Project management gets a bad rap sometimes because some things are easier to quantify than others.
For example, it seems easy to quantify the cost of creating documentation. The time it takes to create the document and the actual physical output (2-200 pages of sometimes technical stuff that only a few people understand) are easily quantifiable. So what happens? People say, "Project management is just creating documentation that will sit in storage unread." I won't dispute that it's sometimes a valid complaint.
Or here's another one. "Why do we have to pay for this person (the project manager) when we could get a couple of us together and knock this thing out?" Another sometimes valid complaint since it's easy to see the PM and quantify their time but not always so easy to see and quantify their value.
Of course project management is a deep and complex profession, but it's not so easy to quantify the less visible things a PM does such as:
- The value of focusing communication on the right topics and with the right people
- Keeping a project on schedule by motivating people to do work when the PM doesn't directly supervise those people
- Getting the right people to act on a problem when everyone thinks it's someone else's job
- Identifying what a customer really wants when they don't really know what they want
- Making sure all the right people review, approve, and will actually support the plans and decisions that will move the project forward
My name is Brian Mossing. I'm a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with an MBA and have over 25 years of business experience supporting the IT, Aerospace and Defense, Transportation, Training, and Quality industries. I enjoy project management for its never ending challenges and opportunities to learn more. I currently work for one of the world's largest aerospace/defense contractors and manage projects (usually multiple projects concurrently) with dollar values anywhere from the tens of thousands into multiple millions.
I'm available to consult on project management issues and activities or just to talk things over if that will help. Feel free to contact me at brian@clearpm.com, look me up on LinkedIn, or follow me on Twitter.
