Top management's expectations

In every stage of a career, keeping one's boss happy is generally recognized as a significant contributor towards success. Today's top managers, in many industries and businesses, are looking increasingly to project manager's (PMs) for the efforts that are likely to ensure the top manager's feelings of organizational well being. As clients and top management accept the project manager as the person responsible, the one who will listen and speak to any concern about project, this trend has accelerated.

From Whence Do They Come?

The common question, “From where do the qualified candidates come?” is answered in a variety of ways from industry to industry and even varies widely within a given company. Historically, people with proven technical and/or business capabilities have been invited to understudy other project engineers or managers and then to lead projects themselves. Unfortunately, this sometimes leaves a void in a key functional area. The net result can then be an inexperienced PM and an inexperienced functional specialist. Many employers choose to hire PMs from outside their companies, they will have to deal with only one, instead of two, inexperienced people.

Hiring and developing PMs who will have the broad perspective, and wisely use the authority of the general manager (for their project) places a demand for skills, knowledge, and situational savvy beyond that of all but the most experienced candidates. Developing PMs with specific understanding of the scope of the effort, in both technical and business terms…. and always taking an integrative view of work, status, progress, problems and corrective actions….dictates tough job specifications and descriptions for applicants.

Where Can You Hire Them?

Where does one find such capabilities for hire? The traditional technical and business career paths have tended to be the source for such candidates. Compromise is usually accepted between technical and business proficiency. Competence tends to develop more slowly in the skills of the opposite companion dimension (technical or business). Competence in one set of disciplines and apprentice level capability in the other is common. If the project involves research and development, someone with proven technical strengths may be chosen. If the project is construction or to gear up for high rate production, other strengths may be the primary criteria for selection.

Between these extremes intermediate points of limited competence, and commensurate degrees of risk are accepted, with the expectation that continuing education and mentor relationships will overcome the deficiencies. Learning opportunities….through academic courses, workshops, seminars, conferences, journals,… are found for many of the skills of project management including:

• scheduling,
• cost estimating,
• critical path method,
• leadership,
• conflict management,
• interpersonal negotiations,
• team building,
• optimization methods,
• knowledge engineering,
• expert systems, etc.

Each learning opportunity seems to offer some help to those suitably challenged to extend their skills and knowledge. Often this is accomplished in their spare time while keeping their project progressing according to plan.

How to Learn to Integrate?

However, even today few educational and training opportunities teach the integrative processes and point of view. This is the most difficult of the skills, knowledge and situations to master. It is, the art of linking technical and business tasks in projects. Concentration on the integration of the knowledge and techniques from both of those career paths, or academic majors, happens often in industry but only in isolated instances on most campuses. Corporate educational efforts and professional association programs labor to develop curricula and certify capability, while only a few academic institutions have faced this challenge directly.

Meanwhile, traditional technical job descriptions and curricula concentrate on science, mathematics, and design while business jobs and courses emphasize finance, economics, marketing, labor relations, and contracting. Both move very slowly toward the interdisciplinary perspective needed. Indeed, most seem to resist those trends, often claiming to remain academically pure.

Conflict is Inevitable!

The formation and conduct of projects, short term efforts with unique managerial needs, term, and focus, often exists within management systems which emphasize the rationalization of operations to continue “in perpetuity” (from an overall or functional view). These contrasting orientations can usually be expected to contribute to an environment which has high potential for conflict. The belief systems of the participants are so different that conflict is inevitable.

After all, the functional departments, and the candidates who have come from those cultures, can not be expected to willingly place higher priority on integration than on their functional heritage. It is not unusual for new people, in the quest for minimum conflict with other organizational activities, to, in a sense, flee from the integrative efforts. The PM, out of necessity, usually becomes the advocate for the integrative disciplines. This is partially because no one else has primary integrative responsibility. It is also because productivity, quality, and profitability are more easily identified in the process of performing the integrative efforts well than they are from performing the efforts of the single functional specialty, exceptionally well.

The Big Picture Perspective !

Those completing careers in project, program, and systems management, or in education and consulting, have usually had the luxury of being in audiences with scores of professionals who buy, use, design, approve or support construction, product design, or other such efforts. The lessons they can share and the teaching they can provide define a common culture much different from the world of the technical specialists or the business specialists. The “to do lists,” labors, and conversations are multiple disciplinary and their competence is integrative with a general management perspective. While successful PMs and top managers may have come from one specialty or another, the most successful and impressive have demonstrated an overall, big picture perspective. There is little of the parochial biases of the functional purists often found in the technical or the business departments of industry and academia.

The Challenge

Collectively, project managers have a long way to go for general acceptance of our integrative disciplines. Top managers hear from functional departments as well as project managers. Continual awareness, tutoring, or marketing of the project management profession is a never ending challenge. Also, genuine resistance is often found among the technical and business specialists who have not studied or practiced project management. This situation can usually be confirmed if one seeks to coordinate a criteria statement for use in the selection of managers for new projects, or if it is necessary to replace a struggling program manager.

Good News!

The “good news” is that many project management positions are being created which include the requirement for integrative knowledge and skills such as systems analysis and feasibility determination with both technical and business dimensions. Examples of these skills include:

• The estimation of work, costs, and times for technical, business, and hybrid efforts;
• The measuring of status and progress and reporting in general management as well as specialist's terms;
• The cross-cultural influencing of project team members, supervisors, customers, regulators, etc. through communications, negotiations and conflict management toward agreement and achievement;
• The minimization of risk and stress through balanced views of the specialties;
• The fulfillment of logistical supportability needs for products, plants, installations, structures and services;
• The training for operators and maintainers;
• The use of innovative purchasing and contracting methods which incentivize various critical paths; and
• The management of quality and productivity efforts.

All must have multiple disciplinary execution to succeed.

The Bad News!

On campuses, heated debates are probable when suggestions are made to revise technical curricula to include more business and integrative subjects, or when the business curricula receives a similar infusion of new subjects. In that arena top management is not yet generally enlightened regarding project management as a course of study or a concentration within a technical or business major. A few forward looking institutions are offering master's level degree programs in project management but the number is quite small on a percentage basis. One university is offering cooperative education in “Systems Engineering and Program Management” in their undergraduate program.

However, it appears that for sometime the majority of college and university graduates will not have received project management education. Employers and professional associations such as PMI will need to continue developing and offering project management education programs to prepare these new generations for their entry level project management duties.

Opportunities are Coming!

Chances for advancement, broader competence, increased power, and higher success rates combine to act as a force field which will slowly overcome the lack of awareness, if not resistance to the use, of project management techniques in fields which have not yet been converted to these disciplines. Becoming fully qualified, i.e., thinking and acting with competence in the multiple dimensions of the specialties being integrated, is within the grasp of many technical and business professionals. As with any new paradigm, time, practice, and faithful advocacy will bring it to full status in the cultures of project and program management.

Top management levels of many companies such as Martin Marietta and Rust International have a pattern of selecting their top managers from the part of their company that uses project management techniques. That career path allows people to demonstrate the potential for general management and top management positions.

Listening to the admonitions of those managers, and the bosses who rely upon them, brings emphasis to our Project Management Institute mission to foster the study and practice of project management, program management and systems management; and to certify those competent ones who have demonstrated the knowledge, the skills, and the situational experience which seasons and matures.