Project Managers – Failure to Adapt?

Posted by John Thorpe on Aug 19, 2022 in PMChat Bloggers | Comments Off

Your process or mine? Recently we received this observation regarding programme and project management practitioners, offering a view that on the whole they fail to adapt to the process requirements when moving into a new organisation. Further to this it goes on to suggest that many practitioners are only capable of doing it their way and lack the required flexibility, or desire, or maybe capability to work within a structured environment that differs from their own way of doing things! Below is the observation and my initial thoughts on this matter, we would really love to hear your thoughts and observations too. “We have found it extremely difficult to find Programme, project managers and project support people who can actually adapt their PM to the organisation or methodology used (even if based on prince2). Maybe PMs are process people and so once they have learned one way of doing it they cannot adapt will not use a template if it is slightly different to what they have seen before?? Talking to other they seem to experience this as well.” What follows is my response in two parts; “We have found it extremely difficult to find Programme, project managers and project support people who can actually adapt their PM to the organisation or methodology used (even if based on prince2” Over the years I have seen what is being described above, though the reasons behind it tend to be impacted by a number of elements; Contractors often feel that there are high expectations and pressures to get the job done and as such they have been engaged to deliver using their knowledge and expertise. This in turn may mean that they deploy tools and methods that they are familiar with, unless somebody takes the time to explain what is actually required/expected of them in terms of compliance to existing methods and procedures