What Comes First? People or the Product of the Project?

by Utpal Vaishnav on March 16, 2013

As a project manager, you have two chief duties. The project that you need to deliver and to take care of the the team that delivers the project.

Both the tasks are equally important, but you favor one over the other in the natural course of the things.

Soft project managers think about team aspects first, other think about the project.

While the job of the project manager is to deliver the product of the project at the end by respecting time, quality and costs, people part, if overlooked may give negative results for a program over the long run.

Take a deep breathe and pause. Review recent actions. Analyze whom you valued more? Ask team members who are comfortable working with you how they find you?

Get clear on which type of project manager you are. That very knowledge will help you balance your actions and emerge as a successful project manager who is also loved by his team.

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Mastering the Basics of Project Management: The Complete Series from Nelson Biagio Jr.

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Ever wondered what’s the difference between these three widely used terms? Portfolio Management, Program Management and Project Management? Or you thought you should get clear on how to manage the costs and budget? Or you wanted to get better handle at scheduling techniques? A great resource from Nelson Biagio Jr provides all these answers. It is called [...]

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7 Promises that I and My Project Team Members Make to Ourselves

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As a project team we promise that: We will accept tasks only which we think we’re capable to accomplish. We would say “No” whenever necessary. We will be direct and genuine in planning and reporting scope, schedule staffing and budget. We will be proactive and take preventive actions before any potential problems happen. We will keep everyone [...]

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Customers Who Want to Take Undue Advantage of Your Situation

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3% of customers are like that. They won’t listen to your phone-call,  they will use the incorrect version of the application manual, they will whine about your app size by comparing with a totally out of context app that their friends have built years ago . They will blame you for not using the latest [...]

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On Project Customer

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Do you know who is your project customer? Those who have habit of learning project management via internet know Elizabeth Harrin. She has written a  book on Customer Centric Project Management, which has just been released. She has written recently about who is your project customer in a recent blog post. Elizabeth says, “Project customers [...]

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When do you know my product will be perfect?

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Certainly it is not perfect. It can still be improved. That’s an incorrect question. The correct question is: when can I ship it? It can be shipped when it is adequate. But it’s not perfect. We cannot… Well, it is not. Actually, the efforts put in making it perfect beyond what’s adequate are waste. It’s [...]

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The Software Project Management Tale – Technology First!

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“I just don’t understand why we’re NOT using latest version of the programming language to build this software application. By the time we will finish building this application, this version of language will be out of beta and released,” the programmer showed his disappointment. “Okay, does current version of the language you’re using solve your [...]

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When Your Team Is Not Performing at a Level You Want

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You want your team to perform at a certain level but it is not happening. All you’ve got are some reasons: They’re all busy chasing contradicting goals. They’ve listen to the director’s speech last week and they can’t understand it. Almost all the day they’re facebooking during the office time. The’re thinking: My colleague who [...]

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How Do You Excel Your Behavioral Competencies?

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Many Project Managers focus on gaining command over skills like planning, budgeting, risk management, monitoring and controlling the execution of the project etc. Despite that, overall project failure rates continue to grow. So, what’s missing? Behavioral competencies. Self-leadership, building motivated teams, negotiating and effective presentation skills to name a few. Sometimes these are considered soft [...]

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