This Just In...

John Sullivan is a working project manager who writes and speaks on project and career issues.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Talent Management  

Projects spawn the unexpected: technical delays, cost overruns, missed deadlines. These create discomfort with bosses, who often insist there be a special response in the form of a new report. This means additional work for you, the project manager, who must now conceive, schedule, assemble and monitor something else in addition to monitoring scope, cost and schedule.

These requests are often an attempt to control circumstances that are outside the manager’s span of control but have a direct effect on his or her organization. Examples include services required to maintain operations (network support) or the configurations and updates to a software development environment. I call this “comfort by control” because being kept informed about things by a special report prepares managers to provide an answer when asked about delays or unfavorable metrics. Being able to say “I get a special report about that” provides your boss a proactive response. Plus, the next report is no more than one week away, so your boss is always on top of the situation.

While a few project circumstances deserve special treatment, most don’t. Your workload is large enough and you don’t want team members manipulating data for a “one-off” report unless it’s absolutely necessary. Here are five ways to limit--or even eliminate--special …

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