The Invaluable Scapegoat
My Personal Experience in Project Management Purgatory
Plenty has been written about the work of a project manager—complaints, praise, and pieces chastising both of those points of view.
But this is the story about my personal love/hate relationship with that role, from enthusiasm to disdain to advocacy.
Thankless ≠ Pointless
I never wanted to be a project manager. But I didn’t actually realize that I did not want to be a project manager until I was one.
And it wasn’t until I was no longer a project manager and then on a project without one that I fully realized how absolutely invaluable having a project manager truly is.
Confused? Welcome to project management.
Source: Concordia University St. Paul
It has been called a “thankless job” by many (myself included), and there’s some good reason for that label. So much power can rest in the PM’s clutches—communication, timelines, budgets, quality assurance, and handling the occasional diva personality—that if things go awry, the finger is often pointed to the one at the management reigns. Even if the client never responded to emails or calls, and the timeline was unachievable from the start, and the project was undersold and suffered scope creep at every corner, and it couldn’t get done without cutting corners, and wow everyone seems to have unresolved issues working with each other—it’s your fault things didn’t run smoothly. Project manager = miracle worker, right?
But if things are a success...congratulations are usually in order to every role except that one. Maybe the intermittent pat on the back with a “good job wrangling these cats haha.”
Thankless? Sure.
Pointless? Not in the very least.
I feel like you can only really understand that first statement if you’ve done your time in project management. And I feel like you can only really understand that second one if you’ve suffered through a trainwreck project without one.
Source: The Verge
Here’s how I came to recognize both.
Promotions, Pride, and How the Pendulum Swings
I accepted the position of project manager without honestly understanding what all it entailed. All I knew was that it was a promotion away from the front desk.
At first, I really did enjoy the work. Under the title “Project Manager”, I worked on small projects and got a crash course in the digital agency ecosystem. With boundless (naive) enthusiasm, I’d remind everyone that even if things went wrong, any hiccups were pretty minor in comparison to a famous little dinosaur theme park project.
John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!
Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.
Look on the bright side, guys!
Source: Giphy.com
In 2015 I even won the agency’s Positivity Award for all my PM zeal, and it was deemed time to start handing me more substantial projects to manage.
For me, this leap from small projects to big projects can be simply described with this analogy:
Small projects are like being in elementary school: you are required to show up and put effort into your work, but it's fun to work in a group and you get praise no matter if you colored outside the lines or it took you a few extra minutes to figure things out. Yay, you did it!
Big projects are like being in high school: you are still required to show up and put effort into your work, but group projects suck now because no one wants to participate since we all already know we’re going to get a mediocre grade because no one clearly understands the assignments and no one is going to be happy at the end, especially the person who gave the assignment in the first place. Oh, and you have 4 more of those doomed projects at the same time. And don’t have enough resources to finish any. And you’re late on all of them.
Sidenote: I hated high school.
My role devolved into a never ending tug of war from placating my pessimistic internal team, over to placating my frustrated client. There was never enough time, budget, resources, or miracles to get a project finished without at least a hint of resentment across the board. For me, every accomplishment felt hollow.
Sure, all of this was probably because I wasn’t a good project manager, but like I said, I never actually wanted to be in project management.
So I got out of there and swore I’d never look back. But the next thing I realized about project management is you still need it—even if you aren’t it.
Somebody’s Gotta Do It...Or Else
I emerged out of the PM world with a new role in content and took comfort in the thought that any scrutiny I received would be on my own work, not my ability to make others produce work. Maybe I’d even get more than that pat on the back for wrangling cats!
But the thing about a project—whether in elementary school, high school, or with a million-dollar budget—is that it requires the collaboration of more than one person. I may have felt responsible for only my chunk of the project, but my chunk wouldn’t be successful without other people doing their chunks and having all those chunks aligned. Chaos brews with every chunky layer.
Suddenly I was one of those cats, hissing at the others, needing to be wrangled.
I could tell you my stories of watching projects go awry without a PM (and equally how proper project management saved the day), but numbers from people far smarter than myself pack so much more of a punch:
Can investing in project management really pay off?
80% of high-performing projects are led by a certified project manager
An average of 50% more projects fail outright for organizations that undervalue project management
Organizations waste approximately 28x less money when using proven project management practices and methodologies compared to more haphazard counterparts
77% of high-performing projects use project management software
66% of PMs say that they would use project management software more extensively if they had adequate support from their organization
A 2018 Wellingtone’s survey found only 22% of organizations use a PM software, in part leading to 50% of surveyed project managers to report spending one or more days to manually collate project reports
Can’t you just let the team use project management software on their own and skip having a human PM?
51% of business professionals report that soft skills in project management are more important today than they were 5 years ago
The biggest impacts a project manager provides for a team is on communication (52%), improved quality of the final product (44%), and improved customer satisfaction (38%)
Confusion around team roles and responsibilities (38%) and a lack of common vision on success criteria (31%) are cited as great barriers to a project’s success
With all these statistics, things must be getting better in the PM world, right?
Source: KnowYourMeme.com
Despite 39% of projects failing due to the lack of resources and planning, only 58% of organizations fully understand the value of project management
Even if they do invest, 75% of business executives anticipate that their project management software will fail
73% of business professionals admitted that their projects are either always or usually "doomed right from the start"
For all my emotionally-biased, and admittedly bitter, views on project management, there’s no denying that it carries more weight than it’s often given credit for.
Thank You & I’m Sorry
So I’ve told you my story and presented you with some facts and maybe enlightened you to the project manager’s plight, or maybe you lost interest in the first paragraph (I did literally say plenty has already been written about this subject).
But if you’ve made it this far you might be wondering where we are supposed to go from here.
Well, truth is I don’t have any answers, no magic formula to make people start caring or to make appreciation a tangible thing (other than a pat on the back). I can’t give you enough evidence to say, “Hey, boss, we need some help.” I do not have the proverbial catnip to make things just a little more tolerable.
I don't know how to assign empathy for a PM—or garner empathy to get a PM.
But if you know a project manager, have one floating around your office looking manic, worked with one way back when on some nightmare project, or if you yourself hold that epic title of invaluable scapegoat, please hear these words and pass them on:
Thank you and I’m sorry.
No matter what is planned, what is happening, or what occurred on a past project, these words can never be said enough.
Thank you, project managers across the world. I’m sorry things just always seem to go this way.
But, man, no one knows how to wrangle cats quite like you do.
