Why Project Managers Must Embrace Uncertainty (Part 1)

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Risk Management   Strategy  

We all know that over the course of the last decade or so, project managers have been expected to embrace the idea of delivering solutions that meet business needs. While that has always been a consideration, it was frequently a secondary one for PMs—other people worried about the benefits while the project manager and team concentrated on delivering the defined solution, working through the feature backlog.

However, as organizations have shifted closer to a continuous evolution model, that approach couldn’t work. Between projects being approved and the solution being delivered, operating environments can change significantly, and they frequently do.

As a result, PMs and teams must embrace change. They need to adapt to delivering a solution that aligns with the operating environment that exists once the work is complete—not simply the one that was anticipated when the project started.

This is where the importance of business acumen for project managers comes in. By understanding the enterprise, its industry and its environment, PMs are better able to understand the drivers of change, and potentially proactively work to deliver improved solutions. This makes us a critical part of the business team, not just the project team.

However, in the current world, that is proving to be a significant challenge.

Unprecedented uncertainty
There is a global …

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