In this latest piece on project leadership, I am writing primarily for:

• Business executives and project sponsors (customers and clients) looking to invest in project services, and
• Fellow project practitioners (project managers and consultants), who have chosen this exciting and demanding career.

These topics also offer insight into why I founded the company. Some of my points are pretty basic for the every-day project practitioner. But for customers and clients, they can be eye-opening.

Note: I use the term “project leader” more so than “project manager”, primarily to differentiate seasoned project practitioners at the forefront of their careers. It helps distinguish them from commoditized contracting staff. “Project Manager” has become a diluted title in today’s market. The role can sometimes be perceived as administrative, coordinative, or middle management (which is admittedly a pet peeve of mine). In the Mavendog world, “project manager” is positioned as a senior, sometimes executive-level leadership role, providing a specialized skill and service.

1. Project Work as a Tactical Specialty

In order to understand the world of project-based work, we have to perceive project management, at least from a project delivery sense, as a tactical specialty. When we hear the term “tactics”, we think in military terms, not necessarily project management ones. But Army training doctrine describes tactical work in a very project management-like way:

Tactical work is a complement to strategy work; one cannot exist without the other. Individual projects are essentially tactical objectives, and a project’s project manager is a tactical asset. The project/tactical goal is to break down strategies into component parts, subsets, or initiatives (or “decomposition” in project-speak). A strategy can appear daunting from a 10,000-foot view. What makes it feasible, measurable, and eventually real is this tactical breakdown and gritty execution. There is a reason why military training translates so well to a project management career.

2. A Venture Into The Unknown

Project work is not your typical, predictable, operational exercise. For some projects, it is more art than science.

As project practitioners, we often have to inform (or remind) executives and project sponsors of the formal, Project Management Institute (PMI) definition of a project:

“A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique project service or result.”

“Temporary” implies that a project is finite. It must have a clear beginning, middle, and end/result. “Unique” implies change — something an organization pursues that is new. For something to be a project, the service or result you’re striving for must not exist yet.

While the uniqueness makes project work exciting, it also evokes apprehension, whether as a fear of the unknown, or in a fog-of-war sense (where conditions are uncertain). It is common practice for the first status report of a project to be coded as Green [healthy]. But in reality, project should start in a Red [unhealthy] status. There are often too many unknowns in the beginning of a project to state confidently that you’re on schedule, under budget, or are even pursuing the right scope. Our purpose as project leaders is to confront the uncertainty. We plan, recognize assumptions, mitigate risk, and drive forward. Once we have a better view through the fog, we can start reporting a Green [healthy] status.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower is credited saying: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” He truly was an exceptional project leader in his own right, who understood that all projects are and will always be a venture into the unknown. It is the project leader who has to explain (and convince) an executive that a project pursuit and experience is a well-planned leap of faith.