Arvind KumarDelivery Manager| IT OrganizationChicago, Il, United States
I heard from my colleagues most of time that team is not productive, not able to manage, not proactive and most of time reactive, not motivated and many more..
In my view it’s Project Manager responsibility to manage these issues and one can manage team efficiently if we interact with team as People Manager.
I wrote an article about the downside of having both the people & project management responsibilities - a strong matrix structure is often superior to projectized as it enables the PM to focus on achieving the project's objectives.
Even if you have formal authority this does not mean you can inspire your team - the carrot and the stick don't work for creative, knowledge-based work. Read Drive by Daniel Pink...
Kiron
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1 reply by Arvind Kumar
Jun 23, 2018 10:32 AM
Arvind Kumar
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Thank you Kiron. I will go through.
Regards,Arvind
Saving Changes...
Arvind KumarDelivery Manager| IT OrganizationChicago, Il, United States
Jun 23, 2018 10:20 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Arvind -
I wrote an article about the downside of having both the people & project management responsibilities - a strong matrix structure is often superior to projectized as it enables the PM to focus on achieving the project's objectives.
Even if you have formal authority this does not mean you can inspire your team - the carrot and the stick don't work for creative, knowledge-based work. Read Drive by Daniel Pink...
In most cases this is not possible for several reasons.
First of all the direct (people) manager of a group of employees must, as a general rule, come from the same line of work as those employees. This means that before becoming a people manager the manager should have worked as an individual contributor in a position similar to the positions of his direct reports.
PMs on the other hand many times, probably most of the times in IT, don't come from the same line of work as the project team members. As a people manager you are responsible for the career development of your employees, but how can you do this if you don't fully understand their work?
In addition projects are temporary structures from within an organization that don't have their own resources. Project's resources, human or material, are being assigned from the functional departments. For an employee, working on a project is just a temporary work assignment as he would continue to belong to his functional department and report to a people manager from that department.
PMs however can become people managers too but they can only directly manage other project managers. For instance the manager/director of a project management structure from within an organization must be an experienced project manager. The rule that the people manager must come from the same line of work as his direct reports does apply here as well. Saving Changes...
Arvind KumarDelivery Manager| IT OrganizationChicago, Il, United States
Hi Adrian,
Very well explained ... Thanks Saving Changes...
A PM needs to balance the requirements of human resources within the project, reporting to the PM, and the often competing demands of functional managers that may have no stake in the project at all, other than the fact you are using their staff. Performance appraisals will be different from the PM compared to functional managers, and a PM should keep this in mind especially knowing that when the project is done, the project resource will be back within their department at the "mercy of the functional manager, so I tend to rate human resources more positively than say if I was a functional manager, in essence focusing on the positive aspects of the individual and limiting negative aspects to team performance to soften the blow.
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1 reply by Adrian Carlogea
Jun 23, 2018 8:59 PM
Adrian Carlogea
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I am not sure about the organization you are working in but in the large companies in which I have worked I have seen that the functional managers were held accountable for the work their direct reports were performing on projects.
When employees are assigned to projects the functional manager should continue to supervise their work an be responsible for managing the project work in his/her area of expertise.
PMs, unless they are also technical experts in the line of work of the team members, are not competent to manage the project team members and also are not competent to give performance appraisal to them. Imagine a software development PM that has never written a line of code in his life telling developers how to do their job and in the end evaluating their technical skills. This is simply non-sense.
Probably one of the biggest mistake you can make in a matrix organization is to let functional managers assign their staff to projects without supervising their project work. The poor PMs are then left to "manage" staff with no formal authority over them and with no technical managerial competence. This would be the employees and functional managers Heaven. :D The employees would be accountable to nobody and the functional managers would have less duties and responsibilities. Things should not work this way. If they do then, I am sorry for the PMs that have to work in this kind of environment.
A PM needs to balance the requirements of human resources within the project, reporting to the PM, and the often competing demands of functional managers that may have no stake in the project at all, other than the fact you are using their staff. Performance appraisals will be different from the PM compared to functional managers, and a PM should keep this in mind especially knowing that when the project is done, the project resource will be back within their department at the "mercy of the functional manager, so I tend to rate human resources more positively than say if I was a functional manager, in essence focusing on the positive aspects of the individual and limiting negative aspects to team performance to soften the blow.
I am not sure about the organization you are working in but in the large companies in which I have worked I have seen that the functional managers were held accountable for the work their direct reports were performing on projects.
