Engineers as Project Leads

Jennifer McIntyre Senior Project Manager| Oklahoma State Department of Health Oklahoma City, Ok, United States

I am a portfolio manager for a global R&D department - our current structure utilizes engineers as project leads and we select the lead based on their technical skills and experience. As can be expected, not every engineer has the needed skills to lead/manage a project on their own. I am more than happy to help and step in, but with a portfolio of over 20 projects going at any time, I cant take on all of their project level tasks.

With this in mind, management has tasked me to provide some basic project management training for our leads. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions regarding presentations/courses or materials that would be good to reference in such a training. Their position is more of a coordinator role, as they don't have a lot of given authority.

Posted: Mar 22, 2021 1:59 PM

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Denathayalan Ramasamy Chief Technology Officer| Atal Incubation Centre -CIIC Chennai, Tamilnadu, India

Looks like these people are Operational managers (supervise similar kind of jobs ) rather than project lead (control over execution). In such case, portfolio manager has to conduct daily GEMBA meetings for work instructions & process flow then bi-weekly retrospective for overall process & productivity improvements

Posted: Mar 7, 2022 4:15 AM

Justin Fu Senior Systems Engineer| Parsons Bristow, Va, United States

thanks all for info

Posted: Apr 4, 2022 9:40 PM

Vijay Suryavanshi Project Manager - Engineering| RECARO Aircraft Seating Plantation, Fl, United States

Giving not a whole lot authority to engineers and utilizing them as only a project coordinator only increases your workload. You must handle nothing more than portfolio and get updates. Focus on top two or three projects that are high budget and make sure that is on track. Prioritization of projects matter. A scrum type of environment works better given your organization. The scrum lead or project lead must report to you (Project Manager/Scrum leader.). The project sponsor must be a good leader who shares the goal or benefits of the project with he team. (I have seen engineers are notorious in an R&D environment and end up burning a whole lot budget and time. Have dealt with internal conflicts and some design engineers excessively passionate, and step off the boundaries and do work outside the department. The idea is to seal the team from disturbances and make them focus on value added engineering work alone following all the processes) . In my opinion, it is also important that the culture changes to a more balanced projectized environment. (Easier said, than done but not impossible with support of upper management)

Posted: Nov 4, 2022 6:00 PM (Updated by author: Nov 4, 2022 6:03 PM)

Vagner Antonio da Silva São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Apr 23, 2021 3:44 AM

Replying to Adela Tataru

...

Maybe start with simple, basic notions? And try to demystify everything as it might be daunting for someone who is not that familiar with PM tasks.

I would suggest for starters to ask them to do the introduction here: https://kickoff.pmi.org/

It is a basic (free) introduction to project management and gives an overall idea of what that is.

Afterwards you can try to schedule regular sessions (let's say once a month or more frequently if you have the time) where you can go deeper into some specific areas.

And make sure you are available to be contacted for questions and advice on particular situations they are not familiar with.

You've got my vote, Mrs. Tataru.

Posted: Nov 8, 2022 9:48 PM

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Engineers as Project Leads

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