Sure, You Can Be a PM In Your Personal Life...but Should You?

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.

  Leadership  

This month’s ProjectManagement.com theme poses a bit of a challenge for me. It’s all about applying project management skills and abilities beyond the workplace, and that’s something I’ve avoided doing throughout my life—at least when it comes to projects for myself.

There have certainly been many opportunities—building a house, moving to a new country (twice), and all of the more usual things like planning a vacation, organizing milestone birthday parties, and so on. So why won’t I project manage those things in my own life?

It's a question I’ve been asked a number of times. People have suggested that I can’t be a very good project manager if I don’t even trust myself to manage a project for myself. And others have suggested that I must have more money than sense if I’m willing to pay someone to handle a personal project that I am perfectly capable of managing.

To me, the reasoning is simple, and I want to share my though process here. But I also want to make one thing clear. I believe all project managers should consider the items that I’m going to discuss in this piece before deciding to manage a personal project for themselves. But I don’t believe everyone will come to the same conclusions that I did.

There are very valid reasons to manage personal projects, and I know many people …

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