Over the arc of my project management experience, I have witnessed some misunderstandings about the role and practice of "project management."
I have experienced a director declare, “I don’t have time for project management,” and a senior technical lead be confronting with “If you're not technical, what value are you?” I have even overheard a senior manager actually say that he "hated" project management.
As the expression goes, we fear what we don’t understand. To the uninitiated or under-informed, "project management" can seem pedantic, burdensome, even an impediment to quickly achieving the organization’s initiatives. “We don’t have time for all that fussiness – just need to get it done” or “I don’t want to hold up progress because of procedures.”
In fact, project management is the link between an organization’s capabilities and its strategic initiatives. Project management brings the skills, knowledge, tools, techniques and process framework for applying the organization's talents to fulfilling its objectives. Project management holds the ingredients for planning, managing and delivering an organization’s value to its stakeholders with any real certainty.
An analogy that comes to mind to help understand the role of the project manager is the conductor of an orchestra, and why you won’t find a good orchestra without a good conductor. The uninformed could again question the need for a conductor. Everyone is playing from the same music score – right? An orchestra can just self-regulate its interpretation, tempo, phrasing and emphasis – can’t it?
Smaller performance teams can indeed perform without a conductor, because communicating and coordinating off of each other’s sound, movement and visual cues is easier. With rehearsal and experience, they cooperatively learn how to manage their production talents according to the performance plan laid out by the music score.
But when the performance requires interactions between more distributed teams with more diverse skills taking on more complex performance plans, output quality becomes less predictable if left to self-guidance.
A more successful outcome is gained when someone continuously monitors and controls the talent resources, making sure the performance is resonating according to the music plan.
Complex performance deliveries using higher skill levels need a management presence to get the most out of the gathered resources. This is why orchestras are renowned in part for their conductors. A skilled conductor can muster even more from an already talented group of performance resources.
Projects can benefit in the same way with leadership from a trained project manager. A team of skilled resources will perform even better when there is a “conductor” leading their performance.