Manage the Organization
An important part of the project manager's job is managing upward in the organization. The way that you interact with your organization's senior management can make or break your projects. When you make changes for the better, you are changing their organization, and, whether or not you are successful, your boss will want to be involved.
Senior Managers See Software Projects as a Cost Burden
Many project managers face an uphill battle when interacting with their organizations' senior management. They find that senior managers have an increasingly antagonistic view of their software projects. The senior managers only see the cost of the development, and often fail to see how the software projects help the organization. These problems are compounded when projects come in late, or do not fill the needs of the stakeholders.
In the mid 1990s, Mary Lacity and Rudy Hirscheim published a study of 14 Fortune 500 companies in which they interviewed over 60 senior managers about their attitudes toward IT projects. They found that the overwhelming majority of them thought of their IT departments as a "cost burden" that steadily increases their costs without adding to the profitability of the company. This attitude is pervasive not just in large companies, but in organizations of all types and sizes.
Unfortunately, most project managers cannot just sit down with their organization's senior managers and explain the value of their projects. They must show over time that there ...