When employees are assigned to projects the functional manager should continue to supervise their work an be responsible for managing the project work in his/her area of expertise.
PMs, unless they are also technical experts in the line of work of the team members, are not competent to manage the project team members and also are not competent to give performance appraisal to them. Imagine a software development PM that has never written a line of code in his life telling developers how to do their job and in the end evaluating their technical skills. This is simply non-sense.
Probably one of the biggest mistake you can make in a matrix organization is to let functional managers assign their staff to projects without supervising their project work. The poor PMs are then left to "manage" staff with no formal authority over them and with no technical managerial competence. This would be the employees and functional managers Heaven. :D The employees would be accountable to nobody and the functional managers would have less duties and responsibilities. Things should not work this way. If they do then, I am sorry for the PMs that have to work in this kind of environment.
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1 reply by Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD
Jun 23, 2018 10:59 PM
Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD
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Sometimes in organizations there is no choice but to take human resources from functional departments, as they are not always dedicated to projects indefinitely. Yes functional managers share some management responsibilities over the employee that sits on a project, like approving them as resources on the project, individual performance reviews (based on job role, not the project). PM's and SM's do perform appraisals of teams especially in an Agile environment, but sometimes individual performance appraisals too. Functional managers should not be supervising project work, that is the PM's role, but the two can meet to discuss resource-related issues, such as conflict resolution, resource availability etc. The "poor" PM's should not even exist in a matrix organization because they should already be adequately equipped with the technical, strategic and leadership qualities to manage both the project and its human resources acquired internally (ie, functional department) and/or externally. Regarding software PM's, no they don't need to have ever written a line of code. They need to know how to manage a project, not "telling developers how to do their job". That is the developer's job. Also, I never said the PM would assess the individual's technical skills. That is often done by team members when forming their teams or bringing in a new member. This is why a member of the developer team is almost always brought into the interview. We may be talking about different environments here. Hint keywords: Agile, Servant Leadership, self-empowered teams rather than the traditional waterfall, command and control structures, and hierarchical management. At least we can embrace the diversity of project management and leadership styles that exist.
I am not sure about the organization you are working in but in the large companies in which I have worked I have seen that the functional managers were held accountable for the work their direct reports were performing on projects.
When employees are assigned to projects the functional manager should continue to supervise their work an be responsible for managing the project work in his/her area of expertise.
PMs, unless they are also technical experts in the line of work of the team members, are not competent to manage the project team members and also are not competent to give performance appraisal to them. Imagine a software development PM that has never written a line of code in his life telling developers how to do their job and in the end evaluating their technical skills. This is simply non-sense.
Probably one of the biggest mistake you can make in a matrix organization is to let functional managers assign their staff to projects without supervising their project work. The poor PMs are then left to "manage" staff with no formal authority over them and with no technical managerial competence. This would be the employees and functional managers Heaven. :D The employees would be accountable to nobody and the functional managers would have less duties and responsibilities. Things should not work this way. If they do then, I am sorry for the PMs that have to work in this kind of environment.
Sometimes in organizations there is no choice but to take human resources from functional departments, as they are not always dedicated to projects indefinitely. Yes functional managers share some management responsibilities over the employee that sits on a project, like approving them as resources on the project, individual performance reviews (based on job role, not the project). PM's and SM's do perform appraisals of teams especially in an Agile environment, but sometimes individual performance appraisals too. Functional managers should not be supervising project work, that is the PM's role, but the two can meet to discuss resource-related issues, such as conflict resolution, resource availability etc. The "poor" PM's should not even exist in a matrix organization because they should already be adequately equipped with the technical, strategic and leadership qualities to manage both the project and its human resources acquired internally (ie, functional department) and/or externally. Regarding software PM's, no they don't need to have ever written a line of code. They need to know how to manage a project, not "telling developers how to do their job". That is the developer's job. Also, I never said the PM would assess the individual's technical skills. That is often done by team members when forming their teams or bringing in a new member. This is why a member of the developer team is almost always brought into the interview. We may be talking about different environments here. Hint keywords: Agile, Servant Leadership, self-empowered teams rather than the traditional waterfall, command and control structures, and hierarchical management. At least we can embrace the diversity of project management and leadership styles that exist. Saving Changes...
PMs that have never written a line of code in their lives can't manage software developers. This is a fact that I have seen in many projects and nobody can convince me the other way around. In this situation the PMs can only ask for estimates and status report for the ongoing tasks. I have seen this happening. There is not anything else PMs and developers could talk about since the PMs would understand nothing more.
