Des Moines Business Record
08-13-06
Superhero support for project managers
Superheroes have superhero support; why not project managers? Project
managers are a unique breed of manager with special talents and training. To a
large degree, they have a knack for planning, organizing, controlling and leading
but they need assistance. In the movie "Sky High," teenagers with superhuman
powers are sent to a super-secret high school to learn how to be superheroes.
Initially, students are separated into superheroes and sidekicks, some by choice
and others by talent.
That's important to note: Superheroes require sidekicks to do all the small,
unimportant and mundane jobs they can't or won't do.
Project management is much the same. Project managers are often in the
limelight, taking both blame and credit for project successes and failures. But
without strong teams of project management followers who believe and
understand the techniques and tools of project management, most projects
would fail. In fact they do. Professor Jack Marchewka of Northern Illinois
University suggests that only 29 percent of projects are successful. The rest are
challenged or impaired in some way, 40 percent failing to meet business
requirements. The sad part is that project team members know a project is failing
a full six weeks before it is canceled by management, knowing they are
contributing nothing of value for those six weeks.
Projects fail because of unstable organizational environments, inadequate
attention to business needs and goals, poor articulation of user requirements,
failure to involve the users, unreliable estimates and unreliable outside suppliers,
among other reasons. We succeed when we overcome the negatives with
effective communication and the sharing of project-specific knowledge. Our
people know that projects fall behind one day at a time, and as effective
managers we need to know what they know when they know it, without
recriminations or retaliation.
We depend on the people in the trenches to give us good information, but that
can be done only if they know the rules of the game. Sidekicks should be familiar
with the importance and impacts of formulating time and cost estimates,
assessing risk and using the right tools to make these judgments.
Many employees fail to understand that projects are temporary endeavors
undertaken to accomplish unique and specific purposes; that projects are
undertaken to leverage business opportunities and solve business problems. In
reviewing 40,000 projects over the past 10 years, the Standish Group found that
where there was not a reliable project management process, companies wasted
20 percent of their project dollars. "Employees" lack knowledge of the firm's
project management methodology and the need to apply specific knowledge,
tools, skills and techniques to project activities to meet specific requirements.
Sidekicks remind, cajole, pester and focus project managers on the important
tasks while keeping track of the small details that need to be done but don't
require superhero attention.
Turn your employees into project manager sidekicks. Formal training gets people
on task and focuses projects on understood industrywide goals that will give the
firm a competitive advantage. This is different from firms that see projects as
tasks, only modifying processes or incrementally improving existing products and
services. If we recognize that project management involves everyone in the firm
in some way, at some time, that it affects career mobility and success, and that it
is a management technique that works, we all stand to gain.
Like Will Stronghold in "Sky High," superheroes may run into trouble, but when
times are bleak, sidekicks come to the rescue. Project managers are much the
same. They require sidekicks with support training to really emerge as the stars
they are.
Gary Hackbarth is an assistant professor of management information
systems at the Iowa State University College of Business