| |DECEMBER 20209Unlike disciplines that require adherence to a defined process to yield desired results, project management entails technical skills combined with a high degree of awareness of the intangible that the PM must recognize and manage, such as human factors, emotions, and the sensibilities of the people affected, among manydesired results, project management entails technical skills combined with a high degree of awareness of the intan-gible that the PM must recognize and manage, such as human factors, emo-tions, and the sensibilities of the people affected, among many. Many years ago, while working with an IT consulting firm, I was assigned a project in Singapore, where a packaged ERP system had to be modified to meet the specific requirements of a major food manufacturing company. A week before the start of the project, and as I sized up the project, it became clear that the statement of work, the Gantt chart and resource allocation spreadsheets had become artifacts that did not re-semble reality. There were two choices: Either reschedule and risk losing the or-der, or make it happen. As a PM, I managed to reset the cus-tomer expectations by converting a sin-gle-deadline driven project to multiple deadlines, i.e. a phased delivery, also known . as "sprints" in today's world. I convinced the development team that even with the departure of the SME and despite other challenges, they were fully capable of delivering a successful project. And I worked with manage-ment to devise means and incentives to help motivate the project team. After working many weekends, late nights, and with unwavering commit-ment to the customer, the project was successfully delivered. We were three months late, but the customer still cele-brated because we achieved the desired outcome and had his buy-in and input along the way.
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