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Welcome to the fitting room of reality for project managers

So you are a project manager?

Let's just measure you up and see what we have in your size today then shall we?

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Project management can be a lonely business. There can be great confusion over project manager duties. We have to get to grips with the hard places of budget, time-scales, people, requirements and quality. We do it all in the service of delivery. We have to manage the consequences when the best laid plans hit the rocks of reality. I sometimes think that project managers are the arbiters of reality. We take the reality of the customers; the reality of the budget holders; the reality of the creative staff; the reality of the manufacturers; the reality of suppliers; the reality of what is actually happening and we make it all fit together into something wearable.

I am very familiar with IT projects but I talk and listen to project managers in many other industries. The same issues seem to apply everywhere: You are pretty much always trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. I have come to a startling conclusion that may surprise you:

Project managers are very important. They are the fulcrum of the project.

Do have a glance at our style recommendations.

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  1. Identifying the real objectives right at the beginning
  2. Clear, concise communications without jargon
  3. Knowing and sharing the real time-scales and what is driving them
  4. Knowing what the real budget is and who is controlling it
  5. Pruning away unnecessary milestones mercilessly
  6. Getting to know colleagues and what inspires them
  7. Understanding and predicting consequences based on cause and effect
  8. Taking the heat and protecting their teams from politics and its fall out
  9. Separating the business critical issues from politics
  1. Communication skills
  2. Negotiating skills
  3. Collaboration
  4. Compromising well
  5. Coaching skills
  6. Planning skills
  7. Requirements appreciation
  8. Estimation skills
  9. Design skills
  10. Prioritising skills
  11. Egoless working
  12. Effective listening
  13. Decision making skills
  14. Recognising progress
  15. Waste reduction skills
  16. Courage
  17. Honesty
  18. A sense of humour
  19. Optimism
  1. Dependency on planning tools
  2. Dependency on methodologies
  3. Waiting for 100% certainty while time runs out
  4. Getting involved in spin
  5. Calling wishful thinking a plan
  6. Pursuing dead ends
  7. Feeding live resources to dead projects
  8. Underestimating colleagues
  9. Arrogance
  10. Impatience
  11. Procrastination in the face of readiness
  12. Isolationism
  13. Unwarranted secrecy
  14. Indiscretion
  15. Divide and conquer
  16. Command and control

These trousers will particularly interest project managers because it puts them back where they belong, at the critical balance point of the project. It takes traditional methods along with Agile, Lean and a host of others and immediately hands you the key to all of them. Your readiness to learn and adapt is the critical measurement. What you need to do is to get really good at knowing what to use and how, where and when to use it. You need a trousers with lots of pockets for all the handy tools you pick up as you go. You need a trousers that comes with a toolbelt that you can simply use straight away but that will become more and more effective as your own skill grows.

Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned veteran you will feel refreshed as you climb up out of the detail and realise that project manager duties include coaching and creativity. The fact that you have the courage to call yourself a project manager tells us that you are ready for grown up trousers. So try these trousers on and as fashions change you can find that they are functional, comfortable, elastic and flexible in ways that you have only dreamed of.

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Your trousers - the trousers of reality.....

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