What's your least favorite part of managing a project?

Michael,

I've come to that conclusion over the decades - the school of cynical Program Managers. It's very common these days, especially in the agile software development world, to blame the process instead of looking at the people's implementation of the process. My defense and DOE experience, along with heavy construction has brought me to the point of being intolerant (not of you of course) of those who assume that the process is broken and we need the next new thing in process, without first examining what went wrong with the current process - a PMO, a development SDLC, a procurement process (my current heart burn in DoD), or anything established way of doing things.

When I hear creativity stifling role," I think "that person needs to look for work somewhere else." The role of management - any management, including PMO's - is to remove impediments to progress. That was a paradigm 1980 TRW, One Space Park, Redondo Beach, CA. Where things were "invented," like GPS, the real internet (ARPA-Net), the shuttle flight controls.

Thanks for the thoughts that stimulate better answers.

Glen B Alleman
VP, Program Planning and Controls
Defense and Space Sector
Denver, Colorado

My least favorite part of managing project is the reporting process. Although I understand the value of reporting and the "whys", I am a doer and just like to get things done.

My least favourite time of running a project is the paperwork. I love dealing with the 'real' things but don't enjoy some of the reporting requirements imposed on me by the PMO. I know they are important and needed to be done for good reasons but it doesn't quite help me run my own project.

Thinking that non-project managers have the skills and experience to manage a project. When someone joins the time, joins the company and comes to me (and my program management office) with all kinds of ideas about how to do things differently, I always ask - "you have applied these ideas on other projects of similar size with tangible evidence of success right?" "No, thanks for the personal opinion, now back to work." "Yes, let's see where we might make some improvement and have you be accountable for making those improvements."

Hi Glen,

It may be that I misunderstand your point but it seems you are suggesting that you have to be a PM to be able to manage a project, and that unless they have worked on similar sized projects in similar environments then their views and ideas will not be relevant. Can you please clarify - I regularly manage projects of varying sizes and in differing business and technical environments and my last ten years of experience of doing this, point towards the PMO becoming a "creativity stifling role" with often a very poor response to new ideas for templates and different approaches to managing projects.

Just my thoughts.

Michael

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone! I'm really impressed with the discussion going on in this thread.

I think the question itself can be interpreted in many ways.

Projects could range from simple marketing strategy projects through to full-scale IT infrastructure projects.

However, surely within each different projects, member experience similar problems?

Although a project leader may not have extensive experience in their role, the desire to make the project a success and execute on schedule should still be a driving factor in the Project Management. So what factor's tend to put a project behind schedule that could be resolved using some simple methodology?

I used to absolutely loath wading through emails and trying to track which version of the project or task is the latest. Now I use our own product http://www.clarizen.com and I can communicate with my team and with other people working on my projects directly from within the Clarizen project. These are sometimes non-Clarizen employees but as the system is SaaS everyone can login - all they needs is an Internet connection.

One of the biggest frustration for me is the implementation or lack of the project management principle. A manager is charged with implementing something new, assigns someone from their group and calls it project management.

1) They don't attempt to assign a competent project manager -or- provide training or mentor to the 'new' PM they have assigned.
2) They don't provide any tools (some mentioned above) to facilitate the new landscape of virtual teams common today
3) The manager provides little support
4) ....

When the project fails they blame it on poor project management.