Can the Project Manager be outsourced?

A business normally outsources functions that are not part of their core competencies. Therefore, if you are an outsourced project manager, you need to distinguish yourself from the organization's pool of regular project managers.

Maybe you have expert project management skills, you managed large projects, or you have specific industry knowledge. You need to be different than the average project manager. But no so different they won't hire you.

I would like to think that my 25 years of project management means I can take on any project. The reality is the customer wants to be comfortable with the project manager. This is hard to achieve if you are brand new to the industry and organization.

Hi Luis,
Although there are transferable skills that Project Managers gain through experience. If the Project Manager is being outsourced, it would make sense to hire a project manager with experience in that field/specific project. Let's say if the firm is building a Highrise Residential project then it would make sense to hire a PM with that type of experience (If you do not have the right candidate internally with the same skills) or if the firm is looking to roll out a CRM tool across the organization, It would add value if the PM has previous experience in rolling out similar platforms.

To answer your second questionI mostly work on Internal Business projects (M&A, Process Improvements projects, Rolling out different accounting/management platforms, etc.

Dear Kiron
Thank you for participating in this reflection and for your opinions on the topic.
It seems we have common thinking points
Weighing the pros and cons, what do you recommend?
Hire outsourcing project manager services?
Or, on the contrary, ensure that project management is carried out by employees of the organization?

Dear Anton
Thank you for participating in this reflection.
In your opinion, to be a outsourced Project Manager what characteristics should you have?
Can you manage any kind of projects, whatever business area you are in?

I think it really depends. If the organization lacks the skills in-house to manage a particular type of project OR if they find themselves in a capacity crunch, then contract project managers can be a good tactical solution.

I do not believe that you need any special PM skills but obviously, since you will be working as an independent contractor you need good business acumen to be successful as a contractor not as a PM per se.

My personal view has always been that a good PM can be good in any situation given the right circumstances. Even the whole Agile hype is really a non-issue since the PM is doing what they have always done but just using different tools and techniques so being contracted on an adaptive or predictive project should not have an impact on your ability to perform well.

Dear Karl
I like to compare the project manager to a conductor
He has to know music
This metaphor applies to project management.
Project Manager must know industry
That's my opinion of course
I shared this question so I could read other perspectives

What you are saying makes perfect sense but the reality many times is completely different.

In some domains like IT many companies have entry level project management positions such as project manager graduate, junior project manager, project management intern.

People with absolutely no working experience in any line of work can be hired as entry level project managers and may end up "managing" projects soon. Some rookie PMs may end up working with team members that are much more senior than them and who have both subject matter expertise as well as proven leadership skills. These entry-level PMs have neither.

I have seen many such PMs, they don't know music and will never learn it. They may have an important role overall for the project but when it comes to manage the team they end up being just some sort of glorified secretaries.

They just schedule meetings, track the progress and then report the progress to managers. They manage the tasks by using project management software but the tasks are created by other people and also performed by others. In practice they end up being just some sort of secretaries.

My mother had been a team leader for a finance team and her company at some point contracted a consultancy to help them with their projects. The project management consultants were inexperienced both in project management and in the finance domain and end up bringing no value at all, they were just bothering my mother with questions.

Project Managers are outsourced by many large companies and governmental bodies either as individual or under PMO master service agreements.