SINCE BECOMING RECOGNIZED as a profession, project management has been trying to prove its value in the business world. While executives often sense that project management is valuable, they can't precisely measure its worth and end up determining its value based on what they see, which is mostly paper reports. That contributes to the perception of many executives that project management is a clerical function.
Most executives are aware of only the base level of performance, which really is clerical. The tasks at this level are well defined and have clear starting and ending points: creating and monitoring schedules, tracking costs, calculating variances. Most of this work arises out of the project charter, follows a regular cycle, and produces reams of reports. Competency at this level is often associated with the ability to use the computer programs that produce the reports. But when unexpected things start to happen and a project manager must operate at a higher level, that's where our profession departs the clerical realm and enters the managerial level.
Because it doesn't get put on paper, our best work goes unrecognized.
At the managerial level, project managers act like catalysts in a chemical reaction: they help make things happen without being directly involved—and that's the problem. Because these accomplishments are not visible and don't directly produce a tangible result, many project managers are unable to articulate their contributions above the clerical level.
While discussing our contributions at a recent professional development conference, several of us project manager types agreed that we did much more than create reports. We also agreed that this work is best described by a term we all knew but could not fully explain: “managing the white space.” First defined in 1849 as “the areas of a page without print or pictures” [from www.yourdictionary.com], this term has come to mean “the area between the work” when used in a discussion about project management.
John Sullivan,PMP, is a founding member of PMI's Dayton/Miami Valley Chapter. Send any comments on this column to [email protected].
The “white space” in project management involves identifying and engaging people and groups outside of the project to solve a problem. Examples of this include:
■ Negotiating for and obtaining additional people to work on your project when senior leadership increases its scope but holds the schedule constant
■ Persuading another internal department that it has ownership of a task, preventing the department from dumping it back on you or your project, and getting it to complete the task correctly and on time
■ Moving your project's priorities to the top of a vendor's list so that you can get the equipment or services you need.
Project managers around the world perform these kinds of tasks every day as part of their efforts to meet deadlines and turn ideas into reality. Yet few will use the words “negotiator” or “salesperson” when describing their jobs.
Managing the white space also means streamlining and accelerating communication between two (or more) groups. Examples:
■ Synthesizing and integrating pieces of information into a comprehensible whole
■ Getting the important information to people or teams who need to know it
■ Helping those people or teams realize the importance and urgency of the information and getting them to act on it.
One of my own staff helped speed communication when he realized we had some “white space” between the development staff and the software configuration manager. He grabbed one of our technical managers, took him to the software configuration manager's office, and got both of them to discuss the unspoken details about when and how the next version of software would be released. By forcing them into a conversation, he quickly and effectively resolved the scheduling problem and prevented further waste in the form of additional meetings, special reports, and continued delays.
The task of “managing the white space” is a subtle but important contribution. Yet I doubt that any project manager's performance review has “manage the white space” listed as a goal for the current year. Maybe it should be listed, because the accomplishments at the higher levels of project management are intangible, which means they can go unrecognized by the executives who benefit from them. Creating a report produces a physical item; negotiating for resources and imparting a sense of urgency do not. But they are valuable contributions, just the same.
IN A PROFESSION KNOWN for producing volumes of paper, we ourselves must recognize and communicate the higher levels of our performance so that executives will acknowledge their value and realize that there is more to project management than the eye can see.
