Wikipedia says that “project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.”
Haven’t you been doing all of the above since you were in school? Even the simple task of completing one’s homework would fall under this definition.
Homemakers do it all the time — if they weren’t planning, coordinating, prioritizing, adapting, identifying and resolving issues on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis, there is no way children could be dropped off to their respective extra-curricular classes, dinner cooked, laundry done, plants watered, beds made…
And those of us chained to our 9-5 schedule are bound to do it every single day. Handling multiple projects, ensuring deadlines are met, executing plans to perfection, delegating tasks efficiently, managing time sinks like Facebook and Twitter…
Despite the fact that all of us do it as part of our professional, and personal, lives, not many of us realize we’re project managing.
We hire project management professionals to teach us how to organize, plan, execute, and monitor. There are project management courses and a vast array of tips and tricks in the guise of training sessions.
But given that all of us have years of practice project managing, what is the value of getting someone from the outside to come in and tell us how to do our jobs better?
Ciprian Rusen and Richard Newton of Corporate Geek “noticed that there is a gap between what project managers do and what they think they do, between how important they feel as part of their organizations and how important they actually are.”
The two of them are studying the image of the project management profession and would love for you to participate in the five-minute survey they’ve put together.
In the survey, you’ll be asked to rate the importance project managers have to the delivery of your organizational goals, what you like and dislike about them and what you think are some ideal traits of project managers.
If you’ve ever worked with project managers, or are one yourself, please take five minutes to answer a few questions. It will be a huge help.
The survey will close in a couple of weeks and I promise to share the results (along with my insights/opinions) with you once Ciprian and Richard have had a chance to review and compile them.
Without further ado, here’s the survey:
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I was going to complain about this post being a ‘cop out’ for a Friday post..
But I enjoyed seeing the ‘results so far’ on this survey, it’s like a Johari window for Project Managers :p
You did read yesterday’s post, right? Sleepless nights=numb mind!
Also, I’d committed to Ciprian I’d do this. Plus the results are shaping up to be quite interesting
You will become a project manager?
Me being a project manager by profession is not as simple as you think or compare to home maker. Even entreprenuer does planning, coordinating, prioritizing, adapting, identifying and resolving issues on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis, so in this case would you compare home maker to entreprenuer?
I believe in comparing project manager to a ‘Virtual entreprenuer’, to be a successful project manager one has to control scope, cost and schedule.