What Makes a Quality PM?

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.

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I guess that this article is taking a slightly different approach to the theme of quality management, but I think that project management quality is an important topic--and not something that is addressed often enough.

Simply put, what makes a “high quality” project manager? It’s not as simple as ensuring that the project delivers against its constraints--that’s important of course, but it’s only one element of the picture. I think most PMs today would accept that there is more to their job than that, just as they wouldn’t want to be labeled as “bad” if their project missed the constraints. But there is far less discussion about “what good looks like”.

That’s what I want to try and address in this article, and I hope that it stirs debate. I’m not trying to offer a definitive solution here; rather I am offering a perspective and inviting all of you to adjust my suggestions based on your own thoughts. Hopefully between us, we can define some quality standards for the profession!

The elements of PM quality
The first place to start would seem to be the different aspects of project management that should contribute to measuring the quality of project management. I think that there are three areas that should contribute:

• What: This broadly aligns with the hard skills of project management…

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