Panic From Fuzzy: PM

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Anonymous said...: I've worked with very good project managers, very bad project managers, and everything in between. They all have suffered from lack of authority. Some have collapsed into the low energy state of maintaining the Microsoft Project document. Others have, through force of personality or dark, mystical arts, acquired some authority. The latter were much more successful than the former.

I think the reason that project managers don't have much authority is that the members of the team already report to a manager who has authority over their activities. Hence, the project manager is not in the critical path. In my current team, the line managers are the project managers. Since it's not their primary skill set, they struggle with some aspects of it. But their all technical and write the reviews of the folks reporting status: that tends to result in very honest status. ;); Tue Oct 30, 03:45:00 PM PDT
David Christiansen said...: I like your comment Sarge. Some groups organize around projects, making the PM powerful (as in your group). I prefer those situations. One way to get similar authority in a matrix organization where the PM is not the functional manager is to use lots of contractors. They will tend to give the PM more authority than an employee with a split loyalty will. That's one of the black magic ways of creating authority as a PM...; Tue Oct 30, 03:50:00 PM PDT

Panic From Fuzzy