What Is Project Management?

The PMBOK definition of project management is “. . . application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to achieve project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the application and integration of the project management processes of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing” (PMBOK 2004, p. 8). Project requirements include the PCTS targets mentioned previously. The various processes of initiating, planning, and so on, will be addressed later in this chapter, and the bulk of this book is devoted to explaining how these processes are accomplished.

It would be better if the PMBOK specified that a project manager should facilitate planning. One mistake made by inexperienced project managers is to plan the project for the team. Not only do they get no buy-in to their plan, but it is usually full of holes. They can’t think of everything, their estimates of task durations are wrong, and the entire thing falls apart after the project is started. The first rule of project management is that the people who must do the work should help plan it.

The first rule of project management is that the people who must do the work should help plan it.

The role of the project manager is that of an enabler. Her job is to help the team get the work completed, to “run interference” for them, to get scarce resources that they need, and to buffer them from outside forces that would disrupt the work. She is not a project czar. She should be—above everything—a leader, in the true sense of the word.

The best definition of leadership that I have found is the one by Vance Packard (1962). He says, “Leadership is the art of getting others to want to do something that you believe should be done.” The operative word here is “want.” Dictators get others to do things that they want done. So do guards over prison work teams. But a leader gets people to want to do the work, and that is a significant difference.

“Leadership is the art of getting others to want to do something that you believe should be done.”

—Vance Packard

The planning, scheduling, and control of work is the management or administrative part of the job. But without leadership, projects tend to just satisfy bare minimum requirements. With leadership, they can exceed those bare minimums.