Project management skills

I'd remarked to my supervisors that a project manager doesn't need technical skills, but they have queried it.

Gray says that a project manager needs "only rudimentary technical skills" {Gray, 2008} but goes on to remark that he/she also needs orchestrating skills to get people to make the right decisions at the right time. I want to find some public sector literature that remarks on the skills that a project manager needs. There is probably something on the OGC site and probably something in PRINCE2. The OGC site on project manager gives responsibilities, skills and attributes. It also has a concise diagram of where the PM fits in.

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Gray, C. F. and Larson, E. W. (2008) Project management: the managerial process, (4 Edn), McGraw-Hill, NY. 798

Project management and risk

Supervisor #2, who has experience of projects, suggested that I look at risk evaluation and analysis in project management.

Gray & Larson (2008) devote a whole chapter to managing risk [1]. They look at the process, breaking it into steps:

1. identification,
   
2. assessment and
   
3. risk response development.

I can see the relevance of managing risk to project management. Identifying risks is a senior management responsibility [2]. In the public sector people may evaluate strategic choices in a risk averse culture . Consequently, people may go for a project where there is a lower chance of success but a paper trail exists to show that it's not their fault, rather than a project with a high chance of success, but no paper trail. At least that’s my hypothesis and how do I check it?

Risk avoidance strategies make it harder to implement change. Risk averse contracts that put the onus on the supplier or the consultant do not improve the probabilities of success.

Beck & Mobs [3 ] discussed motivations of the various stakeholders when they proposed a longitudinal case study research of a large public private project in Germany. They thought that private managers tended to be more risk averse than politicians leading public agencies. Politicians can demonstrate groundbreaking investments in IT. Perhaps politicians hold a different attitude to risk from the public servants that must implement the IT projects.

Other researchers have used quantitative analysis to explore risk factors that may influence decisions [4], [5]. But I don’t think I want to go the quantitative route. I need to be aware of risk management but that it’s not the focus of my research question.

Smith et al (2006) analysed risk factors relevant to software projects and identified most important risks as lack of top management commitment to a project, and lack of client responsibility, ownership and buy-in of project and its delivered systems [4]. That's what interests me.

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[1]GRAY, C. F. & LARSON, E. W. (2008) Project management: the managerial process, NY, McGraw-Hill.
[2]INTELLECT (2000) Getting IT Right for Government A Review of Public Sector IT Projects.
[3] BECK, R. & MOBS, A. (2006) The Public Hand and IT Mega-Projects: Lessons from the German TollCollect Case. Inaugural Research Workshop for IT Project Management Milwaukee, WI, Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group on IT Project Management
[4] SMITH, D., EASTCROFT, M., MAHMOOD, N. & RODE, H. (2006) Risk factors affecting software projects in South Africa. South African Journal of Business Management, 37, 55-65.
[5]BARKI, H. & HARTWICK, J. (2001) INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT AND ITS MANAGEMENT IN INFORMATION SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT. MIS Quarterly, 25, 195-228.
[6]AUBERT, B. A., BARKI, H., PATRY, M. & ROY, V. (2008) A multi-level, multi-theory perspective of information technology implementation. Information Systems Journal, 18, 45-72.