How to get the three success qualities that a PM needs....

There are three qualities that a good Project Manager needs, and you probably don’t have all of them. I’ve only got two out of the three. Some people don’t have any of them

But the good news is that help is at hand. Amazingly, using a Gantt Chart will help you develop all three success qualities. Yes indeed, excessive Gantt Chart use can modify your personality, a little bit, …in a good way.

Project Management Success Quality number 1: Assertiveness.

It’s vital that you don’t agree to a project that can’t be done – everyone will be disappointed later, and the pain is much larger if you don't' tell anyone until just before the project is due! So a good PM won’t say yes, or even maybe, to a project that’s not possible for the budget or in the timescale.

Gantt Charts help with this because they give you indisputable proof that the project can or can’t be done in the time allowed. They give you an arguing tool that you can show other people. And even a totally untrained boss of customer can understand what the Gantt Chart is saying. It’s not YOU being negative, it’s the Gantt Chart that is saying ‘No’.

Project Management Success Quality number 2: Pessimism.

This is the one I fall down on. I’m an optimist and I always think “it’ll be fine, we’ll find a way, nothing will go wrong” and of course something always goes wrong, because projects have lots of tasks, many of which you’ve never done before. And if your plan is any good, any deviation from the plan will be worse than the plan. So a good Project Manager is a step ahead of the problems – they’ve thought about that might go wrong and put actions in place to prevent it, make it less likely, or to deal with it if it does happen. They’ve got extra contingency built in to allow for inevitable slippage of time, and extra money being needed.

The Gantt Chart helps hugely because it shows the whole project in one view, from which it’s easier to think about what might go wrong. It also shows the critical path (if the Gantt is drawn properly! Do YOURS have the critical path clearly shown?) so these are the tasks where the biggest time risk is found. You can even see which floating tasks are nearly critical so you can keep an eye on them too. It forces you to face up to the fact that the project can’t be done quicker than a certain time, so you’re not going to make some optimistic guess in order to please your boss or a customer. Well done that Gantt Chart!

Project Management Success Quality number 3: OCD.

The devil is in the detail, and good Project Managers can see the big picture but also they have a grip of every detail. You should never hear “Oh yes, I forgot to hire the crane” or “Oops, I forgot about testing”. Getting the right level of detail, or ‘granularity’, in your project plan is a difficult but important judgment.

The Gantt Chart allows you to see if there are any tasks that look too big, too long, in other words tasks that need to be broken down into more detail. Also, you can’t miss things out from the Gantt, it shows every part of your project. You’re not going to forget something once it’s on the chart. And for larger projects you can have a sub-Gantt for some of the tasks, where they are broken down into more detail for estimating purposes and to help you monitor progress ore finely when you get to that part of the project. So even if you’re a broad brush kind of person, even if you delegate the making of the Gantt Chart, once you see it you can’t avoid seeing every task that should be happening right now, and every ask that is coming up soon. You wont miss anything ever again.

So there we are – make a Gantt Chart for every project, as soon as possible!

CC

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