The Human Element

Janis is an award-winning journalist and editor who has covered many industries beyond project management, including health care, financial services, higher education and retail sales.

  Career Development   Leadership   New Practitioners   PMO   ProjectsAtWork  

A reformed “process maniac” would like to see more project management peers shift focus from monitoring checklists and templates to developing people skills. Here, IT project veteran Mark Calabrese shares some thoughts on communication and partnering, authority and accountability, the new PMO paradigm, and why project leaders should live in the future so their teams can succeed in the here and now.

Veteran project manager and PMO expert Mark Calabrese, PMP, describes himself as a reformed “process maniac,” and he’d like to see more of his peers join him in the transition. As managing consultant in the Business Strategy Execution Practice Group of Chicago-based Project Leadership Associates, Calabrese is focused on developing in clients the people skills that he says are essential to project success.

After more than 20 years of work in nitty-gritty IT project environments, Calabrese knows firsthand how difficult it can be to shift the focus from technology tools to the human element. Still, he emphasizes that project managers cannot expect to execute sophisticated projects simply by checking off items on a software-generated list. Those project managers need people skills and core values that often are overlooked when corporations emphasize systems and methodologies. An ally in the development of such capabilities is the PMO, Calabrese says,…

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