Don’t Lose Sight of the Forest

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Don’t Lose Sight of the Forest

by Andy Jordan

August 4, 2008


As a project manager, what’s your responsibility? I hope that many of you will answer that question somewhere along the lines of on-time, on-budget delivery of the approved scope to acceptable quality standards. If we distill project management down to its core elements, that’s pretty much it. Why then do so many project managers undertake their job while completely ignoring this?
 
Let me explain what I mean. The organization has determined that a project is worth doing and has asked you to run it. A project is always being done to achieve the goals of the organization--expansion of functionality, reduction in costs, revenue growth, regulatory requirements, etc. As a PM, you probably have a fairly good understanding of those goals, and in this article I intend to argue that your job is to deliver against those goals, to deliver the business need--that’s it. Your job is not to micro-manage every task and ensure adherence to every date.
 
The details don’t matter (as much as you think)
I know many project managers who spend huge amounts of time building wonderfully detailed work breakdown structures that allow them to see exactly where a project should be at any given point in time--in some cases down to time periods of less than an hour! Well I’m sorry if this next statement is heresy to some of you, but…it’s a waste of time.
 
The role of the project manager is to deliver the project, not every single task that makes up the project.



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