project
outcomes.
 3. Dealing with obstacles
 From the beginning of the project to its termination, crises
appear without warning. The better the planning, the fewer
the crises, but no amount of planning can take account of the
myriad of changes that can and do occur the project’s
evironment.
 One characteristic of any project is its uniqueness and with
that come a series of crises:
o At the inception of a project, the “fires” tend to be
associated with resources
o As a project nears completion, obstacles tend to be
clustered around two issues:
 1. Last minute schedule and technical changes
=> The project manager should develop special routines for dealing
with various types of problems so that they can be detected and
recognized as early as possible
 2. Uncertainty surrounding what happens to
members of the project team when the project is
completed
=> The key to solving such problems is communication. The project
manager should make open communication between the project
manager and team members first priority.

4. Making project goal trade offs

 The project manager must make trade offs between the
project goals of cost, time and performance
o During the design or formation stage of the project life
cycle, there is no significant difference in the importance
project managers place on the three goals
o Schedule is the primary goal during the build up stage,
being more important than performance, which is in turn
significantly more important than cost
o During the final stage, phaseout, performance is
significantly more important than cost
 Relative importance of project objectives for each stage of the
project life cycle:

5. Dealing with failure and the risk and fear of failure

 It is difficult, at times, to distinguish between project failure,
partial failure, and success.
 What appears to be a failure at one point in the life of a
project may look like a success at another
 By dividing all projects into two general categories, interesting
differences in the nature and timing of perceived difficulties
can be found
 Two general types of projects:
 Type 1 - these projects are generally well-understood, routine
construction projects
o Appear simple at the beginning of the project
o Rarely fail because they are late or over budget, though
commonly are both
o They fail because they are not organized to handle
unexpected crises and deviations from the plan
 o These projects often lack the appropriate technical
expertise to handle such crises
 Type 2 - these are not well understood, and there may be
considerable uncertainty about specifically what must be done
o Many difficulties early in the life of the project, and often
are considered planning problems
o Most of these problems result from a failure to define the
mission carefully
o Often fail to get the client’s acceptance on the project
mission

6. Maintaining breadth of communication

 Most of the project manager’s time is spent communicating
with the many groups interested in the project
o Considerable time must be spent selling, reselling, and
explaining the project
o Interested parties include:
 Top management
 Functional departments
 Clients
 Members of the project team
 To effectively deal with the demands, a project manager must
understand and deal with certain fundamental issues:
o Must understand why the project exists
o Critical to have the support of top management
o Build and maintain a solid information network
o Must be flexible in many ways, with as many people, and
about as many activities as possible throughout the life of
the project

7. Negotiation
In order to meet the demands of the job of project manager -
Acquiring adequate resources, Acquiring and motivating personnel,
Dealing with obstacles, Making project goal trade offs, Dealing with
failure and the risk and fear of failure, Maintaining breadth of
communication, the project manager must be highly skilled
negotiator. There is almost aspect of the project manager’s job that
does not depend directly on this skill.

Effective project manager

1. Credibility
The project manager needs two kinds of credibility:
• Technical credibility: possessing sufficient technical knowledge
to direct the project. Project manager does not need to have a high
level of expertise, he/she just has to have a reasonable insight into
the base technologies to understand the problems of the project to
address them.
• Administrative credibility: several key administrative
responsibilities that must be performed with skill. Project manager
have to keep the project on schedule and within costs. They must
also make sure the project team has material, equipment, and
labor when needed.
2. Sensitivity
There are several ways for project managers to display sensitivity:
• Understanding the organization’s political structure
• Sense interpersonal conflict on the project team or between
team members and outsiders: Successful project managers are not
conflict avoiders. They have to deal with it before the conflict
increase into a warfare among many departments.
• Keeps team members “cool”: Projects managers have to have
the ability to persuade team members to set aside personal likes
and dislikes and to focus on achieving project goals.
• Sensitive set of technical sensors: They must have the ability
to sense the failure that team members may try to hide and to
sense when things are not progressing properly.
3. Leadership & Management style
Leadership has been defined as:
 “interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and directed
through the communication process, toward the attainment of a
specified goal or goals.”
In other words, the project manager should cover people’s
strengths and weaknesses, know when to punish and when to
reward, know when to communicate and when to remain silent
4. Ability to handle stress
Four major causes of stress:
 Never developing a consistent set of procedures and
techniques with which to manage their work
 Have “too much on their plates”: limitation for their capacity.
 Have a high need to achieve: the demands are greater than
the person’s ability
 The parent organization is in the middle of major change

Impact of Institutional Environments

 A culture’s institutions are a part of the environment for every
project
 In general systems theory, the environment of a system is
defined as everything outside the system that receives outputs
from it or delivers inputs to it
 Project managers must consider the following environments
and how they may impact a project:
 Socioeconomic environment: on international project,
the project manager can expect to deal with bureaucracy
at several different levels (i.e., local, regional, and
national government functionaries.)
 Legal environment: The failure to understand the culture
of a nation in which negotiations are taking place puts the
ignorant party at a severe disadvantages. Because each
nation’s law results from the attempt to reduce conflict
which is a reflection of its unique culture.
  The business cycle as an environment: The project
manager should be aware of the general level of business
conditions in the nation hosting the project because the
depth of the cycle will be greater in one nation than
another.
 Technological environment: The ability to complete a
project with success is often dependent on the project
manager’s ability to plan the project in such a way as to
be compatible with the technology available in the host
nation.

Problems of cultural differences

 The importance of language cannot be overstated
 Communication cannot be separated from the communicator
 Managerial and personal behaviors of the project manager must
be considered in the communication process
 Structure and style of communications
 Managerial and personal behavior
 Structure and Style of Communications:
 In the United States, delegation is a preferred managerial style
 In cultures where authority is highly centralized, it becomes the
project manager’s responsibility to seek out information
 The manager of an international project cannot count on being
voluntarily informed of problems and potential problems by his
or her subordinates
 Managerial and Personal Behavior
 In a society with highly structured social classes, it is difficult to
practice participative management
 There is an assumption that the more educated, higher-class
manager’s authority will be denigrated by using a participative
style
 The more structured a country’s social system, the less direct
managerial communication tends to be