Issue link: https://industrialmanagement.epubxp.com/i/656209
18 Industrial Management project manager at each of the vendors doing these planning, tracking and reporting tasks. A good project manager is worth his or her weight in gold, and no software development project can move forward without one. However, the project manager is not a strategic role. A project manager is not expected to guide business stakeholders in decisions on high-level project approach. Good project managers are, by definition, detail-oriented. Since the project manager indeed handles so many details, people are startled to learn that most project managers frequently are not big-picture thinkers. You may ask, "Isn't that what they do after all – keep track of the big picture?" But just because a person has a skill in organizing and tracking the details does not necessarily mean he or she has a grasp of the big picture. It's a forest-for- the-trees kind of thing. Many books about project management further add to the confusion and blurring of roles. Topics introduced for project managers are more appropriate for project sponsors A project manager is not expected to guide business stakeholders in decisions on high- level project approach. (the person in the business who is tasked with the project's successful delivery) and program managers ("uber project managers"). Subjects such as building a business case for a project or calculating future ROI are important for project managers to know about, but they really are not in the job description of a project manager. True excellent project management requires many more people in the organization than just the project manager. Business leadership is in charge of making strategic technology decisions, setting the project's goals and ROI measures. Business stakeholders are involved in enumerating business requirements and vetting features against requirements. There is the project team itself – those who will document the requirements, who will design, program and test the software. In short, good project management is holistic, not limited. Achieving holistic project management relies on superior commu- nication. In fact, there's a common thread among all successful software projects: They have good communi- cation up, down and across. Thus, the involvement of the whole organization, in different ways, leads to good project management. What you can do: Learn all the business roles involved in holistic project management. Many business people are not aware of the roles necessary in a software project to achieve good governance and management. Combining excellence in these roles with excellent communication usually will yield good project management. • Project sponsor: The person in the business who has been charged with the successful delivery of the project. Often this person is the COO. • Program manager: The uber-project manager is a lead with excellent technical and communication skills to whom all the project tracks report. • Business stakeholder(s): The people for whom the project is being delivered. They are the customers for the project or proxies for those customers. • (Literal) project manager: The PROJECT MANAGEMENT, LITERALLY Figure 1. Having a project manager does not equal project management. Instead, the literal project manager interacts daily with the technical team, makes detailed plans and uses project management tools to report on progress. Others handle different project aspects, such as strategy, goals and the business case. CEO Project sponsor Business stakeholders Program manager Project manager Programmer Business analyst Design UX Literal project manager