Many Hats of a Project Manager

The role of a project manager has evolved over the years and often the role increasingly resembles that of a bollywood hero! And today, he is expected to perform multiple roles, wear multiple hats to have a smooth project execution, and ensure 100% customer satisfaction. This is especially true in a recession hit world, where one cannot afford a failure as competition is so intense and a small slip can lead to losing a customer and thus revenue.
Project Manager-Larger than Life
The Bollywood Hero of the 1950s was only expected to be a good actor besides looking presentable on screen, whether it was Raj Kapoor, Rajendra Kumar or Dilip Kumar.
The story changed with time and the 70s saw the advent of heroes who were not only good actors and were also expected to woo the leading ladies and the audiences alike...he had to be romantic and Rajesh Khanna was born. The 80s saw another angle of the Bollywood heroes, besides all the attributes listed above, he had to fight the baddies on screen and thus the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan was born.
Today's bollywood heroes pretty much sums up the travails of a project manager. The hero of today besides being endowed with drop dead looks, has to woo heroines, beat up baddies, pull off unbelievable stunts, perform dance sequences, which often resemble acrobatic gymnastic routines, and in the recent times, we have also seen some of them singing too. Ability to act is now a given! It is now the other attributes, which make the superstar of today, be it Hrithik Roshan or Abhishek Bachchan.
The businesses in these modern times are characterized by applications, which are often complex, spanning multiple technologies, and touching several lines of businesses and applications. IT has been one of the major drivers of this complexity and acceleration. The global recession has not helped the project manager either. All this has shortened the project life cycles with the goal of faster release to the market to keep their dates with customer requirements and deadlines. Acceleration of everything from communication to production methods is the order of the day. The caveat being that the quality cannot suffer and erode customer satisfaction. The pressure to deliver on time, within budget, and meeting the customer expectations has necessitated that the project manager dons multiple hats. This calls for super human project managers, resembling the larger than life bollywood heroes!
Expectations are High
The role of a project manager has evolved over the years from managing schedules and delivering the projects within budgets to a more complex job. Apart from the traditional project management activities, today's project managers are expected to play the role of an HR person, business development manager, and a customer relationship manager. In short, this calls for project management leadership.
Project Management Leadership
Today, IT projects are changing the way an organization runs its business or changing a business process for the benefits of its customers. Businesses increasingly are tending towards complexity and acceleration of everything from communication to production methods. Information Technology (IT) continues to play a dominant role in this complexity and acceleration. Research studies over the years have continually shown that companies have difficulty with IT projects and the failure rate continues to be high. The biannual studies conducted by the Standish group since 1994, often referred to as the Chaos study have returned consistent results with regards to failed and challenged projects.
Client Expectations Management is the Key
In several researches, it has been proved that lack of understanding of the stakeholders, the inability to manage expectations with respect to understanding perceptions on the project success criteria, and implicit stake holder expectations are major factors in a project's failure. Today's project managers are expected to understand the directions of influence in the project and be in a position to identify the decision makers and the key influencers. It is also very important for the project manager to understand the cultural aspects of the client's company and the interests of the key stakeholders.
Managing the expectations and maintaining the relationship with customers, who are often situated thousands miles away is indeed a challenge and therefore calls for great project management skills and leadership. This means that the project manager has to anticipate and plan while ensuring that the appropriate control systems, historical data, and the knowledge base within the stakeholders are maintained and developed. Upward management involves maintaining robust relationships with the project sponsors and the senior management is responsible for continued organizational support to the project. Downward management involves managing the team and sideward management is all about knowledge sharing and managing the peers to collaborate as opposed to competing with them.
Customers often expect direct and upfront feedback and update on the health of a project. Project managers in high power distant cultures are required to culturally neutralize themselves to ensure that any ‘red' flags are raised early in the project and communication with regard to any bad news is unambiguously conveyed to the customer along with any mitigation plan.
Moving up the Value Chain
Often times, the customers criticize the offshore teams as being reactive and the offshore project managers are perceived as ‘order takers'. Customers today expect project managers to be assertive and participative, with a questioning attitude and ability to think out of the box. Excellent communication and negotiating skills are required to manage both internal and external environment. Cross cultural exposure comes in handy to build rapport and ease into conversations with clients and customers of different cultural milieu. Great client relationships are often the cornerstones of customer development and often translate into ‘customers for life'. In a mature relationship, project managers are also considered as frontline salesmen and often consulted on new projects or business opportunities The project managers are expected to scale up the value chain and perform in a client advisory role.
Project Manager as HR Pro!
Successful project managers also understand the strength of their team members and make every effort to leverage their skills and put them to best use. In an article in the Harvard Business Review of March 2005 by Marcus Buckingham, he alludes to the research he conducted on 80,000 managers which indicated that great managers understand what is unique about each individual and capitalize on it. He adds that while average managers play checkers, great managers play chess. Today's project manager is the first line of HR interface. A good project manager is expected to motivate his or her team to perform consistently without affecting their morale or work-life balance. They are also measured on the attrition count in their team, buttressing the theory that ‘Employees don't leave organizations, but they leave their bosses'. Ability to counsel, mentor, and coach the team members are considered essential attributes of a project manager.
Looking Forward...
In recent times, the role of a project manager is under increasing threat by the concept of self managed teams propagated by software development models such as TSP (Team Software Process-CMM Methodology), Agile/Scrum, having said that, it is safe to say that the project manager will continue to coexist with other personas such as a Scrum Master, a TSP lead or a technical manager. However it is imperative that the project manager continues to reinvent/reposition to ensure, he or she stays ahead of the game. The project manager besides being very communicative needs to have the big picture always in mind and cannot miss the wood for the trees and vice versa.
Awareness of the industry standards and benchmarks of acceptable project success criteria is a necessity for a contemporary project manager. It is very important for the project manager to stay in touch with the latest delivery methodologies and adopt the best practices. A project manager's role as a coach and mentor cannot be over emphasized. Successful project managers are also often great negotiators. Negotiation skills are called upon in negotiating with the team, project sponsors, senior management, and most importantly the clients. It is however important to realize that in the current scenario ‘One size fits all approach' may not work. Different projects need different skills. As the budgets shrink, customers are also looking at project managers with analytical/technical skills. However the onus still lies on firms to ensure that the right person is at the helm of any project and they are provided with continuous training opportunities to keep pace with the changing face and complexities of the projects.