I’ve been thinking for a while now about the difficulties there can be with getting good information about project management when you’re starting out.

Naturally, there are some great resources on the internet. To blow my own trumpet for a moment, my own New to Project Management? page offers some good pointers. Equally, there are a lot of other sites which offer very short introductions to the discipline.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realised that that is probably not enough for many people. When I first started my career, I was lucky enough to work for an organisation that understood the importance of project management, and had excellent mentors that could help me progress.

But there are many organisations out there that don’t understand this, or don’t have the resources to be able to pay for expensive training courses for their staff. What about prospective project managers in those places? What about the people in those organisations who have already had a project dropped on them, but are beginning to realise they haven’t got the tools to tackle it?

It seems to me that what these people need is a simple guide, not just to what project managers do, but to why they do it. An inexpensive pack of information that not only gives them the tools to tackle project management, but an understanding of when to use them. That understanding is really valuable, and it’s what you need to make all the processes project managers use make sense.

A couple of months ago, I started work on something to hopefully help those people. The more time I’ve spent on it, the more I’ve realised how useful it could be. I’ll be releasing it as my first information product, and I’m pretty excited with how it’s turned out. I hope you will be too.

I’ll be finishing it in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll keep you updated about how you can get your hands on it.

I’ve been looking around at a lot of websites recently that yell about how hard project management is, how difficult it is to figure out. They talk about the complex processes, the confusing techniques, and the baffling methods.

The truth is, though, that project management isn’t difficult. No, really, it isn’t.

At the most basic level, all project management needs is a fairly logical mind, and an ability to keep an eye on what is happening. That’s it. You use the logical mind to figure out what needs to happen, and in what order, and then, once you’ve assigned the work, you keep an eye on it to make sure it does.

Of course, that’s not to say project management can’t be complicated, but that’s a different thing to difficult. The basics above will serve you fine for the smallest projects, but as the projects themselves get more complicated, so do the techniques you need to use to keep on top of them.

Unfortunately, that means a lot of people jump straight into learning a large, cumbersome, and over-the-top project management methodology, complete with its own particular terms and way of approaching a project. While you may need to know these things later, they’re not what you should start with straight away.

The best thing to do is to gain a solid understanding of the foundations of project management, the reasons why project managers do what they do, not just the how. The reasons for doing something will always be more useful to you than just one view of how to do it.

By learning why, you’ll be able to tailor your approach to differing situations. By learning why, you won’t be one of those dreaded project managers that apply one methodology in full, regardless of whether it’s appropriate. By learning why, you’ll be a better project manager.

A timely talk from Nigel Marsh for Valentine’s Day?

This is a great talk from Jason Fried about the problems with working in an office, with all the distractions that implies. It is interesting and provocative, and well worth a watch.

An important lesson from this, for me, is to remember what a project manager is for. The people who are actually doing the work in your project are the most important resource you have, and you as a project manager should be guarding their time jealously.

Now, most of us are pretty good at this when it comes to resisting attempts from outside the project to take away our team members’ time, but how do we perform in making sure we aren’t destroying their ability to work?

If nothing else, I can certainly get behind the idea of reducing meetings – maybe we can’t get rid of them altogether, but we can certainly improve on them – check out my post on 10 tips for better meetings.

After my post on Friday about building a team, the folks at Steelray Software sent me a link to a great blog post covering the subject of teams, and the different personalities in them. You really should go and read Why That Urge to Scream is Totally Valid.

So thanks to Steelray for sending me that link on Twitter. (Hey, don’t forget you can follow me on Twitter too!)

Don’t forget to send me your tips on building a team!

In this video, Alain de Botton talks about a different way of looking at success. It’s a good video, Alain is a witty and amusing speaker. He got me thinking about this blog, and whether it has been successful.

It’s been eight months since I started this blog, and seven since I really threw myself into it at the start of the year. Over that time, I’ve produced almost 100 posts. But has the whole process been a success?

