The Project Management Triangle - Not as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle

So, lets say you are now a new PM on a new project or an established PM on a new project or new to the company and so obviously new to the project... you get the idea.. you are new on this project as a Project Manager. When you think of all that the PM shoulders and owns, the thought of embarking on the journey on a new project can be quite daunting especially if its also a new company. As I have tried to articulate in my previous posts, there is no single recipe or even single set of recipes for Project Management that can assure you success. So, each project is almost like parenthood and all your past experiences only help to some extent in making the journey less painful. Here is another perspective on why I think each project is unique in its own way.

Anyway, in this post I would like to highlight three things that any PM needs to focus on to make this journey as PM as efficient and as productive as possible. These are outside of, but contributing to the actual core tasks that any typical PM performs like project estimation, planning, tracking, etc.


1. What? - The most important thing to have a full handle on as a PM is the 'what' the project's charter is - What is the business problem or opportunity at hand, why is it important for the business/client? What are the constraints within which the project needs to operate in? How is 'Success' defined for the project? From a project artifact standpoint, this helps you create the project's scope and understand the priorities for each scope item being requested. Once you clearly understand these you will be able to make more intelligent/informed decisions with regards to what is important and what is not and at crunch time what can be compromised and what cannot, etc. More importantly, the business/client will begin to trust you and view you as a true partner.

2. How? - Once you know the 'what', next is to understand the solution itself. This is why having a good foundation in the domain is very important for the PM so he/she can clearly understand the complexities involved in building solutions and be able to guide both the business/product groups as well as the implementation groups towards the right solution. Understanding the solution well also helps the PM in breaking down the project into smaller chunks that can be effectively distributed among the team, tracked and delivered to fit into the full solution. This also helps the PM understand the pain points or the risky areas and make sure lot more time and energy is focussed in those areas to tackle the issues before they start impacting the project's bottom-line.

3. Who? - Once you understand the 'What' and the 'How', the next key piece is the 'Who'. As a PM you need to be able to understand your team, the key decision makers, the stakeholders, extended teams, etc. Increasingly, corporate hierarchies are being more and more matrixed and it is often not as straightforward to understand all the players and their priorities. So, it is very important as the PM to take the time to know who all the players are and also build some relationships with them. Typically, a PM needs to interact with three groups of people -
a) the core delivery team on the ground that is fully assigned to and contributing day to day to the project,
b) stakeholders and decision makers and
c) interested parties who have some interest in the project and need to be kept in the loop.
The PM being the central communication hub needs to keep the interests of all these three groups in mind and keep them well informed at all times. In addition to the transactional business communication that goes to these three groups, the PM is also the one that is expected to keep the core team motivated and all contributing members aligned towards to the same end goal. In order to do this the PM needs to take the time to understand the individuals separately, understand their strengths and weaknesses, modes of communication/escalation, motivation factors, etc. I can write on and on about team dynamics and how to align teams for maximum efficiency and that is a different lengthy subject in its own, but clearly people management is a key part of PM's day to day job and taking the time to do it right can make a world of difference both for the teams themselves and also the PM and will be the difference between a team that works well like a well-oiled machine vs. a team that is limping through one post to other.

Again, what I tried to highlight here are the three most important aspects of a project that the PM needs to focus on that will make his core tasks follow naturally and will make his core job function as a project enabler/deliverer follow naturally also.