I’ve worked as a Project Manager in teams, companies and projects of all sizes and shapes for more than 15 years. Mostly in the world of web-development, but also with stints in management consulting, and even event management. I’m proud of what I do, but am often confronted with examples of my PM-kin acting in ways that make me less proud of the title I often wear. The following are things I need to tell my offending brethren & sistren.

1: Your main job is to increase “Truth™” in your organisation.

Say what? I thought my job was to make Gantt charts and report to management.

Only if you want to be a terrible Project Manager. Your charts, meetings and reports are only tools to increase the Truth™ in your org. And when you look at it like that, you’ll find that many of the common PM tools, actually do more to obfuscate than increase Truth™. You need to accumulate a useful tool bag of truthiness-increasing-goodness, by cherry picking from standards and developing your own, and if possible at all, custom-fitting your tools for each team and project.

Projects mostly get delayed due to — in some way or other — bad communication, like the following common examples.

a: Client balks at the first prototype, even though it objectively matches the requirements doc 100%. Turns out the client didn’t understand most of what you said during that meeting (surprise: they aren’t web experts!), and was scared to admit their ignorance, so they didn’t really know what they were agreeing to.

b: Devs are scared of the manager/boss/owner, so whenever there is a problem, it gets hidden until the last and worst possible moment, leading to delays, finger-pointing and blame-gaming.

If you successfully increase Truth™ in your organisation on a daily basis, I guarantee that your organisation’s productivity and general well-being will follow.

2: You are not above the team. You are ON the team, and you have a specific role to fill, just like everybody else.

But my title has the word “Manager” in it! Surely I’m more important than them!

If you believe that, please quit your job right now. You are a terrible Project Manager, and you should feel bad. The Team — including you — has a job to perform, and you all have different roles. Some wrangle databases, others wrestle kerning — your role involves managing management, clearing up communication and basically e v e r y t h i n g else that is needed for a successful completion of the project. Don’t tell the Lead about architecture. Ask about it. If something worries you — ask more. If you possess the chops, you should also suggest stuff, but please respect their decision. Or else they will never respect you, and Truth™ disappears.

Being ON the team, also involves standing up for them, when they are being mistreated by management. If you work in a place where standing up to management is “career suicide” — you don’t want to work as a PM there. Trust me on this.

If you manage to actually be a team-member, you will find yourself among loyal and honest colleagues, that will help you do your job, just as you are supposed to help do theirs.

3: Everything bad is your fault, and nothing good is your accomplishment.

What!??? The green button that everybody likes, was MY idea! And the delay wasn’t my fault! The Lead gave me totally wrong estimates to begin with!

This is why the word “Manager” is in your title — you manage the processes leading to either great project success or failure. If your ego can’t handle this, you need a different career. If the Lead supplied you with estimates that ended up far from final delivery, YOU are most probably, and almost certainly, at fault. Did the lead have all the relevant information to begin with? Did that information change during the project, without triggering an update of the estimate? Did events unfold outside of the teams influence, that negatively impacted the estimate? Whatever the answers are to those questions, the responsibility will always be yours.

It’s great that your ideas created value for the project. But so did everybody else's. Using a SWITCH statement instead of IF|ELSE’s because it made sense in that case? Not your idea. Creating the palette using a triadic scheme, because it made sense for that product? Not your idea. For every great idea you contribute, they have to contribute dozens of ideas everyday just to do their jobs. Your ideas are still great — but don’t overstate their importance — because you will be diminishing the team's work every time you do so.

It sounds so simple, and intuitive, and mostly everyone I discuss it with agrees that this is the only right approach. But so very, very rarely do I see PMs actually walking the talk.

Be good at your job, and strive to be great. Being a Project Manager can be a super-fulfilling way of worklife, if you do it right.

Thank you for listening,

John MHM, Rocket Scientist/Secret Agent