Myths of Managing Project Members

In my last post, I mentioned that experts need some amount of management. In fact, most people need more management than customers sometimes imagine. Junior people need someone to keep them going in the right direction, to get them information they need, and to help teach them how to do things. Senior people often need someone to give them a push to work together.

Regardless their level, people who come from different groups in the company or different external companies will probably need someone to make sure they turn into a team and not into a free-for-all/everyone-for-themselves gang of yahoos. In fact, I’ve been on projects where people from a single software vendor can’t work together or people from the same consulting company spend all their time backstabbing each other. Of course, the situation where they all band together as one, big team to gang up on everyone else isn’t useful, either. I’m just pointing-out that customers need to keep their eyes open for this type of behaviour. After all, it’s the customer’s money that’s being wasted. No-one cares about the customer’s budget the way the customer does. Thus, no-one else can be truly vigilant for that money. Period.

Gloria Metrick
GeoMetrick Enterprises
http://www.GeoMetrick.com/