Project Managers: The Level-Headed Heroes that Prevail

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Cost Management   Scope Management  

When it comes to project management, we all want to be the hero. Someone who comes to save the day, rescues the kitten and makes the world a better place for the next generation:

• "Look! It’s going to save us time!"
• "Wow! It’s going to save us money!"
• "Is it a fantasy that lives in a business landscape? No! It’s a well-managed and high-quality project managed by a stellar project manager!"

It can seem quite fictional for many of us that try to keep project costs from ballooning (some figures have pointed to IT projects exceeding their respective budgets on the average of 200%) and from going beyond their scheduled project plan (in the same Harvard Business Review article, it was reported that almost 70% of projects ran past their promised delivery time). But with the right management and control in place, project managers can really save the day.

Budget Becomes Cost, Information Becomes Misinformation
Knowing what to expect is how you apportion the capital necessary and create a budget. All it takes is a few overruns though and soon you have project-associated expenses mutating into costly excesses, with the total value of contracts going beyond their projections and removing much of their expected return on investment. These costs then become issues that  can …

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