The funniest (and incidentally easiest) is just starting up, mix something together and try if it works, adjust and try again. Especially if you yourself are a
specialist or maybe even an expert on the current field of study, it is the way of working that people would most like to work on. But the real world demands predictability of the completion date, budget and quality. Here you must make a choice: either trial-and-error or add an appropriate amount of project management. It's your choice!
As with craftsmen project managers can also see in advance what the
challenges are and therefore what tools and methods to be applied in order to bring the ship safely into port. The choice involves, for example that y
ou will: - See particularly much at stakeholders - Make extra effort in getting the project organized - Analyze risks extra carefully - Involve the client and users active in the planning - Use extra energy to make a good team - Ensure great realism in estimates and schedules The more aware you become of these choices, the more proactive you also become in your thinking, and you will find that you are going ahead with the project and can begin to shape it rather than hang behind the project and grapple with all the problems.
The bottleneck is always decision speed. If management or steering committee groups are not fast and efficient enough the decisions pile up, projects comes to a standstill and last but not least absent of the impact of the projects and that it is especially serious. Although most things today have become more efficient and run faster there is still problems with getting specially the steering groups to run in a reasonable manner. Have a chat with your management about what they are doing to keep up with the speed of the many projects? and do not laugh too obvious if the answer is "Ummm .......".
Things are moving forward in the battle to get project management
into the map as a respectable discipline, but there is long way to go before we as doctors and engineers are trademarks of a well-defined product with a reasonable balanced quality. Try to consider the last five responses you got when you said "I am project manager at Company X". How often did they
understand the answer to their
question? 20 years ago there were virtually no immediate understanding. For your own sake, keep the flag high no matter how small it is. If you are not proud of your discipline as a project manager and radiates it you can not expect that the others respects your job as a project manager.
