Executive's Guide to Project Management: Organizational Processes and Practices for Supporting Complex Projects

Through the Eyes of Senior Management Team Members

I suspect that for many of you this chapter was your first exposure to just how broad and deep the world of projects can be. It never ceases to amaze me that even after more than 40 years of practicing project management I am still encountering new challenges and learning wondrous things about this amazing and evolving discipline of project management. It all starts with a project and they can be as varied as anything you can envision. I've been involved in a three-month project where I was the project manager, the client, and the entire project team. At the other extreme I have participated in a project where the project team was over 10,000 members spread out over a seven-year timeline. Projects are unique and you should begin to appreciate the fact that their management is also unique and that means that the infrastructure and support of the SMT must be flexible so that it can adapt to a variety of changing situations. Project management is not just a matter of blindly following processes and procedures, or routinely filling in forms and writing reports, but rather it is a challenging world where project managers and clients may be called upon to function at the limits of their creativity and to be courageous at all times. It is a world in which you will continually face situations you have never faced before and will have to look inside your toolkit and concoct workable strategies to support projects and project portfolios. ...