Fully agree that times are tough and that demands quality. The environment is full of opportunity for stars to shine. In the oil and gas industry, just as in all other industries, the demand for people to justify all activities is crucial. This means ability to produce clear ROIs and provide clients with alternative solutions (of the cheap nature).

Add value or get out of the way . . .

Maybe I’m biased but I faced a situation you describe (no credit line, problems with cash-flow, pressure on cost-cutting) in my company in 2006. The situation wasn’t recession-related in any way but as you can imagine project management work was affected. Thus I don’t consider dealing with this kind of problem as something exclusive or specific for recession times.

And about being remarkable: still majority (two third) of projects fail to be on time and on scope. This is basically a failure to deliver. Now, that’s why if I had a PM who will deliver each time she won’t be barely a good PM for me. She’ll be great to remarkable, depending on difficultly of projects she works on.

Of course your point that PM should not only administer projects but should also see their business value and work on maximizing it are valid. However I think we have still serious problems in achieving basic goals and that should be our primary concern.

“A good project manager would keep his project on track. A very good project manager would see that the economic situation changes the business case. A remarkable project manager does both of these, and provides options to his executive – such as delivering less, but earlier.”

Very very insightful. Tweeted and stumbled!