1. Project Management A Managerial Approach
Chapter 3
The Project Manager

2. Project Management and the Project Manager
The Functional Manager vs. The Project Manager
Functional managers are usually specialists, analytically oriented and they know the details of each operation for which they are responsible
Project managers must be generalists that can oversee many functional areas and have the ability to put the pieces of a task together to form a coherent whole

3. Project Management and the Project Manager
The Functional Manager

4. Project Management and the Project Manager
The Functional Manager
Analytical Approach
Direct, technical supervisor
The Project Manager
Systems Approach
Facilitator and generalist

5. Project Management and the Project Manager

6. Project Management and the Project Manager
Three major questions face the project manager:
1. What needs to be done?
2. When must it be done?
3. How are the resources required to do this job going to be obtained?
Project manager is responsible for organizing, staffing, budgeting, directing, planning, and controlling the project.

7. Responsibilities of a Project Manager
Responsibility to the Parent Organization
Responsibility to the Client
Responsibility to the Team Members
Above all, the Project Manager must never allow senior management to be surprised

8. Responsibilities to the Parent Organization
Conservation of resources
Timely and accurate project communications
Careful, competent management of the project
Protect the firm from high risk
Accurate reporting of project status with regard to budget and schedule

9. Responsibilities of the Project Manager
Responsibility to the Client
Preserve integrity of project and client
Resolve conflict among interested parties
Ensure performance, budgets, and deadlines are met
Responsibility to project team members
Fairness, respect, honesty
Concern for members’ future after project

10. Project Management Career Paths
Most Project Managers get their training in one or more of three ways:
On-the-job
Project management seminars and workshops
Active participation in the programs of the local chapters of the Project Management Institute
Formal education in degreed programs

11. Importance of Project Management Experience
Experience as a project manager serves to teach the importance of:
An organized plan for reaching an objective
Negotiation with one’s co-workers
Follow through
Sensitivity to the political realities of organizational life
The career path often starts with participation in small projects, and later in larger projects, until the person is given control over small, then larger projects

12. Special Demands on the Project Manager
A number of demands are critical to the management of projects:
Acquiring adequate resources
Acquiring and motivating personnel
Dealing with obstacles
Making project goal trade offs
Dealing with failure and the risk and fear of failure
Maintaining breadth of communication
Negotiation

13. Acquiring Adequate Resources
Resources initially budgeted for projects are frequently insufficient
Sometimes resource trade-offs are required
Subcontracting is an option
Project and functional managers perceive availability of resources to be strictly limited
Competition for resources often turns into “win-lose” propositions between project and functional managers

14. Acquiring and Motivating Personnel
A major problem for the project manager is that most people required for a project must be “borrowed”
At times, functional managers may become jealous if they perceive a project as more glamorous than their own functional area
Typically, the functional manager retains control of personnel evaluation, salary, and promotion for those people lent out to projects
Because the functional manager controls pay and promotion, the project manager cannot promise much beyond the challenge of the work itself

15. Acquiring and Motivating Personnel
Characteristics of effective team members:
High quality technical skills
Political sensitivity
Strong problem orientation
Strong goal orientation
High self-esteem

16. Dealing with Obstacles
One characteristic of any project is its uniqueness and with that come a series of crises:
At the inception of a project, the “fires” tend to be associated with resources
As a project nears completion, obstacles tend to be clustered around two issues:
1. Last minute schedule and technical changes
2. Uncertainty surrounding what happens to members
of the project team when the project is completed

17. Making Project Goal Trade-offs
The project manager must make trade offs between the project goals of cost, time and performance
During the design or formation stage of the project life cycle, there is no significant difference in the importance project managers place on the three goals
Schedule is the primary goal during the build up stage, being more important than performance, which is in turn significantly more important than cost
During the final stage, phaseout, performance is significantly more important than cost

18. Making Project Goal Trade-offs
Relative importance of project objectives for each stage of the project life cycle:

19. Failure and the Risk of Fear and Failure
It is difficult, at times, to distinguish between project failure, partial failure, and success.
What appears to be a failure at one point in the life of a project may look like a success at another
By dividing all projects into two general categories, interesting differences in the nature and timing of perceived difficulties can be found

20. Failure and the Risk of Fear and Failure
Two general types of projects:
Type 1 - these projects are generally well-understood, routine construction projects
Appear simple at the beginning of the project
Rarely fail because they are late or over budget, though commonly are both
They fail because they are not organized to handle unexpected crises and deviations from the plan
These projects often lack the appropriate technical expertise to handle such crises

21. Failure and the Risk of Fear and Failure
Type 2 - these are not well understood, and there may be considerable uncertainty about specifically what must be done
Many difficulties early in the life of the project
Often considered planning problems
Most of these problems result from a failure to define the mission carefully
Often fail to get the client’s acceptance on the project mission

22. Breadth of Communication
Most of the project manager’s time is spent communicating with the many groups interested in the project
Considerable time must be spent selling, reselling, and explaining the project
Interested parties include:
Top management
Functional departments
Clients
Members of the project team

