In the same way each Project Manager has his own definition of done, I described in my previous post, each PM also has his own set of PM Rules that he wants Project Teams to follow during project delivery. In a wider perspective PM Rules constitute a third level of law following the Country Law and the Organization Rules. The set of PM Rules serves as closure of general Organization Rules that defines specific rules in a context a given project. Such rules should be communicated clearly to a Development Team at the project inception phase, referenced and applied coherently throughout the project delivery to guarantee smooth collaboration and common understanding of project and work environment.
Depending on the level of formalization of processes within the Organization, PM Rules need to cover variable set of areas. The more mature the Organization is, or for some – the more corpo-like the Organization is, the smaller set of areas is left to cover for PM. In other words the PM’s freedom is a derivative of the level of maturity of the Organization. Thus in general Organizations should be very careful about the level of formalization of internal processes and make decisions being aware of their consequences.
Finding balance between Organization Rules and PM Rules is the key factor for creating flexible and productivity-oriented work environments. On one hand having a fully-blown set of rules or processes allows easy transfers of resources among various projects, because work environment in all of them is pretty much the same. On the other hand too much of formalization may be perceived as a factor limiting flexibility and/or even limiting creativity in individual projects. Limited flexibility makes adaptation to specific project needs very difficult for a PM as some Development Team members may prefer to follow the well-known tracks they learnt and got used to in former projects. Similarly, limited creativity causes less value added coming from individuals. All in all, too tight suite of formal processes is potentially a root cause of evil of disempowerment of individuals – both Team members and PMs.
My personal preference is for Organizations to leave as much freedom for PMs as possible. And not only that - it is just a pre-requisite for the truly valuable deliverables. Organizations are ultimately responsible for identifying values emerging from PM level and incorporating the most valuable practices on the Organization level. IMHO, only Organizations capable of conducting the above process gain a right to call themselves mature Organizations.
Hi Piotr - interesting post!
ReplyDeleteI think there has to be some common baseline within organisation in terms of PM process. If you take it to extreme, one PM can do waterfall and other Srcum. So some standardisation is good but like you wrote - trick is to keep it on absolutely fundamental level.
Instead organizations can produce set of good practices, recommendations from which PMs can choose and pick whatever is useful for them.