Oh yes, let’s have fun with this one, shall we?
I want your myths in the comments, bucko!
Good Project Managers Make All Decisions By Themselves
While it’s true that project managers do have to make the final decisions in many cases on a daily basis, we certainly should not make them by ourselves. We utilize a portion of our daily stand-up meetings on my teams for discussion topics. These can be technical decisions or issues someone has run into which need to be addressed, or sometimes it’s just a new idea someone had about how to make our product better.
There are cases where I ask various individuals what they think and then make a decision, and other cases where I can delegate the decision to a team member or lead. Whenever possible, I like to have the team make their own decisions and not rely on me for this. Intelligent empowerment makes for a better team and a better end product.
Good Project Managers Deal With Problems Themselves
There is an ironic reality in which the more you fear failure, the more likely you are to fail. I’ve seen project managers try to cover up problems many times, and I’ve even done it myself. But that’s not a good way to run a project. The more open and transparent you can be with everyone, the better your chances of success. This is because you build trust by being open and honest, and you get help from other players when you need it.
Good Project Managers Are Control Freaks
Many have the image of a project manager as being a micro-managing control freak. Scheduling down to the nth degree is the best possible schedule, right?
Wrong.
I think the best project managers I’ve worked with do the exact opposite. They let the team manage their workflow and concern themselves mainly with interfaces to other teams or dependencies of some sort. I think project managers should be just another participant on the team when it comes to managing the day-to-day workflow of the team, unless the team runs into a problem and asks for help. For example, sometimes team members may have difficulty making a priority call about what to work on next. The project manager (or product owner if you are doing Scrum) can help by prioritizing items in the backlog this way.
Good Project Managers Make Projects More Complex
In my experience, this happens when the models of the project (WBS, schedule, etc.) do not accurately reflect reality. There certainly are cases where the project really IS that complex too. I think the best project managers are able to employ the least amount of complexity in project planning and execution artifacts as is possible and responsible.
If every one of your stakeholders can’t look at each and every project artifact and understand it intuitively, it’s too complex.
So, what project management myths would you like to debunk in the comments? I’m excited to see them!
