Adaptive approach towards Project Management

In today's fast-paced Business, Project Manager's play a pivotal role in the success and failure of projects. Theoretically Project Management encompasses multiple modules like Planning, Scheduling, Cost Management, Resource Management (and more..) and also involves various artifacts like Project Charter, Risk Register, Status Reports, etc. However when you talk of Project Management in IT, not all projects are of the same magnitude and complexity, and hence one needs to have an adaptive approach towards Project Management to fine tune the amount of efforts an assigned Project Manager / Delivery Project Manager spends in a project. 

In today's projectized world working on a Global Delivery Model, you will generally find one or many of the following Project Mgmt related roles depending on the size of the projects -

1. Program Director.

2. Program Manager.

3. Lead Project Manager.

4. Regional Project Manager.

5. Project Coordinator.

6. Service Transition Manager.

The Program Director or Program Manager in the client-facing role generally request for Project Management resources to regional Resource Managers during project initiation phase. Some of these resource requests are raised in a hurry without really understanding / justifying the true resource requirements (this also applies for Technical resources). Many a times this ends up in duplication of roles.

Hence when you are assigned as a Project Manager in any of the projects, you need to first understand the overall program requirements and align yourself to deliver the right role. If you commence working as a Project Manager as per defined / theoretical Project Management method and start producing Project Management documents, you may end up spending additional time and efforts for deliverables which are already being produced by a similar resource in the project team. Hence if you are typically assigned to large programs don't draw a conclusion on your role immediately. Give yourself the required time and/or maybe have a quick call with your Program Director / Program Manager / Lead Project Manager to understand the Delivery Model and then align yourself accordingly. In this way you will avoid duplication of efforts and will also be able to device the daily operational model / workflow, so that the regional project team with whom you are working with are in sync. This way you are able to clarify on individual roles and responsibilities and also able to decide on who works as the lead on the client-facing role.

By clarifying the roles and responsibilities you also simplify the communication channel for your client and make it easier for them to approach the right members of your team to address the right questions. At the end a simplified and transparent client experience is all we want in a project. So next time you are assigned a Project Manager in any project, do not blindly start producing Project Management documents before you have thoroughly understood the global delivery expectations. Project Management is all about managing and delivering to client's expectations by having the right set of activities done in the right fashion on time.

My suggestion is to be adaptive towards Project Management and not stick to the rule books.

( First published on https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/adaptive-approach-towards-project-management-baudhayan )