According to popular belief (especially in some service-oriented companionships…) project manager’s main duty is to be a slap b*tch for project sponsor. Joint business lunches full of professional asslicking, constant "governance", assuring that everything is ok (even if it’s clearly not) and preparing tons of content-free PowerPoint atrocities - that’s project manager’s life.
Parallely, on the edge of their perception there’s something going on - it’s named "project". Project managers do not care much, as such low-level details are meaningless for them. Project delivery is so simple, they did it already 10 years ago, once. It wasn’t about custom built system, but more about data migration, but what kind of difference it could be?
And on this project, there are some people. They do some non-interesting job for lower wages. They don’t need much attention as long as the number they report every week is as assumed in the PLAN. The holy sheet that is the only bridge of communication between project manager and lowbies.
Have you ever met such project manager?
You didn’t? Lucky git, aren’t you. You did? You’re not the only one.
Unfortunately some project managers can’t understand that:
- YES, indeed, managing stakeholders is helluva important duty, but …
- there are plenty other different areas to manage, including internal communication (yes, your people deserve to be informed!) and people expectations
- respect based on granted role is the worst kind of respect (because it’s not a respect until you truly deserve it)
- slave is the worst kind of worker - if you want people to do something efficiently you need to make them believe it makes sense - in other words, you have to “sell” the idea internally; convince people that the way you suggest makes the most sense
Sometimes people forget all that. Forget that project managers are for the PROJECT TEAM. That’s who they are supposed to serve.