Correct project involvement

Carlos Aquiles Ortega Mexico, Df, Mexico

I know this could be a very open, tough question, but I will appreciatte any experienced tip/hint...

What is the correct/right/adequate level of knowledge and involvement a Project Manager should have in a project ?
Let me explain in more detail: Supose you are taking a project that is experimenting problems for finishing the job, because scope was never well defined.

In one hand you know you have to define the scope, because there will not be infinite resources ( time, money, stakeholders ).
So this would require to study and analyze the objetives, and also make an assessment of current state/situation.
So you can define a plan to follow ( supose negociation will be included ).
Thus in this approach you have to dig on for know the current state, and later go up to design the plan to follow.

However the team also is suggesting you to go deeper with them, know more about how they are doing the activities, experiment the techniques for getting a product/ artifact and know the problem domain very well, because they feel in case they need help (another resource) in doing the job you can help them.

Friends, the question is, Would you recommend a PM to get involved in the stuff/solution in a deep way ? Or the PM should always have a high level view of the activities and restrictions that the team and the project itself will confont in the future?

Any advice will be appreciated
Regards
Carlos

Posted: Jul 23, 2003 5:22 PM

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Kendall Tucker Sydney, Nsw, Australia

Carlos...I have seen something similar to this once before.

My approach was to identify the stakeholders and agree on the scope to close the project. If the scope for the entire project had not been well defined before, that is now irrelavant as your focus is closing it down.

I would avoid the details that your team suggest you get involved in as you need to focus on getting agreement on what it will take to bring this project to a close...and quickly.

Once the scope to close it has been defined get this signed off by the stakeholders and set the expectation that they will be getting exactly what they have just signed off.

Draw up the schedule based on the scope and ensure that you get this signed off too in terms of the right number of tasks and especially the right number of resources.

Hope this helps. I am sure you will get a few other replies.

Cheers

Kendall

Saving Changes...

Posted: Jul 24, 2003 1:34 AM

Frank Patrick Boonton, Nj, United States

The PM should develop and take full advantage of a relationship not only with the project team, but with the functional resource managers and supervisors associated with the team members. The PM doesn't have to know it all and get her/his hands dirty on every little technical issue. S/he only needs to know and work with the organizational resources that can help.

Posted: Jul 28, 2003 5:28 PM

Lew Kamman Berkeley Heights, Nj, United States

To address your question re how deep to go and how much analysis needs to be done, I think a cardinal principle of effective project management is that the project manager needs to do whatever it takes to gain the confidence of his/her stakeholders.

In the case you describe, I'd say you have to "go deep" enough with the team so that they have confidence that you know the problem domain. You also need to go deep enough with the sponsoring/business side to create a well-defined project scope, requirements set, and resource/cost/time commitment so that they have confidence that this time the job/project will complete correctly on time and on budget.

Hope this helps,

Lew Kamman

Posted: Sep 4, 2003 1:20 PM

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Correct project involvement

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