As project managers, it’s too easy for us to get bogged down in one definition of success – the same we use when we are dealing with projects. Did it deliver to requirements, was it on time, and so on.

But, of course, this blog isn’t really a project – for a start, it doesn’t have an end-date! I also didn’t set myself goals when I started it, other than writing about project management.

So when it comes to deciding whether it has been a success, it has to be a personal and relative judgement, not an objective one. And looked at that way, I’m pretty happy. I have indeed been writing about project management, and I like to think my writing has been getting better. There are now a considerable number of people who read the blog, and I thank each of you.

More importantly than the numbers and the writing, though, is that working on the blog has forced me to take the time and give myself the space to think more deeply about project management, and about what it means to be a project manager. I’ve clarified my own feelings on what is important, how we should handle teams and managers, and how to be more successful in our projects.

I’ve also had my eyes opened to new ways of sharing my passion for and knowledge about project management. I’m currently working on another project (this one really is a project!) to help me do this, and will be able to talk about this more soon.

I’ve also been lucky enough to share in a whole world of online project management blogging, tips, advice, podcasts, information and community. Project management can sometimes get lonely, and it’s good to remember we are all part of a global community of professionals.

So has it been a success? Personally, yes, it has. I’ve got a lot out of it, and I hope you have got something out of it too!

So, last Friday I asked “What’s the point of project managers?” Not surprisingly, as a project manager myself, I think project managers are very useful! But I wanted to throw it open to you guys, and see what reasons you have for the importance of project managers. And you didn’t let me down, especially on LinkedIn!

John Burke says:
“Having someone trying to manage a project alongside the day job has never worked successfully wherever I’ve seen it tried. The individuals, when stretched with ever increasing workloads, have always reverted to completing day job tasks first at the expense of the project”

Dveirel Kovalsky says:
“Project managers contribute to the Knowledge Management and ‘wisdom’ of the company as an asset.”

Mahesh Subramaniam says:
“It is only the project manager whose sole aim is to keep an eye on the deliverables and align the individual objectives towards the common goal of delivering the business product that represents more or less the vision of all interested parties on the project.”

Karl Geppert says:
“The project manager is the valve between the business and the project team. They are needed to focus the whole project team on the business outcome ensure that this is planned, scheduled and delivered on targeted date and content.”

Tom Andries says:
“What’s the point of an architect? What’s the point of a clown? What’s the point of a designer?
With each profession are associated a set of skills that an individual tries to embody and practice.”

Mark Parrish says:
“Since most people got into PM as a SME, I think that they could do it. If people had the time and training.”

As for me, in common with many of these comments, I believe that a full-time project manager provides much more value above a part-time one than he costs. Yes, as Mark Parrish says, with training, the tools we use, the processes we follow, these can be learned, but that doesn’t make you a project manager.

Ultimately, a project manager needs to manage the project well, and for most of us this means, wherever possible, making sure the project is completed in a successful manner. And that takes more than pieces of paper.

Imagine the all too familiar situation that one of the project tasks is stalled, because the person working on it needs information from someone else in the organisation – information that just isn’t forthcoming. The monitoring of the project you have been doing means you have become aware of this problem, and that means you need to take steps to solve it. So what do you do? Well, you go to where the information is supposed to be coming from, and you talk to them, you smooth things over, you negotiate with them to get the information the project needs delivered as soon as possible.

These are the kind of soft skills you must have. You have to be a manager, laying down the law to team members who aren’t pulling their weight – and supporting them to solve whatever is stopping them. You have to be a negotiator, making sure suppliers, internal and external, deliver what the project needs when it needs it. You have to be a politician, talking to senior managers to make sure the staff the project needs are available at the right time. You need to be an advisor, giving the Executive the information he needs to make decisions about the project.

