Consulting Journal: Trends - The over-use of project management

Trends: The over-use of project management

by David Blakey

Project management is often used when it is not needed.

[Monday 30 December 2002]

I believe that consultants should approach project management as a genuine consulting service to clients. I also believe that too many consultants are acting as contractors in project management.

There are many contractors who specialize in project management (PM) and who can bring strong PM skills to their assignments. These contractors may have knowledge and experience of PM methodologies. They may have qualifications in PM methods. They may have skills in PM within particular sectors or industries. As a result, they have stronger abilities in day-to-day PM than most consultants.

PM is a good specialization for contractors. It is primarily based on tasks. The task that mainly concerns a project manager is completing a project within the four constraints of time, budget, risk and quality. To do this, a project manager will have other people work on individual tasks within the project. When the project is complete, so is the project manager's work. It is the kind of single, discrete task so well-suited to contractors.

For all the reasons given in the previous paragraph, PM is not a role that suits most consultants. It is true that many consultants are excellent project managers. It is also true that many consultants do manage projects for clients. But, on the whole, the area of PM does not provide the kind of work that is best suited to a consultant's mentality or skills.

One factor that makes PM unsuitable for consultants is that they prefer ongoing work with a client. A client may like a project manager's work so much that the project manager can continue to work on a number of projects, one after another, for the client. This is not the kind of ongoing work that consultants prefer. Each project is a separate piece of work, even if they all fit into a continuous programme.

Another factor is that a successful project will give the client a single outcome. Consultants prefer to work on the ‘big picture’. Their skills and aptitudes are more in the development and maintenance of the strategy that will be gradually realized by the projects.

So do I think that there is a place for consultants in PM?

Yes, I do.

Strategy

Many clients undertake projects in a relatively casual way. There may be a vague attempt at defining a programme of projects. There may be some staff assigned to running a project office. But these efforts may not provide a strong enough base for those clients' projects to be well-managed and successful.

A consultant can help these clients to reach an understanding of the scale of the commitment that they need to make to projects. In some cases, the consultant can see the need for coordination between projects, which may lead to a clear programme and a strong project office. In other cases, the consultant can see the need to manage projects individually, and may recommend that all PM be contracted out, including the project office.

The first kind of client needs continuous and powerful support for projects, through programmes that will be continuously reviewed and occasionally revised, through methods that will work well for the client, through a permanent project office that will manage resources and reports, and through a team of experienced projects managers - who may well be contractors.

The second kind of client just needs to get each individual project defined, managed and completed successfully, without having a permanent infrastructure for project management.

Once a consultant has helped a client to move to the position that best suits that client, there will be an ongoing consulting role in reviewing that position. In particular, the need for a client to implement a series of major projects within a short time may be met by setting up a temporary PM infrastructure or by contracting out all the PM work to one or more prime contractors.

Reviews

As part of managing the PM strategy, a consultant can conduct reviews of individual projects. This work could also be done if there was no PM strategy. It could be done as a preliminary assignment before developing a PM strategy.

Individual project reviews create problems for some clients.

Some clients manage projects extremely badly. As a result, the time and the budget that were planned for the review are used by previous phases of their projects. Reviews are therefore cursory or even nonexistent.

Some clients have methods that are ‘light’ on project reviews. They may conduct sound reviews, but the results of those reviews are not used to change future projects. There is no real, active feedback.

Some clients conduct their reviews during the ‘honeymoon’ that the users have after a completed project. These reviews are unlikely to be thorough - or critical.

Some clients simply do not review their projects. Often, they think that the recurrent problems that they experience on every project are a characteristic of projects in general.

All of these clients need consultants to inform them, to persuade them and to help them.

Application

There is a current trend to impose large-scale project management on a series of tasks that do not warrant it.

Finally, there are some clients whose PM strategy should be not to have formal PM on their projects at all. It is not generally recognised by project managers that they are not needed on many projects. Consider a project with the following characteristics.

It has a simple time-line. There is no need for a complex network diagram to describe the tasks within the project.
It uses a limited number of available resources. There is no need to negotiate for people to be seconded to the project.
It is presents a low risk. There are no significant risks presented by the project. Such risks as there are will have a minimal impact.
It is not critical. The business will survive if the project fails.
It is not urgent. The business does not depend on its completion within a fixed period.
It will produce a satisfactory product. There are no issues of quality, and little chance of quality criteria not being met.

In these circumstances there is little need for a project manager nor formal PM on the project. There is certainly no need to invoke a full-scale PM methodology, which can add significantly to the project costs.

Consultants can help their clients to use PM only when it is needed and to apply it only to the degree that it is needed.

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