What Style of Project Manager are you?

A tongue in cheek look at some different styles of Project Management taken from an old copy of Computer Weekly ....



Charlie - the crash-test Dummy

He goes to all the user group meetings and believes everything his suppliers tell him. Completing the project on time and meeting the user requirements will take second place to using the latest technology. He will regard success as being when a single user can log on to the system and make one transaction. The problem will come when 10,000 users log on and try to do 1 million transactions a day. His answer will be more hardware, more power and the latest technological fix. Most senior managers can spot this type because of the chequered symbols on the side of their heads and the amount of time they spend reading manufacturers’ literature. Most are kept well away from critical projects. But a few managers will be taken in only to find that the project is so technologically advanced that nobody can fix it and the whole expensive mess has to be thrown out.
General Cobol
He will approach the project like a military operation and make stirring speeches to the team at crucial moments. He fights for his staff and is not afraid to take on the ‘top brass’. He spends very little time with his team unless making a speech and has no grasp of, or interest in, detail. When the project starts to slip he takes it personally and very hard. If the problem is bad he will offer his resignation and hope that it will be accepted so that someone else can take over fixing it.

Tick-Box Tracey
She will have everything neat and in order. The project will be mapped out in minute detail on flow charts and schedulers. Her staff will never be short of pens or furniture, and meetings will start and finish on time. She has no involvement whatsoever with the project itself but sits on the outside compiling endless reports. When the proverbial hits the fan she will blame shortages of resources, staff, etc, but when challenged will have no real idea what is going on. She will then consult the project team and learn the ugly truth, which she will then pass on to the powers-that-be in accurate and minute detail, so making it their problem to fix it.

Arthur Artisan
After a career as a good programmer he is finally rewarded with a promotion to project manager. He likes writing software and is liked by the team. He has no training in project management, no interest in it and no stomach for some of the nastier things it entails. He is likely to spend a lot of time working closely with the team, writing code and solving problems. He will have no idea of the bigger picture and at the project deadline will dismiss the fact that data can only be entered using hexadecimal instruction as ”some work still needs to be done on the user interface”.