In short, you need to be a problem solver. You need to be able to handle any of the situations project management can throw at you. Some of this can be improved by training. A lot more of it can be improved through experience. But a lot of it is down to your own personal inclinations. Regardless of the type of projects you do, regardless of the industry area, you are going to have to be good at dealing with people. You could be working on the most high-tech space-age wonder gadgets, but it will still be people that will cause your biggest problems – and give you your greatest successes.

To be this kind of person usually takes: time, to gain the bitter experience; effort, to learn the tools, techniques and processes; and the right personality, one that enjoys solving these types of problems.

Now, that’s not to say that a member of the team couldn’t do these things, and be good at them. But the skills that make someone, say, a good programmer, aren’t necessarily the same skills that would make a good project manager. And besides, wouldn’t you rather have your good programmers spending their time actually programming, instead of project managing?

I’ll leave you with the most poetic of the comments received, from Eugenio Magnone:
“Scattered bright and colorful pebbles do not create a mosaic.”

Seriously, what’s the point? Note that I’m not asking what the point of project management is – any project needs project management of some sort. But what is the point of having a dedicated project manager?

Think about it. What if you just gave, for example, your lead programmer enough time to do some project management as well as coding? Wouldn’t that work just as well? After all, he’d be closer to the work, he’d have a good idea of how well it was progressing, and he’d know exactly what technical difficulties are cropping up – and how tough they are to solve.

Or what about an infrastructure upgrade. Why not trust the ICT manager to handle the negotiations with suppliers, and chase them up to ensure delivery? Couldn’t she better allocate work to her team than a project manager?

There’s actually a lot of sense in this view. Detailed knowledge of the subject of the project can be a great advantage, and naturally the people doing the work have a lot of this knowledge! If they can be given the time and training in project management, why not do this?

Now, naturally as a project manager I am not fully convinced by this argument! But this means I believe project managers provide benefits above and beyond what a subject matter expert could. I can think of a few, but I’m interested to hear what you think. So, how about it? What do full-time project managers provide to a project that a part-timer can’t?

40 years ago, man walked on the moon for the first time. This was an incredible achievement, the culmination of an immense project. This project had a lot of advantages:

• Clear objective – to send a man to the moon, and bring him back again
• Clear quality requirements – keep them alive
• Strong support from senior stakeholders – Presidential support
• Extensive funding – between $20 and $25.4 billion in 1969 dollars (or approximately $135 billion in 2005 dollars)

But, of course, the project had an awful lot of difficulties too. Not only were they trying to do something never done before, but they also had a clear and public deadline – the end of the decade. It took determination, hard work, acts of genius and even a bit of luck to get there. And, of course, good project management!

The other thing the project had going for it, though, was a healthy attitude to risk. The project was trying to do something incredible, and the people involved, most especially the astronauts, accepted that there was a genuine risk they could lose their lives. But they believed that the risk was low enough, and the prize was great enough, that it was a risk worth taking.

As we look back at the achievements of the Apollo programme, it’s also worth looking forward, to see where we want to get to now, and how we want to do it. There is talk of establishing a permanent base on the moon. This presents all sorts of engineering challenges, and is an interesting proposition.

But to me, the real excitement comes at the thought of sending a man to another planet, of getting completely out of our little Earth-Moon gravity well. Putting humans on Mars would be a herculean task, a task to truly challenge the science and technology of our era. The biggest challenge, though, seems to be cultivating a mindset that accepts the ultimate risk, that helps all of us again believe that some things are worth risking everything for.

I hope you’ll forgive my self-indulgence in writing this post, but sending humans to another planet is important to me. Yes, for the scientific knowledge we would gain. Yes, for the chance of spreading humanity that little bit wider in this universe. But most of all, for the adventure, because I believe seeking out this kind of adventure is part of what it means to be human. Here’s hoping it’s not another 40 years before we make another giant leap for mankind.

(Image courtesy of dcysurfer. Some rights reserved.)

In this video, the lead author of the 2009 refresh of PRINCE2, Andy Murray, talks us through the new Directing guide for PRINCE2. This guide is aimed at project board / Executive level project members.