Some Thoughts On Project Management
In the chemical industry
I don’t have any certifications in project management (at the time of writing this) and I haven’t taken any classes. This is all mostly just my experience in being managed and managing my own projects. Hope it’s useful.
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I’ve been doing a lot of project management lately and I’m not 100% sure if I want to do this more or less since I’ve started, but I view it as something that you have to do at some level. I think that project management is best described as a series of Russian nesting dolls where a large project is really just a series of smaller projects that are rolled up inside. In this analogy each nesting doll represents a new layer of the project with it’s own manager or responsible party.
The place where this analogy breaks down is that Russian nesting dolls are all painted to look alike, but in project management the high level project appearance is really a summation of the smaller projects it contains. How effective each smaller project is at communicating vertically up the chain determines the overall picture. In a sense project management is an exercise in communication which is where the tweet thread below came from:
In a perfect world, projects are developed collaboratively across functions based around a common goal. Ideally, projects are managed so that things run smoothly and on time and that is the project managers sole responsibility. When roadblocks arise the project manager coordinates the proper response to remove the roadblock and elevates the problem until it gets resolved. When successes are had within the team those successes are celebrated and the people integral to the success get the recognition they deserve.
In my experience this doesn’t happen. The reasons are numerous, but the project manager inevitably ends up having to act as a pinch hitter. The first time I ran a design of experiments was with a six sigma blackbelt who was the project manager and I learned some of the design for six sigma tools by doing. In my own brief time as a project manager I find myself assisting procurement and supply chain professionals in finding and securing new raw materials. So while a project manager’s job on paper is to manage the project they inevitably end up trying to make sure the project is done based on the timeline set by the senior leadership of the company.
Sometimes this can facilitate a crisis.
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The first time I ever spent a long period of time on a lake was with people who had been going there for decades. They knew roughly where all the hidden rocks were in the areas we traveled by boat. This is important so you don’t sink the boat or ruin your propeller.
A good project manager should know where the rocks are and decides on if the team should run into them or avoid them. Running into a rock with the proverbial project boat means that the rock is a classic internal problem and hitting that rock gives visibility to a problem that may have been festering for years. If you are new to a company or new to project management and you have no idea where these sorts of internal dangers are I would suggest you start looking.
Project Management Traps To Avoid
Action Item Lists
It’s tempting to get the whole team together and figure out the status of the different actions of the week. This is a losing battle and in my opinion no one likes it. Remember that good project management is all about communication and going through a list of actions is not communication, it’s checking up on people.
Having been part of projects with project managers there is nothing more boring than going through a list of action items from a week ago and finding out if people were able to accomplish them or not. More often than not I would probably end up reading some newsletter I’m subscribed to or I’d be doing literally anything but listening. I used to see coworkers literally fall asleep back when in these meetings in person. I can’t imagine what it’s like when some people are remote.
Providing The Solution
If you are from a specific domain of expertise and you are in a true project management role then there should be a person of your own domain expertise that you are working with on the regular. It will be tempting to try and provide what you think of as the solution to this person or to the team and this can undermine the part of the team where you have similar expertise.
If this specific area needs your domain expertise and help then do it privately and in good faith of being supportive as opposed to directive. Only be a solutions provider after the team has exhausted their options. You might be in your role because of your capabilities, but a team is more powerful than just one person.
To me, the PM role is really about seeing the big picture and making sure that things get "delivered" -- the biggest part of this is anticipating and managing roadblocks (contingency plans for people, equipment, or materials). I agree with you that Action Item lists can be boring, but they can also be useful for keeping people aware of schedule-related expectations.
For those of us who aren't officially trained project managers: it's an excellent intro. I think most of us have performed project management in one form or another in grad school without knowing it.