The Entrepreneurial Project Manager

Wendi J. Salvaggio is a certified PMP® and a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University and is an experienced entrepreneurial project manager, with more than 20 years of project management experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors.

  Career Development   Stakeholder Management  

Entrepreneurial project managers are a different breed of project managers. They occupy a small niche within the project management discipline, but have a profound impact on those who’ve worked with them. It’s difficult to put a finger on what exactly is different. Some say it’s an “ability to work in the grey,” others think it’s an entirely different approach to project management.

Stakeholders often feel like entrepreneurial project managers are part of their core business leadership team. Traditional project managers think entrepreneurial project managers just have a unique interpersonal style and personality that influences how they manage projects.

To better understand what makes an entrepreneurial project manager different, one must first understand what they have in common with traditional project managers, because all project managers must first and foremost be experts in project management.

Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria within the approved cost, scope and schedule. Traditional project managers are experts in rigorously applying these skills as a science.

Like traditional PMs, entrepreneurial PMs rigorously apply these skills as a science, too. However, that’s where the …

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