Teachable Moments: Single Project, Multiple Project Managers

Clay Fuller has more than 20 years of experience in project management and technology innovation consulting. Today his primary focus is leading companies in business intelligence efforts that take advantage of the big data revolution by providing unprecedented insight into performance, opportunities and risks. Follow him on Twitter@realcaf.

 

Teachable moments are formed when you have done something--regardless of the outcome--and learned from the experience. Learning makes us better at what we do and provides a great opportunity to develop others and sharpen skills. We’ve compiled our best Teachable Moments from our community members for you to learn from and share with other project managers.

If you are an experienced IT project manager, you’ve probably run into the scenario of a software implementation project with a third-party vendor that has their own project manager assigned to the effort. The vendor project manager has more experience and knowledge of the product and how the project will progress. After all, he or she implements this product at one company and then another. I’m sure the challenges change somewhat depending on the customer, but knowing the insides and outs of the product is a big advantage.

As a corporate project manager, this has always been a delicate circumstance for me because a supervisor always says, “I don’t want the vendor to lead this project. I want you to manage the project and not let the vendor control things.” So, you sit back and assess the situation--highly visible software implementation, big revenue potential, strict due dates, vendor with expertise in managing the project--while you can barely pronounce the name of the software…

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