General Rules for Project Management

General Rules for Project Management

In sports, whether one is participating or simply watching the game, one
needs to understand not just the sport itself but also the rules associated
with it. There are different rules and roles in team sports such as football or
soccer, and cricket. Automobile racing has different rules and roles from
horse racing and ski racing. Applying experience and knowledge associated
with one sport while watching a different sport would lead to frustration,
discouragement, and eventually rejection. Similarly, applying rules that
apply to routine business operations in a project context would lead to similar
frustration, discouragement, and rejection. As obvious as this concept
seems, the application of operations management concepts to projects
occurs regularly on a daily basis. In many organizations, both the project
team and the sponsoring management share this negative experience but do
not realize why it is occurring.
What makes a project temporary and unique also makes it unsuited to
the rules and roles of operations management.
Roles in project management are different from those in operations.
In operations, a manager in finance will have a different job from a manager
in human resources or product development, but a project manager
will have a very similar job whether the project is a finance project, a
human resources project, or a product development project. While a line
manager can push a problem “upstairs” to a higher level manager, or evendelay its resolution, the project manager is expected to manage the risks,
problems, and resolutions within the project itself, with the help of the
team, the sponsor or the customer, to keep the project moving forward.
Project manager is a clearly a role; the project manager is the person
responsible for the management and results of the project. Some organizations
with established project management functions (such as a project
management office) will have a job description and position classification
for project manager, and some even deploy project managers to other divisions
when that expertise and role are needed. But the position is not just a
manager role with a different title on it. The performance expectations are
as different from each other as offensive or defensive positions on a sports
team. Project management roles are always “offensive”