John E. Wurl PMPManager Project Planning and ControlDeerfield, Il, United States
OK, I thought I have seen it all, but this is a concept I can't seem to grasp. Any help would be grand.
All of our program managers are having all schedules built by departments, not the project managers. I mean the project manager never combines all of these pieces of work. And what I mean is the manager of department A puts the tasks he thinks he needs to do for a project and so on down the line. Now, the department manager is responsible for all schedules and not the project manager.
Has anyone seen this? This seems to contradict any classical project-centric scheduling which seems to work great. Saving Changes...
Sounds like a difficult place to be. In a previous life I was in a similar position. So here's my thoughts: - you don't have a Project Manager. It sounds more to me like you have a Project Co-Ordinator or Leader position. If you refer to PMBOK 2.3.1 you will see a table that defines someone with limited control/authority in that manner. I don't view this as either positive or negative, rather just the culture of the organization - I found this type of environment very limiting, with the biggest disadvantages being: - no-one owned the project schedule. Instead everyone owned their little piece of the world and were quick to blame others through dependacies, etc - I had to take ownership of a schedule I did not have the ability to influence with good practices (e.g. I prefer to break things down before estimating, with all the appropriate stakeholders in the room - i.e. objectives --> scope --> wbs --> risks --> estimates. Without leading the building of the schedule I could not influence things appropriately). - I had no control over the resources as the department mgrs not only built their part of the schedule, but controled the delivery of the schedule. - updates were very difficult to get, when department mgrs couldn't/wouldn't find the logic behind re-estimating, re-planning, etc.
My suggestion would be to start looking at the success (or not) of the projects, and look for a way to show the ROI for going project-centric. As a part of the ROI look for a project you can pilot, using classical project-centric methods to show the greater benefits of what a PM can do the projects, profitability, control, etc.
In summary, I'm not a fan of working in this model, and I'm not sure I'd hang around a place that uses it.
Good luck, and let me know if I've left something hanging.
