PART 1 THE GUTS OF A GREAT PROJECT MANAGER

By guts, I mean grace under pressure.

—Ernest Hemingway

If PMs listened to their gut instincts a little more (“We missed our dates the last three times out—what makes us think we’ll make the date we estimated this time?”) and paid a little less attention to the tools and rules and software and mechanics, we’d all be better off. And if you’re that guy who insists that the first thing your new project management office needs to do is a thorough evaluation of PM software alternatives, you’re not helping at all. Tools and rules and software and mechanics are fine in their place, but only if and after they’re informed by practical, I-know-in-my-guts-that-this-is-true PM thinking—the kind of thinking that the best PMs exhibit regardless of the kind of project they’re on, regardless of the tools and rules and software they’ve got.

And that’s what Part 1 of this book is about: the kind of thinking that speaks directly to the good gut instincts of PMs. The next two parts after that will add on the practical how tos: how to apply good project management thinking in planning (the hard part), and then how to manage the project day to day (the easy part, if you do the planning right). But for now, we’re talking about the guts-aware thinking that forms the mental framework for effective PMs: the mindset that allows them to connect all the pieces, to see and act on the linkages between risk and uncertainty and the schedule, between the project’s stakeholders and its critical deliverables, between its measures of progress and its ultimate project performance, between its priorities and how project changes are handled in light of those priorities. Here’s what’s in the guts and brains of the best PMs.