Following on from my previous article on Project Management in the small, in this article I want to talk about the glamourless, but worthy, side of working as a Project Manager.
One of the most important things for a Project Manager to do is to fix (or cause to be fixed) the sort of problems that the rest of team don't want to, and would be a waste of their talents to spend time on.
For example, if you need to buy a license for some software, then the Project Manager should do that (or have it done), rather than wasting the time of a developer, who probably prefers developing software and probably is quite good at developing software but may not be so motivated at (for example) filling in forms, paying using their own credit card, spending time filling in more forms to claim the money back etc.
The glamourless truth is that part of a Project Manager's job is being a "gopher".
When working as a Project Manager, if you can get someone else to do this sort of thing (who isn't in your team) then that's even better. Some companies have PAs or other useful employees who can do these things for you, which is probably better value for the company. If your company doesn't have such people (as many very small companies don't) then in my opinion it's overall more cost effective to have the Project Manager do things like this rather than developers (even if the Project Manager is paid more per hour) because of the flow-destroying, and in some cases morale sapping, nature of these tasks. Having one person with lots of interruptions and odd-jobs is more efficient than having these spread throughout the team.
To be an even better Project Manager you need to be a like a gopher, but able to predict the future, so I guess that means being a groundhog. Rather than just removing obstacles when they appear, a better Project Manager prevents them from appearing. For example, if you are working at a bank and know that someone new is going to be joining the team, then get their security clearance sorted out before they join so they can get their security pass to allow them around the building as soon as possible, rather than getting it sorted out after they have joined and having to wait for a couple of weeks before they can go to the bathroom unattended.
If you work as a groundhog you might expect to have many groundhog days. If something is cropping up as a persistent problem then you need to make sure it gets fixed, even if the investment seems high compared to the value. It is very good for morale for things to get better, and morale is very important for productivity, so time spent fixing problems usually not only gets back the time that the problem was wasting, but also some extra by making things better and people happier.
Posted by ivan at September 24, 2007 9:21 PM