December 3rd, 2009
[Article] What Value Does a PM Provide at the End of a Project?
The other day, I was challenged by a client to provide a description of why they still needed a PM at the end of their project. To understand their question, and my response, you need a bit of background information first...
The other day, I was challenged by a client to provide a description
of why they still needed a PM at the end of their project. To
understand their question, and my response, you need a bit of background
information first.
This software development and package integration project had
been running for several months, had completed the installation, custom
development, and integration testing. Nearly all of the project team
had been released from the project: only the lead programmer and a part
time solution architect remained to deal with any issues arising during
user acceptance testing (UAT), to answer questions from the client’s
technical team who would be supporting the solution after the end of the
project, and to provide some knowledge transfer to the client’s team on
how to use the custom software solution. With such a small team (1.5
FTEs), low risk for failure, and only a few items left to complete with
adequate hours remaining in the budget to complete them, the project was
in a very enviable position.
The problem was that the schedule had been extended and while
there had been additional hours added for programmers to develop and
test new functionality for the custom application, additional project
management hours were not added with each change authorization that was
signed between the two parties. Instead, with only a couple of project
management hours left in the contract, I was negotiating with my client
to have additional project management hours added in another change
authorization.
The client refused the suggestion of additional project
management hours, saying “We have our own project managers handling our
portion of the project deliverables – they can also manage your two team
members, in addition to their current teams, meaning that we don’t need
any extra project management time from you.”
How do you respond to a statement like that? I suggested the
following items to the client’s senior management chain:
- Relying on Vendor Responsibility: The client had chosen my
company as the vendor of services for this project because of our solid
reputation in the marketplace and our long list of references. They
were not just hiring a few of our staff members in a staff augmentation
(a.k.a. “body shop”) mode; rather, they were buying our overall
organizational expertise, tools, and processes to help them through the
project. If they were to proceed without a project manager, and manage
the resources directly, the client would in effect be absolving our
company of further responsibility for the project, as our project
manager ensures that issues of risk, governance, and our organizational
commitment are being dealt with appropriately, including internal
escalations, if necessary. With staff augmentation arrangements, such
organizational commitment and responsibility rarely enter the
relationship.
- Financial Reporting Support: This client had asked
several times during the project for financial reconciliations such as
invoiced hours versus hours authorized in signed contracts and change
authorization forms. As the project manager, it was my duty to provide
this information to the client, whether I provided the information
directly, or through and assistant. The programmer and solution
architect remaining on the project would not have access to the correct
systems to access the information required to respond to these requests.
- Negotiating Changes: As we were in the final stages of
the project (user acceptance testing and then deployment), issues and
defects were arising that could have broader implications for the
project as a whole. For example, one performance issue had a number of
possible resolutions that needed to be evaluated, each with its own cost
and benefits that need to be discussed in detail with the client before
a decision can be made. Both the developer nor the architect have a
technical focus, but the business impact of these resolutions spread
more broadly than the technical impacts, and these technical resources
didn’t have the business acumen to recognize nor to communicate these
impacts effectively with the business stakeholders. Finally, as the
services vendor, we would need someone delegated with the authority (and
who has the right skills) to negotiate a solution that works for both
parties, including writing up the change, gathering estimates,
calculating cost and schedule impacts, and getting the agreement signed
by the right authorized parties. The technical people assigned to the
team did not have these skills, which are typically found in project
managers.
- Focus on Customer Satisfaction: The personal performance
of the resources left working on the project is measured with
productivity metrics (like percent of worked hours billable to clients).
This drives a certain behavior that is desirable in people building
deliverables for a client: a single-minded focus on completing the
solution. What is missing, is someone focused on customer satisfaction.
In most organizations, customer satisfaction is used to evaluate
project managers, who tend to have the most face-to-face interactions
with senior business stakeholders (sponsors). The vendor’s sales staff
(called “relationship managers”) are focused on customer satisfaction,
as that is how they drive future sales; however, they are not typically
focused on delivering contractual obligations and usually don’t have the
authority and resources to make that happen. As the project manager
tends to have stronger relationship-building skills, and the authority
to shape the project processes to better influence customer
satisfaction, it is in the client’s best interest to ensure that they
still have some hours in the project for the vendor’s project manager.
- Internal Escalations: Some issues and defects that were
arising (and that would likely continue to arise as the project moves
through UAT and into deployment) would require the coordination of
vendor, customer, and subcontractor resources. This requires someone
like a project manager who has experience navigating the vendor’s
organization and who has familiarity with the vendor’s management
processes and also the procurement (subcontractor) management processes.
- Managing Vendor Resources: Even though the client
thinks they can manage the vendor’s two project resources, what they are
referring to are the work assignments and timing of delivery. There
are other aspects to managing the vendor resources that they won’t want
to do or that they cannot do: resolving personnel performance problems,
approving vacation schedules, acquiring additional (or replacement)
resources, resolving conflicts with the other projects being worked on
by the part-time solution architect, etc. In many organizations,
project managers take on broader human resource management roles than
just task assignments.
So, even in the final weeks or days of a project, when most of the
work has been completed and most of the team has been released to other
projects, it is in the best interests of the project sponsor to retain
the services of a project manager from the delivery organization.
Kevin Aguanno, PMP, IPMA-B, MAPM is a certified Executive Project
Manager who has written many books on project management-related topics
and who is an award-winning instructor teaching at universities and
conferences around the world. Find out more about him at www.AgilePM.com.
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