On the first day of a new project assignment, everyone forewarned me about my client-sponsor with unsolicited gossip:

“He has burned through three project managers in as many months.”

“He’s too meticulous. Impossible to please.”

“All consultants who have tried to help have been shown the door.”

It was an inauspicious start.

My first introductory meeting with him, however, did not marry up to the hype. He was reasonable, level-headed, and a had firm grasp on the strategic expectations of him. He and I discussed things in a matter-of-fact way, and what he needed from me in 30, 60, and 90 days. But then I asked him something else. “What does success mean to you… personally?”

He sat back, exhaled, and showed his cards. “I need to get something finished,” he said gruffly. He waved at a whiteboard filled with mind maps, projects, and tasks. “Corporate has asked me to move mountains,” he demurred, “but I can’t even move one rock. Is it truly this hard to deliver just one, stinking project?” He paused for a moment, then said in almost a whisper, “The situation is starting to reflect negatively on me. I don’t know what else to do.”

Then he asked me something I’ll never forget:

“Where, Jon, are all the good project managers?”

1. Practice-Based Specialization

I’ve thought about that question a lot in my career. My conclusion is that it isn’t necessarily a question of “good” or “bad”. It is a matter of aligning the right skillset, service, and individual to the challenge. In project management, that alignment isn’t always that clear. It can sometimes feel too generic, vague, or bureaucratic. In the case of my weary client-sponsor, the answer wasn’t a “good project manager.” He needed a delivery specialist.

Specialization is deep expertise in a discipline, skill, and service. Just as medicine can be distilled into practices like cardiology, urology, or oncology, there is an argument for similar, practice-based specialization in project management.

Specialization is at the core of Mavendog’s vision of how project management should be compartmentalized, packaged, and delivered. Buyers of project management services are better served by project specialization, because it provides more surgical answers and choices. Do they need a general practitioner (GP), or a cardiologist, urologist, or oncologist? Is there a strategic priority at stake, where they need someone with a delivery track record? In the case of my client-sponsor, he had acute, undiagnosed pain, but he didn’t know where else to turn beyond the proverbial GP.

I will discuss all the possible tracks of project management specialization in our next blog. But for now, I focus on the specialty my client-sponsor so desperately needed: project delivery specialization.

2. Project Delivery Specialization

Fellow project managers may be scratching their heads, saying, “Delivering projects is the most basic function of project management. Why would you consider it specialized?” As we previously discussed, the delivery/execution of project work is a specialty in and of itself. What I posit here is stratifying (or better put, elevating) those rare individuals who have mastered the skill. They can deliver any project, no matter the size, deliverable complexity, organization, or industry.

There is more to project delivery mastery than scope, schedule, and cost management. The crucible of delivery specialization has:

• Project Variety: Leading projects of different shapes and sizes, even if the projects are contained within a specific domain (such as IT Security).
• Organizational Diversity: Experience across a variety of organizational types, stakeholder groups, and cultures.
• Diplomacy: Savvy in communication, negotiation, and consensus building. Project leaders are master diplomats of client/sponsor and team dynamics.
• Tribal Assimilation: Quick assimilation and interpretation of organizational and tribal knowledge.
• Methodological Adaptability: Knowledge and experience in all methodologies (e.g., Waterfall vs. Agile). A delivery specialist can mold an approach to fit any project.
• Drive and Endurance: Project delivery is a test of mettle. A true specialist thrives on that pressure.

These are skills that can be studied and taught, but specialization requires mastery through application — something that is honed in the trenches.

3. Career, Lifestyle, and the Gig Economy

A project delivery specialist accepts the reality of a project’s unique and temporary nature. It takes guts to say, “I’m going to pursue a career where everything I do, and everything I’m paid for, is meant to end.” Just as there is an inherent risk in every project, there is an inherent risk to a project-driven career. Your livelihood is bound to the projects you lead. Therefore, delivery specialization demands a working lifestyle that is flexible to the extreme. Work can be ad hoc and deliverable-specific, not necessarily traditional and full-time. It can be fractionalized and part-time, where commitments ebb and flow with an organization’s ever-changing needs.

Project delivery specialization is tailor-made for a flex workforce. In many ways, one is joining the gig economy when embarking on such a career. However, when we mention the concepts of “flex workforce” or “gig economy”, many assume we’re talking about a youth movement. But for project delivery specialization, the more senior, experienced, and financially independent that one is, the more adaptable he or she can be for both projects and customers.

But here’s the hard lesson of the project delivery career:

The moment project leaders think about sacrificing flexibility for work predictability (or even financial stability), they erode their effectiveness and stature as delivery specialists. “What if they cut my hours? Will I get a contract extension? Will they fire me if I place the project in an at risk (red) status? Where will my next project come from?” In those moments, fear leads to inflexibility, partiality, or worse, untruthfulness. It is gig-centric flexibility that enables project delivery specialization, and it ensures specialists remain objective leaders for clients and sponsors.

As for my adventures with my client-sponsor, I fortunately was not the fourth project manager asked to leave. Over the next two years, we chipped away at that white board of projects. No day was without stress or a threat of scrutiny and failure. But work got done. Projects crossed the finish line. And executives finally saw their strategic goals move forward.

In my next blog, I list and discuss more of those compartmentalized specialties from Mavendog vision’s of project management.