{"id":3383,"date":"2022-12-21T21:26:03","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T03:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atiba.com\/?p=3383"},"modified":"2025-03-07T07:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T13:13:11","slug":"good-project-managers-are-worth-their-weight-in-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/good-project-managers-are-worth-their-weight-in-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Good project managers are worth their weight in gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Years ago, we decided it was time to remodel our kitchen.<\/p>\n

We had what I called the 1970s \u201cBrady Bunch\u201d style kitchen that featured a mixture of faint yellow linoleum floors, puke green laminate countertops, and knotty pine brown cabinets.\u00a0 \u00a0We even had some cool flowery wallpaper and a fern\u2014I loved it.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the early 2000s that we finally realized that the ’70s style was no longer all that popular, and it was time to make a change.<\/p>\n

We hired a very talented and honest carpenter named Gary to guide us from our ’70s d\u00e9cor and appliances into more modern times.\u00a0 He presented us with a reasonable estimate and assured us that in three weeks\u2019 time we would be enjoying a life of new hardwood floors, granite counter tops, an ultramodern fridge, and custom cabinets.<\/p>\n

Well, as you may have guessed if you\u2019ve ever remodeled your own kitchen\u2014things didn\u2019t go exactly as planned.<\/p>\n

Gary did a great job on the work itself. The work he did was precise and beautiful.<\/p>\n

But, instead of three weeks it took about three months.\u00a0 And in the end, final cost was about double the estimate. \u00a0There were days at a time when Gary got delayed working on our project because he had other clients he was juggling.\u00a0 The countertops came in late because of a supply issue with the vendor.\u00a0 And, we ran into some issues with some old water damage to the floor that we only found out about midway through the project.<\/p>\n

I was anxious for Gary to get it done and the budget overage was stressful.\u00a0 But I knew my worries were just first-world problems and took it in stride, grateful to have a cool new room.\u00a0\u00a0In the end, the kitchen was great, it just cost twice as much and took four times longer than we expected.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve all had experiences like this\u2014projects that went off the rails somewhere along the line.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s budget, deadlines, features, or all three, complex jobs are hard to manage.<\/p>\n

Watching Gary, who knew how to build complex things, struggle with project management wasn\u2019t unfamiliar to me.<\/p>\n

In my world of custom software<\/a> development and IT services, missed deadlines and budgets are notoriously common.\u00a0 Just like remodeling a kitchen, managing a tech project is complex.\u00a0 In fact, in our technology services business, in many ways managing a technical project is often more complex than the tech itself.<\/p>\n

Enter one of the most valuable yet misunderstood roles in all of business\u2014the project manager.<\/p>\n

In the old days, a project manager was simply someone with good organizational skills. But early in my career, I realized it\u2019s much more. Project management, whether in the tech world or any other business endeavor, is half art and half science because it involves managing both people and deliverables in tandem.<\/p>\n

On the people side, a skilled project manager must manage both the team doing the work and the client\u2019s expectations.\u00a0\u00a0They are charged with managing project scope, deadlines, budgets, and dependencies.\u00a0\u00a0And they must always be one step ahead, identifying and mitigating any risks to a successful project outcome.<\/p>\n

On the deliverable side, project managers have to know what is considered \u201cdone.\u201d\u00a0 They must coordinate timing and contingencies for bugs and mistakes.\u00a0 They must ensure that the final product meets customers’ expectations.<\/p>\n

So, project management is not easy, and often takes years of study and experience to become good at it.<\/p>\n

Gary, with all his talent as a carpenter, ended up being the catalyst for me to commit to project management as a critical component of our business<\/a>. \u00a0Right up there with sales, marketing, accounting, and HR, project management can make or break an entire company.<\/p>\n

Great project managers are hard to come by.\u00a0 But when you find one, they are worth their weight in gold.<\/p>\n

Despite the struggles we had getting our kitchen completed, over 20 years later I am happy we did it.\u00a0 Not only did I get an updated kitchen, but I learned an important business lesson that helped our company improve.\u00a0 I know that if the d\u00e9cor of the ’70s ever comes back in style, between the skills of someone like Gary and the experience of a great project manager, I will be ready.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean. Years ago, we decided it was time to remodel our kitchen. We had what I called the 1970s \u201cBrady Bunch\u201d style kitchen that featured a mixture of faint yellow linoleum floors, puke green laminate countertops, and knotty pine brown cabinets.\u00a0 \u00a0We even had some cool flowery wallpaper and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atiba-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}