Help From Above: Mentoring Project Managers

  Career Development   Innovation   PM Network  

Project managers spend much of their day focused on the front lines of getting projects completed on time, and within budget and scope.

But Nelson Rosamilha wants the project managers at IBM focused on the bottom line, too.

“Most project managers think about delivery first, and their second priority is the financial result,” says Mr. Rosamilha, PMP, a project executive at IBM, a PMI Global Executive Council member. But to ascend the ranks, project professionals need to give both equal weight—a task made easier when project management executives act as mentors.

“Project managers usually see project directors or project executives as role models,” Mr. Rosamilha says.

The first lesson is teaching project managers to look beyond their to-do lists, he says, and work toward the bigger picture.

How do you get your project teams to focus on delivering financial results?

In IT, the challenge we face is explaining to project managers that the main concern is not just delivering the project to the customer. We have to convince the project managers that they also have to give to the customer added value, and deliver financial results to the company.

We communicate the consequences of delivering a project with losses. It’s a very simple message: When you lose money, you have to bring money from another place. The only way to…

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