by Jason Davis on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | 3 Comments »

It was 2004, in a critical stretch of a major project, and the project team was spending the weekend holed up in a conference room in intense design sessions.  The team was staring at magnified circuit boards, a small but immensely critical piece of a complex radar system and there was a serious problem: the boards were burning up during testing.  There was another problem too – the project manager was behavioral science major who knew way more about Maslow, intrinsic & extrinsic motivators, and cognitive biases than he did about electrical engineering, circuit analysis, and capacitors…and that project manager was me.

In the days that followed, project managers from both sides, Government and Industry, sat back and let the engineers go to work.  It’s not that we did nothing – We cleared schedules, resolved contract scope issues, and managed leadership expectations and project communications.  But at the end of the day, the engineers saved the project because they were allowed to use their expertise and work, instead of answering endless questions from the PM or attending daily status meetings with management.  The PMs job is to lead and facilitate project execution, and Rockstar PMs know their role in project success. Back there in the conference room, in 2004, my role was not to tell the engineers to put a 2db pad here and a capacitor there within a circuit board I knew nothing about.  So I shut up, got out of their way, and ran cover for them.  The best PMs understand the limits of their technical knowledge and use the experts on their team effectively.  Do this, and your people will be happier, and your projects more successful.

What can a PM can do to optimize the performance of their teams while staying within their role? Here are a few things that nearly every Rockstar PM practices on their projects:

1.  Understand the Team -  These PMs understand team chemistry, strengths and weaknesses of team members, and how they best fit on the project.  The best PMs are also good leaders, and that requires the need to coach, develop community, and be a dependable resource for the team.  Want to do this?  Understanding your people is the first step.

2.  Clear Barriers - These PMs work ahead of their teams to move barriers to progress.  They handle both the easy stuff – logistics, application security, badging, IDs, and the big stuff – management intervention, cross-departmental politics, adoption issues.  It’s important to lead from the from the front and remove the barriers so that your people can focus on their individual role.

3.  Filter, Filter, Filter! – They protect their team.  They’re loyal.  They don’t let the business sponsor or client tear into their developers, and they filter communication effectively to the team.  The goal is to keep the people focused on their responsibilities, not worried about how their performance is perceived three managers up.

4.  Don’t Micro Manage -  Obvious, maybe, but this still happens ALL THE TIME.  The most ineffective PMs routinely micromanage their teams – demanding unrealistic progress on software development they don’t understand or inundating their staff with useless status reports and grueling meetings.  Nobody likes that PM.  Don’t be that PM.

So there you have it – four areas to think about while attempting to optimize the expertise and productivity of your project team.  Pair this with the tips from last week’s post about the Art of Escalation and you are on your way.  Stay tuned for the final post in the series, about the importance of soft-skills and relationship management in determining project success.

Readers – Agree? Disagree?  Let’s hear those stories about PMs that can’t seem to stay in their lane…