Project management is a complex role to play. The project manager does the requirements gathering, feasibility studies, planning, execution and risk mitigation. In the endeavor, the manager has three different takes – optimist, pessimist and realist. Well, how can the same person have three different attitudes? This is both exciting as well as challenging.
Optimist
As a manager, you create a plan, execute them and hope that you'll not fail. You have to manage team, resources, technology, management, vendors, stakeholders etc. While doing so, you hope that everything will comply with the process and the plan. The plans can only be made if you are an optimist.
Pessimist
You have to be a pessimist to identify the scenarios under which the plan may fail. You need to identify the risk. In order to identify risks, take the most negative attitude towards the project execution and see what all factors may cause the failures or deviation from the plan. If you do not identify the threats, you will not create a mitigation plan and the consequences could be really bad to really worse.
Realist
Your attitude towards the projects should be indifferent, unattached and unemotional. While execution, if there is any deviation from the plan or potential delay in the delivery do not get emotional about your plans getting failed. Be a realist. Accept that real life scenarios can be rude and approach towards the remedial actions.
A project manager has to be all of these. Playing the above three cards gives you success and help you become a seasoned project manager.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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This post is informative and impressive. It may be short but, for me, it has a concise explanation about the roles of a project manager, optimist, pessimist and realist.
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for sharing this post. Keep it up!