Project Management Expertise

In order for you, as the project manager, to manage the competing project constraints and the project as a whole, there are some areas of expertise you should bring to the project team (Figure 2.11). They are knowledge of the application area and the standards and regulations in your industry, understanding of the project environment, general management knowledge and skills, and interpersonal skills. It should be noted that industry expertise is not in a certain field but the expertise to run the project. So while knowledge of the type of industry is important, you will have a project team supporting you in this endeavor. For example, if you are managing a project that is building an oil platform, you would not be expected to have a detailed understanding of the engineering since your team will have mechanical and civil engineers who will provide the appropriate expertise; however, it would definitely help if you understood this type of work.

Let’s take a look at each of these areas in more detail.

Application knowledge

By standards, we mean guidelines or preferred approaches that are not necessarily mandatory. In contrast, when referring to regulations we mean mandatory rules that must be followed, such as government-imposed requirements through laws. It should go without saying that as a professional, you’re required to follow all applicable laws and rules that apply to your industry, organization, or project. Every industry has standards and regulations. Knowing which ones affect your project before you begin work will not only help the project to unfold smoothly, but will also allow for effective risk analysis.

Figure 2.6: Areas of expertise that a project manager should bring to the project team.

Some projects require specific skills in certain application areas. Application areas are made up of categories of projects that have common elements. They can be defined by industry group (pharmaceutical, financial, etc.), department (accounting, marketing, legal, etc.), technology (software development, engineering, etc), or management specialties (procurement, research and development, etc.). These application areas are usually concerned with disciplines, regulations, and the specific needs of the project, the customer, or the industry. For example, most government agencies have specific procurement rules that apply to their projects that wouldn’t be applicable in the construction industry. The pharmaceutical industry is interested in regulations set forth by government regulators, whereas the automotive industry has little or no concern for either of these types of regulations. You need to stay up-to-date regarding your industry so that you can apply your knowledge effectively. Today’s fast-paced advances can leave you behind fairly quickly if you don’t stay abreast of current trends.

Having some level of experience in the application area you’re working in will give you an advantage when it comes to project management. While you can call in experts who have the application area knowledge, it doesn’t hurt for you to understand the specific aspects of the application areas of your project.

Management Knowledge and Skills

As the project manager, you have to rely on your project management knowledge and your general manage­ment skills. Here, we are thinking of items like your ability to plan the project, execute it properly, and of course control it and bring it to a successful conclusion, along with your ability to guide the project team to achieve project objectives and balance project constraints.

There is more to project management than just getting the work done. Inherent in the process of project management are the general management skills that allow the project manager to complete the project with some level of efficiency and control. In some respects, managing a project is similar to running a business: there are risk and rewards, finance and accounting activities, human resource issues, time management, stress management, and a purpose for the project to exist. General management skills are needed in every project.

Interpersonal Skills

Last but not least you also have to bring the ability into the project to manage personal relationships and deal with personnel issues as they arise. Here were talking about your interpersonal skills as shown in Figure 2.8.

Communication

Project managers spend 90% of their time communicating. Therefore they must be good communicators, promoting clear, unambiguous exchange of information. As a project manager, it is your job to keep a number of people well informed. It is essential that your project staff know what is expected of them: what they have to do, when they have to do it, and what budget and time constraints and quality specifications they are working toward. If project staff members do not know what their tasks are, or how to accomplish them, then the entire project will grind to a halt. If you do not know what the project staff is (or often is not) doing, then you will be unable to monitor project progress. Finally, if you are uncertain of what the customer expects of you, then the project will not even get off the ground. Project communication can thus be summed up as knowing “who needs what information and when” and making sure they have it.

Figure 2.8: Interpersonal skills required of a project manager.

All projects require sound communication plans, but not all projects will have the same types of commu­nication or the same methods for distributing the information. For example, will information be distributed via mail or email, is there a shared website, or are face-to-face meetings required? The communication management plan documents how the communication needs of the stakeholders will be met, including the types of information that will be communicated, who will communicate them, and who will receive them; the methods used to communicate; the timing and frequency of communication; the method for updating the plan as the project progresses, including the escalation process; and a glossary of common terms.

