What is a Project Manager?
Project management can be complicated as there is no set definition. Here are a few examples:
“A project manager is the person responsible for leading a project from its inception to execution”
“Project managers are change agents” – Project Managers Institute [1]
“Project managers are the point person in charge of a specific project or projects within an organisation” – Project Manager [2]
“Project management can be defined as a way of developing a structure in a complex project” – Rory Burke, Ration Solutions Group [3]
Confused? Yeah, so was I when I started. However, over the years I have learnt that there is no set description or definition of a PM. There is only a set of behaviours. If we explore the definitions:
- Let’s look at the first definition. What if you join the project half way through its life cycle?
- Now the second one. “Project Managers are change agents”. What if you are leading a team and trying to improve collaboration?
- Next, the third one. Project Managers are the “person in charge of a project”. This is correct, but what does it mean to be in charge?
- Finally the last definition. “Project management is a way of developing a structure”. How do you go about this?
As you can see the actually definitions are vague. So…
How does Project management work then?
Being a Project Manager is portrayed as a mix of complex management, difficult planning, multiple qualifications and fairy dust. In reality it is not that complicated. In my experience project management is split into 3 core areas, with the acronym ARE:
- Adaptability
- Right behaviours
- Experience
The first core area, Adaptability, represents a person’s ability to flexibility to perform and deliver in any scenario. For example, if you were hired to manage a specific IT communications project worth £50m during its delivery phase which is falling behind schedule, you would need to deliver very quickly. There’s a saying for this kind of scenario, it’s called ‘getting thrown in the deep end’. Say you walked in on your first day and said to the team, before learning about their roles, responsibilities, personalities or the project history, “right, this is the way I want to do it, my way or the highway!” You might get lucky, but my guess is the project won’t do very well and you may not last in the organisation very long. Now, if you walked in, took a bit of time to understand the project, spoke to the team and understood who they are as people and what they do, you would know how you can apply your skills to this situation. This will also make you a figurehead to which people want to follow [4].This would make you Adaptable.
The second area is the Right behaviours. As a leader you need to display certain behaviours to lead people in the right direction. Skills are different to behaviours. For example, you may have heard many time before that a Project Manager must be professional, collaborative, organised and a leader. These are skills. How exactly do you go about being professional, collaborative, organised and a leader? This is where behaviour comes in. A behaviour is defined as “the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others”. Therefore these skills are formed by a set of behaviours exhibited by a Project Manager. Looking at the previous example, an example of the Right behaviour as a leader would be getting to know your team and project, getting their ideas and solutions to make them feel part of the journey to fixing the problem.
The last core area is Experience. Now a lot of people will probably think that to be a Project Manager you need years of experience. This isn’t true. The way I approach experience is a combination of having experience, and not having experience. Having experience is where you tap into all areas of your past to deal with a situation. For example, during the IT project, a day before launch of a system, one of your team makes a mistake which sets the project back a few weeks and increases cost by £20,000. All the team are panicking and looking for someone to blame. The person who made the mistake is really blaming themselves. You look back to a point in your life where you made a mistake in school but your teacher put an arm on your shoulder, said “don’t worry, let fix this together”. You always remember this point and you implement the same strategy here. Through this positive attitude and use of your Experience the delay was only one week and cost was minimised to a £5,000 increase. Experience has been explained as a management skill which is gained through experience [5], not learned. I disagree as the skill to use someone else’s experience can help you learn about a situation before acting.
Hence, the second part of Experience, is not having it. This is where you learn from your mistakes. Ever heard the expression, “fail forwards”. This is what I mean by not having experience. If you don’t know what to do in a situation, learn. If you fail in a situation, learn. Always looking forward from mistakes will turn not having experience, into having experience.
A true definition of a Project manager and leader?
So what exactly is the definition of a Project Manager? Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong answer. There are so many definitions of a PM but none I feel capture the diverse society of people who use the skills associated to Project management but are not professionally a “Project manager”. So here is my definition which I believe defines a Project manager and leader:
“A Project manager and leader is someone who exhibits the right behaviours based on skill and experience to steer people and adapt to a variety of situations”.
How to reference this page
- Toor, J. (2019). How Project Management Works?. Available: https://pmgrowth.co/how-project-management-works/
References
- PMI. (2019). Who are Project Managers?. Available: https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/who-are-project-managers.
- Project Manager. (2017). Project Manager. Available: https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/project-manager-job-description.
- Rory Burke, Ration Solutions Group.
- Allio, R., (2009) ‘Leadership – The Five Big Ideas’, Strategy & Leadership, 37 (2) pp.4-12.
- Kumar, V. S. (2009). Essential leadership skills for project managers. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2009—North America, Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute