Conclusion

Project managers need all the personal skills that any manager needs so project managers should not only attend courses that teach them how to manage projects (may we plug this excellent project management course) they should also attend people management training: leadership skills, influencing skills, appraisal skills and so on.

Most of all, good project managers MANAGE. They do not just get swept along by the current (see The Tale of Three Project Managers). They grab the project by the scruff of the neck and manage it.

However, it is sometimes the case that project managers do not feel sufficiently empowered to manage and control the things/people they need to manage and control in order to be successful. This problem has a solution.

The sponsor should make it clear to everyone that the project manager is operating with the sponsor's full authority: "take issue with the project manager and you are taking issue with me; disagree with him and you are disagreeing with me; I don't care how senior you are, what the project manager says is what I say. Now if he's obviously got it completely wrong come and have a word with me, but other than that what he says is what I say."

Will the sponsor think of making some public pronouncement like that at the beginning of a project? Probably not. Whose job is to write the script for the sponsor? Yes, the project manager's.

How many project managers should a project have? One. That is, one reporting to the sponsor. The project manager may need others below him managing parts of the project or specialist teams, but there is only one project manager accountable directly to the project sponsor.

“Project Management is beyond a profession… Project Management is a lifestyle.”