Let me start this blog by asking a few questions:

• Do you think the Project Manager is the role model for all the team members?
  • How often does this often?
• Is PM really respected from his/her team members?

Before I begin with opportunities of PM (Project Manager) to become a role model; let’s quickly understand what this role truly demands. This is important because there is a myth and wrong belief among various project team members that PM’s are mere coordinator and are usually there to police around them and take action. There might be some instances where Managers leave such notion.

So, who is a Project Manager?
A person who takes ultimate responsibility and guarantees for the desired result to be achieved on time and within budget is the Project Manager. A PM has an overall responsibility for the successful planning, execution, monitoring, control and closure of a project.

Well, in this blog, I want to highlight how easily a PM can get confused between the process and the goal. In such scenario, PM’s usually gets inclined towards quantifying things that does not add any value. Not sure of what else to do, they tend to occupy their time with less important activities such as metrics, spreadsheets or reports. This makes team members belief that PM is not adding any value. Team members can very easily carry these thought of their PM’s in all of their future projects. By definition, ‘project is a progressive elaboration’ and PM getting stuck with such non value added activities increases the gap between project and the PM.  For the PM, he/she is in false belief that if the project team just pursues the processes to perfection and follow the checklists; they are bound to succeed in the project.

A good Project Manager does not carried away with such stringent web of procedures; instead they are flexible enough to tweak the processes according to the project needs. A PM should always keep an eye on the business goal that is achieved by accomplishing a set of tasks/work and by a bunch of people (team members). To overcome the confidence and respect of the team members, PM has to educate the team members on various roles of the project team members including their own roles. As project progresses, PM has to measure each roles with their set objectives and not only provide feedback but also show the direction to conquer the gray areas. It’s important to ensure Managers spends enough time with each individual in the team and help them in cultivating a desire for achievement. Getting the best possible performance from each team member is the responsibility of the manager.

In a nutshell, PM must get involved in the project by understanding not only the business goal but all the functionalities of the requirement, by understanding the high level design architecture and most importantly by expediting the overall process of quality development by timely removal of obstacles and by providing directions that lead to right solutions at right time.

Good PM or leaders can thus earn special kind of respect from their team members (developers, testers, architects…). PM should be able to enable: act of thinking, strategy and leadership that positively impact the team. I am sure all of you would now agree that PM can easily be a role model which indeed also depends on his/her personality.

Please feel free to post your comments….

Shrinath Inamdar Project Management Project Management, Project Manager, Role Model