Influence

Project management is about getting things done. Every organization is different in its policies, modes of operations, and underlying culture. There are political alliances, differing motivations, conflicting interests, and power struggles. A project manager must understand all of the unspoken influences at work within an organization.

Leadership

Leadership is the ability to motivate and inspire individuals to work toward expected results. Leaders inspire vision and rally people around common goals. A good project manager can motivate and inspire the project team to see the vision and value of the project. The project manager as a leader can inspire the project team to find a solution to overcome perceived obstacles to get the work done.

Motivation

Motivation helps people work more efficiently and produce better results. Motivation is a constant process that the project manager must guide to help the team move toward completion with passion and a profound reason to complete the work. Motivating the team is accomplished by using a variety of team-building techniques and exercises. Team building is simply getting a diverse group of people to work together in the most efficient and effective manner possible. This may involve management events as well as individual actions designed to improve team performance.

Recognition and rewards are an important part of team motivations. They are formal ways of recognizing and promoting desirable behaviour and are most effective when carried out by the management team and the project manager. Consider individual preferences and cultural differences when using rewards and recognition. Some people don’t like to be recognized in front of a group; others thrive on it.

Negotiation

Project managers must negotiate for the good of the project. In any project, the project manager, the project sponsor, and the project team will have to negotiate with stakeholders, vendors, and customers to reach a level of agreement acceptable to all parties involved in the negotiation process.

Problem Solving

Problem solving is the ability to understand the heart of a problem, look for a viable solution, and then make a decision to implement that solution. The starting point for problem solving is problem definition. Problem definition is the ability to understand the cause and effect of the problem; this centres on root-cause analysis. If a project manager treats only the symptoms of a problem rather than its cause, the symptoms will perpetuate and continue through the project life. Even worse, treating a symptom may result in a greater problem. For example, increasing the ampere rating of a fuse in your car because the old one keeps blowing does not solve the problem of an electrical short that could result in a fire. Root-cause analysis looks beyond the immediate symptoms to the cause of the symptoms, which then affords opportunities for solutions. Once the root of a problem has been identified, a decision must be made to effectively address the problem.

Solutions can be presented from vendors, the project team, the project manager, or various stakeholders. A viable solution focuses on more than just the problem; it looks at the cause and effect of the solution itself. In addition, a timely decision is needed or the window of opportunity may pass and then a new decision will be needed to address the problem. As in most cases, the worst thing you can do is nothing.

All of these interpersonal skills will be used in all areas of project management. Start practicing now because it’s guaranteed that you’ll need these skills on your next project.

Image Descriptions

Figure 2.5 image description: The sign says, “We can do good, quick, and cheap work. You can have any two but not all three. 1. Good, quick work won’t be cheap. 2. Good, cheap work won’t be quick. 3. Quick, cheap work won’t be good.” [Return to Figure 2.5]

Who is a project manager?  Many positions in an organization have project management responsibilities – yet do not have the title of Project Manager. Below shows many examples from different industries to understand more about the skillset that can be applied to various industries.

Example: Construction Managers

Construction managers plan, direct, coordinate, and budget a wide variety of residential, commercial, and industrial construction projects including homes, stores, offices, roads, bridges, wastewater treatment plants, schools, and hospitals. Strong scheduling skills are essential for this role. Communication skills are often used in coordinating design and construction processes, teams executing the work, and governance of special trades (carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring) as well as government representatives for the permit processes.

A construction manager may be called a project manager or project engineer. The construction manager ensures that the project is completed on time and within budget while meeting quality specifications and codes and maintaining a safe work environment. These managers create project plans in which they divide all required construction site activities into logical steps, estimating and budgeting the time required to meet established deadlines, usually utilizing sophisticated scheduling and cost-estimating software. Many use software packages such as Microsoft Project® or Procure® or online tools like BaseCamp®. Most construction projects rely on spreadsheets for project management. Procurement skills used in this field include acquiring the bills for material, lumber for the house being built, and more. Construction managers also coordinate labor, determining the needs and overseeing their performance, ensuring that all work is completed on schedule.

