Who is the Best Project Manager?

Probably more of an issue with a poor recruitment process. Sounds like the recruiter hasn’t run through an interview or reference process that would get to the bottom of how successful the candidate had been in the past, or their responses/actions when facing particularly challenging scenarios. Combine this with the issue that quite a few organisations I’ve met recently don’t really understand best practice project management, and the fear of doing something different and going outside the industry and you get the scenario you’ve described.

I would have to totally agree and thinks solely based on the PM ability to sell them self in the interview as somone ‘You can work with’ rather than ability. You hardly ever get asked about Imitating any lessons learned through the PMs working life cycle.

Too true!

Question is how number 2 can be assessed from interview? Almost all jobs advertised are baaed on previous related skills / knowledge – there is an assumption you are good at what you do.

Hi Rob,
Expedience is the mother of all disasters. Human factors and fallabilities are always an issue to manage. You also mention good stakeholder management, which has to be a common and standard characteristic for any PM, but it is also about good team management and Bottoms-up line management. One of my characteristics I am presently trying to deal with is the desire of the executive body of my organisation to deliver more effectively and efficiently, but a lack of will or allowance to deal with personel issues is an inhibitor, as is the skill sets available, so the PM’s own experience and skillsets become diluted away from what he/she should be dealing with. Iin a sense a halfway house between your first and second scenario is often reached. A Compromise one thinks!!

thanks for this article, I would disagree though with your choice for a simple reason. In most sectors, having a ‘manager’ title is not enough..when you’re not qualified technically. I have been seeing in the UK too many ‘type-2′ PM’s. That’s good enough for NHS, MoD or government, but for demanding projects, we need people with experience over prince2 clerks. The ideal being someone with sufficient background and PM experience. The key reason is that most issues arise from design details, and to anticipate, understand, discuss, solve, an admin type PM is of no use nor help. More importantly, your legitimity as a technically skilled person needs to be recognised by team members, it is being credible.

I think that much of the problem is that the recruitment agent can easily measure the ‘hard’ technical ability of a candidate, but doesn’t know how to measure the ’softer’ management skills of a prospective candidate. I think that any project manager worth his salt will be able to hit the ground running and grapple with the project issues such as budgets, stakeholder concerns, team management, timescales, etc. The technology bit is easy to learn quickly through a brief cramming period during initial engagement with the project. A project manager only needs to know just enough about the technology to get an overview of how it all fits together. He can then use his subject matter experts to deal with the nitty gritty of making it work correctly and only needs to get further into the detail if there is a technical issue that is blocking progress and some work-around is needed to pull it back on track. A good project manager will inspire creativity in his team in these scenarios and encourage high-motivation, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Scenario 2 is more likely to produce the desired “on time,on budget outcome” still so rare in the world of PM,the bigger the project the more rare it seems.
The change in recruitment to the tick box rec cons who will not put forward anybody who has’nt done exactly the same job in their last position would seem to be the main culprit.
I have worked in telecoms project management and am Prince 2 qualified for over 15 years before the dot com bubble burst and was forced then to go into direct sales.Since then due to age discrimination and the attitude described above I have been unable to get a PM job. Other factors inhibiting PM is the lack of support from some line managers.I have worked under Senior Project Managers/Programme Managers with a very long line of qualifications and accreditaions after their name enabling them to walk into any company,to hire and fire at will but who when you work with them show little common sense or abilty to motivate or get their staff on side.PM is primarily a human skill. Previous success or failure is not necessarily a guide to the future but a more broader acceptance of a wide range of previous experience
should be the order of the day. Commission earning box tickers at rec cons in their twenties shouldn’t be in a position to block or end peoples careers
Regards
Dominic Colgan Bsc