4 Groups That Benefit from Your Project Management Ability

“The ‘P’ in ‘PM’ is as much about ‘People Management’ as it is about ‘Project Management’.”  ~ Cornelius Fitchner

At some point in every engineer's career they will find themselves as a project manager.  This happened to me in the first year of my engineering career and I was woefully unprepared.  We are educated in college on the fundamentals of engineering, not the core skills that are required to be fully effective in an engineering career.

What I learned over the years about project management was on the job.  It was only a few years ago that I decided to formalize my practice of project management.  My rationale was simple: I would be transitioning careers and earning the Project Management Professional certification which would communicate to potential future employers that I was still motivated in my engineering career and capable of learning.

However, what I ended up with a was a whole new appreciation for project management as a profession and a worldview that everything we undertake in life - either professionally or personally - is a project.  I also realized that much of what I knew to be “project management” was off vector or flat-out wrong.  

One of the key fundamentals I gathered from my now formal approach to project management, was that relationships play the key role in successful project execution.  This shouldn’t have been a surprise, as relationships play the key role in any successful, and fulfilling, career.  Specifically, I gained a better appreciation for 4 groups that benefit from your project management ability.

In project management lingo, benefits management is a process you use to identify what exactly a project’s completion will deliver in terms of an organization’s strategy.  Determination of these benefits is vital for the project manager, because they need to keep the end in sight throughout execution so when problems affecting cost, scope, or time arise, they can develop solutions that limit the negative effects on the intended benefits.

Determining what exactly the intended benefits are isn’t a solo task for the project manager.  Other stakeholders are, and must, be involved:  owners, the public, project team members, your boss.  If you’re handed a project management role and you don’t know what the intended benefits are, find out by engaging stakeholders and asking questions like these:

When you can answer these questions clearly, you’ll be able to operate with the end in sight and that will reap benefits for everyone involved.  Most importantly, for you as the project manager.  I’ve found that clearly knowing and understanding what the end goal of a project is helps me to focus my abilities to actually make that end goal possible.

Get clear on what benefits are intended from a project’s execution before you start so you can increase the probability of hitting the end goal.

Benefiting Those That Matter Most In Your Project

We know that every project has multiple players, called stakeholders in project management parlance.  Managing stakeholder expectations is where a project manager’s true abilities come into the picture.  From my perspective, an effective project manager doesn’t exist by only having skill in managing and controlling time, cost and scope.  They become effective, and hence successful, when they are able to manage and control stakeholder expectations.

Stakeholders.  If a project manager is effective in controlling stakeholder expectations in regards to benefits, then they are very effective.  Here’s what effective, and successful, project managers deliver for stakeholder benefits:

Project Team Members.  Project managers also have team members they work with, either directly leading or coordinating efforts.  Effective project management delivers these team member benefits:

Organizational Functional Managers.  Project managers also have to support organizational functional manager’s throughout a project’s delivery.  These individuals may be internal to an organization (which brings in potential political aspects as an additional matter to be aware of!) or external if a contracted project manager.  In either case, benefits that an effective project manager can provide to functional managers include:

The Boss.  And finally, every project manager works for someone.  Managing the boss's expectations is sometimes more important than managing a client’s expectations, so it’s important to make certain that time is spent understanding the boss and their expectations.  An effective project manager can deliver these type of senior manager benefits:

Professional project management is a rich field to operate in because it brings together technical, leadership, and business strategy elements.  If you’re interested in furthering your engineering career you will need to become involved in project management.  And you will need to become effective in meeting/exceeding expectations and bringing a project’s benefits to reality each time.

Reference:

"PM Topics." PM Topics. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 June 2015.

Christian Knutson, P.E., PMP is an international infrastructure development program manager, engineer, and author. He has extensive experience in leadership, management, and engineering earned from a career as a civil engineering officer in the U.S. Air Force.  He now coaches engineers enabling them to create an engineering career and life of fulfillment at The Engineering Career Coach.