Accidental Project Manager – Balancing Art and Science of Project Management
Scenario
A typical career path for a project manager is – A technical lead has done a good job and in order to recognize his contributions, he is promoted to the position of a project manager. This is an example of Accidental Project Manager.
These project managers genuinely think that they are doing a perfect job and indeed spend a lot of effort and energy in the project, but most likely they will be considered as a failure in their role of project manager. This leaves them perplexed and wondering – What did I do wrong?
As a Fresh Project Manager
I myself was a perfect example of Accidental Project Manager. I was doing a good job as a technical lead and then I was made into a Project Manager. Luckily for me, I had a good team and the initial projects were relatively less complicated. This helped mask my lack of expertise in Project Management. However, after a few years of enjoying success (mainly because of easy assignments initially), I took on complex projects confident of making them successful. However, I failed miserably. One of the reason for the failure was – I took on too much scope than what I could really handle. After doing 5 Why RCA, the ultimate root cause is "I didn’t know that I didn’t know the art of project management. I only knew the science of it." The situation was so bad that a critical project was about to fail but thankfully my manager jumped in immediately and saved the project. Not everyone will be lucky to have such managers!
With a Salt -N- Pepper Look & Many More Battle Wounds
In a training, I learnt that it is important to understand that Project Management is not just Science, but it is also an Art. Let me explain what this means.
Science of Project Management. This is the straight-forward aspect like planning, monitoring progress, checking costs, measuring quality of the product through standard metrics, checking progress against scope, reporting status to senior management and so on.
Art of Project Management. This is mostly to do with interpersonal skills. Leading a project team through chaos, understanding the complex thought processes of key stakeholders and guiding them to work together for a common goal, motivating key stakeholders especially during challenging times, resolving conflicts among team members and so on..
In order to be successful as a project manager, one needs to
appreciate and acknowledge the fact that there is an "Art" form as well.
understand the team dynamics
know what motivates key stakeholders and constantly appreciates good work in public forums
understand what causes individuals to breakdown OR go into a shell; all efforts need to be spent to avoid these scenarios
know when to use a carrot and when to use a stick.
These are skills that cannot be provided through training, but through practical experience and mentoring. For you to be successful as a project manager, you need to find a good mentor who can guide you when you face challenging situations.
Finally, it is very important not to react immediately to a situation. Take a step back, think peacefully and then react. I have seen projects failing due to aggressive nature of project managers which breaks relationships and many times this leads to irreversible damage.
Let me leave you with a well known thought. It takes a lot of time to build trust and good relationship, but it takes just one event to break it completely. After that it again takes a lot of time/effort to undo the damage.