One of the common misconceptions about project management is that it is just
scheduling. At last report, Microsoft had sold more than a million copies of Microsoft
project, yet the failure rare remains high. Scheduling is certainly a major tool used to
manage projects, but it is not nearly as important as developing a shared
understanding of what the project is supposed to accomplish or constructing a good
work breakdown structure (WBS) to identify all the work to be done (I discuss WBS
later). In fact, without good project management, the only thing a detailed schedule
is going to do is allow you to document your failures with great precision!
I do want to make one point about scheduling software. It doesn´ t matter too much
which package you select, as they all have strong and weak points. However, the
tendency is to give people software and expect them to learn how to use it without
any training. This simply does not work. The features of scheduling software are such
that most people don´ t learn the subtleties by themselves. They don´ t have the time,
because they are trying to do their regular jobs, and not everyone is good at selfpaced
learning. You wouldn´ t hire an experienced person to run a complex machine in
a factory an put him to work without training, because you would know he would
destroy some thing or injure himself. So why do it with software?

When is managing a project not project management? When only one person in
involved. A lot people are sent to my seminars to learn how to manage projects, even
though they are the only person working on their project. It is true that a one-person
job can be called a project, because it has a definite starting point, target end date,
specific performance requirements, defined scope of work, and budget. However,
when no one else is working on the project (including outside vendors), there is no
need for a critical path schedule. A critical path schedule is one that has a number of
parallel paths, and one of then is longer than the others and determines how long it
will take to complete the job, or, ultimately, whether the given end date can be met.
When you´ re working on a job by yourself, there aren´ t any parallel paths-unless you
are ambidextrous!

One-person projects do require good self-management, or good time management,
but all you need is a good to-do list, which comes from a task listing. However, unless
you are coordinating the work of other people, you aren´ t practicing true project
management.

The big trap-working project managers
It is common to have individuals serve as project managers and require that they do
to part of the actual work in the project. This is a certain prescription for problems.
If it is a true team, consisting of several people, the project manager will inevitably
find herself torn between managing and getting her part of the work done. Naturally,the work must take precedence, or the schedule will slip, so she opts to do the work.
That means that the managing does not get done. She hopes it will take care of itself,
but it never does. After all, if the team could manage itself, there would be no need
for a project manager in the first place (remember our argument about whether
project management matters?). Unfortunately, when time comes for her performance
evaluation, she will be told that her managing needs improving. Actually, she just
needs to be allowed to practice management in the first place.

For very small teams-perhaps up to three or four people-a project manager can do
some of the work. But, as team sizes increase, it becomes impossible to both work
and manage, because you are constantly being pulled away from the work by the
needs of your team members. One reason for this situation is that organizations don´ t
fully understand what project management is all about; they think that it is possible
for individuals to do both. The result is that nearly everyone in the company is trying
to manage projects; as is true in every discipline, some managers will be good at it,
and others will have no aptitude whatsoever. I have found that a far better approach
is to select a few individuals who have the aptitude and the desire to be project
managers and to let them manage a number of small projects. This fees " technical"
people (to use the term broadly) to do technical work without having to worry about
administrative issues and allows project managers to get really good at their jobs. It
is outside the scope of this book to discuss how to select project managers, but, for
the interested reader, the topic is covered in The World-Class Project Manager
(Wysocki & Lewis, 2001).