Читать книгу Project Management for Humans - Brett Harned - Страница 35

Usually, you’ll find a project manager embedded on a team, or working on several projects, who is responsible for all of the things that make projects profitable and pleasurable, and sometimes more. Full-time PMs are dedicated to their craft and work hard to be a good project manager. But not all organizations employ full-time project managers. That’s OK, too. Those organizations may have the skills on staff to ensure that projects run smoothly, or they may experience organizational hiccups (read: missed deadlines, projects going over budget) and recognize that they need some better practices in place around the PM.

NOTE PM SKILLS FOR ALL!

Solid PM skills will prove to be valuable in many situations—both personal and professional. Whether you’re planning a move or have to estimate a new website redesign project, you’ll find that you’re doing some level of “PM work.” So, if you’re reading this thinking “not for me,” you’re likely wrong. Pick and choose the tasks and values that complement your existing qualities, and apply them. It will strengthen your work overall.

If you find yourself in that situation and still cannot justify hiring a full-time project manager, you can work to sharpen your team’s PM skills to help keep their projects on track. Designers, developers, illustrators, strategists, and anyone else on a team can be multitasking PMs on top of their regular jobs. It’s just important to keep in mind that adding project management on some folks’ plates could make them uncomfortable, especially if it’s with a client. Sure, we all manage our own work somehow, but that doesn’t mean we’re also good at managing other peoples’ work, budgets, timelines, and all of the other stuff that goes along with being a PM.

Again, you will need to consider what taking on project management responsibility will mean to you, your clients, and the people who need to make time for it as part of their full-time, non-PM role. Review the qualities and tasks listed earlier and decide which of those translates to project management for your organization. From there, you can think about the qualities that are needed and the type of person you want to fill the role. That will lead you to success not only in matching the role to an individual, but also with matching the role to your organization.

Once you do assign the role, be sure to check in and make sure that your new PM/designer (or whatever other full-time role they hold) is comfortable with the responsibility. It can take a good nine months for a full-time PM to feel comfortable with the job, so you’ll want to make sure that you’re giving this person enough training and resources as well as time and space to settle in.

What It Means to Be a Project Manager

by Dave Prior Agile expert and Certified Scrum Trainer

Nobody really ever wants to be a project manager. If you ask a group of kids what they want to be when they grow up, you might hear things like fire fighter, rock star, Batman . . . but there is little chance that any of them is going to say, “When I grow up, I want to be held accountable for things I can’t control and get blamed for things I was not responsible for.” Becoming a PM is not a choice—it is something that happens to you (see Figure 1.5). It can happen for a variety of reasons that all play out across your life like a really slow moving, painfully dysfunctional, superhero origin story. There are some who embrace it with pride and some who spend years trying to pretend it isn’t true. Some PMs are driven with a hunger to solve the impossible riddle of finding the “right” way to do it, and some come to terms with the fact that there is no one perfect way to handle all projects.

FIGURE 1.5

The Dark Knight . . . of Projects. Everything is a project, and he’ll save them all.

I’ve been managing projects for over 20 years and at various points in time, my answer to the question of “What does it mean to be a project manager” has been very different. Early on, I thought it was about managing work, then I thought it was about getting people to do stuff, then I went from following the PMBOK (A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge) to abandoning it and “PM” because I wanted to BE AGILE! I spent a lot of time stuck on that last one, hiding in shame at Agile events because I am a PMP. Eventually, I got past that and decided to accept what I am. Agile or not, I am a PM.

I was taught how to be a project manager by a guy named John Dmohowski. He was brought into a web shop I was working at to train me and another guy. He gave us each a book written by Dick Billows and said, “When I’m done with you, everything is a project.” I think that may have been the truest thing that anyone has ever said to me. Once someone teaches you to think through things in work breakdown structure, you can’t not see things that way. It permanently warps the way your brain works. You learn to see things and break them down in a way that normal people can’t. And once you learn about risk management, you stop caring whether the glass is half empty or half full. The glass becomes a fragile container of liquid that may fall to the floor, shatter, and cut people so . . . Band-Aids, we’re going to need lots of Band-Aids . . . just in case.

My favorite example of a project manager was Radar O’Reilly from M*A*S*H. Radar always knew what was coming before it happened. He always heard the choppers before anyone else. Everyone took him for granted—until he got sent home and Klinger tried to do his job. It was only in his absence that people understood the true depth of his value. A good PM is like that. If they are doing their job well, it often seems like they aren’t really doing anything at all. But take them out of the equation and wheels fall right off the horse.

I’m over 20 years into this job of being a PM. It is my chosen profession and when asked what I do, I usually respond by saying, “I get hit in the stomach with a bag of oranges for a living.” (See Uncle Bobo from The Grifters.) But now, with all this experience, all this time, all these failures and a few successes, my job is not about a schedule, or deliverables, or risk, or Gantt charts or Burndown charts, status reports, or having a certification . . . all those things come into play, but they are not what I do. My job is simple and impossible. I love doing it, I am awesome at it, and every day is an adventure in learning how to suck less at it.

I am a project manager. I hack people for a living.

TL; DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

Solid, practiced project management skills are critical to everyone, whether you’re a full-time project manager or absorbing the role for your project team. To fully understand how you can best serve in that role, consider the following guidelines:

• What does the role mean to your team, and what can you do to uphold it?

• How do you look for project risks and act on them with confidence before they become bigger issues?

• How can you be an honest, direct communicator for the sake of your team and clients?

• How can you be open to learning and adapting to people, situations, and projects?

• What does it take to embrace all of the tasks that fall to your role, such as estimating projects, creating plans, managing scope, motivating teams, and so on?

• Can you stick to your guns and do what is best not only for you, but also for the project?