Project Management Six Best Practices

Project Management Six Best Practices, a series by Dr. Harold Kerzner

Best Practice #1 -"Role of the Line Manager"


Best Practice Makes Perfect

World-renowned project management expert Harold Kerzner will be discussing six current educational best practices, one a week for the next six weeks. This month we are featuring the first best practice "Role of the Line Manager."

IntroductionFor almost 30 years, project management was viewed as a process nice to have, but not as a necessity for the survival of the firm. Companies invested in project management training and education simply to placate those people assigned either full-time or part-time as project managers. Training was restricted almost entirely to the quantitative tools of project management.

The appearance ofproviding support for educating project managers was misleading. Senior management did everything possible to prevent the true implementation of project management for fear of having to decentralize authority and decision-making. Information was hoarded because information was perceived as power. Lip service was given to the concepts of empowerment, teamwork and trust. Personal and functionalinterests were placed ahead of the best interest of the project due to various corporate cultures. Other than a few project-driven industries such as aerospace, defense and heavy construction, nobody wanted to admit that project management could benefit the company's bottom line.

Within the last decade, companies underwent severe competitive pressures to create quality products in a shorter periodof time. The integration of new corporate initiatives such as total quality management, time-to-market, subcontractor management, critical chain and activity fast-tracking were all using the principles of project management. The formal recognition of project management as a profession was finally at hand.

At the end of each project, companies created lessons-learned files on what the projectmanager did correctly and incorrectly in the management of the project. These lessons-learned files became the basis for best practices in project management. These files represented only one way of improving project management performance. Some companies still believe that the cost of project management benchmarking is too large for the returns expected. Given the fact that implementing just onebest practice in project management could save a company millions of dollars, then why does there still exist some degree of resistance?

This series discusses six of the best practices in project management that are now being implemented. All of these related either directly or indirectly to the process of educating project personnel. Best practices are like pieces of a puzzle, when assembled,the picture can be a thing of beauty. And often, the greater the number of pieces in the puzzle, the more beautiful the final assembled picture.

Best Practice #1- Role of the Line Manager

For more than 30 years, companies persisted in viewing project management as simply a scheduling tool used by engineers. Companies were even reluctant to treat project management as a profession. But asproject management began to grow and become more widely accepted, it became apparent that the role of the line manager was also changing.

For years, line managers would provide resources to project but were never held accountable for their promises regarding deliverables. If the project failed because the assigned resources lacked the required skills, blame was still placed on the project manager.Line managers possessed all of the authority and could do no evil. Project managers were delegated very little authority and were at the mercy of line managers who had limited
knowledge of project management and viewed it as just another "fad," soon to disappear.

As companies began to recognize the long-term benefits of project management for their company, it became obvious that line...