Project Management and Senior Management: Reconciling Their Needs

I just posted a a new blog article. It’s titled “Project Management and Senior Management: Reconciling Their Needs.” You can find it here [1].

This article discusses why there is often such a chasm between the views and needs of project managers and those of senior managers. And whereas organizations are usually willing to invest in training their project-level folks in basic project management (“No more late projects after this – we paid to teach you how to use MS Project!”), senior management almost never gets such training. As a result, senior managers rarely understand:

#1. The detailed techniques and metrics of PM;
#2. How they relate to the investment value they want (“Why can’t you just finish on time and on budget!”); and
#3. How specific problematic processes (such as arbitrary deadlines!) could be restructured to help.

The article suggests a solution: a nexus between the tangible solutions that interest project teams and the business value that drives sponsors, customers, and other executives. This nexus is the recognition and management, based in PM techniques and metrics, of projects as investments that are undertaken to maximize their business value.

Fraternally in project management,

Steve the Bajan