Project or Product Management: Which Road Are You On?

Craig is based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and has worked with ProjectManagement.com for the last six years developing the various HEADWAY processes (Project, Change and Portfolio). He has hosted a series of webinars and is a business intelligence subject matter expert.

  CRM   Product Management   Stakeholder Management  

Some time ago, I was working with an organization that was attempting to revise its project management methodology to support the execution of its electricity transmission projects. About 18 months prior, it had gone through an exercise to develop a defined project approach.

It was experiencing a number of significant challenges attempting to successfully implement its projects. Some of the challenges stemmed back to its lack of consistent methodology. It was its first attempt at developing such a methodology and, to be fair, it was a good start and a huge step forward.

However, soon after its implementation, even more confusion was evident. The organization had fully combined its engineering product processes with its project management processes. With this, it had also combined the roles. The engineer working on the project was now responsible to layout both engineering design and develop the project management plan.

Unforunately, he was an engineer and not a project manager. As such, he had no idea what the project required. He was comfortable with the engineering specifications, but lacked the experience and the focus demanded to define the project details such as engaging project stakeholders, developing the charter and identifying risks. The result of this combination was further project delays, frustration, errors and blame.

The reality is that this …

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