This is a guest post by Craig Brown. He usually writes in a more serious tone about project management, requirements management and business analysts at www.betterprojects.net.
Are they really? Probably not everywhere and probably not all the time but there are force at work that keep our project mangers scowling.
- Other peoples money: Dealing with that responsibility can be stressful for many people. Its good practice to treat your clients money as if it were yours, but really, if you have $5 million, would you waste it on a software project? No wonder our PMs feel the pressure to perform.
- Business is serious: Thats right. Our business is very serious and our stakeholders and shareholders are important people who we want to impress. The way you manage your project wont make a blip on the stock market indicators, but you have to share some of our burden.
- As the projects manager you are in charge, right? Except for the following things: You rarely pick your team, you usually dont get to choose the solution, or the project management approach. And your stakeholders, who all have history in the organisation and are probably playing politics 70% of their working life will not spare a second on screwing you behind your back if it suits them. Of course you like your job.
- Are we on track: Measuring vapourware is a time consuming job that often takes much of a pms week, as well as causing countless interruptions to the various project team members while they are trying to work.
- Lucky I am accountant: In this business of corporate projects almost all pms come from an accounting or a marketing background. None come from a software or engineering background. The plus side of this is that they all understand project budgeting and love spending Fridays putting together project financial reports. The downside is that none
of them understand the complexity involved in software development. Oh, sorry, thats the sponsor.
Work doesnt always have to be so hard. If you are finding yourself under pressure at work and one or more of these scenarios sounds all too familiar its time to put your hand up and say Im not perfect. Someone give me a hand. It will be the beginning of the best week youve had in months.
