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Why Projects Fail |
By George Wells |
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Copyright 2001 |
Part 2 - Focus of Project Participants
| Defining Focus |
Among
of the most popular buzzwords of contemporary management is “teamwork”.
The concept of teamwork is simple yet it is all too often misunderstood.
Teamwork is not, as many contemporary managers believe, a situation in
which all participants share equally in knowledge, ability, focus, and
responsibility. How is it that in a
world that places so great an emphasis on sports as we do in our world today,
where the concept of teamwork is usually properly and well implemented, we so
often fail in our implementation of the concept in management, in particular, in
project management? A
sports team is not comprised of individuals who all play the same position and
all with equal skill so why would we expect a project team, or any other team
for that matter, to be any different? |
or should have, a particular set of
responsibilities with respect to the project.
Each project participant will, in turn, have an attitude with respect to
his responsibilities, which is a product of the blending of his responsibilities
with his collective frame of reference. I
am using the word “attitude” here in its classical definition of being a
habitual way viewing, interpreting, and responding to things and ideas, not the
more colloquial definition of possessing a sour disposition.
It is this attitude that is the element which gives the individual participant a focal point, around which are all his duties, responsibilities, activities, and thought processes. Thus an engineer may have technical aspects of the project as his focal point while an accountant may have the financial aspects of the project as his focal point. Each is valid provided their focus is broad enough to encompass all aspects of the project for which they have responsibility.
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Focus of the Participants |
Project
Management Institute’s A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge1
identifies nine project management knowledge areas. Thinking in terms of these nine knowledge areas we can say
that, while all project managers work within the overall framework of the total
body of knowledge, it is common for a project manager to use one of the
knowledge areas as the focal point of project management, scope, time, cost, and
human resources management being among the knowledge areas. Among the fundamental tools for project management are PERT, CPM, and Gantt charts. The project manager as an aid to maintaining project focus will generally use one of these three common charts. The natural consequence is that projects often become driven more by time than by cost, human resources, or scope. It is easy to understand how this can happen. Most project participants have a time schedule to which they must adhere. However, not all project participants are required to concern |
themselves with budgets, human resource management, procurement, integration management, scope, cost management or any other aspect of the project. They usually only know, or are concerned with, their own scope and schedule. Only a few project participants are generally concerned with all aspects of the project.
Project participants who have a narrow focus by virtue of their role in the project generally do not concern themselves too much with activities outside their immediate area of responsibility. There are some project participants, however, who will concern themselves with things that are not rightfully within their domain. The skilled project manager will be able to work with the people whom he directly supervises to keep them focused. The project manager has to exercise great care not to stifle his subordinate’s enthusiasm in the process of keeping him focused.
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Focus of the PM |
A
narrow focus is a luxury not generally afforded to the project manager.
If too great an emphasis is placed on time, as often happens, even the
project manager will begin to behave as though time alone is a critical element
in managing the project.
The project will be in jeopardy when that happens. The project manager
may unwittingly sacrifice other elements of the project while attempting to
maintain a time schedule.
The project manager cannot allow himself to become too narrowly focused on time or any other single element of the project. Time is usually a critical element of the project but it is still only one element. It is unlikely that the project manager will have sufficient authority and influence over the project’s scope to materially alter it but he may have the authority to commit resources to the project. When the project begins to fall behind schedule the project manager can immediately call in more people or ask vendors to accelerate delivery schedules, but |
calling in resources comes at a cost. The project manager’s focus has to remain broad if the project is to succeed other than by pure chance. The PM's focus is going to be centered on a particular element or even several elements but it it must also be broad enough to fully encompass all elements.
"Project Manager" is a title often bestowed upon project participants who have line item or subject matter responsibility. These participants are also sometimes called "Project Engineer" or more simply "Project Team Member". A project team member who has line item responsibility may have already developed the broad perspective necessary of a PM but if not, the project participant who is elevated from the level of having line item or subject matter responsibility to that of having responsibility for the entire project needs to be aware that his focus must broaden to encompass all aspects of the projects.
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references:
1. Project
Management Institute’s A Guide To The Project Management Body Of Knowledge
Part three: Project scope
07 February 2001