In the PMBOK, in other books on project management, and in my own experience in having held both management positions and project management positions, there is a clear overlap in skills between general management and project management. Also in the publications and in my own experience, there are skills that project managers must have that distinguish project management from general management. However, sometimes it is difficult to get people to believe that there is a difference. And, I’ve seen good managers get placed into project management roles, and they often do just fine without using project plans, task dependencies, work break downs, scheduling, critical path analysis, earned value, risks, issues, etc. Unfortunately, the skills that set a project manager apart from a general manager get downplayed and trivialized by general managers who can’t or won’t acknowledge the differences. I’d like to hear from others on what they believe are absolutely clear required skill differences between a project manager and a general manager. Saving Changes...
Rich,
The differences between a General Manager and a Project Manager have to do with role. However, these people should always have overlapping responsability. In a matrix organization the role of a project manager is to focus on the needs of the project and the role of the General Manager is to focus on the capability of the team. Both are responsible for the successful completion of the project / product.
I can't imagine any list of Clear skill differences since the same skills benefit the organization in either role.
The best environments I've worked in that have a balanced matrix require both the Project Manager and the General Manager to have complimentary skills.
Saving Changes...
George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Couple of specific skills for a project manager (definitely not exhaustive):
1. Human Resources: no line manager will ever need to assemble an efficient team, deliver a product and disband the team sometimes in weeks. The leadership and influencing skills required from a PM are so much greater, especially that usually the PM lacks punishment authority (seen anybody fired by a PM?)
2. Procurement: line managers do not usually handle procurement (they have access to specialized departments), but project managers do.
3. Cost: line managers have people assigned to them 8 hours per day no matter what, so they only have to give them something to do. Project Managers need to make efficient use of all material and human resources, as everything becomes a project cost.
4. Risk: not completely different, but the risks from departmental perspective are very different from project risk, same as mitigation strategies.
5. Communication: the line manager has predefined communication channels with a life on their own, the project manager needs to define and maintain communication channels for each project, based on its specifics.
There are many more, but I’ll stop here for now. Hope this provides at least a starting point in identifying the differences.
Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Rich, good post and very nice replies. I often hear, from the general manager point of view, that the key skills that distinguish between general manager and project manager have most to do with macro and micro management. That is, a good general manager macro manages, empowers and delegates, and demonstrates situational leadership skills. A good project manager micro manages, plans and controls, and demonstrates process and best practice leadership skills. I suspect that the general managers that downplay and trivialize project manager skills do so not because they are general managers, rather because they fall on the far left side of the general management capabilities maturity model. Cheers. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
The political differences between general management roles and project management roles should not be overlooked. Project managers are often put in place to cure, improve, correct or realize gains that general managers have not been able, or willing, to undertake - and in my view the most common reason for this ties back to the social / political realities in the organizational structure. Usually, general managers carry a large political burden while project managers carry a much smaller political overhead. You may find a great deal of clarity if you identify skills by political aspects or impacts, and work back from there.
From my experience a good manager and a good project manager do employ effectively the same skills (although the mix or proportion to their role will vary) but most often call them different things. Thus it is the perspective on the skills that is a differentiator rather than the skills being fundamentally different. Saving Changes...
From my experience difference between General Management and Project management is the later's emphasis on scheduling. Project managers are more specialists and focus on a particular projects (could be both strategic and tactical).
General Managers on the other hand may not have tight deadlines and are generalists and tend to focus on operations (though they can overlook/manage individual projects). Saving Changes...
