Note: This post is part of a worldwide project management initiative, read more details at the end of this post.
To me, project management means controlling chaos with a strong determined smile and tenacious attitude that means stuff gets done.
Imagine being smack bang in the middle of many people of varying seniority, many above you, who are all pulling in different directions despite all wanting the same thing, the project you’re managing to be delivered successfully.
Project management is not for the faint-hearted. Project management means that many of your days will feel like this.
However project management isn’t all doom, gloom and stress. Out of the controlled chaos comes a great feeling of accomplishment and pride when you finish a challenging project, when a team is working well or a client is happy.
These kinds of success are almost always aided by good project management and thus ultimately project management to me means making everyone else’s job easy. This is what makes people happy and this is what results in successful projects.
Thus Project Managers have to master the art of being the office chameleon, blending into very different environments at the drop of a hat.
One minute you’re talking to irate developers about server issues and working out how best to help resolve the issue, the next you’re in a Director’s office talking about financial reporting and finally followed up by briefing a photographer on the creative direction you’d like them to take.
Most people end up specialising, project management means having the ability to wear many hats, a skill not many have or fully appreciate.
Successful project management also resulted in the Death Star being built. Case closed.
This post…
This post is published as part of a first ever project management related global blogging initiative to publish a post on a common theme at exactly the same time.
Over 70 bloggers from Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, UK and the USA have committed to making a blogging contribution and the fruit of their labour is now available all over the web. View the complete list of all participating blogs.
Great article and pictures. Using the latest technology will take a lot of the frustration out of managing projects.
Order will prevail!
Used lots of tools but to me proofhub seems to be much better and has helped me a lot.
Thanks to you Sam, and to the community you’ve created around this blog for sharing their thoughts.
http://dana-about-pm.com/2014/01/05/thanks-for-sharing-your-knowledge/
Looking forward to reading more great stuff from all of us in 2014!
Unlike business managers who oversee a department or function, project managers often need to coordinate borrowed people with different skills from different functional areas (and sometimes from different organisations) to spend other’s money to produce new products that hopefully satisfy the users and a variety of other stakeholders, which could be likened to painting a picture with many different and anxious hands holding the paint brush – clearly controlling this chaos is not for the faint-hearted.