Last week Lori and I took a working vacation on Cape Cod. Have you ever taken one of these? Meetings are by conference call. Your laptop comes with you. You find yourself in a beautiful locale, preferably with someone you love. While perhaps not exactly restful, such times can be incredibly refreshing and stimulating.
On the way to the Cape we had a fantastic meal in Mystic, CT at the Captain Daniel Packer Inne, which is recommended if ever you find yourself in that part of the world. While waiting I read a column in a local paper which talked about the old measure of assessing a person’s character by their treatment of waiters. This started me thinking about how we as project managers deal with our own power.
Waiters in Project Management
In your role as project manager, there are people who are in a lower power position than you. How you treat them is an indication of your true character now, and may give you some ideas of ways in which you might want to improve.
Business Analyst
- Do you consider yourself more important than the BAs on your team?
- Have you ever changed documents that other team members prepared without notifying them or giving them a chance to make the revision themselves?
- Do you ever have requirements related discussions without the business analyst present?
Quality Assurance (QA) Tester
- Have you ever marked a bug “fixed” without notifying the test team?
- Do you intentionally leave QA out of the loop?
- Have you ever made a “joke” or snide comment about testers?
Security and/or Help Desk Staff
- Do you gripe or grumble if walking through the security check takes longer than usual?
- Have you ever smiled to the security or help desk person?
- Do you know even one security guard’s name?
Project management can be a demanding profession. This is why ethics and values are so crucial to success. The decisions you make about how you will act in given situations before those situations occur will tend to protect you when the high-stress times arrive.
Rest assured that over time, your true nature will become known.
How do you trait the waiters in your project management world?
If you feel good about your track record or would like to do better please let us know in the comments.
(Image by Tangerine Dreams on flickr)
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Completing projects on time, within budget and to the specifications does not happen by accident or by the heroic efforts of the PM. The sooner the PM starts working with the team instead of against them, the better this is for the PM. The only way for the PM to look good and have people wanting to work with and support him/her in the future is dependent on the PM using his/her power and influence to motivate the team and remove obstacles for them rather than ordering them around and working in a vacuum. For all the PM’s so called “power” the project team ultimately makes or breaks the PM’s success on a project.