Values including sustainability, reuse, LEED-certified building, use of green energy, and various energy efficiencies are being incorporated into today’s projects with an eye to the future. Jennifer Russell, spoke about project management and global sustainability” at the 2011 Silicon Valley Project Management Institute (PMI) conference. She informed the attendees of the financial, environmental, and social areas in expanding the vision of project management with the slide in Figure 1.2. These values are part of the PMI’s code of ethics and professionalism. By adhering to this code, project managers include in their decisions the best interests of society, the safety of the public, and enhancement of the environment.

Figure 1.2: In addition to considering the cost, scope, and schedule of a project, a project manager should work to ensure the project is socially responsible, environmentally sound, and economically viable.

Creative Services

Creative service careers include graphic artists, curators, video editors, gaming managers, multimedia artists, media producers, technical writers, interpreters, and translators. These positions use project management skills, especially in handling the delivery channel and meeting clients’ requirements.

Let us look at one example, graphic artists, to understand and identify some of the project management skills that aid in this career.

Example: Graphic Artists

Graphic artists plan, analyze, and create visual solutions to communication problems. They use many skills found in project management, especially communications. They work to achieve the most effective way to get messages across in print and electronic media. They emphasize their messages using colour, type, illustration, photography, animation, and various print and layout techniques. Results can be seen in magazines, newspapers, journals, corporate reports, and other publications. Other deliverables from graphic artists using project management skills include promotional displays, packaging, and marketing brochures supporting products and services, logos, and signage. In addition to print media, graphic artists create materials for the web, TV, movies, and mobile device apps.

Initiation in project management can be seen in developing a new design: determining the needs of the client, the message the design should portray, and its appeal to customers or users. Graphic designers consider cognitive, cultural, physical, and social factors in planning and executing designs for the target audience, very similar to some of the dynamics a project manager considers in communicating with various project stakeholders. Designers may gather relevant information by meeting with clients, creative staff, or art directors; brainstorming with others within their firm or professional association; and performing their own research to ensure that their results have high quality and they can manage risks.

Graphic designers may supervise assistants who follow instructions to complete parts of the design process. Therefore scheduling, resource planning, and cost monitoring are pillars of project management seen in this industry. These artists use computer and communications equipment to meet their clients’ needs and business requirements in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

Educators

“Educator” is a broad term that can describe a career in teaching, maybe being a lecturer, a professor, a tutor, or a home-schooler. Other educators include gurus, mullahs, pastors, rabbis, and priests. Instructors also provide vocational training or teach skills like learning how to drive a car or use a computer. Educators provide motivation to learn a new language or showcase new products and services. Educators use project management skills including planning and communication.

Let us look at teachers, since we all have had teachers, and see if we can recognize the project management skills that are demonstrated in this profession.

Example: Teachers

Some teachers foster the intellectual and social development of children during their formative years; other teachers provide knowledge, career skill sets, and guidance to adults. Project management skills that teachers exhibit include acting as facilitators or coaches and communicating in the classroom and in individual instruction. Project managers plan and evaluate various aspects of a project; teachers plan, evaluate, and assign lessons; implement these plans; and monitor each student’s progress similar to the way a project manager monitors and delivers goods or services. Teachers use their people skills to manage students, parents, and administrators. The soft skills that project managers exercise can be seen in teachers who encourage collaboration in solving problems by having students work in groups to discuss and solve problems as a team.

Project managers may work in a variety of fields with a broad assortment of people, similar to teachers who work with students from varied ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. These teachers must have awareness and understanding of different cultures.

Teachers in some schools may be involved in making decisions regarding the budget, personnel, textbooks, curriculum design, and teaching methods, demonstrating skills that a project manager would possess such as financial management and decision making.

