That’s the message that the changes to the PMP (the massive increase in the Business Environment domain) seem to be sending. You can deliver your project exactly how it was planned, on time, and on budget, but if the expected outcomes don’t occur from your delivered outputs – outcomes which traditionally you may have had no input into – then you haven’t done your job.
That’s a tough gig, to say the least. There is no point delivering a project, no matter how well, if it ultimately doesn’t benefit the organisation you are delivering it for. Used to be, that wasn’t the project manager’s problem. The Project Executive, Sponsor, Senior Responsible Owner, whatever particular turn of phrase was used – they were the ones on the hook for making sure the project was worth doing.
For example, in PRINCE2:
“The most important relationship in the project is between the project executive and the project manager. This relationship is critical because the project executive provides the necessary strategic direction and ensures that the project aligns with business goals, while the project manager focuses on the day-to-day execution of the project.” (source: PRINCE2.wiki: Project Executive)
From a PMI Global Congress paper:
“The project sponsor is an individual (often a manager or executive) with overall accountability for the project. He or she is primarily concerned with ensuring that the project delivers the agreed upon business benefits and acts as the representative of the organization” (source: Schibi, O. & Lee, C. (2015), presented at PMI Global Congress 2015 EMEA, London.)
Once upon a time, maybe it was true that the sponsor handled this. But I have certainly seen over the years a steady abrogation of that responsibility, or if I am polite a delegation of that responsibility to project managers. I well remember one particularly difficult project where the Project Executive delegated their role to a “day-to-day” Executive, who treated nothing as their responsibility.
An Executive is always busy, and in some organisations it feels like they don’t want the risk of a project’s success or failure being related to what they do – hence project managers become the default role made to pick up that slack, even if they were never in the room when the business benefits were pitched.
Project professionals are now being expected to deliver the outcomes, not just the outputs. I’m writing a short series on some of the expanded stakeholder skills you may need to get this done. To prepare for the next one, dust off (or create…) your list of stakeholders, and we’ll use this as our starting point.
Your project management competence isn’t enough. You need to expand into political competence. You are going to be the one leading the whole change, whether you like it or not, so let’s make sure we have the skills to get things done.
Mind, if you feel your role is being expanded to include this, might be worth asking for a raise…
Trevor Roberts is a programme and project management consultant and the founder of Dull Industries – a consultancy focused on project turnaround, AI implementation, and digital strategy.