Managing the Team

Talent Management

Jolie Roy Chicago, Il, United States

I'm one of 3 project managers at my company. Our VP set a precedent of micro-managing, but is now pulling away to allow the project managers do their job more effectively. However, the developers still look to the VP if they don't like something the PM has asked for.

In these cases, it's hard to get the developers on the team to do the job we've asked them to do.

I've often thought that if the PM has input to the developer's review, they wouldn't bypass our team management and whine to the VP. We've talked among ourselves, but have yet to present it to our boss. I think he'd entertain this method, but we wanted to get some more opinions from those who've gone through some of the same issues.

Any input would be welcome!
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Posted: Mar 11, 2004 3:52 PM

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Jan Altendorff East Grinstead, United Kingdom

This is a common management issue and not at all restricted to the project management context. The right thing to do here is to tackle your VP (diplomatically) about the problem. If he/she is committed to letting the PM's do their job then he/she should reject approaches from the dev team, re-drecting them to their line/project manager for those day-to-day queries. Sitting in on the dev team reviews would not be my first choice of solution, getting those review meetings minuted and 'issues arising' escalated to the pm would be an effective non-intrusive mechanism.

Hope this personal opinion helps.

Posted: Mar 24, 2004 7:23 AM

Stuart Helwig Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Development (programming) and project management are different disciplines. I think the lead developer in the business unit or at the company should be reviewing developers. Would a more appropriate place to address problems with the dynamics of the team be at project team meetings of some sort. Raise it as a risk/issue. Maybe the VP would agree with this approach too, seeing as though it would seem to be a project related issue.

Posted: Mar 26, 2004 5:45 AM

Bob Dobbs Dobbstown, Ma, United States

File attached

Jolie,
Perhaps if you bothered to learn a bit of technical or operational expertise you would get the respect of the team. It seems like they might be rebelling because they are noticing that there could be defiencies in your skillset or managerial style.
I await your response.

Posted: Jul 19, 2004 2:52 PM

Anonymous

To whom it may concern

My name is Bungane Sipamla and I am a second year IT student currently studying at the Tshwane University of Technology. I am specialising in the field of Business Applications. We received an assignment for one of our subjects where we had to find out what roles project managers play within a corporation.

If it were possible could you kindly give me any information about:
- what company you're employed by
- what kind of tasks project managers undertake on a daily basis
- What is the average project scope in terms of funding that a project manager gets to work with on an average project
- what the average salary is for a project manager
- what kind of hours they work
- how much travelling they have to do on a monthly basis.

If there are any of you out there that would be willing to shed some light on the questions listed above please post them or email me @ [email protected]
yours sincerely

Bungane Sipamla

Posted: Aug 8, 2004 6:46 PM

Mark Price Perry Business Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT International Orlando, Fl, United States

Dear Jolie, you have a wide variety of interestng replies to your post already. I would be curious to know what the PMs are asking the developers for that the developers don't like. An open door policy is good. But it is up to the open door executive to clearly act upon the escalation and effect an immediate fix, be that correcting PM error or developer error. I would ensure that this communication flow is working to everyone's satisfaction first, before considering other changes. Cheers. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International

Posted: Jan 19, 2005 9:35 PM

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