| | DECEMBER 20208PROJECT MANAGEMENT ­ AN ART OR A SCIENCE?By Deepak Sharma, Global IT Director, Business Solutions & Support at AgilityVANTAGE POINTaterfall, Agile, Six Sigma.... And many other project management methodologies exist. PRINCE, PMP & CAPM and a host of other certifications exist. New ones are added every few years. All of these methodologies teach us how to manage & execute a project. You can get certified and credentialed as a Project Manager (PM). But does a certificate alone make a person a good PM? Conversely, does it mean that if an un-certified PM is less of a project manager? I started doing project management back in the late 80s when there was no Internet. I do not even recall if there was a project management certifica-tion at that time. I remember learning the craft the old fashioned way: I went to the local library, checked out a book, read it and made handwritten notes. I then went on to practice what I learnt. My dear ex-colleagues and now friends, you were the guinea pigs through whom I learnt project management! My experience with project man-agement spans many years and a range of projects, from one-man to 100+ man projects, single-location to multi-coun-try, with budgets that often went into millions of dollars. I led people locat-ed in the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and countries in the Western hemisphere. At least two of my projects crashed, a few went south but were sal-vaged, and a lot were successful. As I completed more and more proj-ects, I came to learn what worked and what didn't. Other than learning from the typical mistakes of a rookie Project Manager, I learnt a key lesson: there is much more to making a project success-ful than ensuring you have the right Gantt charts, statements of work, UAT sign-offs, the burndown chart, the Agile train etc. If this was all that is required, then every project would succeed by simply following the prescribed pro-cess. But we know that many projects fail despite a seemingly sound process and certified project managers. Why?Because project management is more than a science. After having led hundreds of projects, I realized that it is extremely rare for a project to not have challenges. In fact, I cannot recall a project that did not present its own unique set of challenges, like when the customer disagreed with the scope of the project; the expectations of the customer did not match reality; actual costs exceeded the customer's budget, and the list goes on. No project manage-ment methodology or fancy certificates can address such challengs. It is the PM who has to recognize the customer pain points and address these. Convince the customer to buy-in and allay his or her fears. Reset expectations without com-promising quality.An important aspect of project management has to do with your own project team. Many projects are under-staffed or do not comprise the right set of skills; the customer may be expect-ing a project to be delivered in weeks instead of months; and the team may not have the tools they need. So the PMr must use his acumen to motivate the team, manage their expectations and come up with work-arounds to address the lack of tools and resources. These are only examples of challenges a a PM must tackle. Unlike disciplines that require ad-herence to a defined process to yield W
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