MANAGING PROJECTS

Managing Projects

Managing Projects

Introduction

Project management (PM) refers to the management and control of projects and temporary organizations. In the context of Touprom I will say that managing a project concerns a task to be completed with a limited set of resources—be it personnel, material, or financial resources—and within a certain period. Project management skills are essential for any complex task, where different outcomes are possible, requiring planning and assessing options, and organizing activities and resources to deliver a result (Pinto and Slevin, 1998). The project managers at Touprom are trained in a specific manner. Projects come in all shapes and sizes, from the small and straight-forward to extremely large and highly complex. Project management can be concerned with anything: people, products, services, materials, production, IT and communications, plant and equipment, storage, distribution, logistics, buildings and premises, staffing and management, finance, administration, acquisition, divestment, purchasing, sales, selling, marketing, human resources, training, culture, customer service and relations, quality, health and safety, legal, technical and scientific, new product development, new business development; and in any combination.

Managing Projects

Pinto and Slevin (1998) mention one myth of project management is that certain people have an innate ability to do it well, and others do not. Whenever this myth came up in conversation with other project managers, I always asked for an explanation of that ability—how to recognize it, categorize it, and, if possible, develop it in others. After discussion and debate, the only thing we usually identified—after considering many of the other topics and skills covered elsewhere in this book—is the ability to make things happen (Pinto and Slevin, 1998). Some people are able to apply their skills and talents in whatever combination necessary to move projects forward, and others cannot, even if they have the same or superior individual skills. The ability to make things happen is a combination of knowing how to be a catalyst or driver in a variety of different situations, and having the courage to do so.

The project managers at Touprom consider that the ability to drive is so important to some that it's used as a litmus test in hiring project managers. Even if PMs can't precisely define what the ability is without making at least some references to other skills, they do feel that they can sense or measure it in others. For example, an interviewer needs to ask herself the following question about the candidate: "If things were not going well on some important part of the project, would I feel confident sending this person into that room, into that discussion or debate, and believe he'd help find a way to make it better, whatever the problem was?" If after a round of interviews the answer is no, the candidate is sent home. The belief is that if he isn't agile or flexible enough to adapt his skills and knowledge to the situations at hand, and find ways to drive things forward, then he won't survive, much less thrive, on a typical project (Gido & Clements, ...