The Contract Project Manager: Free Agents and
Pinch Hitters
© 2004 By Donna Fitzgerald
In the not so distant past, almost all non-construction
project managers were of the accidental variety. Companies staffed
project management positions by picking functional managers who
showed solid potential to move up the ranks into senior management
and offer them the challenge. The challenge was always perceived
on both sides as a very high-risk situation in which a manager
agreed to step out of his or her day to day management job to
run a high visibility project. If things went well on the project,
the manager could expect to be promoted. If things didn’t
go well, the odds were that there wouldn’t be a job to
return to at the end.
From management’s perspective, project work was the ultimate management
training program. A project allowed clear visibility of how the individual
in question worked under pressure, how she could handle risk, or how he
performed in a census-building environment. From the accidental project
manager’s point of view, it usually afforded the opportunity to
build name recognition among the company’s ruling elite, which would
hopefully translate into support when a senior management opportunity
became available.
Running the gauntlet of project management was a normal part of every
ambitious manager’s career until the 1990s shattered the relationship
between company and employee. Reengineering and a relentless focus on
cost reduction might have been good for many things but it did irreparable
harm to the notion that a career was built through loyalty and good work
at one company.
The Reaction
According to Newton’s third law, for every action there is an equal
and opposite reaction somewhere in the system. In our example
above we see the corporate action of thinning the middle management
ranks (the
traditional source of accidental PMs) being offset by the reactionof creating project management as a formal profession. The growth
in PM organization
memberships from 8,500 in 1990 to over 120,000 in 2004 proves
this point in a dramatic way. Additionally once project management
became a recognized
profession the best and most experienced project managers had
the opportunity to choose to become free agents. Rather than
stay at a company for years
and handle projects occasionally, some of the most talented and
capable individuals have made the decision to manage projects
full time and if
that means moving from company to company and even state to state
to follow the work then so be it.
For some companies the thought of hiring a contract PM to run a project
is perfectly acceptable proposition but for other companies the decision
isn’t quite so clear cut. What I’d like to explore in this
article is four areas where contract project managers not only provide
a clear value proposition but in fact are actually the superior choice
to having an employee fill the same role.
Peak Loading
The most common reason to hire a contract project manager
is when there is simply too much work for the existing staff to handle
and it just has
to be done. Project work by definition has a beginning and end
and often there is no particular reason to increase the permanent staff.
Hiring a contract project manager also allows for a number of benefits:
• They can provide experience in solving the specific problem.
•
They can manage their project without challenging the current
political structure and therefore
obtain cooperation and consensus more
readily than an employee might in some circumstances.
•
Since they don’t have ongoing responsibilities they can focus on
a single project and get things
done more quickly.
The best way for a company to approach this is to develop a working relationship
either with a firm that specializes in project management (not a body
shop of temporary employees) and/or with a number of trusted individuals
with whom the firm can build an ongoing relationship.
Let’s take an example of what this concept might look like in practice:
Clarity Electronics has just finished evaluating their
project portfolio for the second half of 2003. IT spending is going up
only slightly but
they have a vast amount of work they want to accomplish in the
next six months, including a business intelligence project and some rework
on the
CRM applications they tried to roll out a couple of years ago.
They review their available resources and determine that it makes sense
to have their
existing employees work on the new Business Intelligence System
but that the CRM project really would be better run by someone who has
actually
seen a CRM system work well at another company.
The company maintains a small database of every contract PM who has worked
for them in the past and it’s a quick process to look up resumes.
In this case, it turns out that Jane Anderson has CRM experience
and that she’s gotten good marks from the team she’s managed
at Clarity before. A quick call to Jane finds that she’ll be available
in 4 weeks full time but can free up a few days before that to
get some advanced
planning activities kicked off. Approximately four months later,
Jane and the team have been able to work with the sales staff
and re-implement the lead tracking module in a much easier to
use manner. Jane
goes off
to work with her next client and the project team has had another
opportunity to work with and learn from an experienced PM.
One key factor is that Jane didn’t have a learning curve. She already
knew the company, knew most of her team members, and had even
met a few of the stakeholders on the last project she had done for Clarity.
In our
example of a 120-day project, Jane was able to bring to company
both the unique knowledge gained elsewhere (a working CRM system) and
her familiarity
with Clarity to bear on the project in order to get it done quickly.
Jane was also able to avoid the problem of contractor resentment that
keeps
some companies from hiring outside consultants. By working for
the company on a number of short term projects it is clear to
the employees that she
is operating in a peak load capacity and that she isn’t taking work
away from them. Also by choosing to hire a PM with specialized
knowledge it becomes clear to the staff that Jane (in this case) is bringing
something
none of them would have had the opportunity to acquire. Going
outside of the company becomes not just necessary but a good thing. —continued
• Top •
Editor's Note: Donna Fitzgerald is former asapm Director of Education,
and in addition to managing her own Project Management Consulting firm, she
runs NewGrange, asapm's official list serve, the "hottest place
on the web to discuss project management", at www.newgrange.org.
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