The Project Manager

So you are the new project manager—congratulations and welcome to the challenge of your life.

The minimum standards which you must meet for this position include:

• Ability to speak MIS-IT-CIS, etc.
• Having boardroom presence.
• Ability to manage complex human resource issues • across organization boundaries and across contractor firms.
• Knowledgeable regarding networks and open architec­tures.
• Thoroughly knowledgeable in project control systems and project management software.
• Comfortable with customizing a system design meth­odology to meet the needs of the team.
• Provide strong leadership in enforcing documentation and testing protocols at each project stage.
• Understand the importance of identifying early mile­stones to assess progress and verify estim ating p ar am -eters.
• Providing leadership at all levels without the percep­tion of seeking power and control.
• Possess a third sense for broken processes and have the ability to reconstruct processes through reengineering efforts.
• Understand the value of using multimedia presenta­tion tools and incorporating multimedia system tools in the design.
• Relate to user function needs as customer needs— don't push the customer back to pencils and paper.
• Don't become a date driven "madman."
• Focus on quality deliverables and user benefits.

Characteristics of great project managers include: forcefulness, discretion, knowledge level, trust, understanding technology, ability to listen and communicate, open to team suggestions—but strong enough to redirect as necessary, utilize common sense, be control oriented, practical in estimating and able to visualize the impact of decisions and design parameters on future operations in user functions and in MIS functions.

Pitfalls

Projects get into trouble when:

• Users are involved with no tasks assigned.
• Users are not involved until the conversion phase.
• Budgets are loosely assigned and multi-year projects are at risk of budget cuts.
• Projects lack detailed planning or get off on detours (good or bad).
• Wars break out over which DFD method requires boxes or circles.
• Estimating is so detailed it consumes all the time.
• Partners are not bound to legal penalties.

To Be Continued