27 October 2021
The Practical Work of Making Process Make Sense
The life of a project manager centers around processes. To some, that is appealing. They like the structure, the formality, the rigor and the detail. It gives them comfort and confidence that they have dotted, crossed, cross-referenced, codified and confirmed all the nitty-gritty details of the project they are responsible for and the people they coordinate.
There are others, of course, who run screaming in the other direction for precisely the same reasons. Not only do they not value the detail, they do not see the point. Forms, checklists and templates seem like bureaucracy run rampant. Rather than getting on with the meaningful work they are responsible for, their desks and their inboxes are awash in unnecessary, unvalued and unasked-for paperwork.
You might read the descriptions above, and presume that the first passage describes project managers and the second reflects the team members who they victimize. While this can certainly be true, the descriptions can readily cut both ways. Team members (and sponsors) can obsess over details that the project manager considers both well in hand and micromanagerial overreach. There are also, thankfully, project managers who take a pragmatic view of the processes that they manage and how they serve the projects they are responsible for.
