Project Managers' Sizes!

At first, a PM to me meant a respectful person, full of experience and knowledge, 

who knows what s/he does and knows that his/her job is to deliver successful projects as much 

as to help people and guide them.

To my surprise “as usual”, I found out that there are different types of PMs in the world… In other words, different sizes of PMs!
Let me introduce to you two project managers’ sizes and my stories with them. Mini PM referred to as Miss Mini and Mighty PM referred to as Mr. Mighty…

Mini PM

When I first met her, I tried to convince myself that she definitely looks much younger then her real age.
Anyways… for her, a planning activity was equivalent to and maybe easier than preparing for a picnic or a weekend trip with friends and family!

She was assigned a very big strategic project, and her role was to create the high level project plan for all teams and to coordinate with them to deliver the big project on time "of course". I was managing the software part of the project. She created the plan and sent it to us for review (thanks God she did so!) I reviewed the plan and I found many illogical points and decided to take the risk of discussing this with her! Here we go…
Me: Hi Mini, how are you?
Miss Mini: Hi Mena
Me: I reviewed the plan, and I think some points need clarification
Miss Mini: Go on
Me: Well… I found there are some missing dependencies
Miss Mini: No problem, add them, this is just a plan
Me (thinking): This is just a plan! Per my understanding a plan is a plan, not just a plan!
Me: Excuse me, what does this mean please?
Miss Mini: Nothing, a plan is a collection of assumptions and I assumed that you would start on day X and finish on day Y. That’s it, isn’t this what is planning all about?
Me to Myself: There must be something wrong!
Me: Well, I understand that there should be estimates first from each team based on which we assign people and set durations
Miss Mini: Look Mena… Planning a project is like preparing for a picnic with your friends
Me (visualizing) a blue sky, nice birds flying and flowers of different colors (hearing) soft music mixed with a soft sound of water
Me (thinking): Wake up… This is a project… Oh my God!! This is too much!
Me: Do you know that missing dependencies and such assumptions are putting all of us under a very high risk of missing the deadline? 
Miss Mini: Oh! Really! Well… Make the changes you see, and let’s try not to impact the delivery date 
Me (thinking): Why bother? It’s just a trip, nothing important by any means!
Me: Ok, thanks Mini. Have a good day!
Miss Mini: You too ☺

I was wondering about her age again after this conversation, and I learned she was a fresh grad!
After years of software development, team leading and 4 years of project management, I learned that a project is just like a picnic! Well, I just discovered that I was in KG1 for PMs!
I think this was not her fault rather than the person who put her in such a position and assigned her such responsibilities, she was really trying her best.

Mighty PM

On the other side, there are old PMs who have issues with their projects and their teams. I met another PM who due to some re-org issues was assigned as an in-between management layer between my manager and me. I never knew why they did so, it just happened… Let’s meet Mr. Mighty "the great"…

As a PM, I was expected to meet with my teams and clients, plan, follow up, track and finally report to my manager without getting him involved in my daily activities, this is how I was working since I started project management, which by this time was five years ago. I suddenly found Mr. Mighty with me. At first, I welcomed him; it’s always useful to learn from other people’s experience specially when they come from a different environment.

He attended our team’s weekly status meeting. And to the whole team’s surprise, he interfered in a very strange way… Someone, from our perspective who has never dealt with teams or even with people…
Mr. Mighty: I’m here to fix everything you do because you don’t know your work. I’m here to teach you
This was how he started the meeting!! I didn’t want to interfere in front of my team, as he was supposed to be kind of a manager for me. But, the team did it on my behalf ☺ They taught him how to talk to others and how to respect them.

Afterwards, he was doing really strange things… Amongst them, he was spying on the team and inspecting their screens… They were frustrated and they were not able to work with this style of management of course, and they kept inquiring about his role and I was referring them to my manager for this. And I was just monitoring him doing nothing!

One day, I remember a provocative conversation between Mr. Mighty and me…
Mr. Mighty: How do you manage your team?
Me: I don’t understand, what do you mean?
Mr. Mighty (humbly speaking!): Well, there are two styles to manage teams… The British style and the American style
Me: Huh!
Mr. Mighty: In the British style, the PM acts as an English Lord… He moves in the field to inspect workers while on his horse and pushes them to work hard. The American style, is like a cool guy, laughing with everybody and making friendships with them to get things done
Me (just staring and visualizing slaves and lashes in my head))
Mr. Mighty: Which style do you use?
Me: Well… I use my style!

Next day, I went to my manager and I told him that I’m overloaded with work, and that I think handing over some of my projects to Mr. Mighty will help a lot. The day after, Mr. Mighty disappeared from the account, and we never heard about him again :D
I’m still wondering why do managers hire such people?!

Normal PM

Although I met these types of PMs and others, I still believe there are normal ones, who are aware of their role, and know what they are doing. Yet, I believe this type of PMs is becoming rare.
For me, it’s kind of shocking to know the different faces of people inside and outside their jobs. These people are really nice people outside the project management suit. In my opinion, they just don’t fit in this suit.

If you’re a PM or planning to be one, please revise yourself, and think about the size of PM you’d like to be.

 by Mena Mostafa