The line of communication between the inhouse project manager and the agency is a troublesome one as I outlined in the post on the agile project manager.
When things go wrong, the agency gets blamed no matter what. But what if it’s not the agency, but the dynamic of having multiple project managers that causes problems? Perhaps the time has come to rethink the project manager role on the customer side of the table?
Søren Ahlers-Jensen is a product manager in the IT department at the Region of Southern Denmark and will be speaking at the J.Boye Aarhus conference in November on the tricky discipline of product management. Below he shares his thoughts on project managers and how their function might be better handled by a product manager with great results to follow.
What's the problem with project managers?
The core of the issue is when the daily organization at the client is incapable of taking over and implementing the results of the project. Too many projects, without the proper resources and infrastructure to support it, can leave one without most of the benefits you were hoping when you started the project.
Think about it this way: The product is more important than the project
Even when a project is finished in a satisfactory way, you will not harvest all the benefits if you don’t have someone who can implement it into to the daily workings.
What a great project - can someone please take it off my hands?
I've seen this scenario countless times: An in-house project manager finishes a project and everyone suddenly leaves the building. The project is finished and it all went well, so the project manager can rest, but not in peace. For what happens with the project now?
It takes someone to govern the outcome of the project, and that transition can be more difficult than being a project manager for the initial implementation.
A product manager must take a longer view because their doublesided function will force them to think the project as an integrated part of the business's overall strategy. Also, in this way the winding road between project manager and the rest of the business is eliminated.
Product managers – when to have an octopus
So when should you have a product manager? A product manager is more of a function than anything else. This means that a good product manager needs to be able to grasp different areas of the company; he or she needs to be able to talk strategy with the director, but also handle the more technical stuff on an intranet.
Strong communication skills is important, but the essence is that he or she needs to be the one that knows the product and the bigger impact in depth.
“Thanks for summarising this, it is a challenge we face every day when working on projects for clients. The questions is how to raise the bar and make us more like product managers when we have strict budgets and deadline :)”