"The "poor" PM's should not even exist in a matrix organization because they should already be adequately equipped with the technical, strategic and leadership qualities to manage both the project and its human resources acquired internally (ie, functional department) and/or externally."
From my experience, PMs are almost never equipped with the technical qualities required to manage the human resources of a project and that's why functional managers and technical leads must manage the project team members and they are doing it .
In some countries there are undergraduate project management courses and those that graduate from them could start their working career in an entry-level project management position. Internships in project management do exist. After a very few years these graduates could become project managers and manage projects. Are you telling me that these people are equipped with technical and leadership qualities to manage human resources? I am sorry but I can't believe something like that.
Functional Managers on the other hand have many years of experience in the line of work of the team members and also technical leadership qualities that allows them to manage human resources no matter if these resources work on projects or not.
In the above situation it would make no sense to transfer the management responsibilities from an experienced manager that also has technical expertise to someone that has just a few years of work experience and who can't even understand the work the project team members are doing.
The management transfer could only happen if the PM as well had the experience of the functional manager.
Regarding appraisals I was talking about evaluating the work each project team member has done on the project. In order to do such an appraisal you must deeply understand the work the team member is doing something that most PMs are not capable of. If you want to appraise a surgeon for his operations you must too be a surgeon. The same rule applies to all lines of work.
Regarding hiring this is purely the job of the functional manager who usually also involves senior members from his team. PMs are usually not involved in this process since they lack the required competence and also it is not always sure on which project the new employee would work on. Some employees may not even be assigned to projects. Saving Changes...
Ah but they have and they do manage software developers. There may be an argument to how effective they are at doing it, but a good project manager should be able to manage almost any project without direct technical knowledge of the domain in question. The PM doesn't need to understand software development; that's what developers are for.
My reference to technical is in regards to project management, not the domain-specific technical knowledge (ie. software development).
Project managers are "equipped with technical and leadership qualities to manage human resources" when they have developed the skills over time and thus gained the required experience. This means effective project management is a combination of the skills they learn, and the experience they gain over time. In my view, this is more important than domain-specific knowledge, using your example of a project manager who knows how to write a line of code. While domain experience can help to be sure, skills and experience in project management is critical to project success.
Indeed, we can agree that functional managers (usually) have many years of experience within their domain, which is why they are managers of their departments and of their resources in non-project, more operational work. Having said that, there are some organizations (functional not Matrix) that appoint functional managers as project managers, to their own peril.
In a Matrix organization, it actually makes perfect sense to give the management of the resources to the project manager because 1. the resources have been assigned to the project and 2. the project manager is accountable for the success of the project and given the authority to make decisions; the buck stops with them. Agreed that the more experienced the project manager is, the better the transfer. That is why the organization should appoint experience project managers. But the PM will almost always never have as much domain-specific knowledge as the functional manager, nor should they. They can draw upon the experience and expertise of the functional manager during the project.
Regarding teams, yes I think I said that the teams should be appraising each other. That would fit nicely with your example of surgeons appraising surgeons. The functional manager is not a member of the resource team assigned to the project, therefore they should not be appraising the project performance of these resources. They appraise job performance within their department. Project appraisal is left to the PM/SM and the project/development team themselves.
Regarding hiring, that would depend on resources being external or internal to the project. Internally, it doen't matter who turns up to the interview, you can be assured that a team member from the team that the candidate will be joining will be the main source confirming the candidates skill and thus instrumental in getting them the job even if they are not signing the authorization. Naturally the functional manager is responsible for hiring regular employees within their department. It is their business and decision in the end. Externally, the PM is the common denominator approving human resources to the project along with satellite authorities such as HR, SME's, but rarely functional managers.
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1 reply by Adrian Carlogea
Jun 24, 2018 6:57 PM
Adrian Carlogea
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I think project management has evolved a lot in the last years and the demand for project managers has become high. Still I believe most companies don't hire PMs in order to replace its functional managers in managing people.
PMs are sought primarily for their abilities to create work processes and to get project stakeholders to work together in order to reach the project goals. Also an important aspect is cross-functional cooperation.
The fact that most companies don't hire PMs to do people management can be seen from the reality that the majority of the project managers are ordinary individual contributors and are not part of the management or leadership team of the organization. PMs are not even low-level managers but ordinary non-managerial employees. Some of them are temporary employees or contractors so once the project is over they may no longer work for their company unless they are needed on other projects.
