The defensive project

manager

Original in Spanish by Jose Barato

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The defensive project manager

• It makes good sense for you as a Project Manager to take a defensive posture in most

areas of risk. If the client is inclined to vacillate, you take pains to nail down the product

specifications; if a contract vendor tends to “forget” promises, you publish minutes after

each meeting. These are common risk mitigation techniques a Project Manager should

use. There is one area, though, where defensiveness will always backfire: You cannot

protect yourself against your own people’s incompetence. If your own people are not

up to the job at hand, you will fail.

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• Of course, if the people are badly suited to the job, you should get new people. But once

you have decided to go with a given group, your best tactic is to trust them. Any

defensive measure taken to guarantee success “in spite of them” will only make

things worse. It may give you some relief from worry in the short term, but it will not

help in the long run, and it will poison any chance for the team to gel.

The defensive project manager

• So what? Let them make some mistakes. You can always override a decision (very

occasionally) or give specific direction to the project. But if staff come to believe they are

not allowed to make any mistakes of their own, the clear message you are sending is

that you do not trust them. There is no message you can send that will better inhibit team

formation.

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• Most Project Managers grant autonomy to the team while everything is running smoothly, but that is

not true autonomy. The team will only feel free if it is allowed to proceed down a different path to the

one set by the Project Manager. Only he with the right to err is truly free. If the Project Manager

interferes in every technical decision or prescribes a methodology applicable to each task, then the

team will not feel trusted, and will have little inclination to bond together into a cooperative team.

This text is based on the book entitled:

The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management

Tom DeMarco, Dorset House Publishing, 1997

The defensive project manager

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