Engineers

Engineers apply the principles of science and mathematics to develop economical solutions to technical problems. As a project cycles from an idea in the project charter to the implementation and delivery of a product or service, engineers link scientific discoveries to commercial applications that meet societal and consumer needs.

Engineers use many project management skills, especially when they must specify functional requirements. They demonstrate attention to quality as they evaluate a design’s overall effectiveness, cost, reliability, and safety similar to the project manager reviewing the criteria for the customer’s acceptance of delivery of the product or service.

Estimation skills in project management are used in engineering. Engineers are asked many times to provide an estimate of time and cost required to complete projects.

Health Care

There are many jobs and careers in health care that use project management skills. Occupations in the field of health care vary widely, such as athletic trainer, dental hygienist, massage therapist, occupational therapist, optometrist, nurse, physician, physician assistant, and X-ray technician.  These individuals actively apply risk management in providing health care delivery of service to their clients, ensuring that they do not injure the person they are caring for. Note: There is a section on nursing later in this chapter.

Many of you may have had a fall while you were growing up, and needed an X-ray to determine if you had a fracture or merely a sprain. Let us look at this career as an example of a health care professional using project management skills.

Example: Radiology Technologists

Radiology technologists and technicians perform diagnostic imaging examinations like X-rays, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and mammography. They could also be called radiographers, because they produce X-ray films (radiographs) of parts of the human body for use in diagnosing medical problems.

Project management skills, especially people skills and strong communication, are demonstrated when they prepare patients for radiologic examinations by explaining the procedure and what position the patient needs to be in, so that the parts of the body can be appropriately radiographed. Risk management is demonstrated when these professionals work to prevent unnecessary exposure to radiation by surrounding the exposed area with radiation protection devices, such as lead shields, or limiting the size of the X-ray beam. To ensure quality results, the health technician monitors the radiograph and sets controls on the X-ray machine to produce radiographs of the appropriate density, detail, and contrast.

Safety and regulations concerning the use of radiation to protect themselves, their patients, and their coworkers from unnecessary exposure is tracked in an efficient manner and reported as a control to ensure compliance. Project management skills are also used in preparing work schedules, evaluating equipment for purchase, or managing a radiology department.

Some radiological technologists specialize in CT scans; as CT technologists they too use project management skills. CT uses ionizing radiation to produce a substantial number of cross-sectional X-rays of an area of the body. Therefore, it requires the same precautionary measures that are used with X-rays, hence the need for risk management and monitoring for exposure.

Teamwork, not only with the patient that the radiological technologist supports and the doctor who ordered the request, but also with other health care providers, relies on strong communication, quality, work done in a timely manner, and wise use of hospital resources. This all boils down to ensuring that the three elements of the project management triangle of cost, schedule, and scope with quality delivered remain the essentials that provide a cornerstone to project management and the skills needed to obtain the objective.

Example: Nurses

Nurses treat and educate patients and their families and the public about various medical conditions and provide advice and emotional support. Nurses establish a care plan for their patients that include activities like scheduling the administration and discontinuation of medications (e.g., intravenous (IV) lines for fluid, medication, blood, and blood products) and application of therapies and treatments. Communication with the patient, their family, physicians and other health care clinicians may be done in person or via technology. Telehealth allows nurses to provide care and advice through electronic communications media including videoconferencing, the Internet, or telephone.

Risk management is very important for a nurse, with some cases having a life or death consequence. Nurses monitor pain management and vital signs and provide status reports to physicians to help in responding to the health care needs of the patient.

The nursing field varies. Some nurses work in infection control. They identify, track, and control infectious outbreaks in health care facilities and create programs for outbreak prevention and response to biological terrorism. Others are educators who plan, develop, execute, and evaluate educational programs and curricula for the professional development of students and graduate nurses. Nurses may use project management skills while conducting health care consultations, advising on public policy, researching in the field, or providing sales support of a product or service.

Paralegal

Attorneys assume the ultimate responsibility for legal work but they often obtain assistance. Paralegals assume this role in law firms and perform many tasks to aid the legal profession. However, they are explicitly prohibited from carrying out duties considered to be the practice of law (e.g., giving legal advice, setting legal fees, presenting court cases).

