The Cost of Time

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.

  Career Development  

A friend of mine recently reached out for some advice. He is a project manager who has been steadily progressing in his career over the last 10 years or so and is now managing a business-critical project that has a lot of visibility. However, the project has just been delayed significantly due to problems with the vendor partner, and he isn’t sure what he should do. The organization is still very happy with him as the project manager, and he wants to be able to see the project through to completion. However, he is concerned that he will lose momentum in his career progression if he stays in the role for the potentially two or more years that it will take to fully complete the initiative.

It’s easy to put this enthusiasm to move on down to “youthful exuberance” and encourage this PM to show more patience, but it’s a legitimate concern. I’m sure that many PMs find themselves in similar situations in the earlier years of their careers. Is it better to build a track record of success even if that delays career progression, or is it better to look to move up when an opportunity presents itself--even if that means leaving things undone? Like so many other questions, there is no single right answer, but I think that there are some considerations that we can look at in guiding individuals to make the right decision for them.

The need for a …

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