So most PMs, from the organizational point of view, are peers with the project team members, some team members may even be much more senior that the PM and at a much higher pay.
It has become quite common in some IT projects to have a very junior project manager that has recently started his career to work on projects with technical experts that are much more senior than he is and who also have much higher salaries. In such a situation would be simply ridiculous to assume that a very junior employee could manage people who are much more seniors that he is. Imagine a very experienced solution architect to be appraised by a freshly graduate that has absolutely no understanding of solution architecture. If something like this happened the company would loose most of its very experienced technical experts as most likely they would not accept to be humiliated in this manner.
I can understand the frustration of some PMs but they can only manage people if they are being appointed as line managers for a group of project managers. From this position they can supervise the work of other project managers and also do their appraisal if needed.
Ah but they have and they do manage software developers. There may be an argument to how effective they are at doing it, but a good project manager should be able to manage almost any project without direct technical knowledge of the domain in question. The PM doesn't need to understand software development; that's what developers are for.
My reference to technical is in regards to project management, not the domain-specific technical knowledge (ie. software development).
Project managers are "equipped with technical and leadership qualities to manage human resources" when they have developed the skills over time and thus gained the required experience. This means effective project management is a combination of the skills they learn, and the experience they gain over time. In my view, this is more important than domain-specific knowledge, using your example of a project manager who knows how to write a line of code. While domain experience can help to be sure, skills and experience in project management is critical to project success.
Indeed, we can agree that functional managers (usually) have many years of experience within their domain, which is why they are managers of their departments and of their resources in non-project, more operational work. Having said that, there are some organizations (functional not Matrix) that appoint functional managers as project managers, to their own peril.
In a Matrix organization, it actually makes perfect sense to give the management of the resources to the project manager because 1. the resources have been assigned to the project and 2. the project manager is accountable for the success of the project and given the authority to make decisions; the buck stops with them. Agreed that the more experienced the project manager is, the better the transfer. That is why the organization should appoint experience project managers. But the PM will almost always never have as much domain-specific knowledge as the functional manager, nor should they. They can draw upon the experience and expertise of the functional manager during the project.
Regarding teams, yes I think I said that the teams should be appraising each other. That would fit nicely with your example of surgeons appraising surgeons. The functional manager is not a member of the resource team assigned to the project, therefore they should not be appraising the project performance of these resources. They appraise job performance within their department. Project appraisal is left to the PM/SM and the project/development team themselves.
Regarding hiring, that would depend on resources being external or internal to the project. Internally, it doen't matter who turns up to the interview, you can be assured that a team member from the team that the candidate will be joining will be the main source confirming the candidates skill and thus instrumental in getting them the job even if they are not signing the authorization. Naturally the functional manager is responsible for hiring regular employees within their department. It is their business and decision in the end. Externally, the PM is the common denominator approving human resources to the project along with satellite authorities such as HR, SME's, but rarely functional managers.
I think project management has evolved a lot in the last years and the demand for project managers has become high. Still I believe most companies don't hire PMs in order to replace its functional managers in managing people.
PMs are sought primarily for their abilities to create work processes and to get project stakeholders to work together in order to reach the project goals. Also an important aspect is cross-functional cooperation.
The fact that most companies don't hire PMs to do people management can be seen from the reality that the majority of the project managers are ordinary individual contributors and are not part of the management or leadership team of the organization. PMs are not even low-level managers but ordinary non-managerial employees. Some of them are temporary employees or contractors so once the project is over they may no longer work for their company unless they are needed on other projects.
So most PMs, from the organizational point of view, are peers with the project team members, some team members may even be much more senior that the PM and at a much higher pay.
It has become quite common in some IT projects to have a very junior project manager that has recently started his career to work on projects with technical experts that are much more senior than he is and who also have much higher salaries. In such a situation would be simply ridiculous to assume that a very junior employee could manage people who are much more seniors that he is. Imagine a very experienced solution architect to be appraised by a freshly graduate that has absolutely no understanding of solution architecture. If something like this happened the company would loose most of its very experienced technical experts as most likely they would not accept to be humiliated in this manner.
I can understand the frustration of some PMs but they can only manage people if they are being appointed as line managers for a group of project managers. From this position they can supervise the work of other project managers and also do their appraisal if needed. Saving Changes...
