The Entrepreneurship in Project Management

Agile Planning (c 2008 David Armano)

I learned that two things are essential for successful project management:

Take the “management” aspect very serious – it actually implies a lot of functions and responsibilities.

Apply entrepreneurship principles.

Traditional Activities of Project Management

The project management aspect comprises planning, organizing, resourcing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Don’t think the goal would be delivering the agreed upon document or deliverable on time. NoNoNo.

The goal is to make the customer happy – short term and long term. I had dozens of projects where the actual deliverable was very different from what we originally agreed upon. Resources were over the planned budget. Deliverables were weeks overdue. In some cases change requests were issued to adjust the plan to the actual situation or needs, but in most cases clients just trusted me to do the right thing. Remember: every plan is exactly that: a plan. Plans can change. Tactical and strategic goals change. Resource availability changes. Peoples views change.

Activities involve

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Communications Management: The systematic planning, implementing, monitoring, and revision of all the channels of communication, including managing information flow as well as internal and external communications directives.

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Crisis Management: Although crisis events are unpredictable, they are not unexpected. You have to respond to both the reality and perception of crises.

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Knowledge Management: identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of what is known and who knows it.

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Leadership Management: Stay in control, calm, and focused. You might not know the answer to a problem or crisis, but you know that you can get through it.

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Process Management: Define, visualize, measure, control, report, and improve processes that will maximize customer satisfaction.

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Perception Management: Though the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) has a very interesting definition, I rather target managing brand awareness and creating and organizing a concise and favorable view of the project. Don’t lie. Don’t cover and deceit, and don’t tell half-truths.

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Quality Management: Comprised of quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement.

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Resource Management: Planning, organizing, and managing resources such as time, material, money, people, energy, space, motivation, etc.

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Risk Management: A structured approach to managing uncertainty. Strategies include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk.

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Skill and Performance Management: Understanding, developing and deploying people and their skills, and manage the environment so that these skills have maximum impact. Human resource management is part of that.

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Strategic Management: Formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable your project team to achieve its objectives.

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Stress Management: Identify the factors that are central to your project team as well as your client to control their stress, a state of mental or emotional strain or suspense. Then identify the intervention methods which effectively target these factors. In a lot of cases this will be activity management (commonly known as time management), communications management, or skill and performance management.

The Role of Entrepreneurship in Project Management

Wikipedia says that about the entrepreneur:

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession over a company, enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. [...] Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. In common understanding it is taken as describing a dynamic personality.

And about entrepreneurship:

Entrepreneurship is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities.

My point is that each and every project has the obligation to revitalize our client’s business. We should really treat it as such, and not just see it in management terms that are done like bad chores, like taking the trash out, doing dishes, or vacuum the house. Moreover, project managers should take responsibility and accountability (some of that can only be given by the client, of course). I’ve seen numerous examples where complex steering committee setups and “cross-functional liaison positions” as well as “task teams” were actually used to disperse and obscure responsibilities, “just to be on the safe side”.

My clients loved it when you actually stand for something, make yourself accountable, and take responsibility. They know they can trust you that you are getting things done, you personally will guarantee for that. Suddenly their fears and anxieties with complex projects can be pin pointed to a single, real person. This is an advantage in critical situation being able to react quickly, as well as in situations where the project is at risk of failure:

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You can make unpopular, improvised decisions and your client will follow.

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Your steady hand and calm steering is not seen as “doing nothing about it”, but as thoughtful intervention and that you know what you’re doing.

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Your vision and entrepreneurial spirit will inspire others in your team. Not only will they follow in critical situations, but they will take their own responsibilities more seriously and will proactively take initiative to prevent failure.

While I don’t actually share the busines risk (as the ultimate decision maker is and will be my client), but I share the concern and attitude.

One Response

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Lots of content, but worth the read. Keep it coming.

1 Hillary Martin October 21, 2008 1:52 am

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