Are You a Project Manager, Really?

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

 

Last month's column offered a new definition of project management. Once again, readers took the time to share their feedback--some on the site, and some directly to me. Overwhelmingly the response was positive and supportive, but there were also a number of correspondents who didn't entirely agree with the proposed definition--and some that didn't agree at all.

What was interesting about the disagreement was its singularity of focus. The definition of project management that I offered was:

"The exercise of responsibility and decision-making about a project, the authority to execute within the boundaries of the project, and the accountability to deliver the results of a project in the context of agreed-upon customer expectations, commitments and constraints."

The criticism received was not an objection to the project manager being uniquely accountable for the results of a project. In fact, most people seemed to clearly accept the fact that senior management would hold one person accountable for the project and one person alone--the project manager. What people didn't agree with was the idea of the project manager having the authority and responsibility to make decisions about the project.

Generally, this disagreement fell into one of two camps:

• The project manager cannot have authority and responsibility for the project, because the results of the project are …

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