Articles

Hi,

I’ve just added a new article to our web-site. The title of this article is “What is Microsoft Outlook” and it explores the difference between Outlook as an application and a platform.

Let me know what you think.

Over the course of the last few days, I’ve been thinking about what I do for a living, actually more to the point, what I tell people that I do for a living. As I thought more and more about that topic, it occurred to me that some people might not have a clear idea what a I, as a Project Manager, do and thus the idea for this article was born.

I was trying to come up with a clear description of what I do for a living and it seemed to me that the best way to explain what I do was to present a clear analogy that people can relate to. I think that one of the clearest representation of what a Project Manager does would be the Captain of a ship.

A Captain you see is ultimately responsible for the boat and all of its contents. Similarly a Project Manager is ultimately responsible for the successful completion of the project. A ship’s Captain must know how every aspect of the ship operates, he or she, doesn’t need to be an expert in everything but the Captain must have a clear understanding of how things work together. A Project Manager needs to understand the various inter-dependencies of the project they are working on. This point, I feel, is critical and often overlooked.

There is a large range of ship Captains, from small pleasure boats to large ocean faring cruise ships and there is also a large range of Project Managers from small one-man shop to large 100+ person teams.

A point I’d like to make also is that I believe a Project Manager must have experience in niche that he or she is managing. It would be similar in that you wouldn’t expect someone with experience taking their pleasure boat out for the weekend to captain a large ocean faring cruise ship. The skill set isn’t appropriate and I think it is set up for failure. You must have relevant experience to the project at hand.

At the heart of what you need for an accomplished Captain or Project Manager is the ability to organize and communicate, those two characteristics are critical for the successful completion of a voyage or the successful delivery of a project.

I hope you’ve found this article interesting, even if you haven’t I’d like to hear from you!

Kevin

PS. I’ve written a tool that helps with the organization aspect of Project Management, MissingLink Project Center is the Easiest Project Management Tool for Microsoft Outlook