Project management skills such as planning are used in helping lawyers prepare for closings, hearings, trials, and corporate meetings. Communication skills are used in preparing written reports that help attorneys determine how cases should be handled or drafts for actions such as pleading, filing motions, and obtaining affidavits.

Monitoring skills aid paralegals who may track files of important case documents, working on risk containment related to filing dates and responses to the court. Procurement skills, which a project manager uses, can  also be seen from a paralegal perspective in negotiating  terms of hiring expert witnesses as well as other services such as acquiring services from  process servers.

Financial skills may be used as well, such as assisting in preparing tax returns, establishing trust funds, and planning estates or maintaining financial office records at the law firm.

Government, litigation, personal injury, corporate law, criminal law, employee benefits, intellectual property, labour law, bankruptcy, immigration, family law, and real estate are some of the many different law practices where a paralegal professional may use project management skills.

Software developer

Computer software developers and computer programmers design and develop software. They apply the principles of computer science and mathematics to create, test, and evaluate software applications and systems that make computers come alive. Software is developed in many kinds of projects: computer games, business applications, operating systems, network control systems, and more. Software developers us project management skills to develop the requirements for the software, identify and track the product development tasks, communicate within the development team and with clients, test cases, and manage quality, the schedule, and resources (staff, equipment, labs, and more).

Science Technicians

Science technicians use principles and theories of science and mathematics to assist in research and development and help invent and improve products and processes. In their jobs, they are more practically oriented than scientists. Planning skills project managers use can be seen as science technicians set up, operate, and maintain labouratory instruments; monitor experiments; and observe, calculate, and record results. Quality is a factor here as it is in project management; science technicians must ensure that processes are performed correctly, with proper proportions of ingredients, for purity or for strength and durability.

There are different fields in which science technicians can apply project management skills. Agricultural and food science technicians test food and other agricultural products and are involved in food, fibre, and animal research, production, and processing. Control and risk management are important here in executing the tests and experiments, for example, to improve the yield and quality of crops, or  the resistance of plants and animals to disease, insects, or other hazards. Quality factors are paramount when food science technicians conduct tests on food additives and preservatives to ensure compliance with government regulations regarding colour, texture, and nutrients.

Biological technicians work with biologists studying living organisms. Many assist scientists who conduct medical research or who work in pharmaceutical companies to help develop and manufacture medicines. Skills in scheduling, especially in incubation periods for the study of the impact on cells, could impact projects, such as exploring and isolating variables for research in living organisms and infectious agents. Biotechnology technicians apply knowledge and execution skills and techniques gained from basic research, including gene splicing and recombinant DNA, to product development. Project management skills are used in collaboration and communication among team members to record and understand the results and progress toward a cure or product.

Other kinds of technicians are chemical technicians who may work in laboratories or factories, using monitoring and control skills in the way they collect and analyze samples. Again, quality assurance is an important factor for most process technicians’ work in manufacturing, testing packaging for design, ensuring integrity of materials, and verifying environmental acceptability.

Technicians use a project management skill set to assist in their initiation, planning, and executing tasks, while managing risks with some measure of reporting to determine if their objectives satisfy the constraints of cost, schedule, resource, and quality standards set.

Text Attributions

This chapter of Project Management is a derivative and remix of the following sources:

• Project Management by Merrie Barron and Andrew Barron. © CC BY (Attribution).
• Project Management for Skills for All Careers by Project Management Open Resources and TAP-a-PM. © Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.
• This chapter of Project Management is a derivative of Project Management by Merrie Barron and Andrew Barron. © CC BY (Attribution).
• Table 2.1: Adapted from P. Russo and S. Boor, How Fluent is Your Interface? Designing for International Users, Proceedings of the INTERACT ’93 and CHI ’93, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (1993). Table from Barron & Barron Project Management for Scientists and Engineers, Source: Project Management for Scientists and Engineers by Merrie Barron; Andrew R. Barron