23. Breadth of Communication
To effectively deal with the demands, a project manager must understand and deal with certain fundamental issues:
Must understand why the project exists
Critical to have the support of top management
Build and maintain a solid information network
Must be flexible in many ways, with as many people, and about as many activities as possible throughout the life of the project

24. Selecting the Project Manager
Some of the most popular attributes, skills, and qualities that have been sought in project managers are:
Strong technical background
Hard-nosed manager
A mature individual
Someone who is currently available
Someone on good terms with senior executives
A person who can keep the project team happy
One who has worked in several different departments
A person who can walk on (or part) the waters

25. Selecting the Project Manager
Four major categories of skills that are required for the project manager and serve as the key criteria for selection:
Credibility
Sensitivity
Leadership and management style
Ability to handle stress

26. Credibility The project manager needs two kinds of credibility:
Technical credibility - perceived by the client, senior executives, the functional departments, and the project team as possessing sufficient technical knowledge to direct the project
Administrative credibility - keeping the project on schedule and within costs and making sure reports are accurate and timely. Must also make sure the project team has material, equipment, and labor when needed.

27. Sensitivity
There are several ways for project managers to display sensitivity:
Understanding the organization’s political structure
Sense interpersonal conflict on the project team or between team members and outsiders
Does not avoid conflict, but confronts it and deals with it before it escalates
Keeps team members “cool”
Sensitive set of technical sensors - ability to sense when team members may try to “sweep things under the rug”

28. Leadership and Management Style
Leadership has been defined as:
“interpersonal influence, exercised in situation and directed through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.”
Other attributes may include:
enthusiasm
optimism
energy
tenacity
courage
personal maturity

29. Ethical Issues
A project manager must also have a strong sense of ethics. Some common ethical missteps are listed below:
“wired” bids and contracts (the winner has been predetermined)
“buy-in” (bidding low with the intention of cutting corners or forcing subsequent contract changes)
“kickbacks”
“covering” for team members (group cohesiveness)
taking “shortcuts” (to meet deadlines or budgets)
using marginal (substandard) materials
compromising on safety
violating standards
consultant (e.g., auditors) loyalties (to employer or to client or to public)

30. Ability to Handle Stress
Four major causes of stress associated with the management of projects:
1. Never developing a consistent set of procedures and
techniques with which to manage their work
2. Many project managers have “too much on their plates”
3. Some project managers have a high need to achieve
that is consistently frustrated
4. The parent organization is in the middle of major
change

31. Impact of Institutional Environments
A culture’s institutions are a part of the environment for every project
In general systems theory, the environment of a system is defined as everything outside the system that receives outputs from it or delivers inputs to it

32. Impact of Institutional Environments
Project managers must consider the following environments and how they may impact a project:
Socioeconomic environment
Legal environment
The business cycle as an environment
Technological environment

33. Multicultural Communications and Managerial Behavior
The importance of language cannot be overstated
Communication cannot be separated from the communicator
Managerial and personal behaviors of the project manager must be considered in the communication process
Structure and style of communications
Managerial and personal behavior

34. Multicultural Communications and Managerial Behavior
Structure and Style of Communications:
In the United States, delegation is a preferred managerial style
In cultures where authority is highly centralized, it becomes the project manager’s responsibility to seek out information
The manager of an international project cannot count on being voluntarily informed of problems and potential problems by his or her subordinates

35. Multicultural Communications and Managerial Behavior
Managerial and Personal Behavior
In a society with highly structured social classes, it is difficult to practice participative management
There is an assumption that the more educated, higher-class manager’s authority will be denigrated by using a participative style
The more structured a country’s social system, the less direct managerial communication tends to be

36. Summary
The project manager has responsibilities to the organization, the project, and to the project team
There are many career paths available to an experienced project manager
Typically, a project manager faces unique demands relating to resources, personnel, communication and negotiation

37. Summary
Two factors critical to the success of a project are top management support and the existence of a problem orientation within the team members
Compared to a functional manager, a project manager is a generalist rather than a specialist, a synthesizer rather than an analyst, and a facilitator rather than a supervisor

38. Summary
There are common characteristics of effective project team members: technical skills, political sensitivity, problem orientation, and high self esteem
The best person to select as the project manager is the one who will get the job done
Valuable skills for the project manager are: credibility, political sensitivity, and leadership

39. Summary
Cultural elements refer to the way of life for any group of people including technology, institutions, language, and art
The project environment includes: economic, political, legal, and sociotechnical aspects
Cultural issues include: the group’s perception of time and the manner of staffing projects
Language is a particularly critical aspect of culture for the project

40. The Project Manager
Questions?

41. The Project Manager
Picture Files

42. The Project Manager
Figure 3-1

43. The Project Manager
Figure 3-2

44. The Project Manager
Table Files

45. The Project Manager

46. The Project Manager

47. The Project Manager

48. The Project Manager

49. The Project Manager

50. The Project Manager